This was an eye opening book about the history of US involvement in other countries and US foreign policy. It should be required reading in school. Four stars because the book could be quite repetitive at points.

Essentially, this is a poorly organized compilation of essays written by Dr. Noam Chomsky that critique American foreign policy, particularly the rhetoric often used to justify U.S. actions overseas since the height of the Cold War. I emphasize “poorly organized” because the book is extremely repetitive that one feels the publisher randomly assorted a bunch of Chomsky’s essays they found online and sold it as a book. I am greatly disappointed because this book was neither advertised to me as such, nor introduced in the beginning of the book as an anthology of essays.

The two main recurring topics in the book are the Israel-Palestine conflict and US-Cuban relations. It was boring to read in the sense that anyone who had seen even a clip of his interviews would have already known his thoughts on these two issues, and wouldn’t have learned anything new while reading this book. I would have been much more satisfied if he had written more than a paragraph about US-China relations, or US-India relations, or topics he normally did not discuss very often but which are extremely relevant to the questions of world order. Another issue I had with the book was that Dr. Chomsky never fully discussed why the US took or takes the decisions it does, or why it is/was wrong for the US to build and sustain the current postwar international order to its own benefit, when admittedly China aims to do that for itself presumably in the near future. Furthermore, I was unpleasantly surprised that Chomsky believed and was promoting what many IR scholars view as a popular myth that the US was an isolationist great power before World World One. He himself contradicts this when mentioning the Spanish-American War.

Had I not agreed with most of Dr. Chomsky’s criticisms, I would have rated this book with one star just for its lack of coherence alone. Moreover, I rated this book favorably because I think people unfamiliar with Noam Chomsky and his critiques may find them useful, though I’m unsure whether I would recommend this book as a resource to spread awareness about the hidden (or largely ignored) negative consequences of U.S. foreign policy, except maybe the last chapter/essay.

A lot to take in, however it did not take away from the main points of this book. New Yorker writes that “Chomsky’s interpretation will be the standard among historians a hundred years from now” if the US does not change their ways, and I find that undermines the contents in this book. The interpretation are facts of the crimes the US has committed, how can they be interpreted in another way? I’m having trouble recognizing this point of view, especially from someone who’s read this book. The book talks about how the US believes to be this super power who can do things that their enemies can’t, that’s their whole shtick….

This book has enlightened me a lot about historical events that have not reached me, sadly.

My favorite quotes are -

“Elections have become a charade, run by the public relations industry.”

“As long as the general population is passive, apathetic and diverted to consumerism or hatred of the vulnerable, then the powerful can do as they please, and those who survive will be left to contemplate the outcome.”