This is classic Chomsky. This book published around 90 s but when you read it, you felt like yesterday newspaper. I will try to cover some topics since it would be impossible to review all chapters. The title itself pretty vague if you judge a book by its cover but reading through, it is a comparison between Cold War and post Cold War era. The idea of New World Order from two superpowers to the single country wielding all the power to herself. Chomsky pointed out the hypocrisy of United States (like I said, classic Chomsky) by comparing the military budget during the Cold War and after the dissolvent of USSR. In this era of democracy (or pseudodemocracy) every Tom, Dick and Harry know United States is the one championing the ideology of democracy and shoving it down third world countries but as Chomsky pointed out, this is a fallacy or rather an act to monopolize all the resources in the country. A classic example would be Saudi Arabia. What is more worrying isn't only the hypocrisy but US tendency to destroy the democracy if the so called democracy won't side with them. With the arising power of BRICS now, it would be interesting to see whether they can balance the power of US + NATO in shaping the world's policy. But enough about that. What amazed me at first is this book is published by AUC Press which based in Cairo, a faraway place from MIT University the place where Chomsky works. This book published from a series of lectures of Chomsky at Cairo ( I wish he will come again in the near future before I'm going back) talking about Middle East. I don't know which time is worse, time during the publication of this book or now. 1980 to 1995 a lot of things happened in Middle East. The Gulf War, Saddam, Camp David, the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq, and else. 2000 to 2016, things didn't look any better. Some would argue worsen. Invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, the Spring Revolution, Syria Civil War, disarray of Libya and Iraq, infighting of Palestinian authority (well this is a prolongation from pre Oslo Accords but doesn't matter, still going on), the struggling of Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Iran to become Middle East guardian, the Kurdish country and thousands else. As usual, Chomsky brings out the pessimism in me. While I am not exactly an optimistic person, this book worsen it especially if we see, crises are everywhere. From a looming nuclear war between Russia and US especially with those Ukrainian crisis, to the signing of TPPA by Malaysia. Chomsky mentioned about NAFTA (North America Free Trade Agreement) and how it destroyed the small and medium enterprise in the signatory countries considering they are not strong enough to compete against giant of TNC (Transnational Companies) in the free market. What makes it interesting is how US itself used to protect their market by banning some companies from interfering local companies growth. This is just one of many hypocrisy of US. Not to mention the Israel Palestine crisis. Little did I know, US once sided with Palestine pre 1961. But the allure of a Middle East police and the strength of Zionist lobbyists are too strong. What is interesting is how Sadat once proposed a peace treaty before the second war with Israel. Jarring Sadat 1961 recognized the existence of Israel as a country. Chomsky coined this "historical engineering". The main media will intentionally ignored some facts and keep repeating others until it becomes peculiar to mention otherwise. This is too depressing. I am gonna stop here. Chomsky 's book as usual a bit dry but once you manage to get through it, believe me you would benefit a lot but I gonna throw a cautious warning. Do not get depressed.
PS : I am writing from my phone and a bit spontaneously so excuse my language and the lack of paragraph.