Pox Americana: Exposing the American Empire

by John Bellamy Foster (Editor), Robert D. McChesney (Editor)

Overview

This volume gathers the work of leading left-wing analysts of imperialism to examine the burning question of our time—the nature and prospects of the U.S. imperial project currently being given shape by war and occupation in the Middle East.
Noam Chomsky, Immanuel Wallerstein, Peter Gowan, and others discuss the dynamics at work behind the "War on Terrorism." Their analyses locate recent developments within a longer historical arc, and set out the central questions for research and debate: Is U.S. unilateralism and militarism a sign of the increasing strength of the world's only remaining superpower? Or a desperate response to the erosion of the strategy it developed for ensuring its leadership over the advanced capitalist world during the Cold War? Essays by Barbara Epstein, Amiya Kumar Bagchi and others also examine the prospects for the resistance to imperialism in the United States and globally.
Pox Americana brings together a range of insights and perspectives that were originally presented at a conference in Burlington, Vermont, to honor Harry Magdoff on the occasion of his ninetieth birthday. It is a fitting tribute to Magdoff's pioneering analyses of U.S. imperialism and a testimony to the resilience and fruitfulness of the radical tradition.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781583671122
Publisher:	Monthly Review Press
Publication date:	08/01/2004
Pages:	160
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

John Bellamy Foster is a Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Oregon and editor of Monthly Review. He has written many books including The Robbery of Nature (with Brett Clark) and The Return of Nature, which won the Deutscher Memorial Prize.

Robert W. McChesney is professor of communication at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, author of Rich Media, Poor Democracy and Our Media, Not Theirs, and co-editor of Monthly Review.

Table of Contents

	Preface	7
Part 1	U.S. Imperialism Has a Long History
1.	Kipling, the "White Man's Burden," and U.S. Imperialism	12
2.	Imperial Ambition	22
3.	The Grid of History: Cowboys and Indians	31
4.	U.S. Weakness and the Struggle for Hegemony	41
Part 2	The Geopolitics and Political Economy of U.S. Imperialism
5.	The New Geopolitics	51
6.	U.S. Hegemony Today	57
7.	The Global Minotaur	77
8.	The Two Wings of the Eagle	95
Part 3	Resistance
9.	Confronting the Empire	104
10.	The Parameters of Resistance	112
11.	Can U.S. Workers Embrace Anti-imperialism?	119
12.	Prospects for Anti-imperialism: Coming to Terms with Our Own Bourgeoisie	135
13.	Notes on the Antiwar Movement	143
14.	Construction of an Enemy	151
15.	Homeland Imperialism: Fear and Resistance	156
16.	The New Age of Imperialism	161
	Contributors	175
	Notes	178
	Index	184