Picture Credit: Guardian

In this extended article published in two parts on TomDispatch, Noam Chomsky analyzes the United State's hegemonic position in the world, its long term strategic goals, and the thinking behind many of its foreign policy positions. Chomsky's argument is that United States foreign policy since the Second World War has been founded on an assumption that the US has the right to global preeminence and domination, as well as free exercise of violence, and that the sovereignty of other countries only extends as far as United States strategic and economic interests allow, in a global version of the Manifest Destiny doctrine. Chomsky frames his argument in imperial terminology, explicitly connecting the modern age of empire to those past.