Hegemony Or Survival: America's Quest For Global Dominance Quotes
"The most hopeful prospect is that the question will not be answered: if it receives a definite answer, that answer can only be that humans were a kind of 'biological error,' using their allotted 100,000 years to destroy themselves and, in the process, much else."
"The year 2003 opened with many indications that concerns about human survival are all too realistic."
"The administration’s Climate Change Science Program (CCSP), wrote Science magazine editor Donald Kennedy, is a travesty that 'included no recommendations for emission limitation or other forms of mitigation.'"
"There may still be two superpowers on the planet: the United States and world public opinion."
"Though Bush planners are at an extreme end of the traditional US policy spectrum, their programs and doctrines have many precursors, both in US history and among earlier aspirants to global power."
"Controlling the general population has always been a dominant concern of power and privilege, particularly since the first modern democratic revolution in seventeenth-century England."
"Wilson’s own view was that an elite of gentlemen with 'elevated ideals' must be empowered to preserve 'stability and righteousness.'"
"The power of the executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him the judgment of his peers, is in the highest degree odious, and the foundation of all totalitarian government whether Nazi or Communist."
"History has a discernible direction and destination. Uniquely among all the nations of the world, the United States comprehends and manifests history’s purpose."
"By virtue of its unique comprehension and manifestation of history’s purpose, America is entitled, indeed obligated, to act as its leaders determine to be best, for the good of all, whether others understand or not."
"The simple fact is that Castro represents a successful defiance of the US, a negation of our whole hemispheric policy of almost a century and a half."
"The primary danger we face in Castro is ... in the impact the very existence of his regime has upon the leftist movement in many Latin American countries."
"The United States may often need to do terrible things to get what it has always wanted."
"We believe no more in Bonaparte’s fighting merely for the liberties of the seas, than in Great Britain’s fighting for the liberties of mankind."
"The integrity of other American nations is an incident, not an end."
"The reach of US power was still limited in Wilson’s time, but as President William Howard Taft had presciently observed, 'the whole hemisphere will be ours in fact as, by virtue of our superiority of race, it already is ours morally.'"
"The most dangerous moment in human history."
"The object is the same, to draw to themselves the power, the wealth, and the resources of other nations."
"It is better to have a strong regime in power than a liberal government if it is indulgent and relaxed and penetrated by Communists."
"In its advocacy of the Monroe Doctrine the United States considers its own interests."
"Washington's exercises of subversion and violence, much as in Latin America, had been driven by fear of independence and excessive democracy."
"The defense of Angola was one of Cuba's most significant contributions to the liberation of Africa."
"The relentless hostility of the United States forced the MPLA into an unhealthy dependence on the Soviet bloc."
"The wars in Indochina are a remarkable example of how even the worst crimes are easily effaced."
"The overriding principle prevails: misdeeds are performed by others; we are culpable only for inadvertent error or oversight."
"It is instructive to look at another international terrorist campaign to overcome 'successful defiance': the terrorist war against Nicaragua."
"The attack against Nicaragua was one of the highest priorities of the war on terror launched as the Reagan administration came into office."
"The real threat is successful development that might 'infect others,' renewing the danger of Guatemala's crushed experiment with democracy."
"The Nicaraguan government approached the World Court for relief from terrorist attacks."
"The persistence of standard operating procedures after the Cold War also did not occur or doesn't matter."
"Nicaraguans were the lucky ones during the first phase of the 'war on terror.' They at least had an army to defend them against state-supported terrorism."
"Another striking illustration of prevailing attitudes toward terrorism is the warning of Bush administration officials about Nicaragua's elections."
"Nicaragua experiences the end of the world nearly every day after the destruction the US government has repeatedly wreaked on this country and its people."
"Nicaragua and El Salvador are remembered as 'relative success stories'—and precisely the kind of success stories we lack in the Middle East."
"Nicaraguans hardly needed the warnings. Their history sufficed to tell them that, should they misbehave by electing the wrong government, then Nicaragua will again be considered a state that supports terrorism."
"In the end, the Turks proceeded to teach a lesson in democracy to the West."
"The crucial point was expressed clearly by Pentagon planner Paul Wolfowitz. He condemned the military, who 'did not play the strong leadership role that we would have expected' but betrayed weakness in permitting the government to honor near-unanimous public opinion."
"Turkey's democracy began to improve. While popular opinion apparently turned even more strongly against the war, the government finally yielded to severe US economic and other coercion."
"Throughout, the Reagan administration's legal arguments keep to a principle enunciated by the distinguished Israeli statesman Abba Eban: in 'determining the legal basis' for some intended action, 'one might work backward from the action one wished to take to find a legal justification.'"
"The US alone refused to attend. Participants, including the other four permanent Security Council members, 'warned of devastating humanitarian consequences of a war.'"
"The extension of formal democracy in Latin America has been accompanied by increasing disillusionment about democracy."
"The postwar Bretton Woods system was understood to reduce the options for democratic choice, transferring decisions to the hands of a 'virtual Senate' of investors and lenders."
"Governments now face a ‘dual constituency conundrum,’ which pits the interests of voters against foreign currency traders and hedge fund managers."
"The same is true of other parts of the neoliberal package: privatization, for example, reduces the arena of potential democratic choice."
"On almost all issues, citizens could not identify the stands of the candidates—as intended."
"What remains of democracy is largely the right to choose among commodities."
"In the case of Iraq, a 'constructive solution' to regime change would be to lift the economic sanctions that have impoverished society."
"The historical record hardly suggests that these were illusions."
"The tripolar order that was taking shape from the early 1970s has since become more firm."
"The US took over the British framework but added another layer of control: peripheral states, preferably non-Arab, that could serve as 'local cops on the beat'."
"It is clear enough why the ‘de facto world government’ described in the business press should welcome Eastern Europe’s ‘market reforms.'"
"The Middle East was to be taken over by the United States."
"US relations with Israel largely developed within the context of control over the Middle East."
"The US and Israel took it for granted after 1967 that Arabs could pose no military threat."
"The US has been concerned more with control than access to Middle East oil."
"Israeli commanders rely not only on the standard military doctrine of those who have overwhelming force at their command but also on their own experience."
"The second Intifada was different. This time the orders to crush Palestinians relentlessly and teach them 'not to raise their heads' escalated the cycle of violence, spilling into Israel itself."
"Two-and-a-half years of intense fighting against Palestinian terrorism have turned the Israel Defense Forces into an obdurate and callous army."
"The first is that actions are evaluated in terms of the range of likely consequences. A second is the principle of universality; we apply to ourselves the same standards we apply to others, if not more stringent ones."
"An apologist for state violence who took such positions would be regarded as a moral monster or lunatic."
"Let us, nevertheless, accept the truisms for what they are: truisms. And then think about a few crucial current cases to which they apply."
"It is this common practice that allows for the conventional thesis that terror is a weapon of the weak."
"But counterterror is official US policy, and it plainly will not do to say that the US is officially committed to terrorism."
"Severe threats are not limited to the weapons of mass destruction in the hands of the powerful."
"The threat of terrorism is, however, not the only abyss into which we peer."
"To be more precise, it was the public that was peering into the abyss."
"The threat of international terrorism is surely severe. The horrendous events of 9-11 had perhaps the most devastating instant human toll on record, outside of war."
"They declare that it is unpatriotic and disruptive to question the workings of authority—but patriotic to institute harsh and regressive policies that benefit the wealthy, undermine social programs that serve the needs of the great majority, and subordinate a frightened population to increased state control."
"The US must retain the right of first use of nuclear weapons, STRATCOM advised further, even against non-nuclear powers that have signed the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and must continue to maintain its launch-on-warning posture for strategic nuclear missiles, on hair-trigger alert."
"It is well understood that BMD, even if technically feasible, must rely on satellite communication, and destroying satellites is far easier than shooting down missiles."
"The Space Command’s Clinton-era brochure Vision for 2020 announced the primary goal prominently on the front cover: 'dominating the space dimension of military operations to protect U.S. interests and investment.'"