Customer Reviews

Towards a New Cold War: Essays on the Current Crisis and How We Got There

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This is a reprint of a book from 1982. It's a collection of essays and articles dating from 1973 to 1981. After a lengthy introduction (which could be published as a short book all by itself), Chomsky uses the first four chapters to examine the way the media covers up US imperialism. Picking up after his famous essay, "The Responsibility of Intellectuals," he examines the complicity of journalists, editorialists, and other writers in making excuses for a murderous foreign policy. His remarks mention dozens of specific cases, naming names and quoting their morally repugnant words. You'll either laugh or cry when you see how war crimes such as the bombing of Cambodia were "explained" by the most prestigious writers in the country.

But his focus is also generalized --- he compares these people to the commisars of the Soviet Union, showing that in any country (democratic or otherwise), serving state policy is the only way to rise to the top. After reading the first four chapters, you'll feel a sense of recognition. I guess we always suspected that this is how the media *really* works.

Chapter 5 is co-authored with Edward S. Herman. Herman is the principal author of one of Chomsky's best-known books, Manufacturing Consent. (They teamed up together in 1979 to write The Political Economy of Human Rights, in two volumes. He's written a few important books himself, including The Real Terror Network.) This chapter continues in the vein of the first four, concentrating on the way the media and scholars rewrote the history of the Vietnam war. As with the previous chapters, dozens of specific examples are given, creating a broad picture of modern propaganda techniques.

From there, Chomsky goes on to review Henry Kissinger's memoirs, conflict in the Middle East, the role of the US in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and (finally) a brilliant chapter on East Timor (written after the Indonesian invasion was in full swing).

I urge you to read this book. It paints a detailed portrait of consistency in US foreign policy. Intellectuals will insist that each invasion of each country is a unique moment in history, but Chomsky's meticuluous study shows the common threads. This book can be overwhelming at times in its endless parade of facts, but the effect is liberating. When you're done reading it, you'll feel that some light has been shed on what's really going on in the world.

This book gives alternative interpretation of causes and effects of US foreign policy in contrast to a popular held view. Author's research in general is very thorough and in many cases followed up first hand. Nonetheless the arguments are not constructed in a way to "convince a non believer" or to refute popular view point by point. The arguments are constructed to present author's view with ample references to start you off on verifying his facts on your own if you wish to do so. Paraphrasing author, he does not tend to convince, but rather help open up reader's mind to alternate possibilities in contrast to populist opinions.

With regard to the contents of the book, I have to say, it is critical of US foreign policy to say the least. He is far from being "an apologist for communist regimes" as his harshest critics attribute to him. Rather he holds a view that means that US uses to achieve its foreign policy goals could be much less violent and considerate of foreign country?s population?s will. He also exposes and questions the moral validity of certain US goals that are not commonly in a public view.

I am not sure why one reviewer thought this was a Soviet apologist. This book argues that America, and Russia, interceded in essentially indigenous conflicts for non-ideological reasons. Business interests are the main culprit, so Chomsky says, though this book is not about tracing the strategies of specific corporations. There is bias however. As a typical example, the sections dealing with Israel in 1956-76 fails to properly credit participation from external forces; France and Britain are marginalized in the book and Russia is a rare mention. Accordingly, the business motivation thesis is not balanced against other motivations such as fear of Communism, or a desire for a stable world order that benefits America.

This book, however, is still worth getting for its examination of American intellectuals and for its corrections against mainstream notions that today are taken for granted. And unlike many authors, Chomsky does not hide his bias and his underlying moralities are honestly expressed.

By the way, this is a heavily annotated book so even if you disagree with him you will be able to disagree substantively.

When I picked this up I thought it was a book explaining how America's war on terror was bringing it into a `new cold war' with Islam. Unfortunately that was not the case. This book is a collection of essays from times gone by, from the greatest of the critique's, Mr. Chomsky. This book details a myriad of subjects, boldly among them the steamship like memorandum on why Mr. Carter and Mr. Reagan were creating a `new cold war.' The essay was written in the 80s. Days after the essay was written the Soviet Union collapsed and the cold war ended, forever. That fact alone should doom this book to obscurity but the other essays are more fascinating, including the interest in East Timor, which would not grace the American media for more then a decade and other essays on a vast array of Subjects. An interesting volume but the work is heavily outdated. For a soldier of Chomskyism this book will be another wind in the willows to add to the library and it is a must buy, in fact it will make a wonderful gift for any Chomsky lover. For those interested in Chomsky's take on the current geopolitical struggle, this book will be very disappointing.