World Orders Old and New.

• Author: Rothschild, Matthew
• Position: Brief Article

If you want a coherent, systematic account of U.S. foreign policy from a radical perspective, this is the place to go. With his customary mastery of the historical record and his command of enormous amounts of source material, Chomsky here debunks the notion that the "new world order" of Bush and Clinton is different in any essentials from the old world order. Both, he argues, are designed to aid the rich and powerful people in the rich and powerful nations at the expense of the poor and the powerless around the world.

In the first part of this impressive work, Chomsky revisits the Cold War with a refreshing analysis. He contends that the Cold War itself was merely a continuation of U.S. foreign-policy aims under a new guise. "The Cold War confrontation provided easy formulas to justify criminal action abroad and entrenchment of privilege and state power at home."

No one is better than Chomsky at itemizing the grotesqueries of U.S. foreign policy, or at ridiculing the journalists who stooge for the powerful. He chronicles the falsehoods, omissions, double-standards, and cheerleading of the mainstream media, and it is a devastating indictment. He is especially telling in his criticism of such leading journalists as Thomas Friedman of The New York Times and David Broder of The Washington Post.

The only question I have with Chomsky here, as in previous works, is that of intentionality: Do the members of the mainstream media lie, or are they themselves hoodwinked by the prevailing ideology? Chomsky seems to have it both ways in this muddled...