10,000 words is pretty standard for a Perry Anderson article. Even his book reviews in the London Review of Books run to that length (or more). However, I think he's one of the most acute analysts we have and I always learn from what he write. Here is my attempt at a summary, based only on a quick read, of his latest mini-tome of a an essay: Anderson wants to use the idea of hegemony to examine the US's relationship with the European powers. During the Cold War, US hegemony was based more on force than consent, since capitalists of all nations feared communism and generally rallied behind US leadership. In the last decade, a number of factors have made force increasingly important as a tool of US hegemony. However, despite the fact that their is increasingly vocal unhappiness with the US's global rule, Anderson doesn't think that the centre left (either in the US or in Europe) offers any real alternative to current US policies. The centre left's opposition to the war on Iraq is merely prudential, rather than principled. Further, and perhaps more damning, the centre left's support of humanitarian intervention in the 1990s paved the way for the supposedly new doctrine of pre-emptive war to prevent small nations from acquiring weapons of mass destuction.