Skimmed a few chapters yesterday. Excellent.
In this book noted sociologist Michael Mann argues that the “new American imperialism” is actually a new militarism that will bring disaster to the US and the world.
The US is a military giant, better at devastating than pacifying countries. It is politically schizophrenic, split between multilateralism, unilateralism, and an actual inability to rule over foreign lands or control its own supposed client states. It is only a back-seat driver of the global economy, not steering but prodding poorer countries toward an unproductive and unpopular neoliberalism. Finally, it is an ideological phantom, proclaiming attractive values of freedom, democracy, and material plenty to the world, which its militarism brutally contradicts.
Dissecting the military, economic, and political resources of the US, Mann concludes they are so lacking in comparison to earlier empires, and so uneven, as to generate only an incoherent empire and increasing world disorder.
-- Michael Pugliese