Noam Chomsky - Turning the Tide U.S. intervention in

The Challenge Ahead
Classics in Politics: Turning the Tide Noam Chomsky
382
back to becoming the world’s policeman,” 47 but their joy in this prospect
is overly optimistic. It is doubtful that the US can return to those
wonderful days when intervention, subversion and direct aggression
could be freely undertaken with much success throughout a large part of
the world while the public acquiesced and the intelligentsia lauded our
noble commitment to Wilsonian principles of freedom and selfdetermination
and the inspiring humanitarianism that distinguishes the
US from all other powers in history. The economic consequences of the
Pentagon system of national industrial policy can also not be long
ignored. It is likely that there will be significant conflict within business
circles over the coming years between those who hope to retain the
traditional military Keynesian methods and others who believe that they
will no longer serve in an era of decline of US hegemony, when
industrial rivals can no longer be controlled or dismissed and the
domestic population is not so malleable as before.