Who Rules the World? (American Empire Project)

by Noam Chomsky

The basic viewpoint was outlined with admirable frankness in a major state paper of 1948. The author was one of the architects of the new world order of the day: the chair of the State Department’s policy planning staff, respected statesman and scholar George Kennan, a moderate dove within the planning spectrum. He observed that the central policy goal of the United States should be to maintain the “position of disparity” that separated our enormous wealth from the poverty of others. To achieve that goal, he advised, “We should cease to talk about vague and … unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization,” and must “deal in straight power concepts” and not be “hampered by idealistic slogans” about “altruism and world-benefaction.”15