[cen4]

The US did rebuild Germany, Japan, S.Korea and Taiwan. Its hard to imagine these countries getting to where they are today without US involvement. They could have just followed British history and made these countries colonies with an American Viceroy in charge. But they didn't. And that goes to values.

The goals and intent driving these processes wasn't all noble, but the end result wasn't too bad either. Its natural once you rebuild and reshape a Germany or Japan(basically a feudal society pre-WW2), to think well maybe it can be pulled off elsewhere.

But replicating those stories elsewhere was just too complicated to pull off. It required huge resource commitments and totally compliant local governments. Lot of luck basically. That wasn't a problem in the immediate aftermath of WW2, but got more and more complex as time passed. And American financial (dollar hegemony) and corporate interests took over. Cause their goals are simple.

Ofcourse Chomsky is right to point out all the hubris and hypocrisy, but pointing out hypocrisy even stand up comedians are capable of doing. Doing something about hypocrisy is a much more complicated story.

[aguaviva]

They could have just followed British history and made these countries colonies with an American Viceroy in charge.

They actually floated a proposal along those lines -- a Suggested Post-Surrender Program for Germany, which saw it partitioned into a bunch of de-industrialized fiefdoms, "primarily agricultural and pastoral in its character". However it was tabled after certain negative consequences were predicted to arise as a result, such as some 25 million Germans dying from starvation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgenthau_Plan

[gregjor]

>[America] could have just followed British history and made these countries colonies...

European-style colonization, dating back hundreds of years prior to WWII, had mostly gone out of fashion by the end of the war. US-style economic and military cooperation, or vassalage, gives similar benefits without the hassles of maintaining physical colonization. The US never colonized in the European fashion because the country started out as a colony. Late to the game, most of the good pieces of cake already taken, and the costs of colonial empires starting to take a toll, America did not colonize because it became a world power in the 20th century rather than the 16th. I'd like to attribute that to "values" but I think historic circumstances had more to do with it. Americans did brutally colonize the United States, after all.

> Japan(basically a feudal society pre-WW2)

No. Japan consolidated as an empire in the mid-1800s. The feudal shogunate ended, and during the Meiji period Japan aggressively modernized and industrialized, deliberately, to catch up with the West. By the early 20th century Japan had a formidable modern military capable of conquering Manchuria and Korea and challenging Russia. By 1941 Japan had a navy that credibly threatened the United States. The US did not pull Japan out of feudalism. A feudal Japan would not have had a powerful modern national military capable of conquering much of east Asia and challenging US and allied forces. A feudal Japan would not have multiple large modern cities with industrial targets to bomb.

> Doing something about hypocrisy is a much more complicated story.

Not mentioned in the book review, but Chomsky has a history of activism on the ground -- not just talking and writing. He protested for civil rights and against the Vietnam war, got arrested for his anti-war activism. Not enough perhaps but more than most people. I think what Chomsky has done, including educating and inspiring people to ask questions, counts as "doing something." As the review points out, and as Chomsky has written for decades, Americans don't control their government, especially in matters of foreign policy, wars, police action, and covert intelligence agencies.