Reflections on Humanitarian Action

Dilemmas of Domination:
The Unmaking of the American Empire
Walden Bello
Metropolitan Books, Henry Holt and Co, 2005
ISBN: 0-8050-7402-3

The empire seems unassailable, but the empire is weak—and precisely because of its imperial ambitions. So argues Walden Bello in his provocative new book, which systematically dissects the strategic, economic, and political dilemmas confronting America as a consequence of its quest for global domination.

An award-winning development expert, Bello punctures the myth of America's invincibility, revealing its carefully concealed contradictions. He shows how, despite the enormity of the U.S. defense budget, American forces are critically overextended—a condition bound to intensify as each local "victory" breeds simmering resistance and new confrontations elsewhere. He points to the empire's looming economic breakdown, the result of its gargantuan military costs, record-breaking deficits, and exploitative trade and investment relations with developing countries. On the political front, he warns of the disillusionment mounting around the world in response to America's failure to champion liberal democracy. Everywhere America goes, crony capitalism, gross inequalities in income, and the hostile coercion of foreign peoples undermine its pretenses of justice and inclusion, leaving embittered—and often violently vengeful—populations in its wake.

A clear and prophetic examination, Dilemmas of Domination reveals a not-too-distant future in which the empire's hidden weaknesses will yield fatal challenges to American supremacy.