Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction -- The responsibility of intellectuals, redux -- Terrorists wanted the world over -- The torture memos and historical amnesia -- The invisible hand of power -- American decline : causes and consequences -- Is America over? -- Magna Carta, its fate, and ours -- The week the world stood still -- The Oslo Accords : their context, their consequences -- The eve of destruction -- Israel-Palestine : the real options -- "Nothing for other people" : class war in the United States -- Whose security? How Washington protects itself and the corporate sector -- Outrage -- How many minutes to midnight? -- Cease-fires in which violations never cease -- The U.S. is a leading terrorist state -- Obama's historic move -- "Two ways about it" -- One day in the life of a reader of the New York Times -- "The Iranian threat" : who is the gravest danger to world peace? -- The doomsday clock -- Masters of mankind.

"The world's leading intellectual offers a probing examination of the waning American Century, the nature of U.S. policies post-9/11, and the perils of valuing power above democracy and human rights. In an incisive, thorough analysis of the current international situation, Noam Chomsky argues that the United States, through its military-first policies and its unstinting devotion to maintaining a world-spanning empire, is both risking catastrophe and wrecking the global commons. Drawing on a wide range of examples, from the expanding drone assassination program to the threat of nuclear warfare, as well as the flashpoints of Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Israel/Palestine, he offers unexpected and nuanced insights into the workings of imperial power on our increasingly chaotic planet. In the process, Chomsky provides a brilliant anatomy of just how U.S. elites have grown ever more insulated from any democratic constraints on their power. While the broader population is lulled into apathy--diverted to consumerism or hatred of the vulnerable--the corporations and the rich have increasingly been allowed to do as they please. Fierce, unsparing, and meticulously documented, Who Rules the World? delivers the indispensable understanding of the central conflicts and dangers of our time that we have come to expect from Chomsky"-- Provided by publisher.