The US government has routinely cited the threat of 'failed states' to global security, asserting the right to intervene with military force to prevent their further collapse. 'Failed states' are those on the peripheries of the global system, with either weak, nonexistent or dictatorial governments, allegedly incapable of satisfying the basic needs of their citizens and considered a danger to the world and to their own people. In this ground-breaking new book, celebrated thinker Noam Chomsky argues that America itself is a failed state, and is as such a danger to its people - and, increasingly, to the world. He draws attention to the inescapable irony that the United States, long involved in democracy-building adventures around the world, desperately needs to revitalise democracy far closer to home...