Alfred McCoy is the J.R.W. Smail Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. A TomDispatch regular, he is the author of In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of US Global Power and Policing America’s Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the Rise of the Surveillance State.
The drawbacks of Washington’s grand strategy for global dominion.
One key goal of NSA surveillance of world leaders is not US national security but political blackmail—as it has been since 1898.