Since World War II, the United States has repeatedly posited itself as a defender of democracy, using its military might to promote freedom abroad even as it ascended to the status of the world’s only superpower. The answer to almost every international problem, it seems, has been American military intervention which is always pitched as a disinterested attempt to deal with a crisis. For decades, the world has believed that US foreign policy means well and that Americas motives in spreading democracy are honorable, even noble. According to William Blum’s America’s Deadliest Export: Democracy – the Truth About US Foreign Policy and Everything Else (Zed Books, 2013), nothing could be further from the truth. Discussing his latest book with New Books Network, Blum explains what makes the US the most destructive nation in history and how the exceptionalist goal of spreading democracy is only a cover for a less benign agenda.

William Blum is one of the United States leading non-mainstream chroniclers of American foreign policy and author of the popular online newsletter, The Anti-Empire Report, a historian and U.S. foreign policy critic. Blum is the author of Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower, and other books.

Jasun Horsley is the author of Seen & Not Seen: Confessions of a Movie Autist and several other books on extra-consensual perceptions. He has a weekly podcast called The Liminalist: The Podcast Between and a blog. For more info, go to http://auticulture.com.

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William Blum, “America’s Deadliest Export: Democracy – the Truth About US Foreign Policy and Everything Else” (Zed Books, 2013)