The primary strategic goal of the United States since the end of World War II has been to replace the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Japan as the sole economic hegemon of the global capitalist system (not to "defend democracy" or wage a "war on terrorism"), especially at the peripheries of the global capitalist system where there opportunities for greatest economic growth and profit or for demonstrating the superiority of the system exist. Sullivan (history and politics, Drexel U.) defends this thesis by examining case studies of American interventionism in the post-war era, expanding his focus beyond just the European cases he explored in the first edition (the Greek civil war, CIA interventions in the Italian elections of 1948, and Clinton's "humanitarian" wars in Bosnia and Kosovo) to now include cases from the Asia-Pacific region (the Vietnam War, Laos, Cambodia, the Philippines, Indonesia, East Timor, and Australia), from the middle East (Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Israel-Palestine, and Afghanistan), the Western Hemisphere (Guatemala, Cuba, British Guiana, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, Chile, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Grenada, and Haiti), and Africa (the Congo, Angola, Libya, and Somalia). Annotation ©2008 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)