Not all wars are fought with tanks, and not every occupation requires soldiers to cross borders.
Hegemony can enter a country in the form of a loan, an infrastructure project, or a feasibility study promising a prosperous future. Years later, the country may discover that the road it was told would lead to development has instead led it to dependency.
This is the central idea presented by John Perkins in his famous book Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, published in 2004. The book generated widespread controversy from the moment it appeared because it does not present itself as a neutral academic study, but rather as an insider’s testimony, in which its author recounts the role he says he played within a system bringing together major corporations, international financial institutions, and the political and strategic interests of powerful states.
The book was published in the United States and became a bestseller. New editions were subsequently released, the latest being an expanded third edition in 2023.
The publisher presents it as a testimony exposing the use of development loans to drown countries in debt and subordinate them to American interests. In its latest edition, Perkins expands the scope of his criticism to include similar practices by China.
This expansion is important because it shifts the issue from an accusation against a particular country to a discussion of a pattern of power that any major state might exercise when it possesses financial resources and influence and seeks to transform them into control over the resources and decisions of weaker states.
Perkins worked during the 1970s for the American consulting firm Chas. T. Main, commonly known as MAIN, where he served as a chief economist.
His apparent role was to prepare feasibility studies and forecast the growth rates that would result from major infrastructure projects in developing countries.
His real role, as he recounts it, was more complicated.
He was sent to countries rich in natural resources, where he persuaded their governments to obtain enormous loans from the World Bank and international financial institutions.
In many cases, the money did not directly enter the borrowing country’s economy. Instead, it quickly flowed back to American companies responsible for constructing power plants, airports, roads, and dams.
The company participated in preparing studies for major projects in a number of developing countries. His stated task was to assess these countries’ energy and infrastructure needs and forecast the growth rates that the proposed projects could achieve.
John Perkins describes another, more dangerous role for himself—one he called that of an “economic hit man.”
Who Is the Economic Hit Man?
The economic hit man, as portrayed in the book, does not carry a gun, plant a bomb, or lead a military coup.
He is a man in an elegant suit, carrying a briefcase filled with studies, tables, projections, and contracts.
He enters government palaces through the door of development and persuades leaders to take enormous loans to finance dams, power plants, airports, roads, and new cities.
On the surface, the deal appears to benefit everyone: the country receives major projects, the government announces the beginning of a new era to its people, and international institutions present themselves as partners in development.
But the question Perkins raises is: Where does the loan money actually go?
In many cases, the money does not remain within the borrowing country’s economy. Instead, it quickly returns to the foreign companies responsible for design, construction, supply, and management.
The companies receive the contracts and profits. The ruling elite gains political prestige and perhaps personal benefits. Meanwhile, the people are left with a long-term debt that future generations must repay.
Engineering the Future Through Numbers
One of the most dangerous ideas presented in the book is that control does not necessarily begin with a direct political decision. It may begin with an economic study.
When experts exaggerate projected growth rates or assume that a massive project will generate returns that real-world conditions cannot support, the number becomes a political instrument.
On the basis of these projections, a country obtains a loan larger than its capacity and commits itself to a project larger than its actual needs. Years later, it finds itself unable to meet its obligations.
This is where the meaning of debt changes.
Debt is no longer merely an amount of money that must be repaid. It becomes a means of applying pressure: oil concessions, military bases, votes in international forums, privatization of public utilities, opening markets to particular companies, or changing national laws to conform to the interests of creditors.
The danger of this mechanism lies in the fact that it does not appear coercive.
The government signed the agreement voluntarily. Parliament may have approved it. Experts prepared their studies. Financial institutions followed their procedures.
Everything appears legal, yet the result may be a gradual erosion of the independence of national decision-making.
It is a form of hegemony that does not abolish the state. It leaves it with its flag, anthem, borders, and seat at the United Nations, while part of its real decision-making power shifts to whoever controls the debt and its conditions.
The Three Stages of Hegemony
Perkins proposes a model consisting of three stages.
The first begins with what he calls the “economic hit men.”
Their mission is based on persuasion and inducement: large loans, massive projects, promises of growth and prosperity, and close relationships with political and economic elites.
If the ruler rejects the deal or attempts to regain control over his country’s resources, the second stage follows, which he calls the “jackals.”
Here, the tools shift from economics to covert operations: destabilization, support for loyal domestic forces, financing coups, threats, and perhaps assassination.
If both tools fail, the third stage may follow: direct military intervention.
In this context, Perkins invokes a number of historical experiences, from Iran and Panama to Ecuador, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq.
He interprets them as different manifestations of a single system whose tools change while its objective remains constant: control over resources, markets, and political decision-making.
Historians and economists may disagree about the extent to which this model applies to every individual case. But the book succeeds in drawing attention to a broader reality:
Power is no longer exercised solely through military force. It also operates through money, debt, technology, contracts, institutions, and even the language of development itself.
Mohammad Mosaddegh: The Early Model
Perkins invokes the 1953 Iranian coup as an early example of what an external power can accomplish without a full-scale military invasion.
Mohammad Mosaddegh was a nationalist leader and prime minister who led the decision to nationalize the oil industry, which had been dominated by the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, later known as British Petroleum (BP).
Britain responded with an economic blockade and international pressure. British and American intelligence agencies then collaborated in a covert operation to overthrow his government.
Declassified American documents establish that the CIA did indeed participate in planning and executing the coup, and that Kermit Roosevelt, grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt, was the American field operative responsible for the operation.
The operation used propaganda and influence over the press, contacts with politicians and military officers, mobilization of segments of the public, and support for General Fazlollah Zahedi to replace Mosaddegh as prime minister.
The events culminated in an attack on Mosaddegh’s home and the seizure of Radio Tehran by forces loyal to the Shah. He surrendered the following day.
He was sentenced to three years in prison and then remained under house arrest until his death in 1967.
Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi returned to power in Iran, and Western companies’ influence over the oil industry was strengthened.
Meanwhile, the 1953 coup became a deep wound in the Iranian collective memory and a lasting source of suspicion toward American and Western intentions.
But Perkins does not present Mosaddegh’s story as an isolated historical event. Rather, he presents it as an implicit warning sent, in his interpretation, to other rulers:
Accept the deal, or you may suffer the same fate.
In his discussion of U.S.-Saudi agreements, Perkins says that the American envoy would remind the ruling family of what happened to Mosaddegh when he attempted to remove British oil interests, before presenting the American offer.
Here Perkins exercises an important degree of caution. He states that he did not know the envoy’s identity with certainty, but believed it was Henry Kissinger.
This reference reveals the nature of the book itself: it combines direct personal experience, what the author heard within the circles in which he worked, and his later interpretations and attempts to connect disparate events within a single system.
Saudi Arabia: The Deal Instead of the Coup
In the case of Saudi Arabia, Perkins describes a different model of hegemony. It did not require a coup or military intervention. Instead, it was based on an agreement in which interests became intertwined.
Following the sharp rise in oil prices during the 1970s, Saudi Arabia accumulated enormous financial surpluses.
The American challenge was to ensure the continued flow of oil and maintain the kingdom’s connection to the American economy and political system.
According to Perkins’s account, the arrangement involved investing part of Saudi Arabia’s oil revenues in American securities and using the returns to finance extensive infrastructure projects within the kingdom, which American companies would undertake.
Saudi Arabia received roads, cities, power plants, and modern facilities.
American companies received enormous contracts, and a substantial portion of the money returned to the American economy, while a strategic alliance based on an exchange of protection and interests became firmly established.
The question here is not whether Saudi Arabia benefited from these projects. The kingdom did, in fact, undergo a vast urban and economic transformation.
The deeper question is:
When does an intertwining of interests become political dependence, and when does dependence become a constraint on freedom of decision-making?
This is the essence of Perkins’s thesis.
Modern hegemony does not always mean that one side loses everything while the other wins everything.
Both sides may benefit, but one may remain more capable of determining the rules of the relationship, changing its terms, and using it as leverage when disagreements arise.
Iraq: When the Language of Contracts Ends
Perkins presents Iraq as an example of a transition from one stage to another.
The beginning, in his interpretation, involved attempts to integrate the Iraqi regime into a network of economic, oil, and strategic interests.
When the desired relationship could not be achieved, pressure, sanctions, and attempts to alter political behavior followed.
The process ultimately ended in direct military intervention in 2003.
This does not mean that Iraq’s history or the decision to invade it can be explained by a single economic factor.
Oil, security, regional politics, the events of September 11, and claims concerning weapons of mass destruction all intersected in the decision.
But Perkins’s argument is that military power does not usually emerge from nowhere. It sometimes follows the failure of economic and political tools of influence to produce the desired outcome.
Are Loans Evil in Themselves?
It would be a mistake to leave the book with the simplistic conclusion that every loan is a conspiracy or that every foreign investment is a form of occupation.
Successful development experiences have been built on loans, investment, and technology transfer.
Many countries have succeeded in using external financing to build strong infrastructure, develop education and healthcare, increase productive capacity, and eventually repay their debts from the real returns generated by those projects.
The problem, then, is not the loan itself, but the nature of the project, the financing conditions, the transparency of the contract, and the distribution of benefits and risks.
Does the loan finance a project that society genuinely needs, or one that the company implementing it needs?
Does the project increase the country’s capacity to produce and export, or does it increase consumption and dependence on the outside world?
Are the terms of the contract made public, or do they remain behind closed doors?
Does the project’s return benefit society, or does a limited group benefit while everyone else bears the cost of the debt?
And can the state reject the political conditions accompanying the financing, or has its need for money already exceeded its ability to choose?
These are the questions that distinguish a loan that supports development from a loan that creates dependency.
The Local Partner
The book focuses primarily on external power, but my reading of it leads me to believe that the “economic hit man” cannot accomplish his mission alone.
Every system of hegemony requires a local partner: an official who accepts a feasibility study despite knowing that it is exaggerated; a government seeking a quick achievement even if the price is long-term debt; an elite that receives the profits while leaving the losses to society; weak oversight institutions; or a public that lacks the information necessary to hold decision-makers accountable.
It is easy to place all responsibility on the outside and see ourselves as innocent victims of a complete conspiracy.
But this view, despite the psychological comfort it provides, deprives us of the ability to understand our own mistakes and correct them.
Great powers pursue their interests, and this is no secret.
Companies seek markets and profits. Financial institutions protect their money and influence.
But the primary responsibility of the national state is to understand its own interests, negotiate from a position of knowledge, and avoid confusing the scale of a project with its value—or the ease of obtaining money with the ability to repay it.
A strong state is not one that refuses to engage with the world. It is one that enters the world knowing what it wants, what it can afford, and what it must never surrender.
Debt and the Rights of Future Generations
There is another ethical dimension that should not be ignored.
A government that borrows today will not be the only one repaying tomorrow.
A government may sign a contract extending for twenty or thirty years, while its installments are ultimately borne by citizens who had no role in making the decision—and perhaps by children who have not yet been born.
Public debt, therefore, is not merely a financial matter belonging to the Ministry of Finance or the central bank. It is a question of democracy and the rights of generations.
Who has the right to bind the future through decisions made today?
What are the limits of one generation borrowing at the expense of another?
Is it acceptable to leave our children gleaming roads and buildings while also leaving them debts that drain their resources and constrain their choices?
The value of a project is not measured by how much was spent on it, nor by its size, nor by how quickly it was inaugurated.
It is measured by how much it adds to society’s productive capacity, by its ability to improve citizens’ lives, and by its ability to generate the resources necessary to repay its cost.
The Book’s Value and Its Limitations
I do not read Confessions of an Economic Hit Man as a judicial document proving everything it contains, nor as a single explanation for all the political and economic transformations in the world.
The book relies heavily on the author’s testimony, memory, and interpretations, and at times places highly complex events within a single explanatory framework.
Some of the events Perkins connects to the economic system require more evidence than the book provides.
But this does not diminish the book’s value.
Its fundamental value lies in revealing the political and ethical dimension of economic language that may appear neutral.
It invites us not to be deceived by numbers simply because they have been placed in tables, nor by feasibility studies simply because international experts prepared them, nor by the word “development” simply because it appears at the top of a massive contract.
Numbers may describe reality, but they may also be used to construct a reality that serves the interests of those who chose the assumptions behind them.
Development can be a path toward liberation. But it can also become a gateway to dependency if it is not accompanied by knowledge, transparency, accountability, and national will.
After closing the book, the question that remained in my mind was not:
Do people officially known as “economic hit men” actually exist?
The more important question was:
How many decisions do we consider national decisions, when their boundaries were actually written years earlier into a loan agreement that the people never read?
In our age, independence is not protected by armies alone.
It is also protected by competent administration, independent knowledge, transparent decision-making, an economy that produces before it borrows, and a society with the right to know in whose name deals are made, who benefits from them, and who will ultimately pay their price.
A state may be occupied by force, but it may also mortgage its future voluntarily when it borrows without a vision.
And this, in my view, is the deepest message worth retaining from John Perkins’s Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.
As I was reading the book, another thought occurred to me: the objective of the “economic hit man” may not be limited to subjugating the borrowing country itself. It may extend to using that country as a tool for exerting pressure on another state.
The financing of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) in Ethiopia may provide a case worthy of reflection.
Its impact is not limited to developing the country that received the financing. It may also give other lending states a future capacity to exert influence over Egypt and place it under unprecedented pressure in its modern history—through control over the flow of the Nile, the lifeline and source of existence for the country and its people.
