Noam
Chomsky’s book Who Rules
the World, Picador, 2017, does not declare
its aim. The
New York Review of Books called the book
“A plea to end American hypocrisy … and, instead
of assuming American benevolence, to scrutinize
how the US government actually exercises its
still-unmatched power.” That could have been
made a clearer focus. The book does deliver a
litany of US foreign policy moves and
corresponding hypocrisy throughout its 23 small
chapters. It is a bitty book. It reads like the
re-publication of articles published at various
times for a variety of purposes. The information
is interesting, but not always coherent.
The
last chapter can serve as a summary. The US
remains the world’s strongest power, but others
can make moves. US domination of East Asia and
the Pacific Ocean is changing as China builds
high-speed train and pipeline links along the
old Silk Road and is funding the expansion of
the Pakistani port of Gwadar. In Europe, Russia
is reacting to a perceived threat by the
expansion of NATO. Gorbachev’s vision of a
single Europe from Lisbon to Vladivostok, with
centres like Brussels, Moscow and Ankara is seen
by the West as a Greater Russia dream. In the
Middle East, the Russian intervention in Syria
was despite the US naval and air force bases
there to reassure allies and deter others. The
war on terror in Afghanistan, in Iraq and in
Libya, and on-going drone assassinations has
come with a huge civilian cost and with an
increase in terrorists. Chomsky says diplomacy
not violence is needed with a big program facing
up to mistakes, making amends, providing welfare
and promising a new beginning – in refugee camps
and in the banlieues of Paris. And what matters
most is what principles rule the world – not
what country.
What
follows now is my attempt to mine some
interesting information from the book. At the
end I’ll add some thoughts.
Chapter
1 is titled “The Responsibility of
Intellectuals.” It tells of 1960s Latin America,
the Catholic Church and the successful US
assault on the pope’s doctrine of a
“preferential option for the poor.” The Kennedy
era converted the armies of Latin America into
counterinsurgency brigades that evolved into the
death squads. Here Chomsky say intellectuals
have a responsibility as humans “in a position
of privilege and status to advance the causes of
freedom, justice, mercy and peace - and to speak
out … about the crimes … which we [the US] can
ameliorate or terminate …”
Did
the 9/11 and the attack on the twin towers in
New York “change the world?” There were major
consequences: Bush
re-declared Regan’s war on terrorism, led
invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. There have
been interventions in other countries in the
region, with ongoing drone assassinations
bringing deaths to civilian bystanders. Were
there alternatives? Chomsky ends citing authors
who claim the US responses helped advance Bin
Laden’s aims.
The
short chapter 2 on terrorists begins with the
assassination in 2008 of Imad Mughniyeh, a
commander of Hezbollah in Damascus, that
produced a US State Department press release:
“one way or another he was brought to justice.”
Yet the Financial Times reported that most
charges against Mughniyeh were unsubstantiated.
An exception was the hijacking of a TWA plane in
1985 in which a US Navy diver was killed. The
other was the hijacking of the passenger liner
Achille Lauro in which a disabled American was
murdered. Yet the Achille Lauro hijacking was in
retaliation for an Israeli bombing of Tunis,
killing 75 with smart bombs. That bombing was
denounced by the UN Security Council as “armed
aggression” – a crime more serious than
terrorism. In its turn, that Israeli bombing was
in response to the killing of 3 Israelis in
Larnaca, Cyprus – totally unconnected with
Tunis. And the Cyprus killings were provoked by
regular Israeli hijackings in international
waters. The chapter then lists acts by
governments, their armies and the CIA in the
Middle East that are major acts of terrorism.
The chapter returns to Mughniyeh and his final
alleged terrorist crime - helping Hezbollah
prepare defenses against the 2006 Israeli
invasion of Lebanon. The reader is left
wondering who was brought to what justice.
Chapter
3 begins with an account of The Torture Memos
released by the White House in 2008 and 2009 to
a response of shock, disgust and surprise.
Chomsky says the practice runs from George
Washington’s era through the occupation of the
Philippines to Guantanamo. The US ratification
of the UN Convention against Torture had
reservations that allowed the CIA to continue
the style of torture it had developed. Obama’s
end of torture merely returned to the earlier
pattern of using proxies to do the torture. The
US used Guantanamo for torture as an area
outside the law. When the courts declared that
invalid, the exception moved to Afghanistan.
Chomsky cites authors who believe the US use of
torture has created terrorists.
Chapter
4, “The Invisible Hand of Power”, opens on
pro-democracy movements in the Arab world and
the popular uprisings in US cities. Chomsky
supposes that US policy follows Roosevelt’s
advisor: control of the energy resources of the
Middle East yields “substantial control of the
world.” Since WWII the US sought to control a
“grand area” with unquestioned power, including
the western hemisphere and former British Empire
with its Middle East energy resources. Post 1989
NATO expanded to the East, in violation of
informal pledges made to Gorbachev, and NATO has
become a US run intervention force with goals
now including: “guard pipelines that transport
oil and gas directed for the West.”
Chomsky
introduces
us to the Muasher Doctrine. Basically this says
that if the leader (dictator) supports us (the
US) nothing else matters. Adam Smith argued
against the economic logic of free trade for the
UK because it would hurt the UK’s domestic
economic development. Economist Ricardo hoped
that men of wealth would show a home bias and
accept a lower rate of profit in their own
country. (The warning of classical economists
against what became neoliberalism resonates with
our times!)
Chomsky
turns to Chinese and Iranian threats to the US,
pointing out that China’s ships are blocked from
the Caribbean but a nuclear US warship can take
part in exercises off the coast of China. He
concedes the US capacity to control the “grand
area” has diminished. Chomsky discusses the US
economy and electioneering driven by monied
donors. Wealth and power are narrowly
concentrated. For most, real incomes have
stagnated. Little people get hurt in a sequence
of financial crises. The
banks get bail outs and their CEOs get bonuses.
The blame is pushed onto others like public
service employees and their fat pensions, black
moms picking welfare cheques by limousine – and
teachers and immigrants.
Chapter
5 explores “American Decline: Causes and
Consequences.” By 1949 the US had – in its words
– “lost” China. Then Southeast Asia began to
slip away in horrendous wars. By 1970 the US
share of world wealth had fallen to 25%. Twenty
years later “the Soviet Union collapsed.” The
subsequent expansion of NATO was opportunistic
and counter to US pledges to Gorbachev. (In
1990, I was one of many who expected a peace
dividend.) The then Bush Administration said it
would maintain its policies. Clinton did the
same. And the US said it could unilaterally use
military power to protect its economic
interests.
Bush
and Obama both achieved extremely low Arab world
approval ratings – 5% for Obama so that any real
democracy in the Arab world would be unlikely to
want association with the US. Bush, then Obama,
developed and used Special Forces military in
the hands of the President alone. Bush arrested
and tortured. Obama assassinated by drone. US
power may decline, but US ambition does not.
Chomsky says the theatre that is Washington does
not attract international fans and the influence
of financial institutions makes Washington often
act to the “right” of the views of Americans.
The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have cost over
$4.4 trillion – a victory for Obama Bin Ladin
who aimed to trap the US in costly wars. All
this does not help the vision of the “city on
the hill” that is supposed to inspire US
citizens and the world. Laments about US
decline, although exaggerated, contain elements
of truth.
“Is
America Over”, asks the title of chapter 6.
There is a memorial for Pearl Harbor but not for
Kennedy’s invasion of South Vietnam and then all
Indochina, leaving millions dead and four
countries devastated. Bush’s Iraq war was
justified by self-defense given Saddam Hussein’s
weapons of mass destruction. Justification then
shifted to Iraq’s yearning for democracy. As the
scale of the US defeat grew, a final settlement
tried to keep US bases and retain privilege for
US investors in the Iraq energy system. Chomsky
turns from these Southeast Asia and Iraq
“lessons” to some content of the
November/December 2011 issue of establishment
journal Foreign
Affairs on the topic “Is America Over.”
The journal calls for “retrenchment” of
“humanitarian missions” abroad to arrest decline
and as usual mentions the increasing power of
China and India. The journal issue opens on
Israel/Palestine with a pair of articles “Israel
under Siege.” The January/February 2012 issue
urges bombing Iran before it is too late.
Chomsky suggests US decline is real, but notes
the ruling class perception that anything short
of total control spells disaster. Chomsky adds
that ignoring the effects of atmospheric warming
is a serious threat too.
Chomsky
returns to losing China and Vietnam, to 1948, to
policy and to George Kennan, who advocated
maintaining the disparity separating US wealth
from the poverty of others and ignoring
idealistic slogans about human rights and
raising living standards and democratization.
China’s declaration of independence in 1949 was
a “loss” that led to supporting France’s effort
to conquer its former colony of Indochina – to
resist the virus of independence. Chomsky notes
that a major US “victory” was the 1965 US-backed
coup by General Suharto of Indonesia with mass
slaughter that ended the threat of democracy
there. The first 9/11 event (1973) – the coup in
Chile - ended Chilean democracy with General
Pinochet’s dictatorship.
Chomsky
looks at “stirrings abroad.” South America has
freed itself from Western domination. Similarly,
there is movement in Middle East and North
African countries, although the favoured
dictators are supported by the US as long as
they can hold control. Chomsky argues the US has
opposed settlement of the Israel/Palestine
dispute on the international terms agreed to by
the UN and widely known. The preconditions that
the US insists on ensure that negotiations can
lead only to Palestinian capitulation or
nowhere. Illegal Israeli settlements continue to
be established.
Chomsky
turns to the “threat” of Iran among the “Is
America over” issues from the Foreign
Affairs journal. The
elite take Iran to be a threat, but polls in
Europe regard Israel as the leading regional
threat to peace. In polling Middle East and
North African countries, the status of biggest
threat in the Middle East is shared by the US,
to the extent that on the eve of Egypt’s Tahir
Square uprising, 80% of the population felt the
region would be more secure if Iran had nuclear
weapons. Only 10% of Egyptians felt Iran was a
threat. Only a quarter of Americans regard Iran
as an important concern. A possible rationale
for the US policy is from the Pentagon’s reports
to Congress: “Iran’s nuclear program and its
willingness to keep open the possibility of
developing nuclear weapons is a central part of
its deterrent strategy.”
There
is an interesting chapter 7 on “Magna Carta, Its
Fate and Ours.” There were two British “cartas”
from the middle ages: the Great Charter and the
Charter of the Forest. The former, the Charter
of Liberties, led to the British Habeas
Corpus Act 1679 “for better securing the
liberty of the subject and for prevention of
imprisonment beyond the seas.” The US
Constitution incorporated it stating: “the Writ
of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended” except
in case of rebellion or invasion. The Charter of
the Forest set limits on privatization of the
commons, which were a source of general
sustenance for the population: for fuel,
construction material and food. The late Elinor
Ostrom won the Nobel Prize in economics in 2009
for work showing the superiority of user-managed
(“common”) fish stocks, pastures, woods, lakes
and groundwater basins.
Chomsky
examines control of a people’s desire for
democracy by public relations, advertising and
marketing whereby wants are fabricated and
people are directed to superficial things like
fashionable consumption. The public must be
marginalized and controlled - for its own
interest – in the art of the practice of
democracy. Foreign affairs is not supposed to be
the business of “the bewildered herd.” Chomsky
quotes Foreign
Affairs: “state policies are
overwhelmingly regressive … expanding social
inequality” but designed so that “people think
that the government helps only the undeserving
poor, allowing politicians to … exploit anti
government rhetoric … as they continue to funnel
support to their better-off constituents.”
A
section notes that the Charter of Liberties’
promise - “no person [shall] be deprived of
life, liberty or property without due process of
law [and] a speedy and public trial …” did not
apply to those not “persons” like Native
Americans and slaves. Since Reagan any black
male can be arrested and become trapped in jail.
The last financial crisis largely obliterated
the wealth of Afro-Americans. A short section
notes the 14th amendment that made slaves
persons also made corporations persons. The
rights of corporate persons now transcend those
of humans so that corporation Pacific Rim can
sue El Salvador for seeking to protect its
environment.
Chomsky
shows Magna Carta is now very much under threat.
Habeas
Corpus barred “imprisonment beyond the
seas” without due process yet Tony Blair
“rendered” a Libyan dissident to the mercies of
al-Qaddafi. Due process has been “extended”
under Obama so that internal deliberations in
the executive branch are considered the due
process in the drone assassination campaign. A
drone attack killed cleric al-Awlacki who was an
American citizen, with no fair trial and no
media comment about that. And the presumption of
innocence has taken on a new meaning in the
Obama drone attack era where all military-age
males in a drone strike zone are deemed
combatants. The Times failed
to note in its report on the drones that the Geneva
Conventions prohibit execution without a
previous judgment by a regular court affording
all the necessary judicial guarantees. And there
was the assassination of Osama Bin Laden …
Chomsky
found important US intellectuals who did not
view the US as bound by international law. Then
there are the executive terrorist lists. These
executive decisions are without legal recourse
but with some big counter-productive
consequences. After 9/11 the US closed down
Al-Barakat, the Somali charitable network, for
allegedly financing terror - amid US media
praise. Later the US quietly withdrew the
charges as without merit. That organization ran
remittances back to Somalia and ran major
businesses there. A leading scholar concluded:
“apart from devastating the economy … this
attack … may have played a role in the rise … of
Islamic fundamentalists.” The fact that this can
be done with no checks is an offense against the
Charter of Liberties.
The
Charter of the Forest resonates with voices from
the global South where conversion of public
goods to private property removes another
fragile thread holding African nations together.
Immediately post World War II Africa was left to
Europe, but the US has become more involved
alongside China, and the environment is a
casualty. Indigenous communities who have always
upheld the Charter of the Forests have been in
the lead confronting climate change. In 2009
Bolivia organized the World People’s Conference
on Climate Change that produced a People’s
Agreement calling for a Universal Declaration on
the Rights of Mother Earth.
Chapter
8, “The Week the World Stood Still”, is an
examination of Kennedy and the Cuban missile
crisis of the sixties. Chomsky gives a thorough
review of books and biographers. Khrushchev made
reasonable offers for removing the missiles. The
US comes across as playing unnecessary
brinksmanship. “In 1962 war was avoided by
Khrushchev’s willingness to accept Kennedy’s
hegemonic demands.” He notes the on-going very
serious risk of nuclear war by accident.
Chapter
9 is “The Oslo Accords: Their Context, Their
Consequences”. This devastating review reveals
PLO leader Arafat in need of something to
re-establish his waning power. Internal
Palestinians, transformed by the Intifada, were
seeking the international agreement for a
Palestinian State and the end to Israeli
settlements. The Accords attempted to set aside
all previous international agreements and to
allow Israeli supervision over settlements. The
account ends with the Norwegian
government-commissioned study by Hilde Henriksen
Waage who writes that the Oslo process was
“expected to bring peace to the Middle East” but
“for the Palestinians it resulted in the
parceling of the West Bank, the doubling of
Israeli settlers, the construction of a
crippling separation wall, a draconian closure
regime, and an unprecedented separation between
the Gaza strip and the West Bank.” She
notes that the process is a case study in the
flaws of third party mediation by a small state
in highly asymmetrical conflicts: “the Oslo
process was conducted on Israel’s premises with
Norway acting as Israel’s helpful errand boy.”
Norway hoped that by dialogue and building of
trust an irreversible peace dynamic would be
established. This approach is wrong because
trust is not the issue: power is. A weak
facilitator can only achieve as much as the
strong party will allow. And Waage wonders
whether such a process can ever be enough.
Chomsky ends noting the “ridiculous” situation
remains with the US deeming itself as the
“honest broker” ready for peace negotiations.
“The
Eve of Destruction, chapter 10, contemplates the
foreign policy surrounding efforts to avoid
environmental destruction and the risk of
nuclear war. In Australia, India and South
America there are struggles for the environment.
Bolivia has a constitutional requirement to
preserve the rights of nature. Oil exporter
Venezuela warned of the dangers of overuse of
fossil fuels at the UN. The US now talks of
“energy independence” rather than ending fossil
fuel or alternative energy targets. Then there
is the risk of nuclear war. The Bulletin of
the Atomic Scientists continues its
warnings. And Chomsky tells of Reagan era
probing of Russian airspace for its defenses
that only luck prevented from escalating. This
is crazy.
The
issue of Iran and Korean nuclear weapons comes
up. Non-aligned countries pushed in 2013 to move
towards a nuclear free zone in the Middle East
region – something the UN General Assembly has
approved, and Finland set a conference for it in
2012. Iran said it would go. Obama cancelled the
meeting saying the time wasn’t right. The
European parliament and Arab states called for
it to continue. For North Korea, in 1994, there
was a US/North Korea framework agreement to halt
nuclear work. In 2005 the US and North Korea
agreed to an end to the nuclear program in
return for a light water reactor for its medical
needs. Bush
withdrew the reactor, began programs to compel
banks to stop North Korean transactions and
threatened North Korea as part of an “axis of
evil.” North Korea re-started the nuclear
program. So alternatives are there.
Chapter
11 is “Israel-Palestine: The Real options”.
Although two options are often presented: two
states or one state from the sea to the river;
Chomsky says there is no second option. There is
really only third option that Israel is pursuing
with US support, and this third option is the
only realistic alternative to the two-state
solution. The secular democracy from sea to the
river may seem attractive, but without advocacy
and a path this will only provide support to the
third option that is in fact underway.
There
is a new city still called Jerusalem that now
incorporates dozens of Palestinian villages and
lands with a corridor including the settlement
town of Ma’aleh Adumin with lands reaching to
Jericho – and bisecting the West Bank. Corridors
to the north incorporate settler towns of Ariel
and Kedumim that divide Palestinian control.
Israel is incorporating territory on the Israeli
side of its illegal wall – taking land and water
resources. The wall to the border takes 10% of
the West Bank and Palestinians have an Israeli
bureaucratic control to enter or leave so that
the UN reports an 80% decrease of Palestinian
farmers cultivating their lands and a 60% drop
in yield of olive orchards. Israel is also
taking over the Jordan Valley imprisoning the
cantons that remain. So far the US has resisted
Israel’s desire to take the El region. There are
regular small expulsions of Palestinians that
add up so that “the Jordan Valley population has
fallen from 300,000 in 1967 to 60,000 today.”
The result of all this will be a Greater Israel
with a Jewish majority and under the same
“Jewish and democratic” slogan – the same
contradictory arrangement as Israel now has.
The
reflection ends sadly: repeating the earlier
analysis and the preconditions for negotiations
required, not by the Palestinians but by the US
and Israel. And the problem goes further.
Without an end to the Palestine-Israel conflict,
a regional peace agreement is unlikely. Chomski
repeats that Iran is presented as problematic
and gives some thoughts again on dealing with
the threat - if it exists. He reminds us that
Britain and the US have special responsibility
to devote efforts to a Middle East
nuclear-weapons-free-zone – a situation that was
exploited when attacking Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.
“’Nothing
for Other People’: Class War in the US” declares
chapter 12. At the end of the 19th century the
US had more deaths from labour violence than any
other country except Czarist Russia. Its
influential labour movement was subjected to
brutal attack. By the 1920s the movement had
been decimated, but revived in the Great
Depression. Reagan in the 1980s did not enforce
labour rights. Illegal firings of union
organizers skyrocketed and scabs were used.
NAFTA, labeled “free trade,” is really about
“investor’s rights.” Successful organizing
declined. Today, inequality has reached the
levels of the 1920s. Ninety five percent of
growth has gone to the pockets of 1% of the
population. For males real median income is
below what it was in 1968. Workers wanted not
just bread but roses, “dignity and independence,
recognition of their rights as free men and
women.” The man that sells a product keeps
himself. The man who sells his labour sells
himself. John Stuart Mill, like Marx, expected …”if
mankind continue to improve” … “the association
of the labourers themselves on terms of
equality, collectively owning the capital with
which they carry on their operations, working
under managers electable and removable by
themselves.” The “masters of mankind” promoted
“gain wealth, forgetting all but self.” The
labour movements were dedicated to solidarity
and mutual aid but were defeated mostly by
force.
Chapter
13 turns to the question of how foreign policy
is determined – “Whose Security? How Washington
Protects Itself and the Corporate Sector”. The
standard view is that governments ensure
security, and the primary threat from 1945 was
Russian. Yet after 1989 the US invaded Panama
and installed a client regime in violation of
international law, a move that was bitterly
condemned elsewhere. After 1989, Bush issued a
security policy that was the same as before with
new plans for the Middle East to deal with
“radical nationalism.”
Chomsky
has a section devoted to US policy relating to
“radical and nationalistic regimes” that
responded to popular pressure for independent
development, for example overthrowing
parliamentary governments of Iran and Guatemala
in 1953 and 1954. This continues in Guatemala in
2014 as native peoples are forced to flee land
where mining or plantations are required by
business interests, with the private sector and
the army pushing the government. The historical
backdrop is clear. US investments trump the
people and their land. However, the US finds it
difficult to appeal to the poor with its
doctrine that the rich should plunder the poor!
Chomsky
reminds
us of policy against Cuba where Castro’s new
government encouraged the poor and
underprivileged to demand a decent living:
“Castro represents a successful defiance of the
US.” Kissinger caught the essence of real
foreign policy when he spoke of the virus of
independent nationalism. The virus was attacked
wherever it appeared - in Indochina, Latin
America and the Middle East. Security in the
normal sense is not a factor.
State
power has to be protected from the enemy, but
the population is not protected from state power
– witness the massive surveillance by Obama.
Then there is concern for private power. The
“secret” trans Pacific and Atlantic “trade
agreements” were nevertheless available to
corporate lawyers for corporate input – and like
NAFTA they are really about investor rights.
Finally there is the security of the population
that is more threatened by global warming than
helped by rejoicing over energy independence.
And the security threat of nuclear extinction
remains as potent as ever.
Chapter
14 entitled “Outrage” begins with US and Western
outrage at the downing of Malaysia Airlines
Flight 17 in eastern Ukraine attributed to Putin
and the Russians fighting in Ukraine. There is a
double standard. Chomsky reminds us of a similar
event - the downing of Iran Air Flight 655
killing 290 people including 66 children. The
airbus was shot down by a missile from a US ship
operating in Iranian waters. At the time the US
was assisting Iraq – Saddam Hussein – in the war
against Iran. The US said the ship was defending
itself from possible attack. The ship’s
commander was subsequently given the US Legion
of Merit award! Chomsky notes the inadequate
coverage of the goings on and life in Gaza and
the West Bank – occupied territories. The West
bank norm has been continuing illegal
settlements and infrastructure leaving unviable
cantons to Palestinians who face violence and
repression. Israel kills two children a week.
And Israel goes on separating West Bank from
Gaza. Chomsky shows the 2005 withdrawal of
settlers was a charade – they were resettled in
better and more defensible areas. The
misrepresentations are considerable. When Israel
withdrew, Palestinians voted in overseen
elections in January 2006 and control of their
parliament went to Hamas. Hamas is committed to
the 2-state solution. The Palestinians seem to
be being punished. According to Chomsky, Israel
accepted the international road map but “added
14 reservations that effectively nullified it.”
Since Hamas foiled the plans to overthrow the
elected government, Israeli assaults and the
siege became more severe. Fatas and Hamas forged
a unity agreement establishing a new government
without Hamas participation that accepted the
international “quartet” road map to the two
state solution. Chomsky suggests nothing can
change unless the US changes from support of
Israel, and that Israel’s security would not be
threatened by following international law – and
he gives the instances of Indonesia and East
Timor, and South Africa.
Chapter
15 asks “How Many Minutes to Midnight” and
returns to the dangers of nuclear war, reminding
us that the nuclear weapon era began August 1945
with nuclear bombs dropped on two Japanese
cities. The wonder is that humanity has lasted
for 70 years in the nuclear era. There are scary
revelations from the Clinton era study on Cold
War deterrence where the US is advised to behave
irrationally and present a constant threat of
nuclear attack! The Bush doctrine of the
preventative war is hardly reassuring! And
although Obama talked of abolishing nuclear
weapons he introduced plans to spend $1 trillion
on the US nuclear arsenal over 30 years. It
turns out that the risky Obama assassination of
Bin Ladin in Pakistan could have degenerated
into an unintended nuclear exchange.
Chapter
16 – “Cease-fires in Which Violations Never
Cease” is an account of Israeli assaults in
occupied Palestinian territory from August 2014.
However, this is a repeat of material already
presented in slightly different ways in previous
chapters.
Chapter
17 returns to the US as terrorist: “The US Is a
Leading Terrorist State.” We are asked to
consider our (US) reaction to an article saying
that Putin had asked the KGB to give a report on
its financing and supplying of arms to an
insurgency in a country that worked out well.
The New York Times reported that Obama asked the
CIA to produce exactly such a report. Cuba
played what Nelson Mandela regards as a positive
role in Africa and Chomsky cites Cuba’s role in
Namibia and South Africa that he contrasts with
the International Court of Justice ruling
against Reagan and the US in Nicaragua
(continued by the elder Bush) and with the worse
state terrorism that Reagan backed in Guatemala
and El Salvador. Then Chomsky repeats Kennedy’s
CIA destabilizing activities in Cuba. Chomsky
maintains that the political class regards it as
proper for the US to do these things, immune
from law and civilized norms. However polls
indicate that the rest of the world does not
agree.
Chapter
18 looks at “Obama’s Historic Move” – the
opening of relations with Cuba. He begins by
quoting an article on the matter in the New
Yorker – with facts of an idyllic past that he
takes issue with. Chomsky is uncertain whether
Americans should feel proud for the steps that
Obama took, but it was the right thing. He is
highly critical of the outrageous inaccuracy of
the Obama speech on the matter, which he quotes.
He thinks the past policy was little more than
an angry reaction to a Cuba that challenged US
hegemony in the region and became a symbol for
that challenge.
In
chapter 19, “Two Ways About It,” Chomsky
examines freedom of the press, beginning with
the terrorist attack on Charlie
Hebdo that killed twelve. Amid
condemnation and a chorus under the banner “I Am
Charlie” Izaac Herzof, head of Israel’s Labour
Party, declared: “terrorism is terrorism.
There’s no two ways about it.” Chomsky segues
into a description by a surviving journalist of
another attack - the1999 NATO missile attack on
Serbian state television headquarters that
killed 16 journalists. The Pentagon said “Serb
TV is as much a part of Milosevic’s murder
machine as his military is” and hence a
legitimate target of attack. There was no
outrage. The International Criminal Tribunal
subsequently examined the case, noted high
civilian casualties, but did not call the NATO
attack disproportionate. A Serbian court
sentenced the general manager of Serbian TV to
10 years for failing to evacuate the building!
Someone called the Charlie
Hebdo attack
the most threatening assault on journalism in
living memory. Chomsky says that depends on
memory, and he recalls the horrific occupation
and assault on Fallujah General Hospital during
the US-UK invasion of Iraq because officers said
it “shut down a propaganda weapon for the
militants. Fallujah General hospital, with its
stream of reports of civilian casualties.”
Evidently this was not an assault on free
expression that qualifies to be in living
memory. Then there are on-going assassinations
of journalists in Latin America – 3 in December
2014. Chomsky says when it comes to terrorism;
there are two ways about it.
Chapter
20, “One Day in the Life of a Reader of the New York
Times”, looks at articles in the Times for
reflection on journalistic integrity. The Times gives
an account of a flawed campus rape story that it
criticizes for “lack of skepticism.”
There
is an account of one woman’s work to free Laos
of unexploded bombs. The article notes that the
Lao-American woman became involved after seeing
a collection of drawings of the bombings by
refugees that were gathered by anti war activist
Fred Branfman. His book also revealed that
unused planes were simply unleashed on poor
peasants, devastating the Plain of Jars in Laos
far from the wars of aggression in Indochina;
30% were unexploded and they were cluster bombs.
However, the Times journalist
ignores the revelations from Branfman’s book,
and uses the US government as source – the
targets were North Vietnamese troops along the
Ho Chi Minh Trail that passes through Laos as
well as North Vietnam’s Laotian communist
allies.
Then
Friedman simply relays the words of Obama -
looking for an Obama doctrine. He finds it is
engagement combined with meeting core strategic
needs and it is being applied in Obama’s words
about his approach to Cuba. The move is taken to
“more effectively empower the Cuban people.” One
can see the wincing of Chomsky at that.
Another
gem is a front page think piece about the Iran
nuclear deal, warning about the Iranian crimes
as listed by Washington – for example
destabilizing the region by aiding Shiite
militias. Presumably the US invasion and its
aftermath of sectarian conflicts are
“stabilization.”
The US owns the world and by right - and
Chomsky quotes Jessica Matthews in New York
Review of Books as giving the approved
doctrine: “American contributions to
international security, global economic growth,
freedom, and human well-being have been so
self-evidently unique and have been so clearly
directed to others’ benefit that Americans have
long believed that the US amounts to a different
kind of country. Where others push their
national interests, the US tries to advance
universal principles.”
Chapter
21 returns to the Iranian threat after the
negotiated arrangement made in Vienna among
Iran, the UN veto holders, and Germany regarding
the nuclear program. Chomsky notes again that
Iran is willing to work to rid the world of
nuclear weapons and to build the nuclear free
zone in the Middle East. The US, most recently
Obama, has blocked the expansion of the
Non-Proliferation Treaty on account of Israel,
which is not a party to the NPT. Chomsky makes
clear here that the Middle East nuclear free
zone is the clearest way of addressing concerns
about Iran. Iran and the Arab states want that
route. This chapter adds some evidence about
Iran’s military capability and expenditures and
the like. In research from Stockholm’s
International Peace Research Institute Russian
and Saudi Arabia come after the US and China in
military capability and expenditure.” And Iran’s
weaponry is old. Even Iran’s talk hoping Israel
will vanish amounts to hoping for regime change
– something that the US and Israel have actually
done – in Iran and Lebanon. Chomsky says the
Hizbollah and Hamas movements that Iran is
accused of helping grew out of US backed Israeli
violence and aggression and are not on anything
like the same scale as that. Chomsky notes that
Iran’s “fueling instability” includes helping
the Kurds defend against ISIS and building a
power plant to bring power back to the level
before the US invasion. Recall that US
intelligence said there was not a threat and
that Iran’s nuclear program was part of its
deterrent strategy. Those concerned with a
deterrent strategy are the rogue states in the
Middle East – the US, Israel and, now, Saudi
Arabia.
Chapter
22, “The Doomsday Clock”, returns to the threats
of nuclear extinction and climate change
disasters, where the US Republican Party
features as a big part of the international
climate change threat. Chomsky cites nuclear
security expert Bruce Blair to add new incidents
of errors where only luck prevented nuclear war.
Blair says incidents are not uncommon – and
there will be Russian and Pakistani errors. Then
there are Syria and Ukraine where fingers are
trigger-happy and incidents can escalate.
Chomsky writes on to make his point well - this
nuclear threat is real and scarier than ever.
The
final chapter 23 has useful ideas. The title,
“Masters of Mankind”, uses the term economist
Adam Smith used for the merchants and
manufacturers of England – today the
multinational conglomerates, financial
institutions and retail empires. Smith said it
is wise to attend to their “vile maxim” that he
named “All for ourselves, nothing for other
people.” Today’s masters hold power also over
their home countries on which they depend to
protect their power and to provide them with
forms of financial support.
Chomsky
quotes
three challenges for the West given at the
beginning of 2016: East Asia, where China is
challenging the US Navy that used to treat the
Pacific as a US lake; Europe, where Russia is
intervening in Ukraine – a region where NATO,
1/3 funded by the US, aims to secure members’
territorial integrity; and, the Middle East,
where Russia intervened in Syria in a region
where giant US naval and air bases are supposed
to reassure friends and intimidate rivals. Can
the US accept that other powers should have some
kind of influence over their neighbours?
These
thoughts are expanded. For China: it has
expanded westward. It founded the Shanghai
Cooperation Organization for trade, and China is
redeveloping the old silk roads with high-speed
rail and pipelines and the redevelopment of the
port of Gwadar in Pakistan. In 2015 China opened
the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. For
Europe, Chomsky cites analysis of NATO-Russia
border tensions: Georgia 2008; and now Ukraine.
There are serious concerns with the NATO
expansion. Russia does not see NATO as benign.
And as Chomsky reminds us, we need not ask how
the US would view a Warsaw pact nation on its
border. Russia under Gorbachev had its own
vision of a Greater Europe from Lisbon to
Vladivostok. This vision is back but the West
views it as a formula for expansion to a greater
Russia.
Then
there is the Islamic world. At the beginning of
the Bush global war on terror terrorists were in
a small corner of Afghanistan. The
“sledgehammer” intervention, subsequent
intervention into Iraq and the air intervention
in Libya came with a huge cost in civilian lives
given diplomatic alternatives. Now, there is a
sevenfold increase in the yearly rate of fatal
jihadist attacks (an increase by a third if
Afghanistan and Iraq are excluded) with attacks
in Europe and the US. A group of human rights
organizations conservatively estimated that the
wars killed 1.3 million people. The Oslo Peace
Research Institute estimates that 98% of deaths
occurred after outsiders intervened in disputes.
Outsider intervention tends to generate a
population dislike that automatically escalates.
Obama’s drone assassination campaign has had
this effect – generating more terrorists more
rapidly than it can murder suspects.
What
can be done? Chomsky cites the idea of a
multinational welfare oriented psychologically
satisfying program providing for communal needs,
compensation for previous transgressions and
calls for a new beginning. This could be
provided in refugee camps and in the Paris
banlieues. And there must be a dedication to
diplomacy rather than violence. Who rules the
world? Better: what principles and values rule
the world?
Chomsky
added an afterword for 2017 to note the
accelerating problems of climate change and to
point out that after the November 2016 election
the Republican Party, “the most dangerous
organization in the world” controls all parts of
the US government. There is a return to loss of
real income, loss of dignity, of hope for the
future, of a sense that this is a world in which
one belongs and plays a worthwhile role. And the
business world gets no blame – that is directed
to a government that might become an instrument
of, by and for the people. Yet as he says in his
ending, popular mobilization and activism,
properly organized and conducted, can make a
huge difference.
What do I make of all
this? I think the book would work better
if well focused on the need to have US thinkers
and writers show a more international
perspective and be
more even handed in their thoughts about US
foreign policy. Chomsky shows a need.
The biggest weakness is the vacuum around the
Cold War and its significance for some of the
policies described. Chomsky seems unaware that
the Cold War end ended by a fifteen year series
of big time negotiations. The 1975 Helsinki
process began systematic rounds of discussions
among all European states, the Soviet Union,
Canada and the US. They discussed security needs
and mechanisms. They considered state
boundaries. They had large annual international
forums to mediate issues like freedom of
movement, family reunions and human rights. The
Treaty of Paris, the WWII peace agreement, ended
the Cold War in 1990; the Organization for
Security and Cooperation in Europe, OSCE, was
created to oversee ongoing consultations and
joint cooperation mechanisms.
More than a decade of annual Europe-wide focused
international discussions indicates this was
significant political issue. Chomsky’s relative
silence on the Cold War leaves the reader with
an assumption that since the US was the most
powerful country around by far, there was no
real threat and no need for those unsavory US
policy measures that he describes in Latin
American, Indochina and the Middle East. If the
East/West Cold War was truly felt as the one big
existential threat for the US, a rationale for
US ruthlessness at home, in the Western
Hemisphere and elsewhere is at least
understandable. Not that this makes the actions
taken appropriate.
If the US believed the Cold War was a serious
threat, we might expect some changes at its end.
And indeed there were some big policy shifts
allowing the re-emergence of Latin America,
parts of Asia and Southern Africa. There was
even early hope for changes in the Middle East.
But after the Cold War, things like the invasion
of Panama make no sense. Chomsky is right on
this point.