Imminent crises: paths toward solutions

Imminent Crises: Paths Toward Solutions March 8, 2006
At Binghamton University

Professor Herbert Bix: Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Herbert Bix. Before the evening lecture begins, I wish to say first of all, thank you to Peter Mileur, Dean of Harpur College of Art and Sciences. Thank you to the sponsoring organizations: the Binghamton Political Initiative, the Students for Peace and Justice, the Latin American Students Association, the Caribbean Students Association, the Black Student Union, the Fernand Braudel Center and the Women Center.
If you are opposed to the methods in the current paths of US foreign policy and if you want to change them, there are many things that can be done. Two simple ways of not keeping silent: to sign the petition that is being passed down the rows as I speak. And two weeks from today on March 19th, join the afternoon rallies against illegal wars and occupations at the Memorial Bridge at the Federal Building on Henry Street in Binghamton.
Now it is a great honor for Binghamton University and a joy for me personally to welcome Noam Chomsky, who needs no introduction. Let us applaud him for all the work he’s done for peace and justice over 45 years and for bringing the light of reason to so many world issues. Thank you.

Chomsky: Thanks. Herb’s timing was very good. It was exactly enough time to get me wired up. So you should be able to hear I hope.
The selection of issues that should rank high on the agenda of concern is naturally a subjective matter, but there are at least two that demand high priority because they are literally matters of survival.
One of them is the threat of the nuclear war and the second is environmental disaster both of which are very real.

One of the many respected strategic analysts warning of the increasing threat of nuclear war is a former NATO planner Michael MccGwire. Writing in Britain’s leading journal “International Affairs,” he warns that under current US policies, “a nuclear exchange is ultimately inevitable.” And unless these policies are sharply changed, “we’re virtually certain to see a return to nuclear arms racing, involving intercontinental ballistic systems and space-based assets reactivating the danger of inadvertent nuclear war,” with the probability that “will be extremely high.” Comparing the two crises that literally threaten survival, MccGwire has this to say “By comparison with global warming, the cost of eliminating nuclear weapons would be small. But the catastrophic results of global nuclear war would greatly exceed those of progressive climate change, because the effects would be instantaneous and could not be mitigated. The irony of the situation is that it is in our power to eliminate the threat of global nuclear war, but climate change cannot be evaded.”

Well, he’s right on both counts that means are available and are well-known to eliminate the threat of instantaneous nuclear destruction and while the timing of climate change can be debated, there’s no escaping the fact, unless maybe you’re in the White House, that the longer we delay in confronting it, the worse it’s likely to be.

These considerations bring up a third crisis. Namely the government of the world’s leading power is increasing the likelihood of the two threats to survival. And it’s important to stress government because the population does not agree, not very surprisingly.
So just take one example, the standard observation which you all read, that the United States is almost alone in rejecting the Kyoto Protocols is correct only if the phrase "United States" excludes its population, which strongly favors the Kyoto pact. In fact the support is so strong that the majority of Bush voters believe that he, too, favors US participation in the treaty because it is such an obvious thing to believe.

More generally, this is just one illustration of the fact that voters were seriously deluded about the positions of the political parties in the last election. In fact only 10% even knew what the stand was, 10% of the voters, and that’s not because of lack of interest or mental deficiency but because elections are designed that way purposely. Issues like these and there are many of them bring up the fourth crisis that should be of particular concern to us.

That is the very visible decline of functioning of democracy. More generally, the ominous drift of the world’s dominant power towards becoming a failed state. That’s a fashionable term. It’s conventionally applied to states that are regarded as enemies or portrayed as potential threats to our security or as needing our intervention to rescue the population, often by demolishing them in the process.

A primary characteristic of failed states is their inability or unwillingness to protect their citizens from violence. They are furthermore what are sometimes called “outlaw states” which regard themselves as beyond the reach of international law in norms of civilized behavior. And if they have democratic forms, they suffer from what’s called the democratic deficit, which deprives the formal democratic institutions of any real substance. It’s not hard to recognize those characteristics are painfully nearby. And more important, all of this is surely under our control, if we’re not content to observe passively and obediently. I’ll return to some simple steps at the end.

But the first step, transparently, is awareness and understanding. Without that we can’t proceed.
So to begin with the most serious and imminent crises, apart from specialist circles, very little attention is paid to the threat of nuclear war and more importantly, to our own world and escalating the threat. Now of course we can’t say the threat is unknown. We’ve just passed the 50th anniversary of an appeal to the people of the world by Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein, extraordinary appeal. They posed the choice that in their words is “Stark and dreadful and inescapable: Shall we put an end to the human race or shall mankind renounce war?”
Well, war has certainly not been renounced in the last half century quite the contrary. By now the world’s hegemonic power accords itself officially the right to wage war at will under a doctrine of what’s called “anticipatory self-defense” with unstated bounds. As we all know, the doctrine is now being applied in Iraq and is being threatened in Iran.
The US is backed in that stance by “the spear carrier for the pax-Americana.” That's MccGwire’s term for Blair’s Britain in the journal of Royal Institute of International Affairs. For the warrior and the spear carrier, international law, treaties, rules of world’s order are double-edged. They’re sternly imposed on others with much self-righteous posturing, but they’re dismissed as irrelevant for themselves. Throughout history, that stance has been familiar among states that have or at least believe they have unchallengeable power. The consequences are also well known, but historical analogies don’t have much force, because the stakes now are so much higher, literally survival of the species.

MccGwire is not alone, he’s joined by many others in fact most specialists, in warning of the virtual inevitability of nuclear war.
One of them is Kennedy/Johnson Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, who recalled that the world “came within a hair’s breath of nuclear disaster during missile crisis of 1962” and he goes on to say that the threat is once again severe. According to McNamara now, he warns of “Apocalypse soon,” unless there’s a sharp change in current US nuclear weapons policy which is “immoral, illegal, militarily unnecessary and dreadfully dangerous,” creating “unacceptable risks to other nations and to our own.” Both the risk of “accidental or inadvertent nuclear launch” which is “unacceptably high” and is terminal, and of nuclear attack by terrorists. He endorsed the judgment of Clinton’s defense secretary William Perry, that “there’s greater than 50% probability of nuclear strike on US targets within a decade.” That’s referring to a dirty bomb, not the ultimate disaster.

The threats are well understood and they’re being consciously enhanced. The Iraq invasion is only the most glaring example. Harvard University strategic analyst Graham Allison reports what he calls “the consensus in the national security community” of which he’s been a part, that “a dirty bomb” attack is “inevitable” and an attack with nuclear weapon, a terminal attack, highly likely if fissionable materials which are the essential ingredient are not retrieved and if their further production is not terminated. I’ll come back to the crucial question of controlling production. On retrieving fissionable materials, there has been some success since the early 1990s. That’s under the initiatives of senators Sam Nunn and Richard Lugar. But Cheney, Rumsfeld and the rest put to the side their programs to avert inevitable nuclear terror just as they sideline the war on terror generally, so that they could devote their energies to driving the country to war and then their efforts to contain somehow the catastrophe that they created in Iraq.

In the journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the ultimate in respectability and not given to hyperbole, two well-known strategic analysts warn that the Bush administration, military programs and its general aggressive stance carry in their words “an appreciable risk of ultimate doom.” The reasons are straightforward. “Pursuit of total security by one state entails the insecurity of others and they are almost certain to react. They’ll make use of the terrifying technology that’s being developed in Rumsfeld’s transformation of military,” which “will assuredly diffuse to the rest of the world” and in the context of “competition and intimidation,” the familiar action-reaction cycle creates “rising danger, potentially unmanageable one,” hence, transformation as currently being practiced carries “an appreciable risk of ultimate doom.”

The authors expressed the hope that the threat that the US government is posing to its own population and to the world will be countered by a coalition of peace-loving states led by China.
We’ve come to a pretty pass when thoughts like that are expressed at the heart of the establishment. What they imply about the state of American democracy is no less startling. So the authors don’t even consider the possibility that the American people could have anything to do about this. We’d have to wait for China to do it.
They bring up China because, as they point out, of all the nuclear states it “has maintained by far the most restrained pattern of military deployment.” Furthermore, China for some years has been leading the efforts at the United Nations to overcome the unilateral US refusal to reserve space for peaceful purposes. The Clinton administration refused to join the rest of the world, apart from Israel, in a renewal and extension of the outer space treaty of 1967 and they also immobilized the UN disarmament commission by barring any moves towards prevention of an arms race and outer space. And they gave the reasons explicitly, we should all know them.

Clinton’s Space Command called for “dominating the space dimension of military operations to protect US interests and investment much in the way armies and navies did in earlier years,” but now with a sole hegemon which must develop “space-based strike weapons, enabling the application of precision force from, to and through space.” US intelligence and the space command agreed in the Clinton years that such measures will be needed because “globalization of the world economy” will lead to ”widening economic divide” along with “deepening economic stagnation, political instability, and cultural alienation.” Hence unrest and violence among the “have-nots” much of it directed against the United States. The US therefore must be ready for “precision strike from space as a counter to the worldwide proliferation of weapons of mass destruction” by unruly elements. That’s a likely consequence of the recommended military programs just as a “widening divide, deepening economic stagnation” and so on are the anticipated consequences of the specific form of international integration that is misleadingly called globalization and free trade in the doctrinal system.

The space program falls within the framework of the officially announced Clinton Doctrine that the US is entitled to resort to “unilateral use of military power” to ensure “uninhibited access to key markets, energy supplies, and strategic resources.” Notice that taken literally, that’s far more extreme than anything that comes out of the Bush administration. Clinton’s strategic command added to that that Washington should portray itself as “irrational and vindictive if its vital interests are attacked” including the threat of first strike with nuclear weapons against non nuclear states. Furthermore, “nuclear weapons always cast a shadow over any crisis or conflict” that extends the reach of conventional power. That strategic doctrine is not new and it’s shared across the narrow political spectrum.
Though President Carter’s defense secretary Harold Brown had called on Congress to fund strategic nuclear capabilities because with them, “our other forces become meaningful instruments of military and political power” available for use throughout the Third World, he used such means only against defenseless targets of course.

It’s worth remembering that while Bush and company are extreme in their reactionary statist radicalism, they’re at the extreme of a dangerously narrow spectrum of the political class. That’s why all these things are kept quiet, there’s nothing the population are supposed to learn about, though technically they are public.

The threats are becoming much more serious as the Bush planners extend Clinton’s doctrine of control of space for military purposes to “ownership” of space which “may mean instant engagement anywhere in the world.” They emphasize these phrases so that their meaning will be clearly understood. That purpose is to put any part of the world at risk of instant destruction, thanks to sophisticated global surveillance and lethal offensive weaponry in space. Right now, the US is responsible for 95% of the total world spending for militarization of space and it’s only to be expected that potential target will react, increasing the danger to everyone. And that’s in fact already happening. As was expected, Russia reacted to Bush’s vast increase in offensive military capacity by sharply increasing its own capacities aimed at the United States. China is following suit expanding offensive capacities to preserve its deterrent, it's very small now but it’ll grow.

China’s so far reluctant reaction will have a ripple effect in India first, and then Pakistan in response to India then beyond. Both US and Chinese analysts recognize that almost in the same words that current US plans are likely to set off an arm race in space. That includes what’s euphemistically called “missile defense,” which is understood on all sides to be a first-strike weapon. The program of missile defense is commonly criticized as a colossal waste of money because it won’t work. That’s the good news. It’s far more dangerous if there is any sign that it might work. Adversaries have to make a worst case analysis and if there is any sign it might work, they will react by developing means to overwhelm or bypass it, which are a lot more easy than constructing it. And that will greatly increase the threat to survival. In fact it’s already happening.

In the current issue, in March issue of the bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which is a sort of standard monitor on these things, they report that “Emerging US anti-ballistic missile defense system has provoked direct Russian response, including advanced missiles and new more sophisticated warheads” so exactly as was predicted several years ago, the authors also point out.

Senator Nunn, as I said has been a lead of the conservative senator, been a lead of these anti-war efforts for a long time, he wrote recently that “the chances of an accidental, mistaken or unauthorized nuclear attack might be increasing.” Because of current policy choices, “we’re running an unnecessary risk of Armageddon of our own making.” Like the others, Nunn is referring to the sharp expansion of US military programs which tilt the strategic balance in ways that make “Russia more likely to launch upon warning of an attack, without waiting to see if the warning is accurate.” That’s no joke. The threats are enhanced by the fact that “the Russian early warning system is in serious disrepair and more likely to give a false warning of incoming missiles.”

And US systems are very dangerous, US reliance on “the high-alert, hair-trigger nuclear pasture allows missiles to be launched within minutes” forcing “our leaders to decide almost instantly whether to launch nuclear weapons once they have the computer warning of an attack robs them of the time mainly to gather data, exchange information, gain perspective and discover an error and avoid a catastrophic mistake.”

And we know in own systems, that there are hundreds of such errors just caught on time. The anticipated Bush-Russian reaction to Bush administration aggressive militarism, Nunn says, increases the risk of an “Armageddon of our making” well beyond even the current intolerable level.
These dangers are being consciously escalated by the threat and use of violence, which, just as predicted, is stimulating nuclear proliferation and is also stimulating the jihadi terrorism which traces back to Reagan administration programs to organize, arm and train radical Islamists, not for defense of Afghanistan as it was proclaimed, but for the usual and ugly reasons of state with grim consequences for the tormented people of Afghanistan and for Pakistanis and for the world.

As the Reaganites cheerfully tolerated Pakistan’s slide toward radical Islamic extremism under the rule of Zia ul-Huq, who is one of the many brutal dictators supported by the current incumbents in Washington and their mentors then and today, we may recall that one of them has the familiar name Saddam Hussein. And they were also Reagan and associates that looked away politely while their Pakistani ally was developing nuclear weapons, annually endorsing the pretense that Pakistan was not doing so. And as we should know they were also helping their friend, Saddam Hussein, to do the same. That continued long after Saddam’s worst atrocities and also long after the war, the end of the war with Iran. And we also know the reasons at least if we want to, because they were kind enough to tell us interesting reasons all worth remembering.

MccGwire reminds us of something that is barely known. So “remind” isn’t quite right. The fact is that in 1986, recognizing what he calls “the dreadful logic” of nuclear weapons, Mikhail Gorbachev called for their total elimination. That proposal foundered on Reagan’s militarization of space programs, what are called "Star Wars." NATO doctrine at that time--MccGwire points out as I said he was one of the planners--was “explicitly premised on the credible threat of first use of nuclear weapons and that continues to be policy today.”

Russia kept to the same doctrine until 1994, when it reversed its stand adopting no-first-use policy and calling for the elimination of nuclear weapons. That was a very hopeful step. But Washington’s reaction and our inaction, which is worth remembering, quickly brought these quite hopeful prospects to an end. Russia reverted to NATO doctrine and abandoned its call for abolition of nuclear weapons. That was in response to Clinton’s expansion of NATO in violation of Washington’s “categorical assurance” to Gorbachev that if he “would agree to a reunited Germany remaining in NATO, then the NATO alliance would not expand eastward to absorb former members of the Warsaw Pact.” That was the assurance violated by Clinton.

In the light of recent history, not to speak of strategic truisms, Clinton’s violation of these firm pledges posed a very serious threat to Russia, serious security threat. Clinton’s violation of these assurances also explains why NATO rejected Russian proposals for nuclear-weapons-free-zone including central Europe from the Arctic to the Black Sea. That would have interfered with Clinton’s plans to extend NATO eastward in violation of the firm commitment not to do so. All of this, of course, enhanced the likelihood of “Apocalypse soon,” which is rarely a high priority for planners.

Actually the low priority assigned to national security is so abundantly illustrated that it takes real effort to miss it. So take the war in Iraq. It was undertaken with the expectation that it would probably increase terror and nuclear proliferation. Now, US and other intelligence agencies and analysts confirm that that’s exactly what happened. So take just one of many examples, last May the CIA reported “Iraq has become a magnet for Islamic militants similar to Soviet-occupied Afghanistan two decades ago and Bosnia in the 1990s.” and also that “Iraq may prove to be an even more effective training ground for Islamic extremists than Afghanistan was in al Qaeda’s early days because it is serving as a real-world laboratory for urban combat.” The invasion of Iraq also had the predicted effect of “greatly strengthening the popular appeal of anti-democratic radicals such as those of al Qaeda and other jihadi salafis” throughout extremist Islamic fundamentalists throughout the Muslim world.

Terrorism specialist Peter Bergen says that “President Bush is right that Iraq is a main front in the war on terrorism but this is a front that we created.” As “the Iraq war has expanded the terrorists’ ranks, the year 2003 saw the highest incidence of significant terrorist attacks in two decades and in 2004, astonishingly that number tripled.” In response to Donald Rumsfeld’s search for what he calls “metrics to know if we’re winning or losing the war on terror,” Bergen suggests that “an exponentially rising number of terrorist attacks is one metric that seems relevant.” In fact it is very relevant since it was anticipated.

Sometimes the threat is accelerated in quite remarkable ways. So it’s common to say that no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq after exhaustive search. But that’s not quite accurate. There were WMD facilities found in Iraq, namely those that were provided to Saddam in the 1980s by the US and Britain and others. The storage sites had been secured by UN inspectors who were dismantling the weapons. But the inspectors were dismissed by the invading armies and the sites were left unguarded. The inspectors did continue to carry out their work using satellite imagery. They discovered massive looting of these installations in over a hundred sites. Sophisticated careful massive looting that included-- they knew it was there--that included equipment for producing missiles, bio-toxins, other materials usable for chemical and biological weapons, high-precision equipment, capable of making parts for nuclear and chemical weapons. Where they went, we preferred not to guess.

The ironies are almost inexpressible and they should be front-page headlines everyday in the newspaper. The official justification for the US-UK invasion was to prevent the use of WMD that did not exist. The invasion provided the terrorists who had been mobilized by the United States and its allies with the means to develop WMD, weapons of mass destruction, namely the equipment that they had provided Saddam, caring nothing about the terrible crimes, they later invoked to whip up support for the invasion. It’s as if Iran were now making nuclear weapons using fissionable material provided by the United States to Iran, which may indeed be happening.

That brings us to another imminent crisis: Iran’s nuclear programs. That’s a serious problem. No sane person wants Iran to develop nuclear weapons. There are constructive steps that can be taken to prevent that. But first, again we have to pay some attention to what is in fact happening.
Those who hold the clubs typically take the position that history is bunk, old-fashioned, irrelevant. We don’t have to waste time on it. The victims don’t have the luxury nor do those who want to understand the world, instead of just having a blind faith in their “Dear Leaders,” to borrow the North-Korean expression, which applies all too aptly, I’m afraid.

Let’s have a quick look at a little recent and current history that Iranians know very well and rightly regard as highly pertinent, though it’s swept under the rug here.
To begin with, Iranians remember very well that the policies that Washington is now condemning are the very same policies that the US advocated before the 1979 overthrow of the Shah. That is the tyrant who was imposed by the US-UK military coup in 1953 that destroyed parliamentary democracy in Iran.
Today the standard claim is that Iran has no need for nuclear power; so it must be pursuing a secret weapons program. So Henry Kissinger explains that “for an oil producer such as Iran, nuclear energy is a wasteful use of resources.” That’s now. When the Shah was in charge, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger held that “introduction of nuclear power will both provide for the growing needs of Iran’s economy and free remaining oil reserves for export or conversion to petrochemicals.” And the US acted to assist these efforts with Cheney, Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld also playing significant roles.

US universities were arranging to train Iranian nuclear engineers doubtless with Washington’s approval, probably Washington’s initiative: my own university, MIT, for example, where that was done over enormous student opposition when the news leaked.
Kissinger was asked about his reversal and he responded with his usual engaging frankness. He said, well, then “they were an allied country.” So therefore they had a genuine need for nuclear energy pre-1979, but today they are an enemy so of course they have no such need. Iranians may not be impressed by the logic.

Washington’s charges about an Iranian nuclear weapons program may, for once, be accurate. Many analysts have observed that it would be remarkable if they were not accurate, even though we have no evidence for it. Well as I mentioned, it was anticipated that the US-British invasion of Iraq would increase not only terror but also nuclear proliferation. And it’s now widely agreed that both predictions were confirmed.
Reviewing these conclusions, one of Israel’s leading military historians Martin van Creveld writes that after the invasion of Iraq, “Had the Iranians not tried to build nuclear weapons, they would be crazy.” The reasons are straightforward. Washington has gone out of its way to instruct Iran on the need for a powerful deterrent, not only by invading Iraq but also by strengthening the offensive forces of its Israeli client, which already is a regional superpower, already has hundreds of nuclear weapons as well as air and armored forces that are larger and technologically more advanced than any NATO power outside the US, small country but as an offshoot to the United States, that can happen and it does.
And for several years Israel has been receiving the biggest shipment in its history of advanced US jet bombers very publicly advertised as capable of bombing Iran and also equipped with unspecified “special weaponry,” --a term that's meant for the ears of Iranian intelligence--and deep-penetration bombs.

Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been criticized rightly for outrageous statements. But I’ll just try to imagine what the reaction would be if he would go on to announce that Iran is preparing to bomb the United States and Israel and taking very credible steps to do so. Well, the country will be won away. But the imperial mentality that’s been instilled by centuries of history ensures that western leaders are exempt from many such strictures and are free to act as they like when dealing with the lower orders, that’s just extinctive so requires no comment.

It’s agreed on all sides that Iran’s current activities, at least as far as they are known, fall within its legal rights as a sign of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which is the central part of a thin thread on which survival hangs. Article 4 of the NPT grants non-nuclear states the right to produce fuel for reactors. Washington demands that Article 4 should be revised and restricted. And in fact a good case can be made for that.
The Article 4 option made sense in 1970, when the NPT came into force. But with contemporary technology, producing fuel for reactors is just a step away from nuclear weapons. So restriction of Article 4 is perfectly sensible. However, any such provision of Article 4 would have to ensure unimpeded access, that’s the treaty says, for non-military use. That’s part of the NPT bargain.

Actually reasonable proposals for that was put forth by Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, last year’s Nobel peace laureate. His proposal was that all production and processing of weapon-usable material should be restricted “exclusively to facilities under multinational control” accompanied "above all, by an assurance that legitimate would-be users could get their supplies. "That should be the first step," he proposed, "toward fully implementing the 1993 UN Security Council resolution calling for what’s called “a Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty,” (FISSBAN) which “could cap and make public all inventories of fissile material still available.”

ElBaradei’s proposal which was quite reasonable was dead in the water. The US political leadership, surely in its current stance, would never agree to abrogate its unique exemption from international law and treaty obligations. So Washington’s call for restricting Article 4 is regarded by much of the world quite rationally as the cynical intention to convert the NPT to “a convenient instrument of US foreign policy.” (MaccGwire)

To my knowledge, there’s the only country that has officially accepted ElBaradei’s proposal, namely Iran. On February 16th, Iranian spokesman and top nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani stated that “should a credible international system for providing nuclear fuel be in place, the Islamic Republic of Iran would be ready to procure its nuclear fuel from that system.” That would terminate the crisis and be a great advance forward and preserving the species.
Does Iran really mean it? There’s only one way to find out. But that path can’t be taken as long as the facts are suppressed, I doubt any of you heard them, including Washington’s flat rejection of ElBraradei’s proposal in fact any proposal that would limit its unique authority to do whatever it likes.

Article 4 is one of two paired Articles of the NPT. The other is Article 6, which obliges the nuclear powers to make “good faith efforts” to eliminate nuclear weapons. That’s a binding legal obligation as the World Court determined a decade ago. None of the nuclear powers have lived up to their commitments but the US is far in the lead in rejecting them and is alone in officially rejecting.

There’s a regular five-year review of the NPT. The last one was last May, it was a total disaster. There was a press coverage but it kept to Washington’s agenda blaming the failure on Iran. In the real world, the primary reason for the collapse of conference was Washington’s rejection of all serious prior commitments--that was explicit--and its announcement that it is exempt from Article 6. Let’s not speak of its open plans to develop new nuclear weapons, apparently underway. If that’s not abrogated, that stand essentially terminates the NPT with awesome consequences for proliferation.

Another central part of the NPT compact was the commitment of the nuclear powers to act and implement additional treaties. It includes the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which was rejected by the Republican Senate in 1999 and declared off the agenda by Bush. The ABM treaty, which Bush rescinded, and most important, a verifiable FISSBAN, which would prevent any further additions of nuclear bomb material to the vast amount already existing.

In July 2004, Washington announced its opposition to a verifiable FISSBAN on the grounds that effective verification “would compromise core national security interests.” Nevertheless in November 2004, the UN Committee on Disarmament voted on a verifiable FISSBAN. The vote was 147 to 1, with two abstentions: Israel, which is reflexive, and Britain, which is more interesting. The British Ambassador explained that Britain supports a verifiable FISSBAN, but had to abstain because this version “had divided the international community,” namely 147 to 1. That gives us some insight into the ranking of survival of the species among the priorities of the leadership of the hegemonic power and its spear carrier and their information systems, too. This is probably maybe the most important vote in history of the UN. As far as I can determine, it was not even reported outside of specialist journals and the whole matter is unknown to the only people who can do something about it, namely the general public.

A few days later the General Assembly again called upon all states “to contribute actively to the objective of the peaceful use of outer space and of the prevention of an arms race in outer space and to refrain from actions contrary to that objective.” The resolution passed 178 to 0, with 4 abstentions: the United States, Israel, Haiti, and Palau. The vote again reveals priorities as does the coverage in the United States so far as I can determine, zero. These are very good ways to march on following our leaders to “an Armageddon of our own making.”

Let’s go back to Iran. Several years ago, the European Union and Iran as you know reached an agreement on Iran’s uranium enrich programs. That we know, but not what the agreement was. Here’s an account of it by one of the most respected specialists on this topics, Selig Harrison, writing in world’s leading business journal, the London Financial Times.
He writes that “the nuclear negotiations between Iran and the European Union were based upon a bargain that the European Union, held back by the United States, has failed to honor." Iran agreed to suspend its uranium enrichment efforts temporarily. The EU promised to put forward proposals for economic incentives and security guaranties. The language of the joint declaration was "unambiguous," he says. Here’s what it was. “A mutually acceptable agreement" would not only provide "objective guaranties" that Iran’s nuclear program is “exclusively for peaceful purposes” but would “equally provide firm commitments by the EU on security issues.”

Everyone understands the meaning of the phrase “security issues.” It refers to the very credible US-Israeli threats and preparations to attack Iran, which is no joke for a country that’s been tortured by the global superpower for 50 years, including Washington’s support for Saddam Hussein’s murderous war against Iran. The superpower that now occupies the country on Iran’s border, that’s not to speak of the regional superpower, that’s its client state.

Iran lived up to its side of the bargain. But the EU, under US pressure, rejected its commitments and refused to discuss "security issues." Iran then abandoned the bargain as well. That’s where we are now, not quite the way it’s portrayed. The background was extended by British physicist Norman Dombey, who has long been active in efforts to implement Russell-Einstein’s plea. He reviews the same picture. And he adds that the United States turned down Iran’s offer to discuss security matters including the nuclear program in May 2003.

And as he points out, the Bush administration followed the same course with North Korea when he took office in January 2001. It refused to confirm that it was bound by the no-hostile-intent statement of earlier agreements then went on to issue serious threats. And it abandoned the promised fuel oil shipments and the reactor project. North Korea withdrew from the NPT, locked out the inspectors, started up its plutonium producing reactor processing plant and later announced it possessed nuclear weapons. All as anticipated.

It is clear enough how to reduce these grim prospects, in both cases in fact: a call off the threats that is practically urging Iran to develop nuclear weapons, join with the rest of the world, most of it in taking steps to reintegrate Iran into the, within the global economy, accept the FISSBAN treaty which leading specialists here regard as “the most fundamental nuclear arms proposal.”--that’s Princeton physicist in Arms Control specialist Frank von Hippel--and then move on to the legal obligation to close down the nuclear arsenals. In fact even steps in those directions would mitigate the upcoming crises.
We’re not asked why Washington’s so intent on punishing Iran that is even willing to increase nuclear proliferation and the threat of nuclear war. Actually that should come no surprise to anyone familiar with the record of internal planning and history.
So why did the United States insist on bombing Serbia in 1999? Well, there’s a standard claim that the goals were humanitarian. That was once exploded even by a rich documentary record provided by official western sources. But by now the real reasons have been provided by high officials of the Clinton Administration who were in charge of the enterprise. “It was Yugoslavia’s resistance to the broader trends of political and economic reform, not the plight of Kosovar Albanians, that explains NATO’s war.” In brief, Serbia was not following orders. That’s familiar too.

So why has the United States been torturing Cubans for over 45 years? The internal record from the early 1960s, this is quite explicit. The reason was that what they called Cuba’s “successful defiance of US policies going back 150 years.” That means going back to the Monroe Doctrine--no Russians but the Monroe Doctrine--which declared that the United States has to be the ruler of the hemisphere. Then you don’t tolerate successful defiance of that. If you don’t understand why, just ask your favorite Mafia Don he’ll explain it to you. Iran falls into the very same pattern. So it’s a familiar one.

Another factor accelerating the threat of terror and nuclear war is the US-Israeli rejection of the broad international consensus on a diplomatic settlement of the Israel-Arab conflict. It’s now been going on for 30 years, the rejection. The first US veto of the Security Council resolution calling for a two-state settlement on the international border was in January 1976. And the record continues. And it continues as we meet with ongoing US-Israeli programs to take over the “valuable lands” and resources in the West Bank, leaving unviable cantons which are virtually separated from one another and from whatever fragment of it will be left, of Arab East Jerusalem, which is the center of Palestinian’s cultural, educational, commercial life and institutions.
All of these are now to be imprisoned within Israel with US backing as always. As Israel proceeds--it’s now official, it’s already being clear but it’s now official--that Israel will proceed to take over the Jordan Valley and gradually expels its inhabitants leaving the cantons imprisoned basically. Just take a look at the map and you’ll see what all this means. There’s a lot more to say about that and about the Hamas victory, but time is pretty short, that would take us too far out field, so maybe we’ll return to it.

The critical question today is of course Iraq. There has been a lot of talk about exit strategies. But none of that can be taken seriously unless it faces some fundamental issues. They are sort of kept out of sight for doctrinal reasons but surely dominate the thinking of policy planners. We hear plenty of impressive rhetoric about Washington’s dedication to a sovereign and democratic Iraq. But a moment of thoughts suffices to show that any such outcome would be a nightmare to Washington planners. That’s why the occupying authorities fought so hard to prevent elections. When they couldn’t prevent them, turned at once to trying to subvert them. We should remember and be impressed by the fact that the elections took place at all was a real triumph of non-violent popular resistance that the occupying armies couldn’t handle.

The reasons are pretty obvious. Just consider the policies that a sovereign and moderately democratic Iraq will be likely to adopt. Iraqis may have no great love for Iran but they would prefer friendly relations with their powerful neighbor to antagonism and conflict.
Furthermore, the Shiite religious and political leadership has very close traditional links with Iran and these are now expanding. Shiite success in Iraq is already invigorating the pressures for freedom and rights among the bitterly oppressed Shiite populations right across the border in Saudi Arabia. These tendencies will only increase if Iraq gains some major sovereignty, which that happens to be a region where most of Saudi oil is.

So the outcome, to think it through, could well be a Shiite-dominated alliance comprising the major oil producing regions of Iraq, which are enormous: Iran and the major oil regions in Saudi Arabia all independent of Washington and controlling the bulk of world energy resources. That could mean that the United States would lose control over the world’s major energy supplies. These have long been recognized to be (from the documents in the 1940s,) “a stupendous source of strategic power, and one of the greatest material prizes in world history.” A “strategic power” means what’s called “critical leverage” over industrial rivals. That’s Zbignew Brzezinski’s observation recently in referring to the hopeful benefits of the invasion of Iraq.

That outcome is Washington’s ultimate nightmare, almost, could get worse. It’s not unlikely that an independent bloc of this kind might develop major energy projects jointly with China and India, perhaps even aligning with the Asian Energy Security Grid, the Shanghai corporation organization, those are based in China and Russia, perhaps will incorporate India, which has been developing joint projects with China aimed at Asian integration and independence.
Bush’s visit to India over the last couple of days, is one of the many efforts to impede these clear tendencies which are likely to continue anyway. It’s likely, almost certain, that South Korea and Southeast Asian countries will also join, Japan is a kind of uncertain but it might. The prospect that Europe and Asia might move towards greater independence has seriously troubled US planners ever since World War Two. Those concerns have considerably increased in the last several decades as what's called “the tripolar world” has continued to evolve three major centers: North America, Europe, mainly Northeast Asia.

In addition now, there are for the first time quite important South-South interactions mainly Brazil, South Africa and India. There is also rapidly growing European Union engagement with China, which are perhaps now, or very soon each other’s largest trading partners. Loss of “the critical leverage” would be a serious blow to plans for global dominance that trace right back to the beginning of World War Two.
US intelligence has projected that the United States would control Middle East oil for the traditional reasons but the United States itself would rely mainly on what it called “more stable Atlantic Basin” resources that means West Africa and Western Hemisphere. Control of Middle East oil is now far from a sure thing, and these expectations are also threatened by very important developments of Western Hemisphere, which in fact are being accelerated by Bush administration’s policies which have left the United States remarkably isolated in the global arena.

The Bush Administration even succeeded in alienating Canada. That’s a really impressive feat, takes genius to do that. The reason is Washington’s brazen rejection of NAFTA decisions favoring Canada. The US government just told them to get lost. Well, that may accelerate establishment of closer Canada-China relations, in fact that’s what Canadian officials have been saying in reaction. A Canadian official has said that Canada may shift a significant portion of its trade, particularly oil exports from the United States to China. In a further blow to Washington’s energy policies, the leading oil exporter in the hemisphere, Venezuela, has forged probably the closest relations with China of any Latin American country and it’s planning to sell increasing amounts of oil to China. That’s part of its effort to reduce its dependence on the very openly hostile US government.

In fact Latin America as a whole is increasing trade and other relations with China, there are some setbacks but likely expansion. That’s particularly true for the major raw material exporters, Brazil and Chile.
Meanwhile, for the first time, since the Spanish Conquest, Latin America is moving towards closer integration, independent of Washington. Venezuela just joined the South American Customs Union: Mercosur. That’s a move described by Argentine President Kirchner as “a milestone” in the development of this trading bloc and it’s welcomed as opening “a new chapter in our integration” by Brazilian president Lula da Silva.
There was a meeting in Uruguay convened to mark Venezuela’s formal entry into Mercosur. Venezuelan president Chavez said that “We cannot allow this to be purely an economic project, one for the elites and for the transnational companies.” That's not a very oblique reference to the US-sponsored “Free Trade Agreement for the Americas,” which is highly unpopular in Latin America. Venezuela also supplied Argentina with oil to help stave off energy crisis and it bought part of Argentina’s debt. That’s one element of a very important region-wide effort to free the countries from the controls of the IMF after two decades of disastrous effects of conformity to the rules imposed by the US-dominated international financial institutions.

“The IMF has acted towards our country as a promoter and a vehicle of policies that cause poverty and pain among the Argentine people,” President Kirchner said in announcing his decision to pay almost $1 trillion to rid itself of the IMF forever with the help of Venezuela. Radically violating IMF rules, Argentina did enjoy a substantial economic recovery from the disaster left by IMF policies.

Steps towards regional integration advanced further with the elections of Evo Morales last December. He was the first president coming from the indigenous majority. Morales moved quickly to reach a series of energy accords with Venezuela. Its gas reserves are second only to Venezuela in South America. And Morales too committed himself to reversing the neoliberal policies that Bolivia had pursued rigorously for 25 years leaving the country with a lower per capita income than at the outset.

Much of the region from Venezuela to Argentina has left-centered governments. The indigenous populations have, for the first time, become very active and influential, particularly in Bolivia and Ecuador, both major energy producers where they either want oil or gas to be domestically controlled, or in some cases, oppose production altogether.
Many indigenous people apparently don’t see any reason why their lives and societies and culture should be disrupted or destroyed so that New Yorkers can sit in their SUVs in traffic jams. In fact some are even calling for an Indian nation in South America.
This internal economic integration that is underway is reversing the patterns that trace right back to the Spanish Conquests. Ever since then, Latin American elites and economies have been linked to the imperial powers but not to one another. Washington’s traditional mechanisms of control, namely violence and economic strangulation, they’re losing their effectiveness. For many reasons, the system of global dominance is fragile, even apart from the damage that’s been inflicted on it by Bush planners.

Looking back over the actual record of policy, extricating itself from its rhetorical frame, we find the guiding principles are clear and simple enough. Abroad, democracy is fine but only when it takes a form that does not risk popular interference with the primary interests of power and wealth. And at home, much the same doctrine prevails. There’s no time to go into that critical matter but I’d like to end with just a couple of words about the topic because it provides some useful and simple ideas as to how to approach and deal with very grave problems that confront all of us. So here are a couple of suggestions.

1. Accept the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court and the World Court.
2. Accept the Kyoto protocols and carry them forward.
3. Very important, let the UN take the lead in international crises.
4. Relying on diplomatic and economic measures rather than military ones in confronting the grave threats of terror.
5. Keep to the conventional interpretation of the UN Charter, meaning use of force is legitimate only “when ordered by the Security Council or when the country is under imminent threat of an attack until the Security Council can act.”
6. Give up the veto to the Security Council, and have a “decent respect for the opinions of mankind” as the Declaration of Independence advises, even if power centers disagree.
7. Cut back sharply on military spending and sharply increase social spending meaning health, education, renewable energy and so on.

These are actually very conservative suggestions for quite a simple reason. They are the opinions of the majority of the population, in almost all cases the overwhelming majority of the population. They are the overwhelming majority also wants to rescind Bush’s tax cuts for anyone with incomes over $200,000, which means practically all of them.

In all these cases and plenty of others, public opinion is in radical opposition to public policy. And both political parties are well to the right of the general population.
Few people are even aware of these facts for a simple reason. The regular in-depth public opinion studies by the most prestigious institutions are scarcely reported or not reported at all. When they reveal such facts as these as they regularly do, that records are highly instructive. These are far from only constructive suggestions one can think of, but they are a pretty good start.

There are also some simple truths that can be quite useful. One of them is to take democracy seriously and another is to pay attention to fact and elementary moral principles, another is to refuse to accept the self-serving contention of the powerful that what happened in the past can be forgotten because we’re undergone a miraculous change of course, something which happens every few years as easily demonstrated.

And other simple truths they don’t answer every problem by any means but they do carry us a long way towards developing more specific and detailed answers as they’re constantly done. And more important, they open the way to implementing them. These are opportunities that are readily within our grasp in a society that is as free as ours, if we can free ourselves from the shackles of doctrine and illusion. Thank you.

Aljazeera Interview with Noam Chomsky

Riz Kahn Interview with Noam Chomsky (Aljazeera English) April 26, 2007

(the callers' names are not included)

Riz Kahn: In a full of commentators and thinkers, few people are as respected as our guest today. Though he dismisses being voted the world’s No. 1 intellectual and plays down having his book endorsed at UN General Assembly by a Venezuelan President Hugo Chaves to a great applause, Noam Chomsky continues to be a highly quoted intellectual force. The professor of linguistics at Boston’s prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT, now approaching 80, first made a name for himself with his remarkable work on the theory of grammar in 1950’s but later became known for his political activism particularly for his persistently anti-war stance. And don’t forget, we’ll take your calls on the show, the numbers are at the bottom of your screen. The New York Times described him as arguably the most important intellectual alive. We’re pleased to have him with us. Honor to have you with us, Professor Chomsky.

Chomsky: Very glad to be with you.

Riz: Sir, I know you have no problem in telling as it is, in being very direct. Let me first get your impression on the expression “War on Terror.”

Chomsky: Well, first of all, it’s worth remembering that the “War on Terror” so called, was re-declared in 2001, not declared. It was declared 20 years earlier when President Reagan came into office and announcing he and his associates that the prime focus of US foreign policy would be state-directed international terrorism. International terrorism generally which, as they are described as the plague of the modern age, return to barbarism in our times and so on. And in reaction to it they launched what turned out to be a horrendous terrorist war which destroyed much of Central America and spread to much of the rest of the world. So the war was re-declared in 2001 and it’s not a war on terror. In fact, it’s been plain from the actions that were taken that the goal of reducing terror is not a high priority. In fact, some of the most significant actions have, as anticipated, increased the threat of terror and quite substantially, in fact. (Riz: So let me ask, )So take a look at..(Riz: Sorry. Go ahead, sir.)
Sorry. If you look at the leading international affairs journal in the United States, “Foreign Affairs,” the main journal, one of the lead stories on current issue is about how much the invasion of Iraq has strengthened al Qaeda. A study that just came out by two leading terrorism experts using mostly government data concluded that what they called “the Iraq effect,” the effect of Iraq on terror, has been to increase terror seven fold. That’s quite an increase. And there are other examples.

Riz: What would you have said it would be a more appropriate response to the attacks on September 11? You wrote about 9-11 in your book “9-11”, it’s called “9-11.” I wonder what you think would be the best and the most appropriate response for the US following to those attacks then.

Chomsky: Those are criminal actions, serious criminal actions. And when criminal actions take place, what you do is investigate to find out who is responsible. When you have good evidence to who is responsible, you apprehend them. If it’s an international matter as this was, international security forces, probably the police would be best, could be used to apprehend them and bring them to justice and try them. That’s one aspect.
Another, if you’re serious about it, is to try to ask what the goal and purpose of the terror was and where it’s coming from. What you regularly discover, it’s been discussed over and over again by specialists on terror, what you find is that the terrorists see themselves as a kind of vanguard who are trying to mobilize others on the basis of real grievances. They are trying to show that the grievances are felt and they’re real. They want to try to get people to join their cause by dramatic acts like terror. If you want to stop terror, what you do is pay attention to the grievances and see if they are legitimate, if they are legitimate, then deal with them. That will reduce the likelihood of mobilize of – the terrorists can infect to mobilize the forces, the groups that they’re aiming at. In the case of September 11, I think by now there’s pretty good evidence to that could have been done. The major studies of the Jihadi movements like Fawaz Gerges’ excellent books, others too, have shown that 9-11-style terror, al Qaeda terror was quite unpopular. In fact, it elicited a bitter critique right inside the Jihadi movement. OK, that gave an opportunity to use both of means of criminal investigations, yes, and apprehension, but also to address the grievances, exploit the differences that developed and separate the terrorist groups from their reservoir of support that they are hoping to mobilize.

Riz: Professor, one thing, you live in the United States as you call it your home, and yet you also call it a failed state. You believe it’s a failed state. Now I wonder why.

Chomsky: Actually, that’s not quite true. I said that it’s beginning to take on some of the characteristics of failed states. And it is, I’ve gone through the reasons, I can repeat them. And that’s all the more reason for me to be concerned about it. In fact I live here and it’s my country, sure, you’re particularly interested in the place you care about and can’t care about anything more than your own country.

Riz: Now I’m interested now in your recent book “Perilous Power: The Middle East and U.S. Foreign Policy” which you co-authored with Gilbert Achcar. You both support the idea that the major deterrent to democracy especially in place like the Middle East is that the United States is actually opposed to it, which sort of contradicts the US statements that come out of the government that say, we are trying to promote democracy around the world.

Chomsky: Well, first of all you should time those statements about promoting democracy carefully. Of course there’s always talk about promoting democracy. Everybody always talks about that, but it’s a boilerplate, didn’t mean anything.
When the invasion of Iraq was being planned and sort of sold to the country and the Congress, it was on the bases of what President Bush repeatedly called “a single question”: Will Saddam Hussein terminate his programs of developing Weapons of Mass Destruction? That was the question. That was the basis on which Congress approved to use of force. That was actually even the official internal motivation: Weapons of Mass Destruction, Saddam’s ties to the terror. Couple of months after the invasion, the single question was answered definitively the wrong way. We know the answer.
After that, months after that, the President announced what he called a “freedom agenda.” It was November 2003, to a great fanfare. The “freedom agenda” is that the real goals were to bring democracy to Iraq and to the Middle East, to the world. Nobody can take this seriously of course, and interestingly, in Iraq they didn’t take it seriously. Shortly after the President’s November declarations became headlines, a lot of excitement, a Gallop Poll was released that had been taken in Baghdad: One percent of the population felt the United States invaded to bring democracy. 5 percent felt that the United States invaded to help Iraqis. Most of the rest concluded the obvious, we all know, but we're not allowed to say. Furthermore…

Riz: Sorry, sir, a quick question, based on what you just said. I want to get you its e-mail that came in from Mauritania. I just picked it up what you were talking about that. ** asks, “Don’t you think that the US policy in Iraq and Afghanistan is only triggering more hatred in the Arab and Islamic world? What would you suggest to limit those effects?”

Chomsky: It’s not just I think, it is definite. Studies are coming out, another one just came out a few days ago, from major polling institutions which are showing exactly what the questioner points out. Yes, fear and hatred of the United States is growing. In fact it’s not just in the Islamic world but even in Europe, which is the region most sympathetic to the United States. The effect of George Bush’s policies, particularly the invasion of Iraq has been to raise the United States to the most feared country in the world. What should be done to alleviate this? First of all, to terminate the actions that are causing it and then to deal with the real issues. It would be a great thing if the United States were to support democracy. But it doesn’t and we know that. It didn’t do it before 9-11 and it doesn’t do it now.

If you want maybe the most dramatic example, is Palestine. I mean there were elections in Palestine in January 2006, free elections, carefully monitored, everybody agreed that they were free. And the population voted the wrong way, not the way the US wanted. How did the US react? (Right.) The US, with Europe trailing behind immediately moved to punish the population severely, for voting the wrong way. How can you look at that and say they are trying to promote democracy?

Riz: We got a call just now from London, he’s on the line, if he might ask a question, go ahead.

Caller: I’d just like to ask. Why is it now the Democratic law(?) they passed the bill, Bush and his hawks, you know his colleagues are stuck to the same old policy that the war must continue, the killing must continue. I think it is time that enough British, American, and civilians ( inaudible ) each other -----thousands of Iraqis having been killed. I think American people should come out and speak and we must bring it to the end now, I think.

Riz: OK, let’s get Professor Chomsky to answer this, perhaps I can ask him in this way sir. What is it that stops the American people having some kind of voice, if he is correct, if the people are against the killing that’s going on? Why is it that view of the people are not translated into actions in terms of policies?

Chomsky: Well, now we’re back to the matter of failed states. Not just on this issue, but on a whole range of crucial issues, the public opinion is pretty strongly opposed to government policy. In fact on many issues, important ones, both political parties are well to the right of the general population. That’s true on domestic issues, too it has been pretty well documented, I have written a lot about it and so have others. That’s a failure of the functioning of the American democratic system. I mean it’s a very free country, a freest country in the world. It has formal democratic institutions but for a variety of reasons, they are not functioning in a way in which it makes it responsible to the public. And the public knows it. That’s one of the reasons there’s so much disillusions with political system.
Why doesn't the public do something about it? Well you know that’s a function of atomization of people of difficult economic circumstances, not difficult by the world’s standards, but difficult by the standards that they rightly expect and see. And breakdown of the major organizations. Unions for example used to be a major force for democratization but they’ve been harshly repressed and by now barely exist. Illegal labor practices are used to destroy them and so on. There’s all this Society which is opposed to policy on major issues like this one but hasn’t found the organizational forms, hasn’t developed organizational forms to press for a real voice on foreign policy, or domestic policy for that matter.

Riz: Professor, you know you had, you mentioned the Israeli Palestine situations a moment ago. I want to get to an e-mail that came from *** in the United States, who says, “You’re Jewish. If Israel is destroyed, what part will you have played in it and will you give yourself a pat on the back when it is?”

Chomsky: I have felt for many years and I have written incidentally that the people who call themselves the supporters of Israel are in reality the supporters of Israel’s moral degeneration and probably ultimate destruction. I mean Israel can have security. In fact that’s been true for over 30 years. It has chosen instead expansion at the cost of security. I can go though the reasons if you..(Riz: Probably we’re short on time, a couple of callers are waiting) OK, but that means that I agree with my Israeli friends who think the policies that they are taking are extremely, first of all wrong, but also self-destructive, and if they do pursue security and peace instead of expansion and oppression, their prospects are very much improved.

Riz: *** is on the line from London, what would you like to ask Professor Chomsky?

Caller: I have two questions to ask you. The first one is, basically the UK government and the US government had this term “war on terror.” A lot of people have equated the term “war on terror” to a war on Islam. But this is being denied by George Bush and Mr. Blair. If there was to be a war on Islam, what would it be like and what would one be? So, if someone was to implement a war on Islam, what would it be and difference between that and this? And my second question is that I read a lot of your articles and I would like to be Muslim, invite you to Islam. I just say feel free to read as many books as possible.

Riz: We have got less than a minute now for Professor Chomsky to ask. Apart from your offer to convert to Islam, you have a question about what would a war against Islam be like if war was to take place, very briefly, sir.

Chomsky: War on Islam would be a third world war that might bring species to an end. But the United States is not engaged in the war against Islam. George Bush is correct. Its, for example, the oldest, the most valued ally of the United States in the region is Saudi Arabia because it is where the most oil is. It happens to be the most extremist Islamic fundamentalist state. In the 1980s during the first so-called war on terror, the United States government was fighting a war, to a large extent, against the Catholic Church who were sponsoring liberation theology.

On "Failed States"

On “Failed States” August 25, 2006 CounterSpin

CounterSpin is FAIR's weekly radio show, hosted by Janine Jackson, Steve Rendall and Peter Hart. It's heard on more than 150 noncommercial stations across the United States and Canada.

0:58 Q: A healthy skeptical press accords a requirement for a decent democracy, but when news outlets do as much to obscure as they do to inform, what does it say about the state of democratic affairs? In his new book, Noam Chomsky makes the argument that while the term “Failed state” is most often applied to countries on their receiving in UN-US backed military action or various reforms, the United States in many respects meets the definition of a “Failed State.” Joining us now is Noam Chomsky, long-time activist, professor of linguistics and philosophy at MIT and the author of numerous books. His latest is “Failed States: the Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy.” Noam Chomsky, welcome back to CounterSpin. (Chomsky: Glad to be with you again.)
Now, at least one of the failed states references to need titled is the United States. You drew the line between deteriorating democratic institutions here at home and the promotion of democracy abroad. This was, of course, one of the secondary rationales for the Iraq war that other states in the Middle East would take a lesson from Iraq, we’d see this Arab Spring and so on. This was celebrated in the press at the time as this bold new idea, but you noted in the book that at least in terms of official rhetoric, this is certainly nothing new.

Chomsky: Not only that’s nothing new, but the timing is interesting. As the invasion proceeded, there was the usual boilerplate about democracy, this kind of constant, nobody has paid any attention to it. But the democracy promotion became the sort of mantra. Months later, the United States went to war, as Bush and Powell and others stressed, on the basis of what they called the single question: will Saddam Hussein give up his Weapons of Mass Destruction? Well, the single question was answered within a few months the wrong way, and then there was some various efforts to try to conjure up another reason for the war. And it turned out by about August-September that year, that the real reason was what the press called George Bush’s “messianic mission” to bring democracy to Iraq, the Middle East and the world and so on.

And the press, and the scholarship too to a large extent, immediately jumped on the bandwagon. By a couple of months later in November, Bush gave a speech at the anniversary of the National Endowment for Democracy, in which he proclaimed his vision for democracy. Immediately you had arousing applause for this idealistic war, the Iraq war, it was the most noble war in history, the chief correspondent of Washington Post reported and so on. And then scholarship went along too. In fact, I started discussion on the democracy promotion by just reviewing the major scholarly articles on Bush Doctrine and so on. Every one of them starts with an encomium to Bush’s “magnificent” and “reviving Wilsonian Idealism”etc, etc. But the timing itself tells you that it’s just the comical fraud. But when you look at the record, it becomes even more obvious, which I have two chapters there just going through the record, the past record, the present record, the current record, right up to today.
There’s not a particle of evidence indicating support for democracy except under one condition. And that condition is ruefully recognized by the leading scholar advocate of democracy promotion:Thomas Carothers, who has written several books on it. He’s neo-Reaganite, he was in the Reagan State Department working on democracy promotion. He’s a great enthusiast for it, written major books on it, now head of the democracy and law project of the Carnegie Endowment. The most recent book which I quoted was- went up to 2004.
And his conclusion throughout is that the US does indeed promote democracy and always has, but if and only if it is in accordance with US strategic and economic interests. And if you look through the details as he records them accurately, he’s a good scholar, becomes even clear. There’s no exception to this. Democracy’s fine if it comes out the right way, otherwise you have to destroy it. And since, I won’t go on, but since that time it’s been the same.

Take, the most obvious current example, in Palestine. There was an election--free election, everyone recognized it was free--last January. And the Palestinians voted the wrong way. How did the US react? Instantly, within days, by declaring that the Unite States would punish the people in Palestine for voting the wrong way. And they proceeded to do so. Economic strangulation, sharp step-up in Israeli attacks, refusing to pay legally required funding that Israel collect for the Palestinians and so on. That’s the reaction to a free election, if you don’t like the result.
On the other hand, if you can kind of arrange on election so that the right man wins, maybe at the point of a gun, and does what it tells you to do, it’s fine. So there’s nothing wrong with Saudi Arabia, which is the oldest and the most valued US ally in the region and the most extreme fundamentalist tyrannies maybe in the world. By comparison, Iran looks like a democratic heaven, but that’s ok. I mean we make a few noises about, maybe they should put that into consultative council or something, but there was no effort to do anything about it, because they do what they’re told to do, what we want them to do, and so it continues. The end, conclusion, is that the evidence that dedication to the principle that the US is involved in democracy promotion and that Bush is pursuing his messianic mission, that’s close to 100% in the press, even in scholarship with few exceptions. It’s just a kind of like a principled logic or arithmetic like 2+2=4. That’s true. Look at the evidence for it. It turns out that the evidence consists, almost entirely, of pronouncements by the leaders.

Q: You didn’t note, or you know you didn’t in your book that the New York Times did the same after the death of Yasar Arafat, acknowledging that elections, if they turn out the wrong way or a problem, Tim Russert did recently on “Meet the Press.” Nonetheless, the idea of democracy promotion is still very powerful in the press. You have a small section in the book about deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. When he left the administration, he was going to the World Bank to renew his long-standing commitment to democratic values (Chomsky: And human rights.) and human rights. This idea of promoting democracy as a strategic goal is treated seriously when we talk about Israel and Lebanon. There are front page story in every major newspaper about whether this Bush Doctrine is faltering. Why is it so powerful, do you think?

Chomsky: It’s powerful because the principle is if the “Dear Leader” speaks, we respond by just taking it for granted that it is the truth. That’s why I made comparison with North Korea. Let’s take, say Paul Wolfowitz, whom the Washington Post described as “the idealist-in-chief” in charge of promoting democracy worldwide, making that’s what he made the most noble war in history. Well, yes, he was actually kicked out of Washington because he was an embarrassment and sent off to the World Bank. And there was article after article just like what you said, praising him for his dedication to democracy, a development of his duty and the World Bank is going to eliminate corruption and so on.
Not a word about his record, actually he has the record. One of the most extraordinary examples of illustration of real hatred for democracy which was so suppressed and forgotten, is the distinction -- it was made between, Rumsfeld’s distinction--between Old and New Europe, which was all the rage, right leading up to the war. What was the distinction? Old Europe where the governments went along with a large majority of their population and refuse to participate in war, that’s Old Europe: Bad guys. And New Europe, the hope for democracy where leaders overruled an even larger majority of the population and as if they were from Crawford, Texas.

The most extreme case was Aznar in Spain. He was such a great democrat, but he was invited to the summit where later on Blair and Bush announced the war, at that time with the support of 2% of the population.
Let’s go back to Wolfowitz. One country described as everyone here too, was Turkey. The Turkish government actually took the position which accorded with the will of 95% of its population. Well, they were bitterly denounced by Collin Powell, by everyone, there was sanction, threatend. But the most extreme was Wolfowitz. Wolfowitz publicly berated the Turkish Military for permitting the government to go along with the will of 95% of the population. And he ordered them to apologize to Washington and to recognize that their job is to help America. That’s his dedication to democracy.

And there’s more. He was the most enthusiastic supporter for General Suharto. He had been ambassador to Indonesia, where he defended him constantly. And he actually continued to defend even after he’d been overthrown by the population and sort of tossed on the shelf by like virtually everyone else. When he was appointed, there were inquiries in Indonesia as to what his record was there. And it was clear. An Indonesian activist said that he never did anything to help them at all, he had nothing to say about human rights, he had no interest in democracy, he was interested in supporting investment. His whole record is support for brutal violence, corruption, antagonism to democracy and human rights but it doesn’t matter. He is “the idealist in chief,” directing democracy promotion, making the Iraq war the most noble war in history.

Q: Noam Chomsky, in order to present Paul Wolfowitz as an idealist and an advocate for human rights, you have to conceal a lot of inconvenient truths. Your book “Failed States” is full of case studies that speak to the role of the press in keeping uncomfortable fact from the public view. You cited the uproar of the UN oil-food program in Iraq, which effectively diverted attention away from a more serious fraud carried out by the occupying coalition, provisional authority. I wonder if you could comment on that.

Chomsky: Yes, they are all examples of… I mean take say the corruption. There were charges, you know, very emphatic charges that UN corruption was the greatest fraud in history, so on and so forth. $20 billion were unaccounted for. When the dust settled, it turned out that, yes, there was plenty of money missing, most of it, illegal transfers of oil to US allies--Turkey and Jordan-- with the approval of the United States. When the Volcker commission finished it up, it turned out that the most severe charge was that one UN employee, Benon Sevan had, I think, $150,000 unaccounted for, he had attributed to an aunt in Cyprus. Maybe it was true, maybe it wasn’t. And there were rumors that maybe or maybe not Kofi Annan had talked to someone at the party who might have employed his son, and that’s where it came down to.
Meanwhile, behind the scenes, US officials in charge were piling up massive information about tens of billions of dollars of corruption carried out by US corporations and others working for the coalition provisional authority, which itself was apparently robbing people blind. In comparison, with what they found about the UN, this is mountainous. That was reported pretty well in England, I should say, but from US government sources, nothing, obscured. And finally it’s sort of filtered away into the US press but kind of usual way, you know in back pages, sort of a few bad guys and so on. Meanwhile, the charges against the UN, they stuck even after they were completely exploded. You just can’t pick up an issue by newspaper without seeing examples.

Let’s take right now: the US-Israeli invasion of Lebanon and the sharp escalation of Israeli attacks in the Gaza Strip. A couple of weeks earlier, they were blamed on the outrageous crime of capture of soldiers. On June 25th, Palestinian militants captured an Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, to huge outrage, a sharp escalation of attacks against Gaza and a number of killed. One index went from 36 killed in June to over 170 killed in July, enthusiastic support for it because of this outrageous capture.
The same in Lebanon, Hezbollah committed an outrageous act of aggression, captured two Israeli soldiers, can’t tolerate that, you have to destroy half the country. I mean there’s pure cynicism in the media and you know it.

Take Gaza. One day before the capture of Gilad Shalit, Israeli Forces kidnapped two Gaza civilians, sent them off to the Israeli prison system where they conjoined hundreds of others, close to a thousand also kidnapped and imprisoned without charge, often Lebanese. Was there any reaction? Did anyone say look, we have to invade Israel? No, a few dismissive notices. It was known, I mean it was mentioned here and there but dismissed, insignificant and forgotten. Kidnapping civilians is a far more serious crime than capture of soldiers.

Take Lebanon. I mean for years, decades in fact, Israel has had a regular practice of kidnapping Lebanese. There were hundreds of them in Israeli prisons sometimes in secret prisons. Many killed. It’s known, again you find brutal15:54( ) dealing here and there. Did anyone call for invasion of Israel? Or Attack on Israel? Well, it’s a total, cynical fraud, the US and Britain and most of the West just doesn’t care about even kidnapping civilians, killing of them as long as it’s done by our side. If it’s done by them, it’s an outrageous crime, we have to invade the country and destroy it.

Just take a look at the coverage. David Peterson did an immediate search. I don’t know the exact numbers but he said overwhelming emphasis on the capture of soldier. There’s nothing, barely anything, where the few who did this here and there mentioning, but not following up the much worse crime of kidnapping civilians. That was dramatically obvious in June, when it was one day before they captured Gilad Shalit, mentioned and forgotten. Well, that’s in front of our eyes at the moment. You literally can’t open the newspaper without finding more example.

Q: How about half of the book deals with domestic politics? You know, several times that American public opinion is vigorously documented and dissected and opinion in poll is often done by news outlets and that, then report the findings on those polls. But some of the more interesting findings are just discarded. Tell us about this gap between elite political culture and popular opinion. You read it and you’d think if there were a commentator in the mainstream media who advocated what apparently are the majority positions, if the polls are correct, that person would be considered off the charts to the left.

Chomsky: Take, say the federal budget. The last one available at the time of the book was February 2005, when the Federal budget was announced. And immediately after that, the leading polling agencies in the country, a very respected program on international policy attitudes. They did a careful study on which they interviewed people on what they thought the budget should be. Well, that was the inverse to the budget. Where the federal budget went up, people wanted it to go down. The Military Spending, extra spending on Iraq and Afghanistan, all going up when the public wanted it to do down. The overwhelming majority incidentally where funding was going down, the public wanted it to go up, again by overwhelming majorities, social spending, health, education, veteran’s benefits, renewable energies, support for the United Nations and so on. In fact it’s kind like a mirror image. Well, that’s important news. Again my friend David Peterson did a search for me. Not one mentioned, you couldn’t find a single newspaper that mentioned it. Sometimes you see things aren’t mentioned are sometimes even more revealing.

Say, the last presidential debate(2004). The last presidential debate was devoted to domestic issues. And there was an accurate report in the New York Times next day. It pointed out that John Kerry never brought up any government role in the health system. And the reason he didn’t bring it up is because it has so little political support. Well, in fact it has the support of a very large majority of the population, not just the government involvement, but the government takeover of the system, very large support usually around two thirds. That’s been going for years. Well, “it has no political support,” only a large majority of the population. Well, that’s understandable.
A political support for the New York Times and John Kerry and others means support of the pharmaceutical corporations, Insurance industry, Wall Street and so on. That’s “political support.” The population is irrelevant. Not in the sense they are lying. I mean they’re using the term “political support” in a sense that they take for granted support of concentrated, private power. That’s "political support." The population is irrelevant. Healthcare is not a small issue. If you look at the polls over the years, it’s commonly ranked as the most important, almost the most important domestic issue, because the system is crashing, it’s out of control, it’s twice the per capita the cost as other industrial societies. Some of the worst outcomes, are getting worse.
Here incidentally, comes another media scam. This constant talk about the fiscal train wreck that’s coming up because of entitlements with the baby-boomers retiring, we get this huge entitlement crisis. So, we have to somehow deal with a crisis caused by Medicare-Medicaid and social security. Well, the three are interesting, there’s no crisis about social security. In most some minor tinkering with the system would suffice. But Medicare and Medicaid, yeah they’re going out of control. It’s not because of fault of Medicare and Medicaid. It’s the fault of the privatized health system.
So, the real problem with entitlements is that the privatized health system is the most inefficient in industrial world by a large measure. People complain about it and no one eliminate it. That’s the crisis. Not social security. They want to get rid of social security for other reasons. Social security is a system that benefits the poor, not the rich. So like, you know I’m a retired college professor. OK, I get social security but as compared with pension, it didn’t amount too much. The same is true with other professionals and so on.

On the other hand, for the majority of the population, social security is something they rely on for survival. Well, it follows right away that social security has to be eliminated. It’s not serving domestic, political power, namely the wealthy. On the other hand, take the health system. Again, for people of professionals, what they in my… people in my income bracket, it is a terrific health care system. You get everything you want, best in the world. A large percentage of population can’t even pay the minimum cost. I’m not talking about the uninsured. So it’s the system that works for the rich and it’s a catastrophe for the majority. So therefore, we have to leave it alone. I mean you know, there’s more complexity even in this. But at the first approximation, this is very close. Do you see that any where? No. What you see is, there’s a terrible problem of entitlement we have to reform social security, leave the medical system alone.

Q: Now finally, in the little bit of time we have left, there’s certainly a great deal of talk about polarization in the country. One gets the sense from the kind of liberal end of the mainstream media discussion that the current White House policies, a number of issues represent significant break with traditional US goals whether it be foreign policy, domestic policy and so on. The New York Times ran a whole story recently about the vast differences between George W. Bush and his father on the Mideast, for example. Your book suggested the certain type of continuity, in fact over some of these very different administrations.

Chomsky: Oh, there’s enormous continuity. In fact, there’s a lot of protest about the Bush Doctrine. But take a look at the Clinton Doctrine, it was literally more extreme. So the Clinton Doctrine was that the US has the right to use military force to protect its access to markets and resources. That’s more extreme than Bush, who had at least said that you have to have some kind of pretext.
But Clinton did it a kind of quietly, and not brazenly, and his policy more and less worked. The criticism of Bush, it’s true. I mean they are at radical extreme but they are in a narrow spectrum. They are arrogant and incompetent, there’s real authoritarian streak, they’re going to control everything, they’re harming the interests of the wealthy and the powerful people. Yes, there’s plenty of criticism. This criticism of Bush, because he’s creating catastrophe in every way you looked. Created catastrophe in Iraq, just created another one in Lebanon, he’s seriously increased the risk of terror. Domestic policies, you don’t even have to mention. So yeah there’s string of catastrophes harming the interests of the rich and powerful sectors of the population. So, you have unprecedented criticism on the Bush administration from the right in the mainstream. That’s been true since almost the beginning, increasing after every catastrophe. And on the other hand, are their policies very different?

Let’s take the Middle East policies of his father who was considered a great moderate, critical of Israel, honest broker, etc. What was his position on Israel? Well, we know it, we can read.
In December 1989, they came out with what was called “the Baker Plan.” James Baker was Secretary of State, “the Bush-Baker plan” on Israel and Palestine. It’s the most extremist anti-Palestinians plan yet proposed by an American President. The wording was that there can be “no additional Palestinian state” between Israel and Jordan, meaning no Palestinian state because Jordan already is a Palestinian state. Second, the fate of the Occupied Territories has to be settled in accord with the guidelines of the State of Israel. Then came a call for free election with most of the educated classes are imprisoned without charge and so on. And Baker then said well the Palestinians can enter into these negotiations but only if they accord with the guidelines just stated: no Palestinian state, the policies have to be fixed in accordance with the guidelines of the State of Israel. That’s the Baker Plan, which in fact he didn’t invent. It was just an affirmation of the plan proposed by the Israeli government a few months earlier. The Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Shamir coalition government had produced the plan in those words and Baker simply endorsed it. Why did they do it? Well, because a few months earlier, the Palestine National Council had formally approved of a two-state settlement in accord with the international consensus, broad international consensus that the US has blocked for 30 years. So, the Israeli government including Shimon Peres, a great dove, came out with its statement there’d never be an additional Palestinian state in addition to Jordan and so on. And Bush and Baker endorsed it. That’s the most extreme position yet taken by the American administration. Do you read that anywhere?

Wake up call-Noam Chomsky on Lebanon-Israel

Wake up call -Noam Chomsky on Lebanon-Israel (July 24, 2006)
(the audio archive is not available as of August 2008)

 Q: Good morning, this is Wake-up Call. I’m Deepa Fernandes. The Israeli attacks on suburbs of Beirut and southern Lebanon have continued over the weekend as we’ve been hearing in the news headlines and throughout this program. The civilian death toll has passed 400. A photographer working for a Lebanese magazine was killed over the weekend when an Israeli strike hit her taxi in southern Lebanon. She’s the first journalist to die in Israel’s defensive. Meanwhile, the Lebanese security officials say an Israeli missile struck a mini bus carrying Lebanese fleeing a southern village killing 3 and wounding 13.

The United Nations humanitarian chief Jan Egeland said it’s going to take more than 100 million dollars to help the hundreds of thousands of Lebanese who have been hurt or displaced since Israel began bombing. Jan Egeland will today launch an international appeal for the next three months for contributions from the international community. Meanwhile, the World Health Organization raised its estimate of the number of people displaced in Lebanon to 600,000. The report by the UN health agency also raised its estimate of the number of people killed to more than 350.

We’re joined right now by Professor Noam Chomsky. He’s a professor of linguistics and philosophy at the MIT and his latest book is called “Failed States: the Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy.” Back in May, Professor Chomsky traveled to Beirut where he met with, among others, the Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and we welcome to Wakeup call, Professor Chomsky. Good morning. (Chomsky: Good morning) Thank you so much for being with us.
I wonder first of all, Professor Chomsky, for your analysis, as we’re watching this attack only intensified by Israel. And now we’ve heard that the US is asking for a ceasefire. Can you put a little bit of context, first of all, onto Israel’s stepped-up incursion where some might be thinking they might be trying to wind this down?

Chomsky: Well, first of all, the incursion didn’t take place in a vacuum. It’s part of a strong sharp upsurge in violence since late June. Of course, there had been plenty before but it sharply escalated in late June. The first case, which is not discussed here, was on June 24th, when Israel kidnapped two civilians in Gaza, a doctor and his brother, abducted them to Israel, nothing more was known about them, presumably joined roughly ten thousand prisoners there, a thousand or so without charge.
The next day, June 25th, Hamas captured an Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit. That was well known and set off a very sharp increase in Israeli attacks in Gaza. On July 12th, Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers at the border in the fighting, 8 others were killed. And that led to the invasion that we’re now seeing.

In fact of course, this goes back further, a major change took place last January, when there was a free election in the Palestinian territories and they elected Hamas. Israel and the United States immediately turned to severely punishing the Palestinian people for electing Hamas. That is part of the background, cutting off supplies and funds and so on. That’s-- still more far-reaching part of the background are the Israeli annexation programs called “convergence” that were announced, in I think May, to take over large areas of the West Bank permanently. That’s much of the “valuable land” and most of the resources including water and cantonize the rest and imprisonment essentially by taking over the Jordan Valley. We have to remember that Gaza and the West Bank are treated as a unit by the United States and Israel as well and certainly by Palestinians and the world. So that’s the general background.

Then comes the question why there’s this vast attack against Lebanon which is completely destroying southern Lebanon all way up to Beirut, destroying the infrastructure, hitting--just a couple days ago, they hit and destroyed the rather conservative television station in the Christian area in north Beirut-- hitting hospitals and all you can read much of the destruction in the press. What’s the point of all that? We don’t have documentary evidence from the United States and Israel to joint attack, Israel using US weapons, of course, which are being increased, there’s increase in shipments of weapons to allow escalate the attack. Up until now, the US has been alone in expediting the attack, not only expediting it but trying to prevent a ceasefire.
Maybe that’s going to change, their goal presumably is first of all to eliminate any conceivable deterrent from Lebanon. In case the US and Israel decide to attack Iran, there could have been a Lebanese deterrent for that. And it probably, as Condi Rice said, has to do with their conception of reshaping the Middle East. It doesn’t mean bringing democracy, it means imposing obedient client states as they’re subordinate to US power, with Israel being kind of a military offshoot to the United States.

And in the background are the threats, at least maybe plans to attack Iran. They’re kind of skirting Syria. A lot of charges about Syria, but presumably the US and Israel are reluctant to see any kind of regime change in Syria since the alternative, a very likely alternative would be an Islamic fundamentalist regime which is the last thing they want. Syria has maintained—has not reacted so far for many years, almost 40 years, to Israel’s takeover of the Syrian Golan Heights and annexation of them- in fact in violation of Security Council orders. As long as it maintains quiet and stability while the US and Israel go about the plans, there’s little incentive to overthrow the government of Syria. I think these are some of the background factors.

Q: I wonder if, while we are focusing so much right now on Lebanon, should we be separating Gaza and Lebanon and what do you make of – the calls in the press that actually Israel doesn’t want to be fighting in both Gaza and Lebanon at the same time?

Chomsky: Well, Israel would certainly prefer quiet in Gaza and the West Bank, which again, remember are a unit. While it persists in its programs of what they are calling convergence, the convergence programs have been described here as withdrawal, but that’s extremely misleading. I mean they are going to withdraw from some scattered settlements that are unviable and bring them and converge them into the area that they’re planning to annex. All in violation of any possible interpretation of international law, I’m quoting, including the World Court, that’s very serious.

What was called the Gaza disengagement plan was in fact a West Bank expansion plan. At the very same time that they announced withdrawal of about 8000 settlers from what has become a complete hellhole in Gaza, they also simultaneously announced a sharp expansion of the West Bank settlements. That’s significant. The West Bank settlement programs, as they said “take over valuable land” and most of the resources particularly water which is extremely valuable there, but also cantonize the rest. Look at the map, you’ll see they break up the shrinking territories remaining to Palestinians, they break them up into unviable cantons, virtually separated from one another –three, all three virtually separated from whatever a little corner of Jerusalem is supposed to be left to Palestinians. And they’re imprisoned, because they are going to take over the Jordan Valley, of course air space and any other access is controlled, this means any land, access to the outside is controlled.

This is essentially the murder of Palestine. There’s nothing left. That’s the core of the convergence plan, “hitkansut” plan, which is disguised as withdrawal because indeed yes, there are some scattered settlements being converged into the annexed area. So yes, we shouldn’t disassociate. In fact no one does, if you look at –.
I mean Hezbollah has official reasons for capturing soldiers which are pretty much accepted by most analysts, no matter how hostile they are to Hezbollah.
The two reasons were exchange of prisoners, there are unknown numbers of Lebanese prisoners in Israeli jails. Israeli commentator in Haa'retz recently said at least 15 but we don’t know how many. So that’s one and the other was relieving the pressure on the--at least expressed solidarity with the sharp escalation of Israeli attacks on Gaza ever since the kidnapping of the two civilians on June 24.

Q: I wonder if we can focus for a moment then, Professor Noam Chomsky, on Hezbollah. You recently met with Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s leader. It seems like we only really have two options within which we can understand Hezbollah, if we’re to focus on media reports, that’s on the one hand and either terrorist operation on the other hand, freedom fighters.

Chomky: That’s really a question for the Lebanese to decide. Hezbollah is a major political force inside Lebanon. Hezbollah and its close ally Amal are just approximately the same programs. They constitute the Shia bloc in the parliament. There’s confessional system in Lebanon, every so-called sect has a certain number of seats. And Hezbollah and its ally Amal have the Shiite seats, Hezbollah as agreed to be by far the most popular party in the south with some supports elsewhere as well.
Also, this is a controversial part, it maintains an armed faction. And the question is should it be permitted to maintain its arms. Well, the Lebanese government has –there is the UN resolution 1559, calling on disarming of militias, that would mean Hezbollah and also the Palestinians in the camps who have self-defense militias. That’s a hard problem for Lebanese to solve. The Prime Minister of Lebanon, Fouad Siniora, has said that 1559 doesn’t apply to Hezbollah and implicitly Palestinian’s militias, because they are not militias but rather are resistance forces. And that’s precisely the issue.
The basic question is whether Lebanon deserves to have a deterrent against another Israeli invasion-- this is prior to July 12 for now we’re discussing-- at that time. There was always threat of another Israeli invasion, Israel has invaded four times in the last 22 years. They have been bloody and murderous, the most recent was 1996...

Q: Israel and the United States would say that it should be the Lebanese army, not Hezbollah.

Chomsky: Right, except that no one takes that seriously that the Lebanese army is barely more than a large police force, it doesn’t have presence in southern Lebanon. No one believes the Lebanese army could be a deterrent to anything. There is a possibility, one of the possibilities discussed in Lebanon is that Hezbollah should be incorporated within the Lebanese army, but they argue and it’s not unpersuasive that the Lebanese army is so— elements of it are so corrupt and so easily penetrable by Israel that if that were the case, Israel would know everything about what the army is doing.
It’s a complicated system in Lebanon. There is a section, most Christian Maronite section, which is, not all of them course, but some, which have been closely allied to Israel. In fact Israel in 1982, when it invaded, its goal was to institute a Maronite state in Lebanon which would be subordinate to Israel. It did have forces there. The Phalangist forces that carried out the Sabra/Shatila massacre under Israeli supervision were Lebanese, of course. So yes, it’s an understandable concern, I mean exactly how it should be dealt with.

If there is to be a deterrent to Israeli invasion, it’s hard to imagine an alternative to the guerrilla warfare that drove them out in the first place in 2000, and that’s Hezbollah. So yes, that’s a hard problem for Lebanese to deal with as long as the constant threat of Israeli invasion persists. We should remember--first of all Israel controlled and occupied southern Lebanon in violation of the Security Council resolution for 22 years until they were driven out in 2000, but during that period, there were four further invasions. And they were very serious.
The 1982 invasion was much worse than this, it practically destroyed southern Lebanon including Beirut. The US supported it, finally when the atrocities became too severe after about two months, Reagan sort of instructed Israel to back down, pull, return its so-called “the security zone” in occupied southern Lebanon. There was another in 1993, which was very severe, another in 1996, also severe. None of them had any credible pretext. The 1982 invasion was pretty openly taken to try to prevent Palestinian pressure for negotiations for political settlement which the US and Israel didn’t want. In fact it was called a “war for the West Bank.”
And there could be another, no one knows. Israel is overwhelmingly powerful, it has a superpower backing, can do basically what it wants. And the only conceivable deterrent is the kind of guerrilla warfare which had driven them out in the first place. So, then it’s a Lebanese question whether it had to balance that against the serious threat of having an armed force inside a country that’s not controlled by the government.

On Gerald Ford and the Invasion of East Timor

On Gerald Ford and the Invasion of East Timor (the Struggle January 5, 2007)

Q: President Gerald Ford was buried this week. He was nearly universally praised as “a man of decency,” “a Norman Rockwell painting come to life,” “a healer of the nation.” Outside of Amy Goodman on “Democracy Now!,” no one is talking about the Ford Connection, with one of the great crimes of the 20th century: the invasion of East Timor. I’ll be speaking with Noam Chomsky, a world’s famous fighter for human rights who has written often about East Timor. Good evening.

Chomsky: How are you.

Q: December 7 is a date every school child knows as the infamous date that Japan bombed Pearl Harbor but it’s also the date in 1975 that the Indonesians invaded East Timor. Could you give us a little background?

Chomsky: East Timor had been a Portuguese colony. Indonesia laid claim to the former Dutch Empire but had no claim and expressed no claim to East Timor. As the Portuguese fascist regime collapsed in the mid-70s, its colonies fell into conflict as usually happens with decolonization. Mozambique and Angola were--they had internal wars, they were attacked by South Africa, a complicated story there. And East Timor was one of two, three actually Portuguese colonies in Southeast Asia.
As the Portuguese prepared to withdraw, there was a very brief civil war: it was won by Fretilin, which was a sort of liberation movement of East Timor. Indonesia immediately began plans to invade; the getting up to December 7th, a few days before December 7th, Henry Kissinger and Gerald Ford visited Indonesia-- Ford was President, Henry Kissinger, Secretary of State. The American intelligence knew the plans for the invasion. Australian intelligence was reporting to them, they were closely involved and so on. And there had already been preliminary Indonesian incursions.
So they sort of knew it was coming, they were informed by the dictator of Indonesia, Suharto, who had a long and bloody record himself. He came into power in 1965 in the course of a military coup, it was one of the great massacres in the 20th century. In fact, CIA compared it to the crimes of Hitler, Stalin and Mao, “one of the great mass murders in the 20th century,” they called it. That he killed maybe a million people, mostly landless peasants, opened the country to western exploitation was greeted by complete euphoria, undisguised euphoria in the United States and most of the West. So Suharto was a great hero of the West; it didn’t matter how hideous his atrocities of crimes were. (Q: So he was a known quantity) He was a known quantity, definitely, and very admired.

He informed Kissinger and Ford of his plans to invade East Timor, it was of course defensive, like every aggression in history is, Hitler’s and everyone’s. They had to prevent Cuba from being established, in the Southeast Asia, Russian satellite, the usual business. And Ford and Kissinger essentially gave him the green light. They said they would have no objection: Kissinger’s line was just get it over with quickly so we don’t get into trouble. Indonesia was armed with American arms provided on condition that they would only be used in self-defense. So Kissinger’s observations was, if this goes on too long, we may get into trouble with the Congress and others because the arms are being used illegally.

Q: And this is, there are all documents about…?

Chomsky: Yes, all pretty well documented by now. And most of it was known very quickly, but congressional testimony by Ben Anderson, who is a leading Southeast Asian specialist in the United States very quickly—I forgot the exact date—and bits and pieces appeared in the press and a fair amount in Australian press, I should say. And Kissinger and Ford only requested that Suharto delay the invasion until after they left, so they didn’t have to be on the day of the invasion.

They left, Indonesia invaded on December 7th as you said, there was a massacre. The Security Council passed a resolution which the United States actually supported calling on Indonesia to withdraw as an outright case of aggression, of no qualifications. However, it had no effect. And the reasons were explained by the United States UN ambassador Daniel Moynihan, a great liberal hero regarded as a courageous lonely ex…advocate of international law. In his memoirs, a couple of years later, he explains that his instructions were from the State Department, were to ensure that he would… his task was to render the United Nations “utterly ineffective” in anything it might do to impede the Indonesian invasion, and also the Moroccan invasion of western Sahara, a simpler case. He said he was very successful in achieving this result, he was very proud of himself for having rendered the UN ineffective, therefore expediting the invasion and subsequent slaughter. He himself points out in the same book that within the first few weeks it seems that Indonesia had killed about 60,000 people. And he goes onto the next topic.

Q: I noticed the name Philip Habib cropping up in the story. I remember him a few years later guaranteeing the safety of Palestinian women and children in Lebanon just before the Sabra/Shatila massacre.

Chomsky: Yes, when the US essentially collaborated—the US supported – this was the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, supported by the United States, completely without, utterly no credible pretext. In fact the real reason which was described quite openly in Israel was to undermine the embarrassment of Palestinian, PLO offers of negotiation. It was described as a war for the West Bank: we can get rid of the PLO and their other bases in Lebanon, we will have a free end to the West Bank. And on that basis.. Israel tried to elicit some kind of PLO action that would be a pretext for the invasion. For example, Israel bombed Lebanon and killed a lot of people hoping that the PLO would respond, and give them a pretext, PLO didn’t give them a pretext so they just invaded.

Actually, the first act of invasion June ‘82 was to bomb the Sabra/Shatila Palestinian refugee camps, which later became famous for a huge massacre. This one killed about 200 people, according to the testimony of Middle East specialist Cheryl Rubenberg, who was there at that time. But that was passed unnoticed, and they invaded and maybe killed 15-20,000 people, destroyed a good part of southern Lebanon, much of Beirut.

Q: Now we see these people cropping up again and again in history and may never get punished, never get reprimanded.

Chomsky: (Philip Habib)’s role was not horrible, he tried to negotiate ceasefire, it turned out that as the US…the US sort of finished the Israel’s job of expelling the PLO. And shortly after that came Sabra/Shatila massacre, as mentioned a huge massacre, but yes, the same people show up.
The role of Moynihan and Kissinger was unusually ugly. I mean they facilitated consciously a tremendous massacre. Actually the United States did impose an embargo on the arms to Indonesia right after the invasion. But the embargo was so secret that the Indonesians never knew about it. And in fact what the US did, Kissinger did was an arrange for new arms shipments to Indonesia, not only with using the US arms illegally but he’s providing new ones, including the counter-insurgency equipment –the air craft—used for, designed for counterinsurgency and so on. They were used by 1978, within about two years. It was estimated that deaths in East Timor were in the range of maybe one or two hundred thousand.

Q: A dumb question: Gerald Ford certainly knew about this?

Chomsky: He knew about it but we really don’t know to what extent he was aware of what’s going on. I mean certainly Kissinger and Moynihan were. The Presidents are often… it’s very hard to tell sometimes—they sometimes have a figure head status. So, I’m not sure for example how much George Bush knows about the policies of his administration. But Ford was certainly aware of it. He may not have known the vicious details which Kissinger and Moynihan certainly did. He, Moynihan, mentions the early ones in his memoirs. Kissinger repeatedly provided apologetic commentary about how we have to end it to Congress and internally, documents are available about we have to make sure the Indonesian get this over fast, let’s get rid of it, we can’t—we can’t let an independent East Timor develop. I think they’re mainly concerned that-- pretty much the same reason they were concerned about Cuba or Allende or Vietnam for that matter, it wasn’t that threat to anyone, it was that successful independent development, but particularly in some very tiny backward country, it’s quite dangerous because it can be, using Kissinger’s phrase, it can be a virus that could spread contagion elsewhere. Others might try it.

Q: When did you –I’m sorry if I—when did you first get involved with the East Timor issue?

Chomsky: Very quickly. Within about--I mean I knew about the invasion. I didn’t know much about the region or anything, but within about two months--it must have been February, I guess--the New York Times did have a small item, in which it said that apparently 60,000 people had been killed—that the back page somewhere but immediately sparked interest. Killing 60,000 people in an invasion in two months in a little country of 600,000 is no small achievement.

Right at that time, there were a few mostly young activists who were trying to get some interest in this. The most important one, and he’s still working on it, is Arnold Kohen. He was a graduate student at Cornell University, the department of Southeastern Asian studies, actually a student of Ben Anderson and George Kahin, who is sort of a founder of modern Southeastern Asian studies. He left graduate school and started working full time on this and in fact has--the ultimate liberation of East Timor owes probably more to him than any other person. Of course, he’s pretty much unknown, which is the usual story, but he began—I don’t remember exactly how, but he contacted me, asked if he could come to a talk, some event that he was organizing, a couple of others came along. Pretty soon, there was a small movement trying very hard to get people to be aware of this.

I mean this is--the slaughter in East Timor is about as close to literal genocide as anything in the modern period. I mean they may have been-- nobody knows for sure-- to the quarter of the population something like that, quite an atrocity. In fact in scale, it was about the same as what was credibly reported from Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge at the same time before the major Cambodian massacres in 1978.

Q: And Alan Nairn and Amy Goodman deserved a lot of credit for their reporting.

Chomsky: They did it very--they went to East Timor in 1991. There was a major Indonesian massacre in a cemetery. The Indonesian army came in and just mowed down hundreds of people who were commemorating the killing of a Timorese at church shortly before Amy and Alan were there. They were--Alan actually had his head cracked by Indonesians. They were trying to protect…they tried to say, look, we’re American journalists, but the Indonesians just came after them. Miraculously they survived and they then came back and managed to get out and they made it public here.
Also there was one journalist, British photo journalist who was in the cemetery hiding behind a gravestone, and he made photographic record, he videotaped a lot of it and played it on British TV. So, at least in England and other places it got to be known. And Amy and Alan played a major role in letting it be known here. Right at the times the Dili massacre, finally there had been substantial --there had been support groups, small activist support groups in the United States, in England, in Canada, one in Sweden, a few other places, all of these countries were participating in the atrocities in East Timor. The US was sending substantial arms, I think Britain took over in 1978 as the leading arms supplier. France, the French foreign minister in 1978.. 1978 was the peak year of atrocities, they know it. In 1978 he informed Indonesia and it was published in the press..

Q : And all this can continue well into the Clinton years.

Chomsky: Then it goes on right into the Reagan years more in the Clinton years. Suharto came to Washington in 1995, the Clinton administration greeted him with great ceremony, he was described by a high official as “our kind of guy,” a guy we really like. (Q: Great, great.) And it goes on right through the Clinton years. Finally just to get to the end, in 1998, Suharto was beginning to lose control. There was--his regime was very brutal inside Indonesia as well: one of the worst human rights records in the world. Tremendous corruption, he was in fact way in the lead among in measures of corruption by the Transparency International, Euromonitor. By 1978 he was kind of losing control. There were student protests and so on, and he was also beginning to drag his feet on IMF orders, that’s a real crime. At that point, the United States--what actually happened is Madelaine Albright called him and said it was time, the United States decided it was time for a “democracy transition” in Indonesia. In other words, you’re finished, get out of here. A couple of hours later, he resigned. It wasn’t cause and effect. But the symbolism is striking.

Q: We almost had time to…there’re just two more (Chomsky: Just to fill..) Oh, OK.

Chomsky: As Indonesia was going through this crisis, there was an agreement to allow the Timorese to have a referendum on independence. We are now in early 1999, the Indonesian army stepped up atrocities sharply, actually considerably worse than anything reported from Kosovo at the same time. Big atrocities. That increased. And they warned, the Indonesian army warned that if the Timorese voted for independence, they were just going to destroy the place. Well, the Timorese with amazing courage, did go to vote on August 30 and they voted for independence. And then a huge massacre took place.

By that time, Clinton was under tremendous pressure--domestically from Catholic Church, conservative republicans, internationally to call off the Indonesians. And he finally said, basically told them, look, the game is over. That’s about it. At that point the Indonesians withdrew immediately. And the Australian-led peace keeping force entered.
It’s interesting how this has gone down in history. It’s gone down in history as a remarkable humanitarian intervention by the Clinton administration. Actually it’s opposite transparently. I mean as soon as Clinton said the game is over, they withdrew. That tells you, as if you don’t know already, that the US could have stopped the massacre at anytime, from the time that Ford and Kissinger were there and prevented it at anytime since, by just saying look, we’re not going to support you any longer, but they didn’t until it was under tremendous pressure. Then they finally allowed…finally Clinton said OK, it’s over, and then they withdrew in fact the Clinton administration impeded efforts to gain forensic evidence to determine what happened and to provide meaningful aid and so on. And that takes us up to the present.

Q: Well, thanks for all this on East Timor, just two more questions. President Ford has been praised as a great healer for pardoning Nixon, and pardoning draft resisters who had fled to Canada. Was this kind of healing what we really needed at that time in the 70s?

Chomsky: Well, I find it hard to answer that because I regard it at-- I wrote at that time, now even more so, that the whole Watergate proceedings were almost a farce. I mean Nixon was not charged with the series of crimes of his administration. They were off the agenda. So, for example the bombing of Cambodia which was right in everyone’s mind now and we have since learned it was five times as heavy as the Pentagon reported at that time. Everyone knew that it was a major crime. That was on the original proposal for an indictment, but it was taken off.

Watergate itself, the Watergate exposures appeared at the very same time as the exposures of Cointelpro. Cointelpro was an incomparably worse crime: went through four administrations, was the National Political Police- the FBI- and they reached all the way to the political assassination: the Blank Panther organizers, two of them. That was horrible, it was real monstrous atrocity to be revealed at the same time as Watergate. In comparison, the Watergate charges were a tea party. Very minor, you know ugly but by comparison certainly minor. The difference was Watergate annoyed powerful people. Cointelpro was just destroying left-wing political parties, undermining the Women’s movement, the Black movements, murdering organizers and so and so who cares? Cointelpro passed virtually unnoticed, Watergate became a huge issue. What it teaches you is calling important people bad names in private, like enemies list, is much worse than, say murdering Fred Hampton and Mark Clark. That’s the lesson of Watergate. In fact, even the major crimes of the Nixon administration were eliminated. So it’s a little hard to get exercised over Watergate and over bringing the country together. But I mean as Presidents go, Ford was not unusual for carrying out criminal enterprises. The worst was his acquiescence to the Indonesian invasion exactly what he knew about it. You can speculate.

Q: Thank you very much for this interview.

Chomsky: Good to talk to you.