Noam Chomsky , University Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, founder of the modern science of linguistics and political
activist, is a powerhouse of anti-imperialist activism in the United
States today. On March 21, a crowded and typical - and uniquely
Chomskyan - day of political protest and scientific academic research,
he spoke from his office for half an hour to V. K. Ramachandran on the
current attack on Iraq.
V. K. Ramachandran : Does the present aggression on Iraq represent a
continuation of United States' international policy in recent years or a
qualitatively new stage in that policy?
Noam Chomsky : It represents a significantly new phase. It is not
without precedent, but significantly new nevertheless.
This should be seen as a trial run. Iraq is seen as an extremely easy
and totally defenceless target. It is assumed, probably correctly, that
the society will collapse, that the soldiers will go in and that the
U.S. will be in control, and will establish the regime of its choice and
military bases. They will then go on to the harder cases that will
follow. The next case could be the Andean region, it could be Iran, it
could be others.
The trial run is to try and establish what the U.S. calls a "new norm"
in international relations. The new norm is "preventive war." Notice
that new norms are established only by the United States. So, for
example, when India invaded East Pakistan to terminate horrendous
massacres, it did not establish a new norm of humanitarian intervention,
because India is the wrong country, and besides, the U.S. was
strenuously opposed to that action.
This is not pre-emptive war; there is a crucial difference. Pre-emptive
war has a meaning, it means that, for example, if planes are flying
across the Atlantic to bomb the United States, the United States is
permitted to shoot them down even before they bomb and may be permitted
to attack the air bases from which they came. Pre-emptive war is a
response to ongoing or imminent attack.
The doctrine of preventive war is totally different; it holds that the
United States - alone, since nobody else has this right - has the right
to attack any country that it claims to be a potential challenge to it.
So if the United States claims, on whatever grounds, that someone may
sometime threaten it, then it can attack them.
The doctrine of preventive war was announced explicitly in the National
Security Strategy last September. It sent shudders around the world,
including through the U.S. establishment, where, I might say, opposition
to the war is unusually high. The Security Strategy said, in effect,
that the U.S. will rule the world by force, which is the dimension - the
only dimension - in which it is supreme. Furthermore, it will do so for
the indefinite future, because if any potential challenge arises to U.S.
domination, the U.S. will destroy it before it becomes a challenge.
This is the first exercise of that doctrine. If it succeeds on these
terms, as it presumably will, because the target is so defenceless, then
international lawyers and Western intellectuals and others will begin to
talk about a new norm in international affairs. It is important to
establish such a norm if you expect to rule the world by force for the
foreseeable future.
This is not without precedent, but it is extremely unusual. I shall
mention one precedent, just to show how narrow the spectrum is. In 1963,
Dean Acheson, who was a much respected elder statesman and senior
Adviser of the Kennedy Administration, gave an important talk to the
American Society of International Law, in which he justified the U. S.
attacks against Cuba. The attack by the Kennedy Administration on Cuba
was large-scale international terrorism and economic warfare. The timing
was interesting - it was right after the Missile Crisis, when the world
was very close to a terminal nuclear war. In his speech, Acheson said
that no "legal issue" arises when the United States responds to a
challenge to its "power, position, or prestige", or words approximating
that.
That is also a statement of the Bush doctrine. Although Acheson was an
important figure, what he said had not been official government policy
in the post-War period. It now stands as official policy and this is the
first illustration of it. It is intended to provide a precedent for the
future.
Such "norms" are established only when a Western power does something,
not when others do. That is part of the deep racism of Western culture,
going back through centuries of imperialism and so deep that it is
unconscious.
So I think this war is an important new step, and is intended to be.
Ramachandran :Is it also a new phase in that the U. S. has not been able
to carry others with it?
Chomsky : That is not new. In the case of the Vietnam War, for example,
the United States did not even try to get international support.
Nevertheless, you are right in that this is unusual. This is a case in
which the United States was compelled for political reasons to try to
force the world to accept its position and was not able to, which is
quite unusual. Usually, the world succumbs.
Ramachandran :So does it represent a "failure of diplomacy" or a
redefinition of diplomacy itself?
Chomsky : I wouldn't call it diplomacy at all - it's a failure of
coercion.
Compare it with the first Gulf War. In the first Gulf War, the U.S.
coerced the Security Council into accepting its position, although much
of the world opposed it. NATO went along, and the one country in the
Security Council that did not - Yemen - was immediately and severely
punished.
In any legal system that you take seriously, coerced judgments are
considered invalid, but in the international affairs conducted by the
powerful, coerced judgments are fine - they are called diplomacy.
What is interesting about this case is that the coercion did not work.
There were countries - in fact, most of them - who stubbornly maintained
the position of the vast majority of their populations.
The most dramatic case is Turkey. Turkey is a vulnerable country,
vulnerable to U.S. punishment and inducements. Nevertheless, the new
government, I think to everyone's surprise, did maintain the position of
about 90 per cent of its population. Turkey is bitterly condemned for
that here, just as France and Germany are bitterly condemned because
they took the position of the overwhelming majority of their
populations. The countries that are praised are countries like Italy and
Spain, whose leaders agreed to follow orders from Washington over the
opposition of maybe 90 per cent of their populations.
That is another new step. I cannot think of another case where hatred
and contempt for democracy have so openly been proclaimed, not just by
the government, but also by liberal commentators and others. There is
now a whole literature trying to explain why France, Germany, the
so-called "old Europe", and Turkey and others are trying to undermine
the United States. It is inconceivable to the pundits that they are
doing so because they take democracy seriously and they think that when
the overwhelming majority of a population has an opinion, a government
ought to follow it.
That is real contempt for democracy, just as what has happened at the
United Nations is total contempt for the international system. In fact
there are now calls - from The Wall Street Journal ,people in Government
and others - to disband the United Nations.
Fear of the United States around the world is extraordinary. It is so
extreme that it is even being discussed in the mainstream media. The
cover story of the upcoming issue of Newsweek is about why the world is
so afraid of the United States. The Post had a cover story about this a
few weeks ago.
Of course this is considered to be the world's fault, that there is
something wrong with the world with which we have to deal somehow, but
also something that has to be recognised.
Ramachandran :The idea that Iraq represents any kind of clear and
present danger is, of course, without any substance at all.
Chomsky : Nobody pays any attention to that accusation, except,
interestingly, the population of the United States.
In the last few months, there has been a spectacular achievement of
government-media propaganda, very visible in the polls. The
international polls show that support for the war is higher in the
United States than in other countries. That is, however, quite
misleading, because if you look a little closer, you find that the
United States is also different in another respect from the rest of the
world. Since September 2002, the United States is the only country in
the world where 60 per cent of the population believes that Iraq is an
imminent threat - something that people do not believe even in Kuwait or
Iran.
Furthermore, about 50 per cent of the population now believes that Iraq
was responsible for the attack on the World Trade Centre. This has
happened since September 2002. In fact, after the September 11 attack,
the figure was about 3 per cent. Government-media propaganda has managed
to raise that to about 50 per cent. Now if people genuinely believe that
Iraq has carried out major terrorist attacks against the United States
and is planning to do so again, well, in that case people will support
the war.
Technology, founder of the modern science of linguistics and political
activist, is a powerhouse of anti-imperialist activism in the United
States today. On March 21, a crowded and typical - and uniquely
Chomskyan - day of political protest and scientific academic research,
he spoke from his office for half an hour to V. K. Ramachandran on the
current attack on Iraq.
V. K. Ramachandran : Does the present aggression on Iraq represent a
continuation of United States' international policy in recent years or a
qualitatively new stage in that policy?
Noam Chomsky : It represents a significantly new phase. It is not
without precedent, but significantly new nevertheless.
This should be seen as a trial run. Iraq is seen as an extremely easy
and totally defenceless target. It is assumed, probably correctly, that
the society will collapse, that the soldiers will go in and that the
U.S. will be in control, and will establish the regime of its choice and
military bases. They will then go on to the harder cases that will
follow. The next case could be the Andean region, it could be Iran, it
could be others.
The trial run is to try and establish what the U.S. calls a "new norm"
in international relations. The new norm is "preventive war." Notice
that new norms are established only by the United States. So, for
example, when India invaded East Pakistan to terminate horrendous
massacres, it did not establish a new norm of humanitarian intervention,
because India is the wrong country, and besides, the U.S. was
strenuously opposed to that action.
This is not pre-emptive war; there is a crucial difference. Pre-emptive
war has a meaning, it means that, for example, if planes are flying
across the Atlantic to bomb the United States, the United States is
permitted to shoot them down even before they bomb and may be permitted
to attack the air bases from which they came. Pre-emptive war is a
response to ongoing or imminent attack.
The doctrine of preventive war is totally different; it holds that the
United States - alone, since nobody else has this right - has the right
to attack any country that it claims to be a potential challenge to it.
So if the United States claims, on whatever grounds, that someone may
sometime threaten it, then it can attack them.
The doctrine of preventive war was announced explicitly in the National
Security Strategy last September. It sent shudders around the world,
including through the U.S. establishment, where, I might say, opposition
to the war is unusually high. The Security Strategy said, in effect,
that the U.S. will rule the world by force, which is the dimension - the
only dimension - in which it is supreme. Furthermore, it will do so for
the indefinite future, because if any potential challenge arises to U.S.
domination, the U.S. will destroy it before it becomes a challenge.
This is the first exercise of that doctrine. If it succeeds on these
terms, as it presumably will, because the target is so defenceless, then
international lawyers and Western intellectuals and others will begin to
talk about a new norm in international affairs. It is important to
establish such a norm if you expect to rule the world by force for the
foreseeable future.
This is not without precedent, but it is extremely unusual. I shall
mention one precedent, just to show how narrow the spectrum is. In 1963,
Dean Acheson, who was a much respected elder statesman and senior
Adviser of the Kennedy Administration, gave an important talk to the
American Society of International Law, in which he justified the U. S.
attacks against Cuba. The attack by the Kennedy Administration on Cuba
was large-scale international terrorism and economic warfare. The timing
was interesting - it was right after the Missile Crisis, when the world
was very close to a terminal nuclear war. In his speech, Acheson said
that no "legal issue" arises when the United States responds to a
challenge to its "power, position, or prestige", or words approximating
that.
That is also a statement of the Bush doctrine. Although Acheson was an
important figure, what he said had not been official government policy
in the post-War period. It now stands as official policy and this is the
first illustration of it. It is intended to provide a precedent for the
future.
Such "norms" are established only when a Western power does something,
not when others do. That is part of the deep racism of Western culture,
going back through centuries of imperialism and so deep that it is
unconscious.
So I think this war is an important new step, and is intended to be.
Ramachandran :Is it also a new phase in that the U. S. has not been able
to carry others with it?
Chomsky : That is not new. In the case of the Vietnam War, for example,
the United States did not even try to get international support.
Nevertheless, you are right in that this is unusual. This is a case in
which the United States was compelled for political reasons to try to
force the world to accept its position and was not able to, which is
quite unusual. Usually, the world succumbs.
Ramachandran :So does it represent a "failure of diplomacy" or a
redefinition of diplomacy itself?
Chomsky : I wouldn't call it diplomacy at all - it's a failure of
coercion.
Compare it with the first Gulf War. In the first Gulf War, the U.S.
coerced the Security Council into accepting its position, although much
of the world opposed it. NATO went along, and the one country in the
Security Council that did not - Yemen - was immediately and severely
punished.
In any legal system that you take seriously, coerced judgments are
considered invalid, but in the international affairs conducted by the
powerful, coerced judgments are fine - they are called diplomacy.
What is interesting about this case is that the coercion did not work.
There were countries - in fact, most of them - who stubbornly maintained
the position of the vast majority of their populations.
The most dramatic case is Turkey. Turkey is a vulnerable country,
vulnerable to U.S. punishment and inducements. Nevertheless, the new
government, I think to everyone's surprise, did maintain the position of
about 90 per cent of its population. Turkey is bitterly condemned for
that here, just as France and Germany are bitterly condemned because
they took the position of the overwhelming majority of their
populations. The countries that are praised are countries like Italy and
Spain, whose leaders agreed to follow orders from Washington over the
opposition of maybe 90 per cent of their populations.
That is another new step. I cannot think of another case where hatred
and contempt for democracy have so openly been proclaimed, not just by
the government, but also by liberal commentators and others. There is
now a whole literature trying to explain why France, Germany, the
so-called "old Europe", and Turkey and others are trying to undermine
the United States. It is inconceivable to the pundits that they are
doing so because they take democracy seriously and they think that when
the overwhelming majority of a population has an opinion, a government
ought to follow it.
That is real contempt for democracy, just as what has happened at the
United Nations is total contempt for the international system. In fact
there are now calls - from The Wall Street Journal ,people in Government
and others - to disband the United Nations.
Fear of the United States around the world is extraordinary. It is so
extreme that it is even being discussed in the mainstream media. The
cover story of the upcoming issue of Newsweek is about why the world is
so afraid of the United States. The Post had a cover story about this a
few weeks ago.
Of course this is considered to be the world's fault, that there is
something wrong with the world with which we have to deal somehow, but
also something that has to be recognised.
Ramachandran :The idea that Iraq represents any kind of clear and
present danger is, of course, without any substance at all.
Chomsky : Nobody pays any attention to that accusation, except,
interestingly, the population of the United States.
In the last few months, there has been a spectacular achievement of
government-media propaganda, very visible in the polls. The
international polls show that support for the war is higher in the
United States than in other countries. That is, however, quite
misleading, because if you look a little closer, you find that the
United States is also different in another respect from the rest of the
world. Since September 2002, the United States is the only country in
the world where 60 per cent of the population believes that Iraq is an
imminent threat - something that people do not believe even in Kuwait or
Iran.
Furthermore, about 50 per cent of the population now believes that Iraq
was responsible for the attack on the World Trade Centre. This has
happened since September 2002. In fact, after the September 11 attack,
the figure was about 3 per cent. Government-media propaganda has managed
to raise that to about 50 per cent. Now if people genuinely believe that
Iraq has carried out major terrorist attacks against the United States
and is planning to do so again, well, in that case people will support
the war.