Iraq Is A Trial Run
02/04/2003
- Opinión
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.
This has happened, as I said, after September 2002. September 2002
is when the government-media campaign began and also when the mid-
term election campaign began. The Bush Administration would have
been smashed in the election if social and economic issues had
been in the forefront, but it managed to suppress those issues in
favour of security issues - and people huddle under the umbrella
of power.
This is exactly the way the country was run in the 1980s. Remember
that these are almost the same people as in the Reagan and the
senior Bush Administrations. Right through the 1980s they carried
out domestic policies that were harmful to the population and
which, as we know from extensive polls, the people opposed. But
they managed to maintain control by frightening the people. So the
Nicaraguan Army was two days' march from Texas, and the airbase in
Grenada was one from which the Russians would bomb us. It was one
thing after another, every year, every one of them ludicrous. The
Reagan Administration actually declared a National Emergency in
1985 because of the threat to the security of the United States
posed by the Government of Nicaragua.
If somebody were watching this from Mars, they would not know
whether to laugh or to cry.
They are doing exactly the same thing now, and will probably do
something similar for the presidential campaign. There will have
to be a new dragon to slay, because if the Administration lets
domestic issues prevail, it is in deep trouble.
Ramachandran :You have written that this war of aggression has
dangerous consequences with respect to international terrorism and
the threat of nuclear war.
Chomsky: I cannot claim any originality for that opinion. I am
just quoting the CIA and other intelligence agencies and virtually
every specialist in international affairs and terrorism. Foreign
Affairs, Foreign Policy , the study by the American Academy of
Arts and Sciences, and the high-level Hart-Rudman Commission on
terrorist threats to the United States all agree that it is likely
to increase terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass
destruction.
The reason is simple: partly for revenge, but partly just for
self-defence.
There is no other way to protect oneself from U.S. attack. In
fact, the United States is making the point very clearly, and is
teaching the world an extremely ugly lesson.
Compare North Korea and Iraq. Iraq is defenceless and weak; in
fact, the weakest regime in the region. While there is a horrible
monster running it, it does not pose a threat to anyone else.
North Korea, on the other hand, does pose a threat. North Korea,
however, is not attacked for a very simple reason: it has a
deterrent. It has a massed artillery aimed at Seoul, and if the
United States attacks it, it can wipe out a large part of South
Korea.
So the United States is telling the countries of the world: if you
are defenceless, we are going to attack you when we want, but if
you have a deterrent, we will back off, because we only attack
defenceless targets. In other words, it is telling countries that
they had better develop a terrorist network and weapons of mass
destruction or some other credible deterrent; if not, they are
vulnerable to "preventive war".
For that reason alone, this war is likely to lead to the
proliferation of both terrorism and weapons of mass destruction.
Ramachandran :How do you think the U.S. will manage the human -
and humanitarian - consequences of the war?
Chomsky: No one knows, of course. That is why honest and decent
people do not resort to violence - because one simply does not
know.
The aid agencies and medical groups that work in Iraq have pointed
out that the consequences can be very severe. Everyone hopes not,
but it could affect up to millions of people. To undertake
violence when there is even such a possibility is criminal.
There is already - that is, even before the war - a humanitarian
catastrophe. By conservative estimates, ten years of sanctions
have killed hundreds of thousands of people. If there were any
honesty, the U.S. would pay reparations just for the sanctions.
The situation is similar to the bombing of Afghanistan, of which
you and I spoke when the bombing there was in its early stages. It
was obvious the United States was never going to investigate the
consequences.
Ramachandran: Or invest the kind of money that was needed.
Chomsky: Oh no. First, the question is not asked, so no one has an
idea of what the consequences of the bombing were for most of the
country. Then almost nothing comes in. Finally, it is out of the
news, and no one remembers it any more.
In Iraq, the United States will make a show of humanitarian
reconstruction and will put in a regime that it will call
democratic, which means that it follows Washington's orders. Then
it will forget about what happens later, and will go on to the
next one.
Ramachandran: How have the media lived up to their propaganda-
model reputation this time?
Chomsky: Right now it is cheerleading for the home team. Look at
CNN, which is disgusting - and it is the same everywhere. That is
to be expected in wartime; the media are worshipful of power.
More interesting is what happened in the build-up to war. The fact
that government-media propaganda was able to convince the people
that Iraq is an imminent threat and that Iraq was responsible for
September 11 is a spectacular achievement and, as I said, was
accomplished in about four months. If you ask people in the media
about this, they will say, "Well, we never said that," and it is
true, they did not. There was never a statement that Iraq is going
to invade the United States or that it carried out the World Trade
Centre attack. It was just insinuated, hint after hint, until they
finally got people to believe it.
Ramachandran: Look at the resistance, though. Despite the
propaganda, despite the denigration of the United Nations, they
haven't quite carried the day.
Chomsky: You never know. The United Nations is in a very hazardous
position.
The United States might move to dismantle it. I don't really
expect that, but at least to diminish it, because when it isn't
following orders, of what use is it?
Ramachandran: Noam, you have seen movements of resistance to
imperialism over a long period - Vietnam, Central America, Gulf
War I. What are your impressions of the character, sweep and depth
of the present resistance to U.S. aggression? We take great heart
in the extraordinary mobilisations all over the world.
Chomsky: Oh, that is correct; there is just nothing like it.
Opposition throughout the world is enormous and unprecedented, and
the same is true of the United States. Yesterday, for example, I
was in demonstrations in downtown Boston, right around the Boston
Common. It is not the first time I have been there. The first time
I participated in a demonstration there at which I was to speak
was in October 1965. That was four years after the United States
had started bombing South Vietnam. Half of South Vietnam had been
destroyed and the war had been extended to North Vietnam. We could
not have a demonstration because it was physically attacked,
mostly by students, with the support of the liberal press and
radio, who denounced these people who were daring to protest
against an American war.
On this occasion, however, there was a massive protest before the
war was launched officially and once again on the day it was
launched - with no counter-demonstrators. That is a radical
difference. And if it were not for the fear factor that I
mentioned, there would be much more opposition.
The government knows that it cannot carry out long-term aggression
and destruction as in Vietnam because the population will not
tolerate it.
There is only one way to fight a war now. First of all, pick a
much weaker enemy, one that is defenceless. Then build it up in
the propaganda system as either about to commit aggression or as
an imminent threat. Next, you need a lightning victory. An
important leaked document of the first Bush Administration in 1989
described how the U.S. would have to fight war. It said that the
U.S. had to fight much weaker enemies, and that victory must be
rapid and decisive, as public support will quickly erode. It is no
longer like the 1960s, when a war could be fought for years with
no opposition at all.
In many ways, the activism of the 1960s and subsequent years has
simply made a lot of the world, including this country, much more
civilised in many domains.
* Source: ZNet (http://www.zmag.org).
https://www.alainet.org/pt/node/107260
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