Noam Chomsky | ukwatch.net

US-EU Relations

Tim Holmes — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 12:18:27 +0000

PRIMC: What is the political relationship between the EU and the US? How does US influence show itself in domestic and foreign policy within the EU? Are there any areas of policy which exibit sharp breaks between US and EU policy?

CHOMSKY: During World War II, the US laid plans for global hegemony, assigning each region of the world its »function« within the system that was designed. Europe of course was the region of greatest importance. The US (with British support) therefore devoted considerable effort to ensuring that Western Europe would be reconstructed in ways that conformed to US interests. That entailed such actions as undermining the anti-fascist resistance, restoring much of the traditional order including Fascist and Nazi collaborators, re-establishing the Mafia (and with it, the international narcotics industry), and much more. But there was also concern from the earliest days that Europe might pursue an independent path and become a »third force« — perhaps something like De Gaulle’s vision of Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals. The US therefore always had an ambivalent attitude towards European unification. It offered US corporations enormous advantages because of their scale and depth, and it could be a supporter of US global designs. But on the other hand, it was potentially powerful enough to pursue an independent course.

US attitudes towards the EU conform to these long-lasting concerns. They were made quite explicit in Donald Rumsfeld’s distinction between »Old Europe« (bad) and »New Europe« (good) when the US was trying to drum up support for the Iraq war. The criterion distinguishing them was very clear: Old Europe consisted of the countries where the government took the position of the large majority of the population, and opposed the war. New Europe consisted of the countries where the government opposed even larger majorities of the population and followed orders from Washington. The leaders of New Europe were Italy’s Berlusconi and Spain’s Aznar, who was even invited to the Azores summit where Bush and Blair declared war. Aznar joined with the support of 2% of the population, and was therefore hailed as a leader in bringing democracy to the world.

All of this passed without comment, at the same time that Western intellectuals were lauding themselves for their profound dedication to Bush’s democracy crusade. The events reveal,, once again, that there are few limits to conformism to power on the part of the educated classes.

But there was more to the Old-New Europe distinction than that. Old Europe was the industrial and commercial heartland, and the center of potential European independence: Germany and France. The US wants to reduce their influence and increase its own. Therefore it has strongly favored admission into the EU of former Soviet satellites, which it assumes will be easily controlled, and will bring Europe into closer conformity to US global ambitions.

By and large, Europe has gone along with US demands, even while strongly disagreeing with Washington’s positions. That has happened all over the world. It might not persist into the future, however.

PRIMC: The foreign policies of the US and Slovenia seem to be very similar. Despite very large public oposition (only 3.6% supported military action at the time the troops were sent) Slovenian army is both in Afghanistan as well as Iraq, Slovenia supported the recognition of Kosovo as an independent state and yet does not support recognition of South Ossetia. What do you beleive is the reason for this similarity?

CHOMSKY: That is for people who know about Slovenia to answer. And, in my opinion at least, to change, at least if Slovenians hope to live in an independent and democratic society.

PRIMC: We hear pledges about promoting democracy, reducing poverty and fostering developement both from the EU and the US. Are these pledges genuine and how do they present themselves in foreign policy actions?

CHOMSKY: Everyone speaks about these goals, even Stalin. Accordingly, they carry no information, even in the technical sense: they are the predictable oratory of leaders. In the case of the US, the matter has been carefully studied, right in the mainstream. The leading scholar/advocate of Democracy Promotion is Thomas Carothers, a highly respected figure, who describes himself as a neo-Reaganite. He has written several books on the topic, reaching right to the present. He concludes, ruefully, that US administrations support democracy if and only if that conforms to their strategic and economic objectives. Every president, he says, is oddly »schizophrenic« in that regard. In simple language, it is sheer fraud, like most pronouncements of noble intent on the part of the powerful.

On poverty and development, unfortunately, it is much the same, also a well-studied matter. I have not looked into scholarship on the EU with comparable care, but from what I know, I think the picture is much the same, with scattered exceptions.

It is interesting to compare policy with public attitudes. Take foreign aid. Americans consistently object that foreign aid is too high: we are giving away our hard-earned money to worthless foreigners. However, when asked what they think the right level should be, they consistently give a figure far higher than what it is. That suggests that people are quite decent, but have been victimized by incessant propaganda. I do not know of similar studies in Europe.

PRIMC: Why do you beleive NATO keeps expanding given the fact that it was created to defend Europe against the Soviet Union which ofcourse does not exist anymore?

CHOMSKY: The rational conclusion is that it was not created to defend Europe against the USSR, even though that might have been one purpose. Another rational conclusion, also supported by its earlier history, is that from the US perspective, a primary goal – maybe the primary goal – was to ensure that Europe would be subject to US control. There is no space to review the matter here, but there is ample documentary and historical evidence supporting such conclusions.

PRIMC: How do you perceive the recent conflict in Georgia? What are the global implications of it?

CHOMSKY: Afraid I can’t answer this briefly. I’ll attach a current article about it.

PRIMC: What role did the US and EU play in the breakup of former Yugoslavia? Was it an engineered dissolution of a country or was it merely helped along and made sure to develop along the wishes of the »west«?

CHOMSKY: Putting aside Slovenia, which is a special case, public opinion in Yugoslavia seemed to be in favor of maintaining the federation. The US at first took the same position. Under German initiative, the EU quickly recognized Croatia without taking into account the rights of the substantial Serb minority. That was a recipe for civil conflict, which soon ensued. As Yugoslavia fractured, the US entered in support of the Bosnian Muslims, mostly for great power reasons. Clinton convinced Izetgebovic to reject the Vance-Owen plan, thereby undermining the best hope for a peaceful settlement and laying the basis for vicious conflict, which ended with a settlement not very different from that plan, except that hopes for peaceful reconstruction are far more remote. A great deal of self-serving mythology has been concocted by Western intellectuals about all of this, impossible to unravel here.

PRIMC: It seems there is a trend in the world of countries reducing their social support networks which is very unpopular. It has been happening in Slovenia as well. We hear that this is necessary in order to foster economic developement and that we are forced to do this because of globalization. It seems though that some areas of the world seem to be developing quite well even though they are radically increasing social spending. What part does globalisation play in this process if any and is it really unavoidable?

CHOMSKY: Many words of political discourse have two meanings: a literal meaning, and a doctrinal meaning that is used for political warfare. The term »globalization« is no exception.

In its literal meaning, »globalization« refers to international integration. Virtually everyone is in favor of globalization in this sense. Its most active and committed proponents are those who meet in the annual World Social Forum, and the associated regional and local social forums all over the world. They are called »anti-globalization,« which means that they oppose globalization in the doctrinal sense: a specific form of international economic integration designed by multinational corporations and the powerful states that cater to them, and of course designed in the interests of the designers. This form of »globalization« involves a mixture of liberalization and protectionism, and many measures that have little to do with trade in any meaningful sense, though the term »trade« is often introduced to allow them to fall under World Trade Organization rules. Naturally, this form of »globalization« and the neoliberal doctrines in which it is couched call for weakening social support systems while increasing the power of what has properly been called »the conservative nanny state« that serves the interests of concentrations of economic power. Perhaps some ideologues actually delude themselves into believing that this has to do with economic development. It doesn’t. For most it is probably just a device to increase their power and influence.

PRIMC: Nonetheless of all the influence the US has exerted on the world, that influence seems to be declining globally, partly due to the weakening of the US economy and also due to loss of whatever moral luster it seemed to have in the past. Is this perception correct? Will the decline be reversed and if not is the american empire likely to go as quietly as the soviet empire did?

CHOMSKY: The Bush administration, demonstrably, succeeded in greatly increasing dislike and fear of the United States throughout the world. Nevertheless, the US remains by far the most powerful state in the world, and has enormous advantages in just about every dimension. There is no reasonable comparison to the old Soviet Union. There is little reason to doubt that it will continue to be the major actor in the world scene for some time to come. There is much talk about the rising power of China and India, and their return to the position of global prominence they maintained before European colonization. But they have enormous internal problems. Merely to illustrate, in the UN Human Development Index China ranks 81 and India 128 (actually below its ranking before the partial neoliberal reforms). Europe could, as before, follow an independent path, but there seems to be little sign of that at present.

Ossetia-Georgia-Russia-U.S.A.

tim — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 22:08:47 +0000

Aghast at the atrocities committed by US forces invading the Philippines, and the rhetorical flights about liberation and noble intent that routinely accompany crimes of state, Mark Twain threw up his hands at his inability to wield his formidable weapon of satire. The immediate object of his frustration was the renowned General Funston. “No satire of Funston could reach perfection,” Twain lamented, “because Funston occupies that summit himself… [he is] satire incarnated.”

It is a thought that often comes to mind, again in August 2008 during the Georgia-Ossetia-Russia war. George Bush, Condoleezza Rica and other dignitaries solemnly invoked the sanctity of the United Nations, warning that Russia could be excluded from international institutions “by taking actions in Georgia that are inconsistent with” their principles. The sovereignty and territorial integrity of all nations must be rigorously honored, they intoned – “all nations,” that is, apart from those that the US chooses to attack: Iraq, Serbia, perhaps Iran, and a list of others too long and familiar to mention.

The junior partner joined in as well. British foreign secretary David Miliband accused Russia of engaging in “19th century forms of diplomacy” by invading a sovereign state, something Britain would never contemplate today. That “is simply not the way that international relations can be run in the 21st century,” he added, echoing the decider-in-chief, who said that invasion of “a sovereign neighboring state…is unacceptable in the 21st century.” Mexico and Canada therefore need not fear further invasions and annexation of much of their territory, because the US now only invades states that are not on its borders, though no such constraint holds for its clients, as Lebanon learned once again in 2006.

“The moral of this story is even more enlightening,” Serge Halimi writes in Le Monde Diplomatique and CounterPunch newsletter, “when, to defend his country’s borders, the charming pro-American Saakashvili repatriates some of the 2,000 soldiers he had sent to invade Iraq,” one of the largest contingents apart from the two warrior states.

Prominent analysts joined the chorus. Fareed Zakaria applauded Bush’s observation that Russia’s behavior is unacceptable today, unlike the 19th century, “when the Russian intervention would have been standard operating procedure for a great power.” We therefore must devise a strategy for bringing Russia “in line with the civilized world,” where intervention is unthinkable.

There were, to be sure, some who shared Mark Twain’s despair. One distinguished example is Chris Patten, former EU commissioner for external relations, chairman of the British Conservative Party, chancellor of Oxford University and a member of the House of Lords. He wrote that the Western reaction “is enough to make even the cynical shake their heads in disbelief” – referring to Europe’s failure to respond vigorously to the effrontery of Russian leaders, who, “like 19th-century tsars, want a sphere of influence around their borders.”

Patten rightly distinguishes Russia from the global superpower, which long ago passed the point where it demanded a sphere of influence around its borders, and demands a sphere of influence over the entire world. It also acts vigorously to enforce that demand, in accord with the Clinton doctrine that Washington has the right to use military force to defend vital interests such as “ensuring uninhibited access to key markets, energy supplies and strategic resources” – and in the real world, far more.

Clinton was breaking no new ground, of course. His doctrine derives from standard principles formulated by high-level planners during World War II, which offered the prospect of global dominance. In the postwar world, they determined, the US should aim “to hold unquestioned power” while ensuring the “limitation of any exercise of sovereignty” by states that might interfere with its global designs. To secure these ends, “the foremost requirement [is] the rapid fulfillment of a program of complete rearmament,” a core element of “an integrated policy to achieve military and economic supremacy for the United States.” The plans laid during the war were implemented in various ways in the years that followed.

The goals are deeply rooted in stable institutional structures. Hence they persist through changes in occupancy of the White House, and are untroubled by the opportunity for “peace dividends,” the disappearance of the major rival from the world scene, or other marginal irrelevancies. Devising new challenges is never beyond the reach of doctrinal managers, as when Ronald Reagan pulled on his cowboy boots and declared a national emergency because the Nicaraguan army was only two days from Harlingen Texas, and might lead the hordes who are about to “sweep over the United States and take what we have,” as Lyndon Johnson lamented when he called for holding the line in Vietnam. Most ominously, those holding the reins may actually believe their own words.

Returning to the efforts to elevate Russia to the civilized world, the seven charter members of the Group of Eight industrialized countries issued a statement “condemning the action of our fellow G8 member,” Russia, which has yet to comprehend the Anglo-American commitment to non-intervention. The European Union held a rare emergency meeting to condemn Russia’s crime, its first meeting since the invasion of Iraq, which elicited no condemnation.

Russia called for an emergency session of the Security Council, but no consensus was reached because, according to Council diplomats, the US, Britain, and some others rejected a phrase that called on both sides “to renounce the use of force.”

The typical reactions recall Orwell’s observations on the “indifference to reality” of the “nationalist,” who “not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but … has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.”

The basic facts are not seriously in dispute. South Ossetia, along with the much more significant region of Abkhazia, were assigned by Stalin to his native Georgia. Western leaders sternly admonish that Stalin’s directives must be respected, despite the strong opposition of Ossetians and Abkhazians. The provinces enjoyed relative autonomy until the collapse of the USSR. In 1990, Georgia’s ultranationalist president Zviad Gamsakhurdia abolished autonomous regions and invaded South Ossetia. The bitter war that followed left 1000 dead and tens of thousands of refugees, with the capital city of Tskhinvali “battered and depopulated” (New York Times).

A small Russian force then supervised an uneasy truce, broken decisively on August 7, 2008, when Georgian president Saakashvili’s ordered his forces to invade. According to “an extensive set of witnesses,” the Times reports, Georgia’s military at once “began pounding civilian sections of the city of Tskhinvali, as well as a Russian peacekeeping base there, with heavy barrages of rocket and artillery fire.” The predictable Russian response drove Georgian forces out of South Ossetia, and Russia went on to conquer parts of Georgia, then partially withdrawing to the vicinity of South Ossetia. There were many casualties and atrocities. As is normal, the innocent suffered severely.

Russia reported at first that ten Russian peacekeepers were killed by Georgian shelling. The West took little notice. That too is normal. There was, for example, no reaction when Aviation Week reported that 200 Russians were killed in an Israeli air raid in Lebanon in 1982 during a US-backed invasion that left some 15-20,000 dead, with no credible pretext beyond strengthening Israeli control over the occupied West Bank.

Among Ossetians who fled north, the “prevailing view,” according to the London Financial Times, “is that Georgia’s pro-western leader, Mikheil Saakashvili, tried to wipe out their breakaway enclave.” Ossetian militias, under Russian eyes, then brutally drove out Georgians, in areas beyond Ossetia as well. “Georgia said its attack had been necessary to stop a Russian attack that already had been under way,” the New York Times reports, but weeks later “there has been no independent evidence, beyond Georgia’s insistence that its version is true, that Russian forces were attacking before the Georgian barrages.”

In Russia, the Wall Street Journal reports, “legislators, officials and local analysts have embraced the theory that the Bush administration encouraged Georgia, its ally, to start the war in order to precipitate an international crisis that would play up the national-security experience of Sen. John McCain, the Republican presidential candidate.” In contrast, French author Bernard-Henri Levy, writing in the New Republic, proclaims that “no one can ignore the fact that President Saakashvili only decided to act when he no longer had a choice, and war had already come. In spite of this accumulation of facts that should have been blindingly obvious to all scrupulous, good-faith observers, many in the media rushed as one man toward the thesis of the Georgians as instigators, as irresponsible provocateurs of the war.”

The Russian propaganda system made the mistake of presenting evidence, which was easily refuted. Its Western counterparts, more wisely, keep to authoritative pronouncements, like Levy’s denunciation of the major Western media for ignoring what is “blindingly obvious to all scrupulous, good-faith observers” for whom loyalty to the state suffices to establish The Truth – which, perhaps, is even true, serious analysts might conclude.

The Russians are losing the “propaganda war,” BBC reported, as Washington and its allies have succeeded in “presenting the Russian actions as aggression and playing down the Georgian attack into South Ossetia on August 7, which triggered the Russian operation,” though “the evidence from South Ossetia about that attack indicates that it was extensive and damaging.” Russia has “not yet learned how to play the media game,” the BBC observes. That is natural. Propaganda has typically become more sophisticated as countries become more free and the state loses the ability to control the population by force.

The Russian failure to provide credible evidence was partially overcome by the Financial Times, which discovered that the Pentagon had provided combat training to Georgian special forces commandos shortly before the Georgian attack on August 7, revelations that “could add fuel to accusations by Vladimir Putin, Russian prime minister, last month that the US had `orchestrated’ the war in the Georgian enclave.” The training was in part carried out by former US special forces recruited by private military contractors, including MPRI, which, as the journal notes, “was hired by the Pentagon in 1995 to train the Croatian military prior to their invasion of the ethnically-Serbian Krajina region, which led to the displacement of 200,000 refugees and was one of the worst incidents of ethnic cleansing in the Balkan wars.” The US-backed Krajina expulsion (generally estimated at 250,000, with many killed) was possibly the worst case of ethnic cleansing in Europe since World War II. Its fate in approved history is rather like that of photographs of Trotsky in Stalinist Russia, for simple and sufficient reasons: it does not accord with the required image of US nobility confronting Serbian evil.

The toll of the August 2008 Caucasus war is subject to varying estimates. A month afterwards, the Financial Times cited Russian reports that “at least 133 civilians died in the attack, as well as 59 of its own peacekeepers,” while in the ensuing Russian mass invasion and aerial bombardment of Georgia, according to the FT, 215 Georgians died, including 146 soldiers and 69 civilians. Further revelations are likely to follow.

In the background lie two crucial issues. One is control over pipelines to Azerbaijan and Central Asia. Georgia was chosen as a corridor by Clinton to bypass Russia and Iran, and was also heavily militarized for the purpose. Hence Georgia is “a very major and strategic asset to us,” Zbigniew Brzezinski observes.

It is noteworthy that analysts are becoming less reticent in explaining real US motives in the region as pretexts of dire threats and liberation fade and it becomes more difficult to deflect Iraqi demands for withdrawal of the occupying army. Thus the editors of the Washington Post admonished Barack Obama for regarding Afghanistan as “the central front” for the United States, reminding him that Iraq “lies at the geopolitical center of the Middle East and contains some of the world’s largest oil reserves,” and Afghanistan’s “strategic importance pales beside that of Iraq.” A welcome, if belated, recognition of reality about the US invasion.

The second issue is expansion of NATO to the East, described by George Kennan in 1997 as “the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-cold-war era, [which] may be expected to inflame the nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion; to have an adverse effect on the development of Russian democracy; to restore the atmosphere of the cold war to East-West relations.”

As the USSR collapsed, Mikhail Gorbachev made a concession that was astonishing in the light of recent history and strategic realities: he agreed to allow a united Germany to join a hostile military alliance. This “stunning concession” was hailed by Western media, NATO, and President Bush I, who called it a demonstration of “statesmanship … in the best interests of all countries of Europe, including the Soviet Union.”

Gorbachev agreed to the stunning concession on the basis of “assurances that NATO would not extend its jurisdiction to the east, `not one inch’ in [Secretary of State] Jim Baker’s exact words.” This reminder by Jack Matlock, the leading Soviet expert of the Foreign Service and US ambassador to Russia in the crucial years 1987 to 1991, is confirmed by Strobe Talbott, the highest official in charge of Eastern Europe in the Clinton administration. On the basis of a full review of the diplomatic record, Talbott reports that “Secretary of State Baker did say to then Soviet foreign minister Eduard Shevardnadze, in the context of the Soviet Union’s reluctant willingness to let a unified Germany remain part of NATO, that NATO would not move to the east.”

Clinton quickly reneged on that commitment, also dismissing Gorbachev’s effort to end the Cold War with cooperation among partners. NATO also rejected a Russian proposal for a nuclear-weapons-free-zone from the Arctic to the Black Sea, which would have “interfered with plans to extend NATO,” strategic analyst and former NATO planner Michael MccGwire observes.

Rejecting these possibilities, the US took a triumphalist stand that threatened Russian security and also played a major role in driving Russia to severe economic and social collapse, with millions of deaths. The process was sharply escalated by Bush’s further expansion of NATO, dismantling of crucial disarmament agreements, and aggressive militarism. Matlock writes that Russia might have tolerated incorporation of former Russian satellites into NATO if it “had not bombed Serbia and continued expanding. But, in the final analysis, ABM missiles in Poland, and the drive for Georgia and Ukraine in NATO crossed absolute red lines. The insistence on recognizing Kosovo independence was sort of the very last straw. Putin had learned that concessions to the U.S. were not reciprocated, but used to promote U.S. dominance in the world.Once he had the strength to resist, he did so,” in Georgia.

Clinton officials argue that expansion of NATO posed no military threat, and was no more than a benign move to allow former Russian satellites to join the EU (Talbott). That is hardly persuasive. Austria, Sweden and Finland are in the EU but not NATO. If the Warsaw Pact had survived and was incorporating Latin American countries – let alone Canada and Mexico – the US would not easily be persuaded that the Pact is just a Quaker meeting. There should be no need to review the record of US violence to block mostly fanciful ties to Moscow in “our little region over here,” the Western hemisphere, to quote Secretary of War Henry Stimson when he explained that all regional systems must be dismantled after World II, apart from our own, which are to be extended.

To underscore the conclusion, in the midst of the current crisis in the Caucasus, Washington professes concern that Russia might resume military and intelligence cooperation with Cuba at a level not remotely approaching US-Georgia relations, and not a further step towards a significant security threat.

Missile defense too is presented here as benign, though leading US strategic analysts have explained why Russian planners must regard the systems and their chosen location as the basis for a potential threat to the Russian deterrent, hence in effect a first-strike weapon. The Russian invasion of Georgia was used as a pretext to conclude the agreement to place these systems in Poland, thus “bolstering an argument made repeatedly by Moscow and rejected by Washington: that the true target of the system is Russia,” AP commentator Desmond Butler observed.

Matlock is not alone in regarding Kosovo as an important factor. “Recognition of South Ossetia’s and Abkhazia’s independence was justified on the principle of a mistreated minority’s right to secession – the principle Bush had established for Kosovo,” the Boston Globe editors comment.

But there are crucial differences. Strobe Talbott recognizes that “there’s a degree of payback for what the U.S. and NATO did in Kosovo nine years ago,” but insists that the “analogy is utterly and profoundly false.” No one is a better position to know why it is profoundly false, and he has lucidly explained the reasons, in his preface to a book on NATO’s bombing of Serbia by his associate John Norris. Talbott writes that those who want to know “how events looked and felt at the time to those of us who were involved” in the war should turn to Norris’s well-informed account. Norris concludes that “it was Yugoslavia’s resistance to the broader trends of political and economic reform – not the plight of Kosovar Albanians – that best explains NATO’s war.”

That the motive for the NATO bombing could not have been “the plight of Kosovar Albanians” was already clear from the rich Western documentary record revealing that the atrocities were, overwhelmingly, the anticipated consequence of the bombing, not its cause. But even before the record was released, it should have been evident to all but the most fervent loyalists that humanitarian concern could hardly have motivated the US and Britain, which at the same time were lending decisive support to atrocities well beyond what was reported from Kosovo, with a background far more horrendous than anything that had happened in the Balkans. But these are mere facts, hence of no moment to Orwell’s “nationalists” – in this case, most of the Western intellectual community, who had made an enormous investment in self-aggrandizement and prevarication about the “noble phase” of US foreign policy and its “saintly glow” as the millennium approached its end, with the bombing of Serbia as the jewel in the crown.

Nevertheless, it is interesting to hear from the highest level that the real reason for the bombing was that Serbia was a lone holdout in Europe to the political and economic programs of the Clinton administration and its allies, though it will be a long time before such annoyances are allowed to enter the canon.

There are of course other differences between Kosovo and the regions of Georgia that call for independence or union with Russia. Thus Russia is not known to have a huge military base there named after a hero of the invasion of Afghanistan, comparable to Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo, named after a Vietnam war hero and presumably part of the vast US basing system aimed at the Middle East energy-producing regions. And there are many other differences.

There is much talk about a “new cold war” instigated by brutal Russian behavior in Georgia. One cannot fail to be alarmed by signs of confrontation, among them new US naval contingents in the Black Sea – the counterpart would hardly be tolerated in the Caribbean. Efforts to expand NATO to Ukraine, now contemplated, could become extremely hazardous.

Nonetheless, a new cold war seems unlikely. To evaluate the prospect, we should begin with clarity about the old cold war. Fevered rhetoric aside, in practice the cold war was a tacit compact in which each of the contestants was largely free to resort to violence and subversion to control its own domains: for Russia, its Eastern neighbors; for the global superpower, most of the world. Human society need not endure – and might not survive – a resurrection of anything like that.

A sensible alternative is the Gorbachev vision rejected by Clinton and undermined by Bush. Sane advice along these lines has recently been given by former Israeli Foreign Minister and historian Shlomo ben-Ami, writing in the Beirut Daily Star: “Russia must seek genuine strategic partnership with the US, and the latter must understand that, when excluded and despised, Russia can be a major global spoiler. Ignored and humiliated by the US since the Cold War ended, Russia needs integration into a new global order that respects its interests as a resurgent power, not an anti-Western strategy of confrontation.”

Irish Times Interview

eddie — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 19:57:46 +0000

Q First of all, I wanted to clear something up. I understand that some remarks you made about Bertie Ahern and shoe shining may have been reported inaccurately.

A The Press Association story on December 26th said that on his way to Ireland, Noam Chomsky says that Bertie Ahern shines the shoes of the Americans. Well I knew there was no interview around that time and I checked back and I finally found there was one last May.

In May I had an interview with a journalist and in it I had no plans to go to Ireland in it, I was talking about the Old Europe and New Europe business . A nd I did use the phrase, it had to do with taking part in the [IRAQ] war. Old Europe was the countries that just wouldnt take part in the war, New Europe was the countries that did take part in the war.

Then I pointed out that the distinguishing characteristic was that in Old Europe, so called, that the governments took the position of a large majority of the population , which is what we usually call democracy . And In New Europe, they overruled an even larger majority of the population and were just shining the shoes of the Americans.

And then he asked well, would you say that Bertie Ahern is shining the shoes of the Americans ? To tell you the truth, Id never heard of Bertie Ahern , but I didnt want to say that, to be impolite. So the context was taking part in the war. So I asked, I dont know what the polls are in Ireland. Is he following the polls? And he said no. And I said, well theres your answer.

Q The Irish Government obviously has a problem in that it’s received more explicit assurances than most other countries because it asked for the assurances before the Americans stopped giving specific assurances about places that no prisoners have gone through Irish airports.

A You see there are several separate points here. I did an interview with someone else from The Irish Times and he asked me a very straightforward question what do you think about the use of Shannon for military flights? And he said there was a suspicion that its being used for rendition flights.

So I said military flights are a complicated matter and by now its not military flights for the war, its military flights for the occupation, which is different. So I didnt say anything about military flights.

But I said if they use it for rendition, its completely shameful to take part in criminal acts like that. And I understand there are spotters at Shannon and at Heathrow who are picking up these Gulfstream flights which both governments deny. If either government or any government is giving any support whatsoever for what is just pure torture, theres nothing else to say about it.

Q But what the Irish say is that the only information they have about these flights is that the Americans have told them that there are no prisoners on these flights going through Ireland. The question is what should the Irish do?

A Refuse. Its an Irish airfield. If the United States wants to torture people, let them do it some other way.

Q Theres also the business that by asking, say, to search these planes, it would be an unfriendly gesture to a friendly power which is not only an important economic partner but has also played an important role in Northern Ireland and continues to do so .

A So you have to make choices. Its true, a government has to make ugly choices. But theres a question of what decision you make in a complex situation. Sometimes you do things which in other circumstances require you to offend your moral principles. Yes, that happens in life.

But we should be clear on the principles. I mean, conscious participation in anything as grotesque as rendition, which is just a euphemism for torture , is outrageous.

Suppose they wanted to torture people in Ireland. Suppose they sent people to Ireland for torture. Its basically the same thing. You can say its a friendly gesture but. ..

Q Much of Irelands foreign policy is now expressed through the European Union, and the United States has been ambivalent about the whole business of European integration, particularly the idea of a defence identity. Whats your view of the course of European integration?

A Its ambiguous. Actually, the United States has been ambivalent about it since the 1940s. On the one hand, the US has always pressed for some form of European unification for obvious reasons. I mean, if IBM is investing in Europe, theyd rather have one location with once currency and one language and so on than installations in 20 different places.

A lot of this integration developed as a result of American multilateral corporations. In fact, the Marshall Plan was the framework in which multinational corporations developed. Its one reason why it was pressed. Its openly discussed by the Commerce Department, for example.

So yes, thats a pressure for integration. Its much better to have a big market with uniformity of practices and so on.

On the other hand, the US has always been concerned that Europe might go off in its own direction. It used to be called a potential third force during the Cold War. And by 1970 when the world had become economically tripolar three major economic centres: Japan based, German based Europe, and North America, roughly on a par these concerns became much more serious, and by now theyre much more serious.

So the questions of European integration, there are several dimensions to them. They are the centre of the industrial, financial, commercial power of Europe. Its Germany and France, its not a big secret.

You bring in the old Russian satellites, theyre likely to be more subordinated to the United States.

Similarly, Spain and Italy are expected to be more subordinated even if they are not always so. So thats a way of diluting. Its the same with Turkey. The US has been pressing very hard for the inclusion of Turkey for years, not because theyre in love with Turkey but because they want to ensure that the European Union is more controllable.

Same with the extension of NATO. NATO is basically under US control so if NATO extends, it extends the US control system.

So from an international point of view, its [European enlargement] dubious . B ut from the domestic point of view, I think its a good thing for Europeans to be able to cross borders without paying any attention to have the common currency, and so on. Thats all to the good.

On the other hand, there are some things the European Union has done which I think are very negative.
For example, the power of the European Central Bank, which is so outrageous that even conservatives in the United States cant believe it. Its way more than the Federal Reserve. And its harmed European growth. Theyre ultra inflation conscious . Theyve kept interest rates too high, theyve slowed growth, theyre completely unaccountable. Thats negative.

The one, I think, beneficial unplanned consequence of the European Union is that its stimulating a kind of regionalism Europe of the regions , so called which is a good thing. So in regions of Spain and in England and other places theres a revival of local cultures, local languages, some degree of autonomy in Catalonia and the Basque country . Scotland has limited autonomy. You hear Welsh spoken in Cardiff, which you didnt used to do.

Those things are all positive. So like any complicated system it has positive and negative features to it.

Q The Europeans have a different view of security from America. If you compare, for example the Security Strategy the Bush administration came out with and the document that Solana and Co [European Union diplomacy] came out with, the whole concept of intervention is different. Do you think its useful for the world to have an alternative vision of security like the European one?

A I dont think the US has a vision of security. It has a vision of dominance. So it acts quite consciously in ways that increase insecurity.

Take, say, the invasion of Iraq. They understood that it was likely to increase the threat of terrorism and proliferation. Thats transparent and by now they agree that that happened. Their own intelligence services agree that the invasion substantially increased the threat of terrorism, which is going to be a long term threat.

And it also, of course, increased proliferation. Take Iran. Nobody wants to see Iran get nuclear weapons, no one sane. On the other hand, its very understandable. One of Israels leading military historians, Martin van Crefeld .
had an article in which he said obviously we dont want Iran to have nuclear weapons and I dont know if theyre developing them, but if theyre not developing them, theyre crazy. The invasion of Iraq just instructed them to develop nuclear weapons.

How are you going to deter a powerful state that claims it can do anything it wants? Its got nothing to do with security. This goes way back. What Arthur Schlesinger called correctly the most dangerous moment in human history was in 1962, the [Cuban] missile crisis.

The missile crisis had a lot of complicated features, but one element of it was Washingtons terrorist war against Cuba which was a factor that led to an effort at deterrence. It was a lunatic effort that could have set off a nuclear war, but, lunacy aside, the logic is understandable.

Was the terrorist war an effort to increase US security? No, we know what it was for because we have a rich documentary record. It was because of what the State Department called Cubas successful defiance of US policies going back to the M u nroe Doctrine. It had nothing to do with security.

In fact, to talk about security is very misleading. States dont seek security, they seek power. And the effort to extend power can increase insecurity.

Q Lets talk about it a different way and speak about the use of force or military intervention. Are there benign examples of the use of military force that you can think of?

A It depends on how you define them. Theres very extensive legal literature on so called humanitarian intervention. There are extensive studies. If you work through them, its extremely hard to find a genuine example.

I mean, there are examples of the use of military force which had benign consequences, definitely. In fact, in the last 50 years the two most dramatic cases are Indias intervention in East Pakistan which did stop atrocities , and Vietnams intervention in Cambodia which terminated Pol Pots atrocities in fact just at the point that they were peaking.
Those are the two most striking examples in the last half century of military intervention with benign consequences. And how did the West react? The US was infuriated in both cases. It imposed sanctions against India and sent the Sixth fleet to the Bay of Bengal, threatening.

Kissinger was totally furious. The reason was that it spoilt some photo ops he was hoping to get on a secret trip to China through Pakistan.

But the reaction was very harsh and punitive. In the case of Vietnam it was worse. In the case of Pol Pot, the US and Britain immediately turned to supporting the Khmer Rouge. They supported a Chinese invasion to punish Vietnam for the crime of having terminated Pol Pots atrocities.

The press was denouncing them as the Prussians of Asia. The US imposed very harsh sanctions.

So here are two cases. Now I wouldnt call those humanitarian interventions. They didnt intervene because they were trying to help people. They had their own reasons of state. In fact, in Vietnams case, it was really defensive. Pol Pot was carrying out atrocities inside Vietnam and along the border so it was kind of a defensive reaction.

But the consequences were very benign. And the West reacted with extreme harshness. I cant think of any other examples.

Q I was thinking of something more recent and on a much smaller scale, like the European intervention in the Congo, most recently, which was a kind of fire fighting operation.

A That was under UN auspices. An intervention under UN auspices is something quite different. The framework of international law is not perfect but its better than nothing. Its the best we have.

Peacekeeping forces in the UN framework, even Chapter Seven which is occasionally used and which allows the use of military force, that can be legitimate.

I dont say its necessarily legitimate. If you take a look at Haiti for example, it had very ugly consequences. But, in principle, its legitimate. The real issue comes from military intervention that has no UN sanction, thats in violation of international law. You can imagine it being benign, but try to find a case.

In fact, the West claims whats called a responsibility to protect. I think in Canada its even an official doctrine. The world doesnt accept it. The UN summit last September flatly rejected it .

And there was a high level UN panel about a year before which had people like Gareth Evans and Brent Scowcroft, by no means a radical group. But they went through the Charter and they said they saw no reason whatsoever to change Article 51 which is the relevant one, and that no use of force is legitimate. Im sure they had the bombing of Serbia in mind.
The Saff Commission, which is basically the old Non Aligned Movement in a different form, which represents about 80 per cent of the population of the world not democratically , but at least its their governments right after the bombing of Serbia they had their highest level meeting ever and produced a long document.

One part of it was that they flatly reject the so called right of humanitarian intervention. Theyve had enough experience with it over the last couple of centuries.

And if you try to find cases, its very, very hard. I mean, just to illustrate, perhaps the main scholarly work by Cole on humanitarian intervention in the legal literature which covers the period of roughly the 20th century, found three cases of humanitarian intervention prior to the UN Charter.

You know what they were? Mussolinis invasion of Abyssinia, Hitlers takeover of the Sudetenland, and Japans invasion of Manchuria in North China. Its not that the author regarded them as humanitarian, its that they were carried out with a very impressive humanitarian rhetoric and in fact a fair amount of support in the West, not open support , but tacit support.

Thats humanitarian intervention. Trace back the history and you find almost nothing. In the legal literature, the one case thats brought up over two centuries is an intervention in Lebanon and Syria in 1860, if I remember, by the French . It was to save the Christians from a massacre. But if you start taking a look at it, it was to establish their own interests and strengthen their own position. Maybe it saved the Christians too.

Q One of the issues that has become more acute since 9/11 is the whole question of how to engage with Islam. What do you think are the principles that should govern our engagement with Islam ? And is it possible to have an alliance of civilisations as opposed to a clash?

A As far as I know there are only two forces in the world that are pressing for a clash of civilisations. One is Osama bin Laden and the other is George Bush. Nobody else wants it.

Its basically two powerful forces and what does it mean? Does the US have any problems with Islam? One of the oldest US allies is the most extreme, brutal, fundamentalist Islamic state in the world, Saudi Arabia. Do they [the US] care? As long as Saudi Arabia manages the oil properly, they can do what they want.

The largest Muslim state in the world is Indonesia. The US did have, and Britain had, a confrontation with Indonesia when it was independent. As soon as the Suharto coup came along and killed a couple of hundred thousand people, destroyed the political system, introduced a regime of torture and massacre, and invaded East Timor, and so on, it was just fine. Suharto was our kind of guy as the Clinton administration called him.

A Muslim state? Dont care .

And in the 1980s, the US was pretty much at war with the Catholic church in central America. Wheres the clash of civilisations?
US interactions or British or French , or whatever interactions with the Islamic world are based on other principles. I mean, you could try to create a clash of civilisations Osama and Bush are helping out in that endeavour but theres actually no reason for it. Its a matter of other considerations that dominate.

And I dont think 9/11 had anything to do with it. Its claimed it changed the world. I dont think it changed the world very much.

Q One of the issues that comes up is the idea that there are universal human rights and that we have a responsibility to put pressure on Muslim states to respect them.

A It used to be called Asian relativism and communist relativism and now its Muslim relativism. The fact of the matter is that if we were honest we would recognise that there is relativism with regard to universal human rights, and one of the leaders of the relativist camp is the United States.

And the United States and Ireland and Britain and most of the West flatly reject the US mostly but the others more or less a central component of the Universal Declaration .

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights has three components civil and political rights, social and economic rights , and cultural rights, basically. Well, the United States publicly, flatly, officially rejects the socio economic rights, explicitly. Jeanne Kirk patrick [former US ambassador to the UN] called them a letter to Santa Claus.

And Morris Abram, the US ambassador to the UN Commission on Human Rights vetoed the right to development because it paraphrased Article 25 of the Universal Declaration. And Paula Dobriansky , whos the current UnderSecretary for Global Affairs, shes has very publicly explained that we have to eliminate the myth that there are social an d economic rights . Which is poisoning the human rights discourse.

You take a look at the articles and you see why the US is opposed. They call for a right to healthcare, a right to food, a right to a decent job and so on. Its as much a part of the Universal Declaration as anything else.
In fact if you look at the part [of the declaration] that the West claims to uphold, it doesnt. Take the civil and political rights, the part were supposed to uphold and that we say the Asian relativists dont uphold. Do we uphold them? Does the United States support democratic governments? Is that why it overthrows them all over the world?

Take, say, the right of asylum, political asylum. Who accepts that? Thats, I think , Article 9. Take a look at what happens. Take, say, Jack Straw. In the year 2000, as Home Secretary and in that capacity he had to approve asylum requests. Well one of them this was actually published in the British press and I didnt think the government would be able to survive , but it passed very quietly in 2000 there was a request from an Iraqi who had somehow escaped an Iraqi torture chamber and made it to England . H e was applying for political asylum.

Straw turned him down with a letter saying we have faith in the integrity of the Iraqi judicial process and that you should have no concerns if you havent done anything wrong. In 2000!

Or take whats happening in Europe now with refugees.

Or take, say, the United States. Under Carter, Haiti was under vicious dictatorship backed by the US and people were fleeing. The Carter administration informally , but the Reagan administration by agreement , essentially blockaded the island, totally illegal ly, to block Haitians from escaping from a brutal, vicious dictatorship.

In fact the only break in that policy was when Aristide won a democratic election and the US, opposed to the Aristide government, and tried to destroy it. And one of the things they did was reverse the policy. They said now people who are fleeing from a democratic government were political refugees. Before that they were just economic refugees. They were fleeing from Duvaliers torturers.

What happened to Article 9?

And you can run through the list. The support [for human rights] is utter hypocrisy. If you look at it, who are the relativists?

Q If you look at America and around the world, what would be the most hopeful signs that you see?

A The populations. Take, say, the United States. One of the most hopeful signs in the United States I think very hopeful is that there is an enormous gap between public policy and public attitudes.

In fact the gap is so strong that the press literally does not report the studies of public attitudes , literally .
Ill give you an example. The federal budget comes out around February every year for the next year. After the last federal budget last February, one of the major polling institutions in the world, the Centre on Policy Attitudes based in Maryland, which does in depth studies, did a study of peoples attitudes to wards the budget. They were the reverse of the budget. Where the budget was going up, the population wanted it to go down. Where it was going down, they wanted it to go up.

The public was strongly opposed to increased military spending, supplementals for Iraq and Afghanistan. It was very strongly in favour of increases in social spending, health, education, renewable energy, support for United Nations peacekeeping operations … across the board. And it was almost the inverse of the budget.

Well I had a friend do a database search on that. Not a single newspaper in the country reported it.
In a democratic society people should know what others believe. And it [the suppression of polls] is quite common. Right before the November 2004 elections, the same people, the Centre on Policy Attitudes in Maryland and the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations, which does the main monitoring of attitudes on international affairs , published a couple of big joint studies.

They came out right before the election. They were barely mentioned in the press but they were very striking. Again they showed that both main political parties are far to the right of the population on a whole range of important issues, ranging from the Kyoto protocol to the right of intervention , which the public opposes . I t [the government] takes a pretty conservative view of the UN Charter. Yet s upport for the United Nations was very strong.

In fact , to my amazement, a small majority of the population thinks the US ought to give up the veto and follow general world opinion even if it doesnt like it.

[Public opinion] Strongly support s more social spending. Take, say, health care. Its the leading domestic issue in the United States, by far. People are really worried about it and its a huge fiscal crisis when you have to deal with the most inefficient system in the industrialised world.

A strong, large majority of the population wants some kind of national health care. Neither political party will touch it. In fact, when the press ever mentions it, its called politically impossible or lacking political support or something. It tells you something about their attitude to democracy. But this gulf has implications. It means if the democratic deficit can be overcome, if the public can somehow, if public attitudes have some influence on public policy a lot of things could change. Thats very hopeful. The general population is a lot more civilised than it was back in the 1960s or 1950s.

Q The faults that you have identified a number of times in the mainstream media here in America, do you think they are shared elsewhere in the world? Do you think the European media are as bad?

A I dont study them as intensively so Im less competent but from what Ive seen, theyre as bad or worse.

I spent a week in Germany last March and for a week I was reading the German press. It was appalling, kind of like Fox News with big words and references to philosophers and so on. But I think you couldnt even publish it here. I think the French media are horrible. The British , which I read a little more , is a sort of mixed story.

The Irish I dont know about. From what Ive seen, I think its different, a little more diverse. Theres a kind of diversity, at least in England. Its impressionistic but my impression is theres not a fundamental difference.

Q The media in the US , the New York Times obviously , and perhaps the Washington Post , had a bad war shall we say , and we all know about that. But both of those papers in recent weeks have been essential in revealing both about the renditions and about the NSA spying [National Security Agency involvement in domestic phone-tapping] . Would you say youre being entirely fair on them in the sense that they obviously are useful?

A Oh, sure theyre useful. I mean if I had one newspaper in the world to read it would be the New York Times . Maybe the business press as well. Sure, theyre very useful, yes. Theres enormous coverage and if you read carefully, you can learn a lot. The Washington Post , the Boston Globe, the Financial Times and others. But the framework in which they present things, if it was in some enemy state, we would ridicule it.

Its true, they dont like governments spying, they dont like torture. But the business world doesnt either. Take a poll of CEOs in major corporations and they dont want a state powerful enough to intrude into their affairs. They have no particular interest in torture. The general attitudes of CEOs theyre called liberal in the United States is in favour of gay rights and they dont see anything wrong with abortion and so on and so forth.

So sure, on those issues, the press will reflect the interests of its major constituency, which is concentrated private economic power.

On the other hand, take something like coverage of the Iraq war.

I dont read everything but I follow it pretty carefully and I listen to NPR [the US National Public Radio] which is supposed to be liberal and so on. But its at the level of a high school newspaper cheering the local football team. And the only question that can come up, the only question is how well are we doing? Did the coach make a mistake? Should he have substituted somebody else?

The question whether we should invade its after all the supreme crime at Nuremberg, leaders are supposed to be hanged for that you cant even raise that question. Did we have a right? The only, the framework is how do we gain victory? Is that the only question that arises when, say, Russia invades Afghanistan?

In fact, if I had the resources I dont but somebody ought to compare the US media on Iraq and the Russian media on the invasion of Afghanistan. I bet you it would be pretty similar. You know, agonising stories about the suffering of soldiers and how theyre trying to do great things for the Afghans, fighting these hideous terrorists, which was all true, the deeply humanitarian aims and how could Russia gain victory, for the benefit of the Afghans of course. I think its pretty predictable that thats what the coverage would have been. Thats what the coverage is here.

Q Since I moved here [to the US] last August, everybody has told me that the problem that Europeans have is that we dont understand, we cant grasp just how deeply 9/11 affected Americans.

A It affected the Europeans too. Its understandable. For one thing it was a major atrocity. But for another thing, it runs counter to centuries of deeply rooted imperial assumptions. This is the kind of thing that we do to them. They dont do it to us. And that is outrageous.

In fact, take 9/11. Go south of the border. There they call it often the second 9/11 . September 11th 1973 [the overthrow of the Allende government in Chile] , take a look at that. Translate it in per capita terms to the United States, OK, one change only.

Imagine that Al Qaeda had bombed the White House, killed the president, carried out a military coup, destroyed the oldest democracy in the hemisphere, killed 50,000 100,000 people thats the per capita equivalent and tortured 700,000, established a major international terrorist centre which overthrew governments, installed neo Nazi regimes, carried out assassinations all over the world, sent in a bunch of economists called the Kandahar Boys who took over the US economy, drove it into the worst disaster in US economic history within a few years.

Suppose all that had happened. Would that have been worse than 9/11? Incomparably worse. Well it did happen. The only change I made is change to the per capita equivalent. Yeah, that happened. But we did it to them, so therefore it doesnt matter. The US may not have instigated the coup but it was certainly up to its neck in it and both the United States and Britain strongly supported it. Pinochet was the darling of Thatcher and Reagan.

Yeah, we did it, so therefore it doesnt really matter. But thats another 9/11. Its true that this 9/11 was a horror story, maybe the worst single terrorist atrocity in history. But you put it in the general framework, its the kind of thing we do to the Third World all the time.

Q But what Im getting at is just the psychological impact that the event had on Americans. ... Does it make

A The psychological impact was multiple. On the one hand it really frightened people and correctly. I felt there was going to be further terrorist attacks. I was surprised there was only one. So , sure, people had a right to be frightened.

For another, the United States has never been attacked and the last attack on US soil was in 1814, which is not par of US history.

Were safe, were not going to be attacked. We cant be attacked.

Were ultrasecure. So, yes, it was a shock. And it led to kind of what is called patriotism, a lot of flags and that sort of thing. But there was another side to it. The United States is a very insular society. People dont know much about the outside world, nor do they care much about it. A lot of people couldnt tell you where France is. Maybe they know where Canada is, but not much more. This kind of opened a lot of peoples minds.

They said, wed better start paying attention to whats going on in the outside world. The small presses, left presses, all of a sudden had to start reprinting their books from the 1980s which nobody had bought and were selling them all over the place.

I can tell it just personally invitations for talks just escalated and audiences were huge. And it was everywhere around the country.

Its not just Harvard Square, its central Iowa . Anywhere. They said weve just got to learn something, we dont know anything.

The country became a lot more open minded. That was a very positive development. So its complex.

Q The other big event recently of course was Hurricane Katrina. What do you think is the long term effect of that event.

A Hurricane Katrina brought out very dramatically some facts about the United States and its the same in Ireland that are usually pushed under the rug. Theres a very sharp class difference which shows up all over the place.

In the United States, class and race are fairly closely correlated so theres also a race difference. But the poverty in the United States is very high, the highest in the industrial world and its a scandal. But in New Orleans it was close to 30 per cent and the poor, black areas were of course devastated.

And it was so dramatic that even the business press was covering it, it was such a horror. And then the government reaction. And then you start looking at the background and you find they didnt bother to deal with the levees. They knew it was going to be a catastrophe but theyd got other things in mind and so on, which was scandalous.

But even more scandalous was the reaction , and the immediate reaction of the administration in Washington was to try to ram through their favourite programmes to benefit the rich. So the first thing they did was rescind the Davis-Bacon Act which goes back to the 30s and calls for decent wages for construction. Then come the contracts for all the usual gangsters. Ten years from now therell be a big corruption scandal about Halliburton and the rest of them for ripping off money.

Instead of putting money into schools they put it into vouchers with extra funding if you send your child to private school. So its trying to destroy the public school system.

They even tried to they didnt get away with this but they tried to use it as an opportunity to rescind the estate tax. Just what the poor blacks in New Orleans need ! Only the cynicism was so extreme that plenty of people found it appalling.

But watch the media coverage decline. It sort of fades into the background and by now I think its a memory. Something that was bad. Its still a horror story but not much about it.

Q People dont like too much bad news here? They dont like to be depressed?

A Lifes hard enough, to face more bad news is not good. In fact, the media have become far more sensational. I think this is true of Europe too, but crime, for example, is featured in gory, grisly detail in a way which it wasnt when I was growing up. And that has a big effect on society.

I mean, I happen to live in a suburban neighbourhood. We moved there because we couldnt afford the rents in the city and our kids were growing up and so on, and it was a nice place for kids . Theyd play on the streets and parks.

Take a walk around the neighbourhood now, you wont see any children. Parents are afraid. Theres nothing to be afraid of. But children have to be inside under supervision, organised activities. You dont see children just going out and playing in the park, it has to be organised.

I know its the same in England. I happened to be there when some study came out, some government study, which showed that increasingly parents just keep their kids under control. Theyre not learning how to live on the streets because of fear.

And the fear is engendered by amplification of real stories. Like lightning bolts. If a child gets abducted somewhere, were kind of asked to hide the children in the cellar. You know what trick or treat is? Well, for years we were caught up in it too we didnt want our children to go around without supervision because there were rumours circulating about poisoned apples and razor blades. It turned out there was absolutely nothing to it.

It was just a, mostly mediasponsored, scare story. This goes on all the time, partly through the sensationalisation of coverage, the commercialisation of the media. But its a big social thing.

Q One last question on a different subject. How would you describe the relationship between your academic work and your political activity? Is there one? [Chomskys ground-breaking work in linguistics suggests that human beings have an innate grammar, an ability for language that is not just socially acquired]

A Almost nonexistent. At some very abstract level theres a connection which Ive written about occasionally.

If you go back, say, to the Enlightenment, the origins of classical liberalism and so on, there actually was a connection at the time. So if you look at people like Wilhelm von Humboldt, one of the founders of classical liberalism and also the founder of the modern university system, or Rousseau for that matter in his more libertarian essays, others, they drew a connection which traces to Cartesian thought … between the essential theyre struck by an essential property of language.

This goes back to the Cartesians, in fact. Its something free and creative about it. What you and I are now doing is just free creation, expression of thoughts that maybe nobody ever had before , but if you say them I can understand them , and so on. And this is boundless, its not controlled by internal states, its not determined by external stimuli. As far as anyone knows, its unique to humans.

Theres some kind of intrinsic, free, creative element to human nature which shows up most dramatically in language. Actually for the Cartesians, that was the prime criterion for mind as distinct from body. So its very extensively thought about, investigated.

And this, connected with political attitudes, with the idea that theres some sort of instinct for freedom and the core of human nature is to inquire and create and any external constraint that limits this is illegitimate and has to be overcome, out of this comes a lot of classical liberal thought and left – libertarian thought and so on.

There is a kind of a loose, abstract connection in the background. But if you look for practical connections, theyre nonexistent. Id do the same political things if I was an algebraic pathologist and somebody could have the same linguistic views as I do and be a fascist or a Stalinist. Thered be no contradiction.

The Guardian's Deceit

eddie — Sun, 13 Nov 2005 19:01:32 +0000

This is an open letter to a few of the people with whom I had discussed the Guardian interview of 31 October, on the basis of the electronic version, which is all that I had seen. Someone has just sent me a copy of the printed version, and I now understand why friends in England who wrote me were so outraged.

It is a nuisance, and a bit of a bore, to dwell on the topic, and I always keep away from personal attacks on me, unless asked, but in this case the matter has some more general interest, so perhaps its worth reviewing what most readers could not know. The general interest is that the print version reveals a very impressive effort, which obviously took careful planning and work, to construct an exercise in defamation that is a model of the genre. Its of general interest for that reason alone.

A secondary matter is that it may serve as a word of warning to anyone who is asked by the Guardian for an interview, and happens to fall slightly to the critical end of the approved range of opinion of the editors. The warning is: if you accept the invitation, be cautious, and make sure to have a tape recorder that is very visibly placed in front of you. That may inhibit the dedication to deceit, and if not, at least you will have a record. I should add that in probably thousands of interviews from every corner of the world and every part of the spectrum for decades, that thought has never occurred to me before. It does now.

It was evident from the electronic version that t was a scurrilous piece of journalism. Thats clear even from internal evidence. The reporter obviously had a definite agenda: to focus the defamation exercise on my denial of the Srebrenica massacre. From the character of what appeared, it is not easy to doubt that she was assigned this task. When I wouldnt go along, she simply invented the denial, repeatedly, along with others. The centerpiece of the interview was this, describing my alleged views, in particular, that:

....during the Bosnian war the massacre at Srebrenica was probably overstated. (Chomsky uses quotations marks to undermine things he disagrees with and, in print at least, it can come across less as academic than as witheringly teenage; like, Srebrenica was so not a massacre.)

Transparently, neither I nor anyone speaks with quotation marks, so the reference to my claim that Srebrenica was so not a massacre, shown by my using the term massacre in quotes, must be in print hence witheringly teenage, as well as disgraceful. That raises the obvious question: where is it in print, or anywhere? I know from letters that were sent to me that a great many journalists and others asked the author of the interview and the relevant editors to provide the source, and were met by stony silence for a simple reason: it does not exist, and they know it. Furthermore, as Media Lens pointed out, with five minutes research on the internet, any journalist could find many places where I described the massacre as a massacre, never with quotes. That alone ends the story. I will skip the rest, which also collapses quickly.

More interesting, however, is the editorial contribution. One illustration actually is in the e-edition. I did write a very brief letter in response, which for some reason went to the ombudsman, who informed me that the word fabrication had to be removed. My truncated letter stating that I take no responsibility for anything attributed to me in the article did appear, paired with a moving letter from a victim, expressing justified outrage that I or anyone could take the positions invented in the Guardian article. Pairing aside, the heading given by the editors was: Fall out over Srebrenica. The editors are well aware that there was no debate or disagreement about Srebrenica, once the fabrications in their article are removed.

The printed version reveals how careful and well-planned the exercise was, and why it might serve as a model for the genre. The front-page announcement of the interview reads: Noam Chomsky The Greatest Intellectual? The question is answered by the following highlighted Q&A, above the interview:

Q: Do you regret supporting those who say the Srebrenica massacre was exaggerated?

A: My only regret is that I didn’t do it strongly enough

It is set apart in large print so that it cant be missed, and will be quoted separately (as it already has been). It also captures the essence of the agenda. The only defect is that it didnt happen. The truthful part is that I said, and explained at length, that I regret not having strongly enough opposed the Swedish publishers decision to withdraw a book by Diana (not Diane, as the Guardian would have it) Johnstone after it was bitterly attacked in the Swedish press. As Brockes presumably knew, though I carefully explained anyway, there is one source for my involvement in this affair: an open letter that I wrote to the publisher, after editors there who objected to the decision, and journalist friends, sent me the Swedish press charges that were the basis for the rejection. In the open letter, readily available on the internet (and the only source), I went through the charges one by one, checked them against the book, and found that they all ranged from serious misrepresentation to outright fabrication. I then took and take the position that it is completely wrong to withdraw a book because the press charges (falsely) that it does not conform to approved doctrine. And I do regret that I didnt do it strongly enough, the words Brockes managed to quote correctly. In the interview, whatever Johnstone may have said about Srebrenica never came up, and is entirely irrelevant in any event, at least to anyone with a minimal appreciation of freedom of speech.

The article is then framed by a series of photographs. Lets put aside childhood photos and an honorary degree — included for no apparent reason other than, perhaps, to reinforce the image the reporter sought to convey of a rich elitist hypocrite who tells people how to live (citing a comment of her own, presumably supposed to be clever, which will not be found on the tape, I am reasonably confident). Those apart, there are three photos depicting my actual life. Its an interesting choice, and the captions are even more interesting.

One is a picture of me talking to journalist John Pilger (who isnt shown, but lets give the journal the benefit of the doubt of assuming he is actually in the original). The second is of me meeting Fidel Castro. The third, and most interesting, is a picture of me in Laos en route to Hanoi to give a speech to the North Vietnamese.

Thats my life: honoring commie-rats and the renegade who is the source of the word pilgerize invented by journalists furious about his incisive and courageous reporting, and knowing that the only response they are capable of is ridicule.

Since Ill avoid speculation, you can judge for yourselves the role Pilger plays in the fantasy life of the editorial offices of the Guardian. And the choice is interesting in other ways. Its true that I have met John a few times, much fewer than I would like because we both have busy lives. And possibly a picture was taken. It must have taken some effort to locate this particular picture, assuming it to be genuine, among the innumerable pictures of me talking to endless other people. And the intended message is very clear.

Turn to the Castro picture. In this case the picture, though clipped, is real. As the editors surely know, at least if those who located the picture did 2 minutes of research, the others in the picture (apart from my wife) were, like me, participants in the annual meeting of an international society of Latin American scholars, with a few others from abroad. This annual meeting happened to be in Havana. Like all others, I was in a group that met with Castro. End of second story.

Turn now to the third picture, from 1970. The element of truth is that I was indeed in Laos, and on my way to Hanoi. The facts about these trips are very easy to discover. I wrote about both in some detail right away, in two articles in the New York Review, reprinted in my book At War with Asia in 1970. It is easily available to Guardian editors, because it was recently reprinted. If they want to be the first to question the account (unlike reviewers in such radical rags as the journal of the Royal Institute, International Affairs), it would be very easy for a journalist to verify it: contact the two people who accompanied me on the entire trip, one then a professor of economics at Cornell, the other a minister of the United Church of Christ. Both are readily accessible. From the sole account that exists, the editor would know that in Laos I was engaged in such subversive activities as spending many hours in refugee camps interviewing miserable people who had just been driven by the CIA clandestine army from the Plain of Jars, having endured probably the most intense bombing in history for over two years, almost entirely unrelated to the Vietnam war. And in North Vietnam, I did spend most of my time doing what I had been invited to do: many hours of lectures and discussion, on any topic I knew anything about, in the bombed ruins of the Hanoi Polytechnic, to faculty who were able to return to Hanoi from the countryside during a lull in the bombing, and were very eager to learn about recent work in their own fields, to which they had had no access for years.

The rest of the trip to Hanoi to give a speech to the North Vietnamese is a Guardian invention. Those who frequent ultra-right defamation sites can locate the probable source of this ingenious invention, but even that ridiculous tale goes nowhere near as far as what the Guardian editors concocted, which is a new addition to the vast literature of vilification of those who stray beyond the approved bounds.

So thats my life: worshipping commie-rats and such terrible figures as John Pilger. Quite apart from the deceit in the captions, simply note how much effort and care it must have taken to contrive these images to frame the answer to the question on the front page.

It is an impressive piece of work, and, as I said, provides a useful model for studies of defamation exercises, or for those who practice the craft. And also, perhaps, provides a useful lesson for those who may be approached for interviews by this journal.

This is incidentally only a fragment. The rest is mostly what one might expect to find in the scandal sheets about movie stars, familiar from such sources, and of no further interest.

Noam Chomsky