[Peace-discuss] "Noam Chomsky: Biden’s Foreign Policy Is Largely Indistinguishable From Trump’s" and commentary from Jimmy Dore

[J.B. Nicholson]

 From 
https://truthout.org/articles/noam-chomsky-bidens-foreign-policy-is-largely-indistinguishable-from-trumps/ 
-- "Noam Chomsky: Biden’s Foreign Policy Is Largely Indistinguishable From Trump’s"

> President Joe Biden’s domestic policies, especially on the economic front, are 
> quite encouraging, offering plenty of hope for a better future. The same,
> however, cannot be said about the administration’s foreign policy agenda, as Noam
> Chomsky’s penetrating insights and astute analysis reveal in this exclusive
> interview for Truthout. Chomsky is a world-famous public intellectual, Institute
> Professor Emeritus at MIT and Laureate Professor of Linguistics at the University
> of Arizona.
> 
> C.J. Polychroniou: Noam, two months after being in the White House, Biden’s 
> foreign policy agenda is beginning to take shape. What are the signs so far of
> how the Biden administration intends to address the challenges to U.S. hegemony
> posed by its primary geopolitical rivals, namely Russia and China?
> 
> Noam Chomsky: The challenge to U.S. hegemony posed by Russia and particularly 
> China has been a major theme of foreign policy discourse for some time, with 
> persistent agreement on the severity of the threat.
> 
> The matter is plainly complex. It’s a good rule of thumb to cast a skeptical eye 
> when there is general agreement on some complex issue. This is no exception.
> 
> What we generally find, I think, is that Russia and China sometimes deter U.S. 
> actions to enforce its global hegemony in regions on their periphery that are of 
> particular concern to them. One can ask whether they are justified in seeking to 
> limit overwhelming U.S. power in this way, but that is a long distance from the 
> way the challenge is commonly understood: as an effort to displace the U.S.
> global role in sustaining a liberal rule-based international order by new centers
> of hegemonic power.
> 
> Do Russia and China actually challenge U.S. hegemony in the ways commonly 
> understood?
> 
> Russia is not a major actor in the world scene, apart from the military force
> that is a (very dangerous) residue of its earlier status as a second superpower.
> It does not begin to compare with the U.S. in outreach and influence.
> 
> China has undergone spectacular economic growth, but it is still far from 
> approaching U.S. power in just about any dimension. It remains a relatively poor 
> country, ranked 85th in the UN Human Development Index, between Brazil and 
> Ecuador. The U.S., while not ranked near the top because of its poor social 
> welfare record, is far above China. In military strength and global outreach 
> (bases, forces in active combat), there is no comparison. U.S.-based 
> multinationals have about half of world wealth and are first (sometimes second)
> in just about every category. China is far behind. China also faces serious
> internal problems (ecological, demographic, political). The U.S., in contrast, has
> internal and security advantages unmatched anywhere.
> 
> Take sanctions, a major instrument of world power for one country on Earth: the 
> U.S. They are, furthermore, third-party sanctions. Disobey them, and you’re out
> of luck. You can be tossed out of the world financial system, or worse. It’s
> pretty much the same wherever we look.
> 
> If we look at history, we find regular echoes of Sen. Arthur Vandenberg’s 1947 
> advice to the president that he should “scare hell out of the American people” if 
> he wanted to whip them up to a frenzy of fear over the Russian threat to take
> over the world. It would be necessary to be “clearer than truth,” as explained by
> Dean Acheson, one of the creators of the postwar order. He was referring to NSC-68
> of 1950, a founding document of the Cold War, declassified decades later. Its 
> rhetoric continues to resound in one or another form, again today about China.
> 
> NSC-68 called for a huge military build-up and imposition of discipline on our 
> dangerously free society so that we can defend ourselves from the “slave state” 
> with its “implacable purpose… to eliminate the challenge of freedom” everywhere, 
> establishing “total power over all men [and] absolute authority over the rest of 
> the world.” And so on, in an impressive flow.
> 
> China does confront U.S. power — in the South China Sea, not the Atlantic or 
> Pacific. There is an economic challenge as well. In some areas, China is a world 
> leader, notably renewable energy, where it is far ahead of other countries in
> both scale and quality. It is also the world’s manufacturing base, though profits
> go mostly elsewhere, to managers like Taiwan’s Foxconn or investors in Apple,
> which is increasingly reliant on intellectual property rights — the exorbitant
> patent rights that are a core part of the highly protectionist “free trade”
> agreements.
> 
> China’s global influence is surely expanding in investment, commerce, takeover of 
> facilities (such as management of Israel’s major port). That influence is likely 
> to expand if it moves forward with provision of vaccines virtually at cost in 
> comparison with the West’s hoarding of vaccines and its impeding of distribution 
> of a “People’s Vaccine” so as to protect corporate patents and profits. China is 
> also advancing substantially in high technology, much to the consternation of the 
> U.S., which is seeking to impede its development.
> 
> It is rather odd to regard all of this as a challenge to U.S. hegemony.
> 
> U.S. policy might help create a more serious challenge by confrontational and 
> hostile acts that drive Russia and China closer together in reaction. That has,
> in fact, been happening, under Trump and in Biden’s first days — though Biden did 
> respond to Russia’s call for renewing the New START Treaty on limiting nuclear 
> weapons at the last minute, salvaging the one major element of the arms control 
> regime that had escaped Trump’s wrecking ball.
> 
> Clearly what is needed is diplomacy and negotiations on contested matters, and 
> real cooperation on such crucial issues as global warming, arms control, future 
> pandemics — all very severe crises that know no borders. Whether Biden’s hawkish 
> foreign policy team will have the wisdom to move in these directions is, for now, 
> at best unclear — at worst, frightening. Absent significant popular pressures, 
> prospects do not look good.
> 
> Another issue that calls for popular attention and activism is the policy of 
> protecting hegemony by seeking to harm potential rivals, very publicly in the
> case of China, but elsewhere too, sometimes in ways that are sometimes hard to 
> believe.
> 
> A remarkable example is buried in the Annual Report for 2020 of the Department of 
> Health and Human Services, proudly presented by Secretary Alex Azar. Under the 
> subheading “Combatting malign influences in the Americas,” the report discusses 
> the efforts of the Department’s Office of Global Affairs (OGA)
> 
> to mitigate efforts by states, including Cuba, Venezuela and Russia, who are 
> working to increase their influence in the region to the detriment of U.S. safety 
> and security. OGA coordinated with other U.S. government agencies to strengthen 
> diplomatic ties and offer technical and humanitarian assistance to dissuade 
> countries in the region from accepting aid from these ill-intentioned states. 
> Examples include using OGA’s Health Attaché office to persuade Brazil to reject 
> the Russian COVID-19 vaccine, and offering CDC technical assistance in lieu of 
> Panama accepting an offer of Cuban doctors. [Emphasis mine].
> 
> In the midst of a raging pandemic, according to this report, we must block 
> malignant initiatives to help miserable victims.
> 
> Under President Jair Bolsonaro’s grotesque mismanagement, Brazil has become the 
> global horror story of failure to deal with the pandemic, despite its outstanding 
> health institutes and fine past record in vaccination and treatment. It is 
> suffering from a severe shortage of vaccines, so the U.S. takes pride in its 
> efforts to prevent it from using the Russian vaccine, which Western authorities 
> recognize to be comparable to the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines used here.
> 
> Even more astonishing, as the author of this article in the EU-based Brasil Wire 
> comments, is “that the US dissuaded Panama from accepting Cuban doctors, who have 
> been on the global front line against the pandemic, working in over 40
> countries.” We must protect Panama from the “malign influence” of the one country
> in the world to exhibit the kind of internationalism that is needed to save the
> world from disaster, a crime that must be stopped by the global hegemon.
> 
> Washington’s hysterical dedication to crush Cuba from almost the first days of
> its independence in 1959 is one of the most extraordinary phenomena of modern
> history, but still, the level of petty sadism is a constant surprise
> 
> With regards to Iran, also there do not seem to be signs of hope as the Biden 
> administration has named Richard Nephew, an architect of sadistic sanctions 
> against Iran under Barack Obama, as its deputy Iran envoy. Right or wrong?
> 
> Biden adopted Trump’s Iran program with virtually no change, even in rhetoric. It 
> is worthwhile to recall the facts.
> 
> Trump withdrew U.S. participation in the JCPOA (the nuclear agreement), in 
> violation of UN Security Council Resolution 2331, which obligates all states to 
> abide by the JCPOA, and in violation to the wishes of all other signers. In an 
> impressive display of hegemonic power, when the UN Security Council members 
> insisted on abiding by 2331 and not extending UN sanctions, Secretary of State 
> Mike Pompeo told them to get lost: You are renewing the sanctions. Trump imposed 
> extremely harsh new sanctions to which others are obliged to conform, with the 
> goal of causing maximum pain to Iranians so that perhaps the government might 
> relent and accept his demand that the JCPOA be replaced by a new agreement that 
> imposes much harsher restrictions on Iran. The pandemic offered new opportunities 
> to torture Iranians by depriving them of desperately needed relief.
> 
> Furthermore, it is Iran’s responsibility to take the first steps towards 
> negotiations to capitulate to the demands, by terminating actions it took in 
> reaction to Trump’s criminality.
> 
> As we’ve discussed before, there is merit in Trump’s demand that the JCPOA can be 
> improved. A far better solution is to establish a nuclear weapons-free zone (or 
> WMD-free zone) in the Middle East. There is only one barrier: the U.S. will not 
> permit it, and vetoes the proposal when it arises in international forums, most 
> recently seen by President Obama. The reason is well-understood: It’s necessary
> to protect Israel’s major nuclear arsenal from inspection. The U.S. does not even 
> formally acknowledge its existence. To do so would prejudice the vast flood of 
> U.S. aid to Israel, arguably in violation of U.S. law, a door that neither 
> political party wants to open. It’s another topic that will not even be discussed 
> unless popular pressure makes suppression impossible.
> 
> In U.S. discourse, Trump is criticized because his policy of torturing Iranians 
> didn’t succeed in bringing the government to capitulate. The stance is
> reminiscent of Obama’s highly praised moves towards limited relations with Cuba,
> because, as he explained, we need new tactics after our efforts to bring democracy
> to Cuba had failed — namely, a vicious terrorist war that led almost to extinction
> in the 1962 missile crisis and sanctions of unparalleled cruelty that are
> unanimously condemned by the UN General Assembly (Israel excepted). Similarly, our
> wars in Indochina, the worst crimes since World War II, are criticized as a
> “failure,” as is the invasion of Iraq, a textbook example of the “supreme
> international crime” for which Nazi war criminals were hanged.
> 
> These are among the prerogatives of a true hegemon, immune to the cackles of 
> foreigners and confident in the support of those whom an acerbic critic once 
> called “the herd of independent minds,” the bulk of the educated classes and the 
> political class.
> 
> Biden took over the entire Trump program, without any change. And to twist the 
> knife further, he appointed Richard Nephew as deputy Iran envoy. Nephew has 
> explained his views in his book Art of Sanctions, where he outlines the proper 
> “strategy to carefully, methodically, and efficiently increase pain on areas that 
> are vulnerabilities while avoiding those that are not.” Just the right choice for 
> the policy of torturing Iranians because the government that most of them despise 
> will not bend to Washington’s demands.
> 
> Cuba since independence in 1959 has been the target of unremitting U.S. violence 
> and torture, reaching truly sadistic levels — with scarcely a word of protest in 
> elite sectors. The U.S., fortunately, is an unusually free country, so we have 
> access to declassified records explaining the ferocity of the efforts to punish 
> Cubans. Fidel Castro’s crime, the State Department explained in the early years, 
> is its “successful defiance” of U.S. policy since the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, 
> which declared Washington’s right to control the hemisphere. Plainly harsh 
> measures are required to stifle such efforts, as any Mafia Don would understand — 
> and the analogy of world order to the Mafia has considerable merit. U.S. 
> government policy towards Cuba and Iran provides very valuable insight into how 
> the world works under the domination of imperial power.
> 
> Much the same is true of Iran since 1979, when a popular uprising overthrew the 
> tyrant installed by the U.S. in a military coup that rid the country of its 
> parliamentary regime. Israel had enjoyed very close relations with Iran during
> the years of the Shah’s tyranny and extreme human rights violations, and like the 
> U.S., was appalled by his overthrow. Israel’s de facto Ambassador to Iran, Uri 
> Lubrani, expressed his “strong” belief that the uprising could be suppressed, and 
> the Shah restored “by a very relatively small force, determined, ruthless, cruel. 
> I mean the men who would lead that force will have to be emotionally geared to
> the possibility that they would have to kill ten thousand people.”
> 
> U.S. authorities pretty much agreed. President Carter sent NATO Gen. Robert E. 
> Huyser to Iran to try to convince the Iranian military to undertake the task — a 
> surmise confirmed by recently released internal documents. They refused, 
> considering it hopeless. Shortly after, Saddam Hussein invaded Iran — an attack 
> that killed hundreds of thousands of Iranians, with full support from the Reagan 
> administration, even when Saddam resorted to chemical weapons, first against 
> Iranians, then against Iraqi Kurds in the Halabja atrocities. Reagan protected
> his friend Hussein by attributing the crimes to Iran and blocking congressional 
> censure. He then turned to direct military support for Hussein with naval forces 
> in the Gulf. One vessel, the USS Vincennes, shot down an Iranian civilian
> airliner in a clearly marked commercial airspace, killing 290 people, returning to
> a royal welcome at its home base where the commander and flight officer who had
> directed the destruction of the airliner were rewarded with Medals of Honor.
> 
> Recognizing that it could not fight the U.S., Iran effectively capitulated. 
> Washington then to turned harsh sanctions against Iran, while rewarding Hussein
> in ways that sharply increased threats to Iran, which was then just emerging from
> a devastating war. President Bush I invited Iraqi nuclear engineers to the U.S.
> for advanced training in nuclear weapons production, no small matter for Iran. He 
> pushed through agricultural aid that Hussein badly needed after having destroyed 
> rich agricultural areas with his chemical weapons attack against Iraqi Kurds. He 
> sent a high-level mission to Iraq headed by the Republican Senate leader Bob
> Dole, later presidential candidate, to deliver his respects to Hussein, to assure
> him that critical comment about him would be curbed on Voice of America, and to
> advise Hussein that he should ignore critical comment in the press, which the
> U.S. government can’t prevent.
> 
> This was April 1990. A few months later, Hussein disobeyed (or misunderstood) 
> orders and invaded Kuwait. Then everything changed.
> 
> Almost everything. Punishment of Iran for its “successful defiance” continued, 
> with harsh sanctions, and new initiatives by President Bill Clinton, who issued 
> executive orders and signed congressional legislation sanctioning investment in 
> Iran’s oil sector, the basis of its economy. Europe objected, but had no way to 
> avoid U.S. extraterritorial sanctions.
> 
> U.S. firms suffered too. Princeton University Middle East specialist Seyed
> Hossein Mousavian, former spokesman for Iran nuclear negotiators, reports that
> Iran had offered a billion-dollar contract to the U.S. energy firm Conoco.
> Clinton’s intervention, blocking the deal, closed off an opportunity for
> reconciliation, one of many cases that Mousavian reviews.
> 
> Clinton’s action was part of a general pattern, an unusual one. Ordinarily, 
> particularly on energy-related issues, policy conforms to Adam Smith’s comments
> on 18th-century England, where the “masters of mankind” who own the private
> economy are the “principal architects” of government policy, and act to ensure
> that their own interests are foremost, however “grievous” the effect on others,
> including the people of England. Exceptions are rare, and instructive.
> 
> Two striking exceptions are Cuba and Iran. Major business interests 
> (pharmaceuticals, energy, agribusiness, aircraft, and others) have been eager to 
> break into Cuban and Iranian markets and to establish relations with domestic 
> enterprises. State power bars any such moves, overruling parochial interests of 
> the “masters of mankind” in favor of the transcendent goal of punishing
> successful defiance.
> 
> There’s a good deal to say about these exceptions to the rule, but it would take 
> us too far afield.
> 
> The release of the Jamal Khashoggi murder report disappointed almost everyone, 
> save Saudi Arabia. Why is the Biden administration taking such a soft approach 
> towards Saudi Arabia, and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in particular, which 
> prompted New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof to write that, “Biden … let
> the murderer walk”?
> 
> Not hard to guess. Who wants to offend the close ally and regional power that the 
> State Department described during World War II as “a stupendous source of 
> strategic power, and one of the greatest material prizes in world history … 
> probably the richest economic prize in the world in the field of foreign 
> investment.” The world has changed in many ways since, but the basic reasoning 
> remains.
> 
> Biden had promised that, if elected, he would scale back Trump’s nuclear weapons 
> spending, and that the U.S. would not rely on nuclear weapons for defense. Are we 
> likely to see a dramatic shift in U.S. nuclear strategy under the Biden 
> administration whereby the use of these weapons will be far less likely?
> 
> For reasons of cost alone, it is a goal that should be high on the agenda of 
> anyone who wants to see the kinds of domestic programs the country badly needs. 
> But the reasons go far beyond. Current nuclear strategy calls for preparation for 
> war — meaning terminal nuclear war — with China and Russia.
> 
> We should also remember an observation of Daniel Ellsberg’s: Nuclear weapons are 
> constantly used, much in the way a gun is used by a robber who aims his gun at a 
> storekeeper and says, “Your money or your life.” The principle in fact is 
> enshrined in policy, in the important 1995 document “Essentials of Post-Cold War 
> Deterrence” issued by Clinton’s Strategic Command (STRATCOM). The study concludes 
> that nuclear weapons are indispensable because of their incomparable destructive 
> power, but even if not used, “nuclear weapons always cast a shadow over any
> crisis or conflict,” enabling us to gain our ends through intimidation; Ellsberg’s
> point. The study goes on to authorize “preemptive” use of nuclear weapons and
> provides advice for planners, who should not “portray ourselves as too fully
> rational and cool-headed.” Rather, the “national persona we project” should be
> “that the US may become irrational and vindictive if its vital interests are
> attacked and that “some elements may appear to be potentially ‘out of control.’”
> 
> Richard Nixon’s “madman theory,” but this time not from reports by associates but 
> from the designers of nuclear strategy.
> 
> Two months ago, the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons went into 
> effect. The nuclear powers refused to sign, and still violate their legal 
> responsibility under the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons to undertake 
> “effective measures” to eliminate nuclear weapons. That stance is not carved in 
> stone, and popular activism could induce significant moves in that direction, a 
> necessity for survival.
> 
> Regrettably, that level of civilization still seems beyond the range of the most 
> powerful states, which are careening in the opposite direction, upgrading and 
> enhancing the means to terminate organized human life on Earth.
> 
> Even junior partners are joining in the race to destruction. Just a few days ago, 
> British Prime Minister Boris Johnson “announced a 40 per cent increase in UK’s 
> stockpile of nuclear warheads. His review… recognised ‘the evolving security 
> environment’, identifying Russia as Britain’s `most acute threat’.”
> 
> Lots of work to do.



Jimmy Dore's commentary on this article is on https://youtube.com/watch?v=Yk1QBIOQx_Q 
and ends with his take on Chomsky's electoral advice:

> Jimmy Dore: So, the idea that the United States cares about humanitarian rights, 
> or anything, or anybody, or any other thing, you're wrong. And Noam Chomsky nails 
> it, this time, he gets it right. But it's the guy that he told you to vote for.
> He said you gotta vote for Joe Biden if you're a moral person. Joe Biden's just
> like Trump. Well, what are you gonna do? What are you gonna do? Chomsky was wrong 
> again. What do you fuckin' know about that?