<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><font face="verdana"><h3><span style="font-size:14pt;">Noam Chomsky Questions Humanitarian Intervention At Williams</span></h3><b style="font-size: small; ">By Andy McKeever</b><br><font color="#808080" style="font-size: small; "><i>iBerkshires Staff</i></font><br><font class="Apple-style-span" size="2">10:33PM / Saturday, September 17, 2011</font><br><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><br></span><br><table align="right" border="0" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="1" width="200" style="font-size: small; ">
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<span style="font-size: 13px;"><strong>Noam Chomsky is one of the most controversial figures in American politics because of his criticism of U.S. foreign policy.</strong></span><br>
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WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — Controversial linguist and political pundit Noam
Chomsky told Williams College students to question if humanitarian
intervention even exists.</font><br>
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The Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor weaved through the
history, as he is known to do in his books criticizing U.S. Foreign
Policy, of humanitarian intervention to make the point that those
actions are not simple and come with a huge amount of politics while
simple things that could truly save lives are overlooked.</font><br>
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Chomsky started with the 1850s with John Stuart Mill posing the idea
that England should intervene not only when its safety and interest are
in danger but because it is dedicated to peace. Philosophers added to
the growing thought - painting a "saintly glow" of modernized countries -
by saying "barbarians" needed protection from the civilized power.</font><br>
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While the ideas may have begun then, it wasn't until after the Cold War
when the idea began to pick up momentum. When the Soviet Union fell,
NATO - against handshake agreements with Mikhail Gorbachev - expanded to
the entire world.</font><br>
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"The condition was that NATO does not expand one inch to the east. That
meant east of Germany. NATO immediately moved east of Germany and then
further east," Chomsky said. "These were only gentleman's agreement.. He
was stupid enough to believe western diplomats."</font><br>
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NATO continued to expand and became a "global, U.S. run intervention"
organization and with that the U.S. also shifted their foreign policy,
Chomsky said. Former President George H. Bush continued to keep a large
military presence to ensure global safety by keeping an eye on the
Middle East. </font><br>
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"It wasn't because of the Russians, it was because of the technological
sophistication of third world powers," Chomsky said. "There was an
ideological change too, a large, sudden interest in the concept of
humanitarian intervention."</font><br>
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In 1999 the "crown" of humanitarian intervention came with the bombing
of Serbia. In what sometimes considered NATO's first humanitarian
intervention, the goal was the end ethnic cleansing of Kosovo Albanians.
When most of the world condemned the move humanitarian intervention
took another turn, he said.</font><br>
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"At that point a new concept was invented. That was called the
responsibility to protect," Chomsky said but added there were two
versions.</font><br>
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The version that was adopted by the rest of the world, including the
countries that condemned the Kosovo action, did not include a
stipulation that the western world took. When western cultures point to
the responsibility to protect and say it was supported by the rest of
the world, that is not entirely correct, Chomsky contends.</font><br>
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"It provides for NATO and NATO alone to intervene freely anywhere
without authorization from the Security Council," Chomsky said. "There
is only one region that can do this... The one regional group that can
do that is NATO and the region of their authority is the world."</font><br>
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While Kosovo is often considered the first humanitarian intervention,
Chomsky contends that there are many other world actions that should
also be considered but had fallen of the radar.</font><br>
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Chomsky cited a scholarly study on humanitarian intervention written by
Sean Murphy, who found three examples between the two world wars. Those
examples are Italy's invasion of Ethiopia led by Benito Mussolini,
Japan's invasion of Manchuria and Adolf Hitler's invasion of parts of
Czechoslovakia. All three invading countries had "convinced" themselves
that they were sacrificing themselves for the betterment of the other
country and the rhetoric followed. </font><br>
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"They all had the properties of humanitarian intervention," Chomsky said. "They meant it."</font><br>
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Also left out of consideration, Chomsky contends, is India's
intervention of East Pakistan to end Pakistani atrocities and Vietnam's
invasion of Cambodia that ended Pol Pot's reign.</font><br>
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"Neither of these figures in the literature of humanitarian intervention
because of two reasons. One reason is, wrong agency. They did it. We
didn't do it. The second and more powerful reason is the U.S. was
bitterly opposed to both of these interventions," Chomsky said. "There
are cases where intervention has had benevolent effects."</font><br>
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But with all the political jargon and political forces that have changed
humanitarian intervention throughout history, six million infants die
every year in countries that lack the ability to perform simple medical
procedures that would cost very little to the wealthiest nations,
Chomsky said. With on a "tiny percentage of the GDP" from the largest
nations the most elementary form of humanitarian intervention could save
six million, he said.</font><br>
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Chomsky appeared at Williams as the first part of a two-part dialogue
about the dilemmas in humanitarian intervention. Fiona Terry will be the
next speaker on Tuesday, Oct. 18, at 8 p.m., also at the '62 Center. </font></font></body></html>