[Peace-discuss] Chomsky text

Sat Oct 11 22:38:40 CDT 2003

[This is not a transcript of the talk Noam Chomsky gave last Tuesday night
at ISU.  It is an article from the current Boston Review that follows
roughly the same outline as the ISU talk. (A CD of the ISU talk has been
produced by my radio colleague Paul Mueth and is available for a pledge
to WEFT, 359.9338.)  --CGE]

Dominance and Its Dilemmas 

The Bush administration's Imperial Grand Strategy 

The past year has been a momentous one in world affairs. In the normal
rhythm of political life, the pattern was set in September of 2002, a
month marked by several important and closely related events. The most
powerful state in history announced a new National Security Strategy,
asserting that it will maintain global hegemony permanently: any challenge
will be blocked by force, the dimension in which the United States reigns
supreme. At the same time, war drums began to beat to mobilize the
population for an invasion of Iraq, which would be "the first test [of the
doctrine], not the last," the New York Times observed after the invasion,
"the petri dish in which this experiment in pre-emptive policy grew."1 And
the campaign opened for the midterm congressional elections, which would
determine whether the administration would be able to carry forward its
radical international and domestic agenda.

The basic principles of this new "imperial grand strategy," as it was
aptly termed at once by John Ikenberry, trace back to the early days of
World War II and have been reiterated frequently since. Even before the
United States entered the war, planners and analysts concluded that in the
postwar world it would seek "to hold unquestioned power," acting to ensure
the "limitation of any exercise of sovereignty" by states that might
interfere with its global designs. They outlined "an integrated policy to
achieve military and economic supremacy for the United States" in a "Grand
Area" to include at a minimum the Western Hemisphere, the former British
empire, and the Far East, later extended to as much of Eurasia as possible
when it became clear that Germany would be defeated.2

Twenty years later, elder statesman Dean Acheson instructed the American
Society of International Law that no "legal issue" arises when the United
States responds to a challenge to its "power, position, and prestige." He
was referring specifically to Washington's post-Bay of Pigs economic
warfare against Cuba, but he was surely aware of Kennedy's terrorist
campaign aimed at "regime change," a significant factor in bringing the
world close to nuclear war only a few months earlier and a course of
action that was resumed immediately after the Cuban missile crisis was
resolved.

A similar doctrine was invoked by the Reagan administration when it
rejected World Court jurisdiction over its attack against Nicaragua. State
Department Legal Adviser Abraham Sofaer explained that most of the world
cannot "be counted on to share our view" and "often opposes the United
States on important international questions." Accordingly, we must
"reserve to ourselves the power to determine" which matters fall
"essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of the United States"-in
this case, the actions that the Court condemned as the "unlawful use of
force" against Nicaragua; in lay terms, international terrorism.

Their successors have continued to make it clear that the United States
reserves the right to act "unilaterally when necessary," including
"unilateral use of military power" to defend such vital interests as
"ensuring uninhibited access to key markets, energy supplies and strategic
resources."3

Even this small sample illustrates the narrowness of the planning
spectrum. Nevertheless, the alarm bells sounded in September 2002 were
justified. Acheson and Sofaer were describing policy guidelines, within
elite circles. Other cases may be regarded as worldly-wise reiterations of
the maxim of Thucydides that "large nations do what they wish, while small
nations accept what they must." In contrast, Cheney-Rumsfeld-Powell and
their associates are officially declaring an even more extreme policy.
They intend to be heard, and took action at once to put the world on
notice that they mean what they say.

That is a significant difference.

The imperial grand strategy is based on the assumption that the United
States can gain "full spectrum dominance" through military programs that
dwarf those of any potential coalition and that have useful side effects.
One is to socialize the costs and risks of the private economy of the
future, a traditional contribution of military spending and the basis of
much of the "new economy." Another is to contribute to a fiscal train
wreck that will, it is presumed, "create powerful pressures to cut federal
spending, and thus, perhaps, enable the administration to accomplish its
goal of rolling back the New Deal,"4 a description of the Reagan program
that is now being extended to far more ambitious plans.

A few weeks later, the Space Command released plans to go beyond U.S.
"control" of space for military purposes to "ownership," which is to be
permanent, in accord with the Security Strategy. Ownership of space is
"key to our nation's military effectiveness," permitting "instant
engagement anywhere in the world. . . . A viable prompt global strike
capability, whether nuclear or non-nuclear, will allow the United States
to rapidly strike high-payoff, difficult-to-defeat targets from stand-off
ranges and produce the desired effect . . . [and] to provide warfighting
commanders the ability to rapidly deny, delay, deceive, disrupt, destroy,
exploit and neutralize targets in hours/minutes rather than weeks/days
even when U.S. and allied forces have a limited forward presence,"6 thus
reducing the need for overseas bases that regularly arouse local
antagonism.

Similar plans had been outlined in a May 2002 Pentagon planning document,
partially leaked, which called for a strategy of "forward deterrence" in
which missiles launched from space platforms would be able to carry out
almost instant "unwarned attacks." Military analyst William Arkin comments
that "no target on the planet or in space would be immune to American
attack. The U.S. could strike without warning whenever and wherever a
threat was perceived, and it would be protected by missile defenses."
Hypersonic drones would monitor and disrupt targets. Surveillance systems
would provide the ability "to track, record and analyze the movement of
every vehicle in a foreign city."7 The world is to be left at mercy of
U.S. attack at will, without warning or credible pretext. The plans have
no remote historical parallel. Even more fanciful ones are under
development.

These moves reflect the disdain of the administration for international
law and institutions and for arms control measures, dismissed with barely
a word in the National Security Strategy. They illustrate a commitment to
an extremist version of long-standing doctrine.

Since the mid-1940s, Washington has regarded the Persian Gulf as "a
stupendous source of strategic power, and one of the greatest material
prizes in world history"-in Eisenhower's words, the "most strategically
important area of the world" because of its "strategic position and
resources." Control over the region and its resources remains a policy
imperative. After taking over a core oil producer, and presumably
acquiring its first reliable military bases at the heart of the world's
major energy-producing system, Washington will doubtless be happy to
establish an "Arab façade," to borrow the term of the British during their
day in the sun. Formal democracy will be fine, but if history and current
practice are any guide, only if it is of the submissive kind tolerated in
Washington's "backyard."

To fail in this endeavor would take real talent. Even under far less
propitious circumstances, military occupations have commonly been
successful. It would be hard not to improve on a decade of murderous
sanctions that virtually destroyed a society that was, furthermore, in the
hands of a vicious tyrant who ranked with others supported by the current
incumbents in Washington, including Romania's Ceausescu, to mention only
one of an impressive rogues' gallery. Resistance in Iraq would have no
meaningful outside support, unlike in Nazi-occupied Europe or Eastern
Europe under the Russian yoke, to take recent examples of unusually brutal
states that nevertheless assembled an ample array of collaborators and
achieved substantial success within their domains.

The new grand strategy authorizes Washington to carry out "preventive
war." Whatever the justifications for pre-emptive war may sometimes be,
they do not hold for preventive war, particularly as that concept is
interpreted by its current enthusiasts: the use of military force to
eliminate an invented or imagined threat, so that even the term
"preventive" is too charitable. Preventive war is, very simply, the
"supreme crime" condemned at Nuremberg.

That is widely understood. As the United States invaded Iraq, Arthur
Schlesinger wrote that Bush's grand strategy is "alarmingly similar to the
policy that imperial Japan employed at Pearl Harbor, on a date which, as
an earlier American president said it would, lives in infamy." FDR was
right, he added, "but today it is we Americans who live in infamy." It is
no surprise that "the global wave of sympathy that engulfed the United
States after 9/11 has given way to a global wave of hatred of American
arrogance and militarism" and to the belief that Bush is "a greater threat
to peace than Saddam Hussein."8

For the political leadership, mostly recycled from more reactionary
sectors of the Reagan-Bush I administrations, "the global wave of hatred"
is not a particular problem. They want to be feared, not loved. They
understand as well as their establishment critics that their actions
increase the risk of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD)
and terror. But that too is not a major problem. Higher on the scale of
priorities are the goals of establishing global hegemony and implementing
their domestic agenda: dismantling the progressive achievements that have
been won by popular struggle over the past century and institutionalizing
these radical changes so that recovering them will be no easy task.

It is not enough for a hegemonic power to declare an official policy. It
must establish it as a "new norm of international law" by exemplary
action. Distinguished commentators may then explain that law is a
flexible, living instrument, ensuring that the new norm is available as a
guide to action. It is understood that only those with the guns can
establish "norms" and modify international law.

The selected target must meet several conditions. It must be defenseless,
important enough to be worth the trouble, and an imminent threat to our
survival and ulitimate evil nature. Iraq qualified on all counts. The
first two conditions are obvious. For the third, it suffices to repeat the
orations of Bush, Blair, and their colleagues: The dictator "is assembling
the world's most dangerous weapons [in order to] dominate, intimidate or
attack"; and he "has already used them on whole villages leaving thousands
of his own citizens dead, blind or transfigured. . . . If this is not evil
then evil has no meaning."

President Bush's eloquent denunciation surely rings true. And those who
contributed to enhancing evil should certainly not enjoy impunity: among
them, the speaker of these lofty words, his current associates, and those
who joined them in the years when they were supporting the man of ultimate
evil long after he had committed these terrible crimes and won the war
with Iran, with decisive U.S. help. We must continue to support him, the
Bush I administration explained, because of our duty to help U.S.
exporters.

It is impressive to see how easy it is for political leaders, while
recounting the monster's worst crimes, to suppress the crucial words "with
our help, because we don't care about such matters." Support shifted to
denunciation as soon as their Iraqi friend committed his first authentic
crime: disobeying (or perhaps misunderstanding) orders by invading Kuwait.
Punishment was severe-for his subjects. The tyrant escaped unscathed, and
his grip on the tortured population was further strengthened by the
sanctions regime then imposed by his former allies.

Within the United States, a reluctant domestic population had to be
whipped into a proper war fever, another traditional problem. From early
September 2002, grim warnings were issued about the threat Saddam posed to
the United States and about his links to al Qaeda, with broad hints that
he was involved in the 9/11 attacks. Many of the charges "dangled in front
of [the media] failed the laugh test," the editor of the Bulletin of the
Atomic Scientists, Linda Rothstein, commented, "but the more ridiculous
[they were], the more the media strove to make wholehearted swallowing of
them a test of patriotism."

As has often happened in the past, the propaganda assault had at least
short-term effects. Within weeks, a majority of Americans came to regard
Saddam Hussein as an imminent threat to the United States. Soon almost
half believed that Iraq was behind the 9/11 terror. Support for the war
correlated with these beliefs. The propaganda campaign proved just enough
to give the administration a bare majority in the midterm elections, as
voters put aside their immediate concerns and huddled under the umbrella
of power in fear of the demonic enemy.

Despite its narrow successes, the intensive propaganda campaign left the
public unswayed in more fundamental respects. Most continue to prefer U.N.
rather than U.S. leadership in international crises, and by two to one
prefer that the U.N., rather than the United States, should direct
reconstruction in Iraq.11

Perhaps the most spectacular propaganda achievement was the lauding of the
president's "vision" to bring democracy to the Middle East in the midst of
a display of hatred and contempt for democracy for which no precedent
comes to mind. One illustration was the distinction between Old and New
Europe, the former reviled, the latter hailed for its courage. The
criterion was sharp: Old Europe consists of governments that took the same
position as the vast majority of their populations; the heroes of New
Europe followed orders from Crawford, Texas, disregarding an even larger
majority in most cases. Political commentators ranted about disobedient
Old Europe and its psychic maladies while Congress descended to low
comedy.

At the liberal end of the spectrum, Richard Holbrooke stressed "the very
important point" that the population of the eight original members of New
Europe is larger than that of Old Europe, which proves that France and
Germany are "isolated." So it does, if we reject the radical left heresy
that the public might have some role in a democracy. Thomas Friedman urged
that France be removed from permanent membership on the Security Council
because it is "in kindergarten" and "does not play well with others." It
follows that the population of New Europe must still be in nursery school,
judging by polls.13

Anger at Old Europe has much deeper roots than contempt for democracy. The
United States has always regarded European unification with some
ambivalence because Europe might become an independent force in world
affairs. Thus senior diplomat David Bruce was a leading advocate for
European unification in the Kennedy years, urging Washington to "treat a
uniting Europe as an equal partner"-but following America's lead. He saw
"dangers" if Europe "struck off on its own, seeking to play a role
independent of the United States."14 In his "Year of Europe" address 30
years ago, Henry Kissinger advised Europeans to keep to their "regional
responsibilities" within the "overall framework of order" managed by the
United States. Europe must not pursue its own independent course based on
its Franco-German industrial and financial heartland.

In the tripolar world that was taking shape at that time, these concerns
extend to Asia as well. Northeast Asia is now the world's most dynamic
economic region, accounting for almost 30 percent of global GDP (far more
than the United States does) and holding about half of global foreign
exchange reserves. It is a potentially integrated region with advanced
industrial economies and ample resources. All of this raises the threat
that it, too, might flirt with challenging the overall framework of order,
which the United States is to manage permanently, by force if necessary,
Washington has declared.

Violence is a powerful instrument of control, as history demonstrates. But
the dilemmas of dominance are not slight.<

[Noam Chomsky, professor of linguistics at MIT, is author most recently of
Understanding Power, Middle East Illusions, and Hegemony or Survival
(forthcoming).]

Notes

1 David Sanger and Steven Weisman, New York Times, 10 April 2003.

2 Memorandum of the War and Peace Studies Project of the Council on
Foreign Relations, with State Department participation, 19 October 1940.
Laurence Shoup and William Minter, Imperial Brain Trust (

3 Dean Acheson, American Society of International Law Proceedings 13, 14
(1963); Abraham Sofaer, U.S. Department of State Current Policy 769
(December 1985); President Bill Clinton, address to the U.N., 1993;
Secretary of Defense William Cohen, Annual Report, 1999.

4 Thomas Ferguson and Joel Rogers, Right Turn (Hill and Wang, 1986). On
Clinton's contribution see Michael Meeropol, Surrender: How the Clinton
Administration Completed the Reagan Revolution (University of Michigan
Press, 2000; updated 2003).

5 Peter Slevin, Washington Post, 19 September 2002.

6 Air Force Space Command "Strategic Master Plan (SMP) FY04 and Beyond," 5
November 2002.

7 William Arkin, Los Angeles Times, 14 July 2002; Michael Sniffen,
Associated Press, 1 July 2003.

8Los Angeles Times, 23 March 2003.

9 Thomas Friedman, New York Times, 7 June 1991. Alan Cowell, New York
Times, 11 April 1991.

10 Thomas Friedman, New York Times, 4 June 2003.

11 Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA), University of
Maryland, 18-22 April 2003.

12 Dana Milbank, Washington Post, 1 June 2003. Guy Dinmore and James
Harding, Financial Times, 3-4 May 2003.

13 Lee Michael Katz, National Journal, 8 February 2003. Friedman, New York
Times, 9 February 2003.

14 Frank Costigliola, Political Science Quarterly (Spring 1995).

Originally published in the October/November 2003 issue of Boston Review