[Peace-discuss] Chomsky interview

[Morton K. Brussel]

Chomsky on Iran, Iraq, and the Rest of the World

Michael Shank | February 16, 2007

Editor: John Feffer, IRC



www.fpif.org
Noam Chomsky is a noted linguist, author, and foreign policy expert.  
On February 9, Michael Shank interviewed him on the latest  
developments in U.S. policy toward Iran, Iraq, North Korea, and  
Venezuela. Along the way, Chomsky also commented on climate change,  
the World Social Forum, and why international relations are run like  
the mafia.

Shank: With similar nuclear developments in North Korea and Iran, why  
has the United States pursued direct diplomacy with North Korea but  
refuses to do so with Iran?

Chomsky: To say that the United States has pursued diplomacy with  
North Korea is a little bit misleading. It did under the Clinton  
administration, though neither side completely lived up to their  
obligations. Clinton didn’t do what was promised, nor did North  
Korea, but they were making progress. So when Bush came into the  
presidency, North Korea had enough uranium or plutonium for maybe one  
or two bombs, but then very limited missile capacity. During the Bush  
years it’s exploded. The reason is, he immediately canceled the  
diplomacy and he’s pretty much blocked it ever since.

They made a very substantial agreement in September 2005 in which  
North Korea agreed to eliminate its enrichment programs and nuclear  
development completely. In return the United States agreed to  
terminate the threats of attack and to begin moving towards the  
planning for the provision of a light water reactor, which had been  
promised under the framework agreement. But the Bush administration  
instantly undermined it. Right away, they canceled the international  
consortium that was planning for the light water reactor, which was a  
way of saying we’re not going to agree to this agreement. A couple of  
days later they started attacking the financial transactions of  
various banks. It was timed in such a way to make it clear that the  
United States was not going to move towards its commitment to improve  
relations. And of course it never withdrew the threats. So that was  
the end of the September 2005 agreement.

That one is now coming back, just in the last few days. The way it’s  
portrayed in the U.S. media is, as usual with the government’s party  
line, that North Korea is now perhaps a little more amenable to  
accept the September 2005 proposal. So there’s some optimism. If you  
go across the Atlantic, to the Financial Times, to review the same  
events they point out that an embattled Bush administration, it’s  
their phrase, needs some kind of victory, so maybe it’ll be willing  
to move towards diplomacy. It’s a little more accurate I think if you  
look at the background.

But there is some minimal sense of optimism about it. If you look  
back over the record—and North Korea is a horrible place nobody is  
arguing about that—on this issue they’ve been pretty rational. It’s  
been a kind of tit-for-tat history. If the United States is  
accommodating, the North Koreans become accommodating. If the United  
States is hostile, they become hostile. That’s reviewed pretty well  
by Leon Sigal, who’s one of the leading specialists on this, in a  
recent issue of Current History. But that’s been the general picture  
and we’re now at a place where there could be a settlement on North  
Korea.

That’s much less significant for the United States than Iran. The  
Iranian issue I don’t think has much to do with nuclear weapons  
frankly. Nobody is saying Iran should have nuclear weapons –nor  
should anybody else. But the point in the Middle East, as distinct  
from North Korea, is that this is center of the world’s energy  
resources. Originally the British and secondarily the French had  
dominated it, but after the Second World War, it’s been a U.S.  
preserve. That’s been an axiom of U.S. foreign policy, that it must  
control Middle East energy resources. It is not a matter of access as  
people often say. Once the oil is on the seas it goes anywhere. In  
fact if the United States used no Middle East oil, it’d have the same  
policies. If we went on solar energy tomorrow, it’d keep the same  
policies. Just look at the internal record, or the logic of it, the  
issue has always been control. Control is the source of strategic power.

Dick Cheney declared in Kazakhstan or somewhere that control over  
pipeline is a “tool of intimidation and blackmail.” When we have  
control over the pipelines it’s a tool of benevolence. If other  
countries have control over the sources of energy and the  
distribution of energy then it is a tool of intimidation and  
blackmail exactly as Cheney said. And that’s been understood as far  
back as George Kennan and the early post-war days when he pointed out  
that if the United States controls Middle East resources it’ll have  
veto power over its industrial rivals. He was speaking particularly  
of Japan but the point generalizes.

So Iran is a different situation. It’s part of the major energy  
system of the world.

Shank: So when the United States considers a potential invasion you  
think it’s under the premise of gaining control? That is what the  
United States will gain from attacking Iran?

Chomsky: There are several issues in the case of Iran. One is simply  
that it is independent and independence is not tolerated. Sometimes  
it’s called successful defiance in the internal record. Take Cuba. A  
very large majority of the U.S. population is in favor of  
establishing diplomatic relations with Cuba and has been for a long  
time with some fluctuations. And even part of the business world is  
in favor of it too. But the government won’t allow it. It’s  
attributed to the Florida vote but I don’t think that’s much of an  
explanation. I think it has to do with a feature of world affairs  
that is insufficiently appreciated. International affairs is very  
much run like the mafia. The godfather does not accept disobedience,  
even from a small storekeeper who doesn’t pay his protection money.  
You have to have obedience otherwise the idea can spread that you  
don’t have to listen to the orders and it can spread to important  
places.

If you look back at the record, what was the main reason for the U.S.  
attack on Vietnam? Independent development can be a virus that can  
infect others. That’s the way it’s been put, Kissinger in this case,  
referring to Allende in Chile. And with Cuba it’s explicit in the  
internal record. Arthur Schlesinger, presenting the report of the  
Latin American Study Group to incoming President Kennedy, wrote that  
the danger is the spread of the Castro idea of taking matters into  
your own hands, which has a lot of appeal to others in the same  
region that suffer from the same problems. Later internal documents  
charged Cuba with successful defiance of U.S. policies going back 150  
years – to the Monroe Doctrine -- and that can’t be tolerated. So  
there’s kind of a state commitment to ensuring obedience.

Going back to Iran, it’s not only that it has substantial resources  
and that it’s part of the world’s major energy system but it also  
defied the United States. The United States, as we know, overthrew  
the parliamentary government, installed a brutal tyrant, was helping  
him develop nuclear power, in fact the very same programs that are  
now considered a threat were being sponsored by the U.S. government,  
by Cheney, Wolfowitz, Kissinger, and others, in the 1970s, as long as  
the Shah was in power. But then the Iranians overthrew him, and they  
kept U.S. hostages for several hundred days. And the United States  
immediately turned to supporting Saddam Hussein and his war against  
Iran as a way of punishing Iran. The United States is going to  
continue to punish Iran because of its defiance. So that’s a separate  
factor.

And again, the will of the U.S. population and even US business is  
considered mostly irrelevant. Seventy five percent of the population  
here favors improving relations with Iran, instead of threats. But  
this is disregarded. We don’t have polls from the business world, but  
it’s pretty clear that the energy corporations would be quite happy  
to be given authorization to go back into Iran instead of leaving all  
that to their rivals. But the state won’t allow it. And it is setting  
up confrontations right now, very explicitly. Part of the reason is  
strategic, geo-political, economic, but part of the reason is the  
mafia complex. They have to be punished for disobeying us.

Shank: Venezuela has been successfully defiant with Chavez making a  
swing towards socialism. Where are they on our list?

Chomsky: They’re very high. The United States sponsored and supported  
a military coup to overthrow the government. In fact, that’s its  
last, most recent effort in what used to be a conventional resort to  
such measures.

Shank: But why haven’t we turned our sights more toward Venezuela?

Chomsky: Oh they’re there. There’s a constant stream of abuse and  
attack by the government and therefore the media, who are almost  
reflexively against Venezuela. For several reasons. Venezuela is  
independent. It’s diversifying its exports to a limited extent,  
instead of just being dependent on exports to the United States. And  
it’s initiating moves toward Latin American integration and  
independence. It’s what they call a Bolivarian alternative and the  
United States doesn’t like any of that.

This again is defiance of U.S. policies going back to the Monroe  
Doctrine. There’s now a standard interpretation of this trend in  
Latin America, another kind of party line. Latin America is all  
moving to the left, from Venezuela to Argentina with rare exceptions,  
but there’s a good left and a bad left. The good left is Garcia and  
Lula, and then there’s the bad left which is Chavez, Morales, maybe  
Correa. And that’s the split.

In order to maintain that position, it’s necessary to resort to some  
fancy footwork. For example, it’s necessary not to report the fact  
that when Lula was re-elected in October, his foreign trip and one of  
his first acts was to visit Caracas to support Chavez and his  
electoral campaign and to dedicate a joint Venezuelan-Brazilian  
project on the Orinoco River, to talk about new projects and so on.  
It’s necessary not to report the fact that a couple of weeks later in  
Cochabamba, Bolivia, which is the heart of the bad guys, there was a  
meeting of all South American leaders. There had been bad blood  
between Chavez and Garcia, but it was apparently patched up. They  
laid plans for pretty constructive South American integration, but  
that just doesn’t fit the U.S. agenda. So it wasn’t reported.

Shank: How is the political deadlock in Lebanon impacting the U.S.  
government’s decision to potentially go to war with Iran? Is there a  
relationship at all?

Chomsky: There’s a relationship. I presume part of the reason for the  
U.S.-Israel invasion of Lebanon in July—and it is US-Israeli, the  
Lebanese are correct in calling it that—part of the reason I suppose  
was that Hezbollah is considered a deterrent to a potential U.S.- 
Israeli attack on Iran. It had a deterrent capacity, i.e. rockets.  
And the goal I presume was to wipe out the deterrent so as to free up  
the United States and Israel for an eventual attack on Iran. That’s  
at least part of the reason. The official reason given for the  
invasion can’t be taken seriously for a moment. That’s the capture of  
two Israeli soldiers and the killing of a couple others. For decades  
Israel has been capturing, and kidnapping Lebanese and Palestinian  
refugees on the high seas, from Cyprus to Lebanon, killing them in  
Lebanon, bringing them to Israel, holding them as hostages. It’s been  
going on for decades, has anybody called for an invasion of Israel?

Of course Israel doesn’t want any competition in the region. But  
there’s no principled basis for the massive attack on Lebanon, which  
was horrendous. In fact, one of the last acts of the U.S.-Israeli  
invasion, right after the ceasefire was announced before it was  
implemented, was to saturate much of the south with cluster bombs.  
There’s no military purpose for that, the war was over, the ceasefire  
was coming.

UN de-mining groups that are working there say that the scale is  
unprecedented. It’s much worse than any other place they’ve worked:  
Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, anywhere. There are supposed to be about  
one million bomblets left there. A large percentage of them don’t  
explode until you pick them up, a child picks them up, or a farmer  
hits it with a hoe or something. So what it does basically is make  
the south uninhabitable until the mining teams, for which the United  
States and Israel don’t contribute, clean it up. This is arable land.  
It means that farmers can’t go back; it means that it may undermine a  
potential Hezbollah deterrent. They apparently have pretty much  
withdrawn from the south, according to the UN.

You can’t mention Hezbollah in the U.S. media without putting in the  
context of “Iranian-supported Hezbollah.” That’s its name. Its name  
is Iranian-supported Hezbollah. It gets Iranian support. But you can  
mention Israel without saying US-supported Israel. So this is more  
tacit propaganda. The idea that Hezbollah is acting as an agent of  
Iran is very dubious. It’s not accepted by specialists on Iran or  
specialists on Hezbollah. But it’s the party line. Or sometimes you  
can put in Syria, i.e. “Syrian-supported Hezbollah,” but since Syria  
is of less interest now you have to emphasize Iranian support.

Shank: How can the U.S. government think an attack on Iran is  
feasible given troop availability, troop capacity, and public sentiment?

Chomsky: As far as I’m aware, the military in the United States  
thinks it’s crazy. And from whatever leaks we have from intelligence,  
the intelligence community thinks it’s outlandish, but not  
impossible. If you look at people who have really been involved in  
the Pentagon’s strategic planning for years, people like Sam  
Gardiner, they point out that there are things that possibly could be  
done.

I don’t think any of the outside commentators at least as far as I’m  
aware have taken very seriously the idea of bombing nuclear  
facilities. They say if there will be bombing it’ll be carpet  
bombing. So get the nuclear facilities but get the rest of the  
country too, with an exception. By accident of geography, the world’s  
major oil resources are in Shi’ite-dominated areas. Iran’s oil is  
concentrated right near the gulf, which happens to be an Arab area,  
not Persian. Khuzestan is Arab, has been loyal to Iran, fought with  
Iran not Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war. This is a potential source of  
dissension. I would be amazed if there isn’t an attempt going on to  
stir up secessionist elements in Khuzestan. U.S. forces right across  
the border in Iraq, including the surge, are available potentially to  
“defend” an independent Khuzestan against Iran, which is the way it  
would be put, if they can carry it off.

Shank: Do you think that’s what the surge was for?

Chomsky: That’s one possibility. There was a release of a Pentagon  
war-gaming report, in December 2004, with Gardiner leading it. It was  
released and published in the Atlantic Monthly. They couldn’t come up  
with a proposal that didn’t lead to disaster, but one of the things  
they considered was maintaining troop presence in Iraq beyond what’s  
to be used in Iraq for troop replacement and so on, and use them for  
a potential land move in Iran -- presumably Khuzestan where the oil  
is. If you could carry that off, you could just bomb the rest of the  
country to dust.

Again, I would be amazed if there aren’t efforts to sponsor  
secessionist movements elsewhere, among the Azeri population for  
example. It’s a very complex ethnic mix in Iran; much of the  
population isn’t Persian. There are secessionist tendencies anyway  
and almost certainly, without knowing any of the facts, the United  
States is trying to stir them up, to break the country internally if  
possible. The strategy appears to be: try to break the country up  
internally, try to impel the leadership to be as harsh and brutal as  
possible.

That’s the immediate consequence of constant threats. Everyone knows  
that. That’s one of the reasons the reformists, Shirin Ebadi and  
Akbar Ganji and others, are bitterly complaining about the U.S.  
threats, that it’s undermining their efforts to reform and  
democratize Iran. But that’s presumably its purpose. Since it’s an  
obvious consequence you have to assume it’s the purpose. Just like in  
law, anticipated consequences are taken as the evidence for  
intention. And here’s it so obvious you can’t seriously doubt it.

So it could be that one strain of the policy is to stir up  
secessionist movements, particularly in the oil rich regions, the  
Arab regions near the Gulf, also the Azeri regions and others. Second  
is to try to get the leadership to be as brutal and harsh and  
repressive as possible, to stir up internal disorder and maybe  
resistance. And a third is to try to pressure other countries, and  
Europe is the most amenable, to join efforts to strangle Iran  
economically. Europe is kind of dragging its feet but they usually go  
along with the United States.

The efforts to intensify the harshness of the regime show up in many  
ways. For example, the West absolutely adores Ahmadinejad. Any wild  
statement that he comes out with immediately gets circulated in  
headlines and mistranslated. They love him. But anybody who knows  
anything about Iran, presumably the editorial offices, knows that he  
doesn’t have anything to do with foreign policy. Foreign policy is in  
the hands of his superior, the Supreme Leader Khamenei. But they  
don’t report his statements, particularly when his statements are  
pretty conciliatory. For example, they love when Ahmadinejad says  
that Israel shouldn’t exist, but they don’t like it when Khamenei  
right afterwards says that Iran supports the Arab League position on  
Israel-Palestine. As far as I’m aware, it never got reported.  
Actually you could find Khamenei’s more conciliatory positions in the  
Financial Times, but not here. And it’s repeated by Iranian diplomats  
but that’s no good. The Arab League proposal calls for normalization  
of relations with Israel if it accepts the international consensus of  
the two-state settlement which has been blocked by the United States  
and Israel for thirty years. And that’s not a good story, so it’s  
either not mentioned or it’s hidden somewhere.

It’s very hard to predict the Bush administration today because  
they’re deeply irrational. They were irrational to start with but now  
they’re desperate. They have created an unimaginable catastrophe in  
Iraq. This should’ve been one of the easiest military occupations in  
history and they succeeded in turning it into one of the worst  
military disasters in history. They can’t control it and it’s almost  
impossible for them to get out for reasons you can’t discuss in the  
United States because to discuss the reasons why they can’t get out  
would be to concede the reasons why they invaded.

We’re supposed to believe that oil had nothing to do with it, that if  
Iraq were exporting pickles or jelly and the center of world oil  
production were in the South Pacific that the United States would’ve  
liberated them anyway. It has nothing to do with the oil, what a  
crass idea. Anyone with their head screwed on knows that that can’t  
be true. Allowing an independent and sovereign Iraq could be a  
nightmare for the United States. It would mean that it would be  
Shi’ite-dominated, at least if it’s minimally democratic. It would  
continue to improve relations with Iran, just what the United States  
doesn’t want to see. And beyond that, right across the border in  
Saudi Arabia where most of Saudi oil is, there happens to be a large  
Shi’ite population, probably a majority.

Moves toward sovereignty in Iraq stimulate pressures first for human  
rights among the bitterly repressed Shi’ite population but also  
toward some degree of autonomy. You can imagine a kind of a loose  
Shi’ite alliance in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Iran, controlling most of  
the world’s oil and independent of the United States. And much worse,  
although Europe can be intimidated by the United States, China can’t.  
It’s one of the reasons, the main reasons, why China is considered a  
threat. We’re back to the Mafia principle.

China has been there for 3,000 years, has contempt for the  
barbarians, is overcoming a century of domination, and simply moves  
on its own. It does not get intimidated when Uncle Sam shakes his  
fist. That’s scary. In particular, it’s dangerous in the case of the  
Middle East. China is the center of the Asian energy security grid,  
which includes the Central Asian states and Russia. India is also  
hovering around the edge, South Korea is involved, and Iran is an  
associate member of some kind. If the Middle East oil resources  
around the Gulf, which are the main ones in the world, if they link  
up to the Asian grid, the United States is really a second-rate  
power. A lot is at stake in not withdrawing from Iraq.

I’m sure that these issues are discussed in internal planning. It’s  
inconceivable that they can’t think of this. But it’s out of public  
discussion, it’s not in the media, it’s not in the journals, it’s not  
in the Baker-Hamilton report. And I think you can understand the  
reason. To bring up these issues would open the question why the  
United States and Britain invaded. And that question is taboo.

It’s a principle that anything our leaders do is for noble reasons.  
It may be mistaken, it may be ugly, but basically noble. And if you  
bring in normal moderate, conservative, strategic, economic  
objectives you threatening that principle. It’s remarkable the extent  
to which it’s held. So the original pretexts for the invasion were  
weapons of mass destruction and ties to al-Qaida that nobody but  
maybe Wolfowitz or Cheney took seriously. The single question, as  
they kept reiterating in the leadership, was: will Saddam give up his  
programs of weapons of mass destruction? The single question was  
answered a couple of months later, the wrong way. And quickly the  
party line shifted. In November 2003, Bush announced his freedom  
agenda: our real goal is to bring democracy to Iraq, to transform the  
Middle East. That became the party line, instantly.

But it’s a mistake to pick out individuals because it’s close to  
universal, even in scholarship. In fact you can even find scholarly  
articles that begin by giving the evidence that it’s complete farce  
but nevertheless accept it. There was a pretty good study of the  
freedom agenda in Current History by two scholars and they give the  
facts. They point out that the freedom agenda was announced on  
November 2003 after the failure to find weapons of mass destruction,  
but the freedom agenda is real even if there’s no evidence for it.

In fact, if you look at our policies they’re the opposite. Take  
Palestine. There was a free election in Palestine, but it came out  
the wrong way. So instantly, the United States and Israel with Europe  
tagging along, moved to punish the Palestinian people, and punish  
them harshly, because they voted the wrong way in a free election.  
That’s accepted here in the West as perfectly normal. That  
illustrates the deep hatred and contempt for democracy among western  
elites, so deep-seated they can’t even perceive it when it’s in front  
of their eyes. You punish people severely if they vote the wrong way  
in a free election. There’s a pretext for that too, repeated every  
day: Hamas must agree to first recognize Israel, second to end all  
violence, third to accept past agreements. Try to find a mention of  
the fact that the United States and Israel reject all three of those.  
They obviously don’t recognize Palestine, they certainly don’t  
withdraw the use of violence or the threat of it -- in fact they  
insist on it -- and they don’t accept past agreements, including the  
road map.

I suspect one of the reasons why Jimmy Carter’s book has come under  
such fierce attack is because it’s the first time, I think, in the  
mainstream, that one can find the truth about the road map. I have  
never seen anything in the mainstream that discusses the fact that  
Israel instantly rejected the road map with U.S. support. They  
formally accepted it but added 14 reservations that totally  
eviscerated it. It was done instantly. It’s public knowledge, I’ve  
written about it, talked about it, so have others, but I’ve never  
seen it mentioned in the mainstream before. And obviously they don’t  
accept the Arab League proposal or any other serious proposal. In  
fact they’ve been blocking the international consensus on the two- 
state solution for decades. But Hamas has to accept them.

It really makes no sense. Hamas is a political party and political  
parties don’t recognize other countries. And Hamas itself has made it  
very clear, they actually carried out a truce for a year and a half,  
didn’t respond to Israeli attacks, and have called for a long-term  
truce, during which it’d be possible to negotiate a settlement along  
the lines of the international consensus and the Arab League proposal.

All of this is obvious, it’s right on the surface, and that’s just  
one example of the deep hatred of democracy on the part of western  
elites. It’s a striking example but you can add case after case. Yet,  
the president announced the freedom agenda and if the dear leader  
said something, it’s got to be true, kind of North Korean style.  
Therefore there’s a freedom agenda even if there’s a mountain of  
evidence against it, the only evidence for it is in words, even apart  
from the timing.

Shank: In the 2008 presidential election, how will the candidates  
approach Iran? Do you think Iran will be a deciding factor in the  
elections?

Chomsky: What they’re saying so far is not encouraging. I still  
think, despite everything, that the US is very unlikely to attack  
Iran. It could be a huge catastrophe; nobody knows what the  
consequences would be. I imagine that only an administration that’s  
really desperate would resort to that. But if the Democratic  
candidates are on the verge of winning the election, the  
administration is going to be desperate. It still has the problem of  
Iraq: can’t stay in, and can’t get out.

Shank: The Senate Democrats can’t seem to achieve consensus on this  
issue.

Chomsky: I think there’s a reason for it. The reason is just thinking  
through the consequences of allowing an independent, partially  
democratic Iraq. The consequences are nontrivial. We may decide to  
hide our heads in the sand and pretend we can’t think it through  
because we cannot allow the question of why the United States invaded  
to open, but that’s very self-destructive.

Shank: Is there any connection to this conversation and why we cannot  
find the political will and momentum to enact legislation that would  
reduce C02 emissions levels, institute a cap-and-trade system, etc.?

Chomsky: It’s perfectly clear why the United States didn’t sign the  
Kyoto Protocol. Again, there’s overwhelming popular support for  
signing, in fact it’s so strong that a majority of Bush voters in  
2004 thought that he was in favor of the Kyoto Protocol, it’s such an  
obvious thing to support. Popular support for alternative energy has  
been very high for years. But it harms corporate profits. After all,  
that’s the Administration’s constituency.

I remember talking to, 40 years ago, one of the leading people in the  
government who was involved in arms control, pressing for arms  
control measures, détente, and so on. He’s very high up, and we were  
talking about whether arms control could succeed. And only partially  
as a joke he said, “Well it might succeed if the high tech industry  
makes more profit from arms control than it can make from weapons- 
related research and production. If we get to that tipping point  
maybe arms control will work.” He was partially joking but there’s a  
truth that lies behind it.

Shank: How do we move forward on climate change without beggaring the  
South?

Chomsky: Unfortunately, the poor countries, the south, are going to  
suffer the worst according to most projections—and that being so, it  
undermines support in the north for doing much. Look at the ozone  
story. As long as it was the southern hemisphere that was being  
threatened, there was very little talk about it. When it was  
discovered in the north, very quickly actions were taken to do  
something about it. Right now there’s discussion of putting serious  
effort into developing a malaria vaccine, because global warming  
might extend malaria to the rich countries, so something should be  
done about it.

Same thing on health insurance. Here’s an issue where, for the  
general population, it’s been the leading domestic issue, or close to  
it, for years. And there’s a consensus for a national healthcare  
system on the model of other industrial countries, maybe expanding  
Medicare to everyone or something like that. Well, that’s off the  
agenda, nobody can talk about that. The insurance companies don’t  
like it, the financial industry doesn’t like and so on.

Now there’s a change taking place. What’s happening is that  
manufacturing industries are beginning to turn to support for it  
because they’re being undermined by the hopelessly inefficient U.S.  
healthcare system. It’s the worst in the industrial world by far, and  
they have to pay for it. Since it’s employer-compensated, in part,  
their production costs are much higher than those competitors who  
have a national healthcare system. Take GM. If it produces the same  
car in Detroit and in Windsor across the border in Canada, it saves,  
I forget the number, I think over $1000 with the Windsor production  
because there’s a national healthcare system, it’s much more  
efficient, it’s much cheaper, it’s much more effective.

So the manufacturing industry is starting to press for some kind of  
national healthcare. Now it’s beginning to put it on the agenda. It  
doesn’t matter if the population wants it. What 90% of the population  
wants would be kind of irrelevant. But if part of the concentration  
of corporate capital that basically runs the country -- another thing  
we’re not allowed to say but it’s obvious -- if part of that sector  
becomes in favor then the issue moves onto the political agenda.

Shank: So how does the south get its voice heard on the international  
agenda? Is the World Social Forum a place for it?

Chomsky: The World Social Forum is very important but of course that  
can’t be covered in the West. In fact, I remember reading an article,  
I think in the Financial Times, about the two major forums that were  
taking place. One was the World Economic Forum in Davos and a second  
was a forum in Herzeliyah in Israel, a right wing forum in  
Herzeliyah. Those were the two forums. Of course there was also the  
World Social Forum in Nairobi but that’s only tens of thousands of  
people from around the world.

Shank: With the trend towards vilifying the G77 at the UN one wonders  
where the developing world can effectively voice their concerns.

Chomsky: The developing world voice can be amplified enormously by  
support from the wealthy and the privileged, otherwise it’s very  
likely to be marginalized, as in every other issue.

Shank: So it’s up to us.



Foreign Policy In Focus contributor Michael Shank is the policy  
director for the 3D Security Initiative.



World Beat


Published by Foreign Policy In Focus (FPIF), a joint project of the  
International Relations Center (IRC, online at www.irc-online.org)  
and the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS, online at www.ips-dc.org).  
©Creative Commons - some rights reserved.

Recommended citation:
Michael Shank, "Chomsky on Iran, Iraq, and the Rest of the  
World,” (Silver City, NM & Washington, DC: Foreign Policy In Focus,  
February 16, 2007).


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