PGHIMC - Pittsburgh Independent Media Center

INTERVIEW WITH NOAM CHOMSKY
by JONAS Monday, May. 12, 2003 at 6:46 PM

For Pgh INdymedIA: Check out this awesome interview with Chomsky. He discusses the Bush Administration's imperialistic push toward world domination-- and gives us locals some advice in our struggle to move forward-- to stay out of limbo that some may be experiencing.

(Curtesy of Jewish Peace News)

[Linguist and political analyst Noam Chomsky checks in on recent
events, including Iraq, Israel and the probable long-term
effects of the Bush administration on domestic and national
policy. Chomsky shows how the US is formulating and applying a
frightening new doctrine of preventative war. Not that this is
a completely novel idea; Chomsky points to similar statements of
intention coming from the Kennedy administration, for instance.
But the Bush people are pushing it more brazenly than ever
before, and making it a formal statement of national policy.
Chomsky argues that one of the actual 'preventative' intents of
the recent war was to prevent anyone but the US from controlling
Iraqi oil. Chomsky makes the useful distinction between access
to oil (which wouldn't require a war) and control. Control of
oil gives the US leverage over OPEC and the global economy at a
time when its own economy is growing increasingly weak.

Chomsky demonstrates how Bush has stepped up the US's long-term
and concerted effort to undermine any peace process in the
Middle East (while maintaining the startling image of a
visionary proponent of peace). He points to the Bush
administration's recent reversal of its previous (formal)
condemnation of Israel's annexation of and population transfer
to East Jerusalem. Further, Chomsky discusses Bush's recent
statement that: "as the peace process advances, Israel should
terminate new settlement programs." He points out that this is
another reversal, in that the US is apparently no longer
demanding that Israel stop constructing illegal colonies, but
rather postponing this requirement into the indefinite future.

Chomsky ends with an encouraging note for activists;
unprecedented public dissidence failed to stop the war in Iraq,
but the war is just one element in an overarching imperial
program, and we need to continue to fight. After all, it took
centuries to end slavery. "If you give up every time you don't
achieve the immediate gain you want, you're just guaranteeing
that the worst is going to happen. These are long, hard
struggles." JN

The Monthly Review
May, 2003
Imperial Ambition
An Interview with Noam Chomsky by David Barsamian

Noam Chomsky, longtime political activist, writer, and professor
of linguistics at MIT, is the author of numerous books and
articles on the media, U.S. foreign policy, international
affairs and human rights. His latest books are Power and Terror
(Seven Stories Press, 2003) and Middle East Illusions (Rowman &
Littlefield Publishers, 2003).

David Barsamian is founder and director of Alternative Radio
http://www.alternativeradio.org. He and Professor Chomsky have done a
series of interview books. Their latest is Propaganda and the
Public Mind (South End Press, 2001). This interview occurred on
March 22, 2003.

David Barsamian: What are the regional implications of the U.S.
invasion and occupation of Iraq?

Noam Chomsky: I think not only the region but the world in
general perceives it correctly as a kind of an easy test case to
try to establish a norm for use of military force, which was
declared in general terms last September. Last September, the
National Security Strategy of the United States of America was
issued. It presented a somewhat novel and unusually extreme
doctrine on the use of force in the world. And it's hard not to
notice that the drumbeat for war in Iraq coincided with that. It
also coincided with the onset of the congressional campaign. All
these are tied together.

The new doctrine was not one of preemptive war, which arguably
falls within some stretching of the U.N. Charter, but rather of
something that doesn't even begin to have any grounds in
international law, namely, preventive war. The doctrine, you
recall, was that the United States would rule the world by
force, and that if there is any challenge perceived to its
domination, a challenge perceived in the distance, invented,
imagined, whatever, then the U.S. will have the right to destroy
that challenge before it becomes a threat. That's preventive
war, not preemptive war.

And if you want to declare a doctrine, a powerful state has the
capacity to create what is called a new norm. So if India
invades Pakistan to put an end to monstrous atrocities, that's
not a norm. But if the United States bombs Serbia on dubious
grounds, that's a norm. That's what power means.

So if you want to establish a new norm, you have to do
something. And the easiest way to do it is to select a
completely defenseless target, which can be completely
overwhelmed by the most massive military force in human history.
However, in order to do that credibly, at least to your own
population, you have to frighten them. So the defenseless target
has to be turned into an awesome threat to survival which was
responsible for September 11 and is about to attack us again,
and so on and so forth. And that was indeed done. Beginning last
September there was a massive effort which substantially
succeeded in convincing Americans, alone in the world, that
Saddam Hussein is not only a monster but a threat to their
existence. That was the content of the October congressional
resolution and a lot of things since. And it shows in the polls.
And by now about half the population even believes that he was
responsible for September 11.

So all this falls together. You have the doctrine pronounced.
You have a norm established in a very easy case. The population
is driven into a panic and, alone in the world, believes
fantasies of this kind and therefore is willing to support
military force in self-defense. And if you believe this, then it
really is self-defense. So it's kind of like a textbook example
of aggression, with the purpose of extending the scope of
further aggression. Once the easy case is handled, you can move
on to think of harder cases.

Those are the main reasons why so much of the world is
overwhelmingly opposed to the war. It's not just the attack on
Iraq. Many people perceive it correctly as exactly the way it's
intended, as a firm statement that you had better watch out,
we're on the way. That's why the United States is now regarded
as the greatest threat to peace in the world by probably the
vast majority of the population of the world. George Bush has
succeeded within a year in converting the United States to a
country that is greatly feared, disliked, and even hated.

DB: At the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre in late January,
you described Bush and the people around him as "radical
nationalists" engaging in "imperial violence." Is this regime in
Washington substantively different from previous ones?

NC: It is useful to have some historical perspective. So let's
go to the opposite end of the political spectrum, the Kennedy
liberals, about as far as you can get. In 1963, they announced a
doctrine which is not very different from Bush's national
security strategy report. This was in 1963. Dean Acheson, a
respected elder statesman, a senior adviser to the Kennedy
administration, delivered a lecture to the American Society for
International Law in which he instructed them that, no legal
challenge arises in the case of a U.S. response to a challenge
to its position, prestige, or authority. The wording was pretty
much like that. What was he referring to? He was referring to
the U.S. terrorist war and economic warfare against Cuba. And
the timing is quite significant. This was shortly after the
missile crisis, which drove the world to the edge of nuclear
war. And that was largely a result of a major campaign of
international terrorism aimed at what's now called regime
change, a major factor that led to the missiles being sent.
Right afterwards, Kennedy stepped up the international terrorist
campaign, and Acheson informed the Society for International Law
that we had the right of preventive war against a mere challenge
to our position and prestige, not even a threat to our
existence. His wording, in fact, was even more extreme than the
Bush doctrine last September.

On the other hand, to put it in perspective, that was a
proclamation by Dean Acheson. It wasn't an official statement of
policy. And it's obviously not the first or last declaration of
this kind. This one last September is unusual in its brazenness
and in the fact that it is a formal statement of policy, not
just a statement by a high official.

DB: A slogan we have all heard at peace rallies is "No Blood for
Oil." The whole issue of oil is often referred to as the driving
force behind the U.S. attack and occupation of Iraq. How central
is oil to U.S. strategy?

NC: It's undoubtedly central. I don't think any sane person
doubts that. The Gulf region is the main energy-producing region
of the world. It has been since the Second World War. It's
expected to be at least for another generation. It's a huge
source of strategic power, of material wealth. And Iraq is
absolutely central to it. It has the second largest oil
reserves. It's very easily accessible, cheap. To control Iraq is
to be in a very strong position to determine the price and
production levels, not too high, not too low, to probably
undermine OPEC, and to swing your weight around throughout the
world. That's been true since the Second World War. It has
nothing in particular to do with access to the oil; the U.S.
doesn't really intend to access it. But it does have to do with
control. So that's in the background. If Iraq was somewhere in
Central Africa, it wouldn't be chosen for this test case. So
that's certainly there in the background, just as it's there in
less crucial regions, like Central Asia. However, it doesn't
account for the specific timing of the operation, because that's
a constant concern.

DB: A 1945 State Department document on Middle East oil
described it as "...a stupendous source of strategic power, and
one of the greatest material prizes in world history." The U.S.
imports 15 percent of its oil from Venezuela. It also imports
oil from Colombia and Nigeria. All three of those states are
perhaps, from Washington's perspective, somewhat problematic
right now, with Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and serious internal
conflicts, literally civil war, in Colombia and uprisings in
Nigeria threatening oil supplies there. What do you think about
all of those factors?

NC: That's very pertinent, and those are the regions where the
U.S. actually intends to have access. The Middle East it wants
to control. But, at least according to intelligence projections,
the U.S. intends to rely on what they regard as more stable
Atlantic Basin resources-Atlantic Basin means West Africa and
the Western Hemisphere-which are more totally under U.S. control
than the Middle East, which is a difficult region. So the
projections are: control the Middle East, but maintain access to
the Atlantic Basin, including the countries you mentioned. It
does, therefore, follow that lack of conformity, disruption of
one kind or another, in those areas is a significant threat, and
there is very likely to be another episode like Iraq, if this
one works the way the civilian planners at the Pentagon hope. If
it's an easy victory, no fighting, establish a new regime which
you will call democratic, and not too much catastrophe, if it
works like that, they are going to be emboldened on to the next
step.

And the next step, you can think of several possibilities. One
of them, indeed, is the Andean region. The U.S. has military
bases all around it now. There are military forces right in
there. Colombia and Venezuela are both, especially Venezuela,
substantial oil producers, and there is more elsewhere, like
Ecuador, and even Brazil. Yes, that's a possibility, that the
next step in the campaign of preventive wars, once the so-called
norm is established and accepted, would be to go on there.
Another possibility is Iran.

DB: Indeed, Iran. The U.S. was advised by none other than that,
as Bush called him, "man of peace," Sharon, to go after Iran
"the day after" they finish with Iraq. What about Iran? A
designated axis-of-evil state and also a country that has a lot
of oil.

NC: As far as Israel is concerned, Iraq has never been much of
an issue. They consider it a kind of pushover. But Iran is a
different story. Iran is a much more serious military and
economic force. And for years Israel has been pressing the
United States to take on Iran. Iran is too big for Israel to
attack, so they want the big boys to do it.

And it's quite likely that the war may already be under way. A
year ago, over 10 percent of the Israeli air force was reported
to be permanently based in eastern Turkey, that is, in these
huge U.S. military bases in eastern Turkey. And they are
reported to be flying reconnaissance over the Iranian border. In
addition, there are credible reports, that there are efforts,
that the U.S. and Turkey and Israel are attempting to stir up
Azeri nationalist forces in northern Iran to move towards a kind
of a linkage of parts of Iran with Azerbaijan. There is a kind
of an axis of U.S.-Turkish-Israeli power in the region opposed
to Iran that may ultimately, perhaps, lead to the split-up of
Iran and maybe military attack. Although there will be a
military attack only if it's taken for granted that Iran would
be basically defenseless. They're not going to invade anyone who
can fight back.

DB: With U.S. military forces in Afghanistan and in Iraq, as
well as bases in Turkey and Central Asia, Iran is literally
surrounded now. Might not that objective reality on the ground
push forces inside Iran to develop nuclear weapons, if they
don't already have them, in self-defense?

NC: Very likely. The little evidence we have-serious
evidence-indicates that the 1981 Israeli bombing of the Osirak
reactor probably stimulated and may have initiated the Iraqi
nuclear weapons development program. They were engaged in
building a nuclear plant, but what it was nobody knew. It was
investigated on the ground after the bombing by a well-known
nuclear physicist from Harvard-I believe he was head of the
Harvard physics department at the time. He published his
analysis in the leading scientific journal, Nature. According to
him, it was a power plant. He's an expert on this topic. Other
Iraqi sources, exiled, have indicated-we can't prove it-that
nothing much was going on. They may have been toying with the
idea of nuclear weapons, but that the bombing of it did
stimulate the nuclear weapons program. You can't prove this, but
that's what the evidence looks like. And it's very plausible.
That doesn't have to be true. What you described is highly
likely. If you come out and say, "Look, we're going to attack
you," and countries know that they have no means of conventional
defense, you're virtually ordering them to develop weapons of
mass destruction and networks of terror. It's transparent.
That's exactly why the CIA and everyone else predicted it.

DB: What does the Iraq war and occupation mean for the
Palestinians?

NC: Disaster.

DB: No roadmaps to peace?

NC: It's interesting to read it. One of the rules of
journalism-I don't know exactly how it got established, but it's
held with absolute consistency-is that when you mention George
Bush's name in an article, the headline has to speak of his
vision and the article has to talk about his dreams. Maybe there
will be a photograph of him right next to it peering into the
distance. And one of George Bush's dreams and visions is to have
a Palestinian state somewhere, sometime, in some unspecified
place, maybe in the desert. And we are supposed to worship and
praise that as a magnificent vision. It has become a convention
of journalists. There was a lead story in the Wall Street
Journal on March 21 which I think had the words "vision" and
"dream" about ten times.

The vision and the dream is that maybe the United States will
stop undermining totally the long-term efforts of the rest of
the world, virtually without exception, to create some kind of a
viable political settlement. Up until now, the U.S. has been
blocking it, for the last twenty-five to thirty years. The Bush
administration went even further in blocking it, sometimes in
pretty extreme ways, so extreme that they weren't even reported.

For example, last December at the U.N., for the first time the
Bush administration reversed U.S. policy on Jerusalem. Up until
now, the U.S. had, at least in principle, gone along with the
1968 Security Council resolution ordering Israel to revoke its
annexation and occupation and settlement policies in East
Jerusalem. And for the first time, last December, the Bush
administration reversed that. That's one of many cases intended
to undermine the possibility of any meaningful political
settlement. To disguise this, it's called a vision, and the
effort to pursue it is called a U.S. initiative, although in
fact what it really is, as anyone who pays the slightest
attention to the history knows, is a U.S. effort to catch up to
long-standing European and Arab efforts and to try to cut them
down so they don't mean very much. The great praise for Sharon
in the United States, who is now considered a great statesman-he
is after, after all, one of the leading terrorist commanders in
the world for the last fifty years-that's an interesting
phenomenon, and it reveals another substantial achievement of
propaganda, the whole story, and a dangerous one.

In mid-March, Bush made what was called his first significant
pronouncement on the Middle East, on the Arab/Israeli problem.
He gave a speech. Big headlines. First significant statement in
years. If you read it, it was boilerplate, except for one
sentence. That one sentence, if you take a look at it closely,
gives his roadmap: as the peace process advances, Israel should
terminate new settlement programs. What does that mean? That
means until the peace process reaches a point that Bush
endorses, which could be indefinitely far in the future, until
then Israel should continue to build settlements. That's a
change in policy. Up until now, officially at least, the U.S.
has been opposed to expansion of the illegal settlement programs
that make a political settlement impossible. But now Bush is
saying the opposite: Go on and settle. We'll keep paying for it,
until we decide that somehow the peace process has reached an
adequate point. So, yes, it was a significant change towards
more aggression, undermining of international law, and
undermining of the possibilities of peace. That's not the way it
was portrayed. But take a look at the wording.

DB: You've described the level of public protest and resistance
to the Iraq war as "unprecedented"; never before has there been
so much opposition before a war began. Where is that resistance
going?

NC: I don't know any way to predict human affairs. It will go
the way people decide it will go. There are many possibilities.
It should intensify. The tasks are now much greater and more
serious than they were before. On the other hand, it's harder.
It's just psychologically easier to organize to oppose a
military attack than it is to oppose a long-standing program of
imperial ambition, of which this attack is one phase, and of
which others are going to come next. That takes more thought,
more dedication, more long-term engagement. It's the difference
between deciding, okay, I'm in this for the long haul and
saying, okay, I'm going out to a demonstration tomorrow and then
back home. Those are choices, all of them. The same in the civil
rights movement, the women's movement, anything.

DB: Talk about threats to and intimidation of dissidents here
inside the United States, including roundups of immigrants, and
citizens, for that matter.

NC: Vulnerable people like immigrants, definitely have to be
concerned. The current government has claimed rights which go
beyond any precedents. There are some in wartime, but those are
pretty ugly ones, like the 1942 round up of Japanese, or, say,
Wilson during the First World War, which was pretty awful. But
they're now claiming rights that are quite without precedent,
including even the right to arrest citizens, hold them in
detention without access to family or lawyers, and do so
indefinitely, without charges. Immigrants and other vulnerable
people should certainly be cautious. On the other hand, for
people like us, citizens with any privileges, though there are
threats, as compared with what people face in most of the world,
they are so slight that it's hard to get very upset about them.
I've just been back from Turkey a couple of times and Colombia,
and compared with the threats that people face there, we're
living in heaven. And they don't worry about it. They do,
obviously, but they don't let it stop them.

DB: Do you see Europe and East Asia emerging as counterforces to
U.S. power at some point?

NC: They're emerging all right. There is no doubt that Europe
and Asia are economic forces roughly on a par with North
America, and have their own interests. Their interests are not
simply to follow U.S. orders. They're tightly linked. So, for
example, the corporate sector in Europe, the U.S., and most of
Asia are linked in all kinds of ways and have common interests.
On the other hand, there are separate interests, and these are
problems that go way back, especially with Europe.

The U.S. has always had an ambivalent attitude towards Europe.
It wanted Europe to be unified, as a more efficient market for
U.S. corporations, great advantages of scale. On the other hand,
it was always concerned about the threat that Europe might move
off in another direction. A lot of the issues about the
accession of the East European countries to the European Union
have a lot to do with that. The U.S. is strongly in favor of it,
because it's hoping that these countries will be more
susceptible to U.S. influence and will be able to undermine the
core of Europe, which is France and Germany, the big industrial
countries, which might move in a somewhat more independent
direction.

Also in the background is a long-standing U.S. hatred of the
European social market system, which provides decent wages and
working conditions and benefits. It's very different from the
U.S. system. And they don't want that model to exist, because
it's a dangerous one. People get funny ideas. And it's very
explicitly stated that with the accession of Eastern European
countries, with low wages and repression of labor and so on, it
may help undermine the social and worker standards in Western
Europe, and that would be a big benefit for the U.S.

DB: With the U.S. economy deteriorating and with more layoffs,
how is the Bush administration going to maintain what some are
calling a garrison state with permanent war and occupation of
numerous countries? How are they going to pull it off?

NC: They have to pull it off for about another six years. By
that time they hope they will have institutionalized highly
reactionary programs within the United States. They will have
left the economy in a very serious state, with huge deficits,
pretty much the way they did in the 1980s. And then it will be
somebody else's problem to patch it together. Meanwhile, they
will have, they hope, undermined social programs, diminished
democracy, which of course they hate, by transferring decisions
out of the public arena into private hands. and they will have
done it in a way that will be very hard to disentangle. So they
will have left a legacy internally that will be painful and
hard. But only for the majority of the population. The people
they're concerned about are going to be making out like bandits.
Very much like the Reagan years. It's the same people, after
all.

And internationally, they hope that they will have
institutionalized the doctrines of imperial domination through
force and preventive war as a choice. The U.S. now in military
spending probably exceeds the rest of the world combined, and
it's much more advanced and moving out into extremely dangerous
directions, like space. They assume, I suppose, that no matter
what happens to the American economy, that will give such
overwhelming force that people will just have to do what they
say.

DB: What do you say to the peace activists who labored for so
long trying to prevent the invasion of Iraq and who are now
feeling a sense of anger and sadness?

NC: That they should be realistic. Abolitionism. How long did
the struggle go on before they made any progress? If you give up
every time you don't achieve the immediate gain you want, you're
just guaranteeing that the worst is going to happen. These are
long, hard struggles. And, in fact, what happened in the last
couple of months should be seen quite positively. The basis was
created for expansion and development of a peace and justice
movement that will move on to much harder tasks. And that's the
way these things go. It isn't easy.

www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/

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