What's
Happening?
By Noam Chomsky
and Atilio Boron
15 June, 2003
Atilio A. Boron: Looking
at the recent US policies in Iraq, What do you think was the real goal
behind this war?
Noam Chomsky: Well, we can
be quite confident on one thing. The reasons we are given can't possibly
be the reasons. And we know that, because they are internally contradictory.
So one day, Bush and Powell would claim that "the single question,"
as they put it, is whether Iraq would disarm and the next day they would
say it doesn´t matter whether Iraq disarms because they will go
on and invade anyway. And the next day would be that if Saddam and his
group get out then the problem will be solved; and then, the next day
for example, at the Azores, at the summit when they made an ultimatum
to the United Nations, they said that even if Saddam and his group get
out they would go on and invade anyway. And they went on like that.
When people give you contradictory reasons every time they speak, all
they are saying is: "don't believe a word I say" . So we can
dismiss the official reasons.
And the actual reasons I
think are not very obscure. First of all, there´s a long standing
interest. That does not account for the timing but it does account for
the interest. And that is that Iraq has the second large oil reserves
in the World and controlling Iraqi oil and even ending up probably with
military bases in Iraq will place the United States in an extremely
strong position to dominate the global energy system even more than
it does today. That's a very powerful lever of world control, quite
apart from the profits that comes from it. And the US probably doesn't
intend to access the oil of Iraq; it intends to use primarily safer
Atlantic basin resources for itself (Western Hemisphere, West Africa).
But to control the oil has been a leading principle of US foreign policies
since the Second World War, and Iraq is particularly significant in
this respect. So that's a long standing interest. On the other hand
it doesn't explain the timing.
If you want to look at the
timing, I think that it became quite clear that the massive propaganda
for the war began in September of last year, September 2002. Before
that there was a condemnation of Iraq but no effort to whip people into
war fever. So we asked what else happened then September 2002. Well,
two important things happened. One was the opening of the mid term congressional
campaign, and the Bush´s campaign manager, Karl Rove, was very
clearly explaining what should be obvious to anybody anyway: that they
could not possible enter the campaign with a focus on social and economic
issues. The reason is that they are carrying out policies which are
quite harmful to the general population and favorable to an extremely
narrow sector of corporate power and the corrupt sectors as well, and
they can't face the electorate on that. As he pointed out, if we can
make the primary issue national security then we will be able win because
people will -you know- flock to power if they feel frightened. And that
is second nature to these people; that's the way they have ran the country
-right through the 1980´s- with very unpopular domestic programs
but accustomed to press into the panic button -Nicaragua, Grenada, crime,
one thing after another. And Rove also pointed out that something similar
would be needed for the presidential election.
And that's true and what
they want do is not just to stay in office but they would like to institutionalize
the very regressive program put forward domestically, a program which
will basically unravel whatever is left of New Deal social democratic
systems and turn the country almost completely into a passive undemocratic
society, controlled totally by high concentration of capitals. This
means slashing public medical assistance, social security; probably
schools; and increasing state power. These people are not conservatives,
they brought the country into a federal deficit with the largest increase
in federal spending in 20 years, that is since their last term in office-
and huge tax cuts for the rich, and they want to institutionalize these
programs. They are seeking a "fiscal train wreck" that will
make it impossible to fund the programs. They know they cannot face
an election declaring that they want to destroy very popular programs,
but they can throw up their hands in despair and say, "What can
we do, there's no money," after they have made sure there would
be no money by huge tax cuts for the rich and sharp increase in spending
for military (including high tech industry) and other programs beneficial
to corporate power and the wealthy. So that's the second, that's the
domestic factor and in fact, there was a spectacular propaganda achievement
on that. After the government-media propaganda campaign began in September
they succeeded in convincing a majority of the population very quickly
that Iraq was an imminent threat to the security of the United States,
and even that Iraq was responsible for September 11th. I mean, there
is not a grain of truth in all that, but by now majority of the population
believes those things and those attitudes are correlated strongly with
the commitment to war, which is understandable. If people think they
are threatened with destruction by an enemy who´s already attacked
them it is {delete "all"} likely that they'll go to war. In
effect, if you look at the press today they describe soldiers as saying:
"we are here for revenge - you know- because they blew up the World
Trade Center, they will attack us", or something. Well, these beliefs
are completely unique to the United States.
I mean: no one in the World
believes anything like this. In Kuwait and Iran people hate Saddam Hussein,
but they are not afraid of him, they know they're the weakest country
in the region. In any event the government-media propaganda campaign
worked brilliantly as the population was frightened and to a large extent
it was willing to support the war despite the fact that there was a
lot of opposition. And that's the second factor.
And there was a third factor
which was even more important. In September the government announced
the national security strategy. That is not completely without precedent,
but it is quite new as a formulation of state policy. What is stated
is that we are tearing the entire system of the international law to
shreds, the end of UN charter, and that we are going to carry out an
aggressive war -which we will call {delete "it"} "preventive"-
and at any time we choose and that we will rule the world by force.
In addition, we will assure that there is never any challenge to our
domination because we are so overwhelmingly powerful in military force
that we will simply crush any potential challenge.
Well, you know, that caused
shudders around the world, including the foreign policy elite at home
which was appalled by this. I mean it is not that things like that haven't
been heard in the past. Of course they had, but it had never been formulated
as an official national policy . I suspect you will have to go back
to Hitler to find an analogy to that. Now, when you propose new norms
in the international behavior and new policies you have to illustrate
it, you have to get people to understand that you mean it. Also you
have to have what a Harvard historian called an "exemplary war",
a war of example, which shows that we really mean what we say.
And we have to choose the
right target. The target has to have several properties. First it has
to be completely defenseless. No one would attack anybody who might
be able to defend themselves, that would be not prudent. Iraq meets
that perfectly : it is the weakest country in the region, it's been
devastated by sanctions and almost completely disarmed and the US knows
every inch of the Iraq territory by satellite surveillance and overflights,
and more recently U-2 flights. So, yes, Irak it is extremely weak and
satisfied the first condition.
And secondly, it has to be
important. So there will be no point invading Burundi, you know, for
example, it has to be a country worthwhile controlling, owning, and
Iraq has that property too. It´s, as mentioned, the second largest
oil producer in the world. So it's perfect example and a perfect case
for this exemplary war, intending to put the world on notice saying
that this is what we´re going do, any time we choose. We have
the power. We have declared that {delete "there"} our goal
is domination by force and that no challenge will be accepted. We've
showed you what we are intending to do and be ready for the next. We
will proceed on to the next operation. Those various conditions fold
together and they make a war a very reasonable choice in taking to a
test some principles.
Atilio A. Boron: According
to your analysis then the question is: who is next? Because you don´t
believe that they are going to stop in Iraq, wouldn't you?
Noam Chomsky: No, they already
made this clear. For one thing they need something for the next presidential
election. And that will continue. Through their first twelve years office
this continued year after year; and it will continue until they manage
to institutionalize the domestic policies to which they are committed
and to ensure the global system they want. So what's the next choice?
Well the next choice has to meet similar conditions. It has to be valuable
enough to attack, and it has to be weak enough to be defenseless. And
there are choices, Syria is a possible choice. There Israel will be
delighted to participate. Israel alone is a small country, but it´s
a offshore US military base, so it has an enormous military force, apart
from having hundreds of nuclear weapons (and probably a kind of chemical
and biological weapons), its air and armed forces are larger and more
advanced that those in any Nato power, and the US is behind it overwhelmingly.
So Syria is a possibility.
Iran is a more difficult possibility because it´s a harder country
to dominate and control. Yet there is a reason to believe that for a
year or two now, efforts have been under way to try dismantle Iran,
to break it into internally warring groups. These US dismantling efforts
have been based partly in Eastern Turkey, the US bases in Eastern Turkey
apparently flying surveillance over Iranian borders. That´s another
possibility. There is a third possibility that can not be considered
lightly, and is the Andean region. The Andean region has a lot of resources
and it´s out of control. There are US military bases surrounding
the region, and US forces are there already. And the control of Latin-America
is of course extremely important. With the developments in Venezuela,
Colombia, Ecuador, Brazil, Bolivia it´s clear that US domination
is challenged and that can´t be accepted, in particular in a region
so close and so crucial because of its resource base. So that is another
possibility.
Atilio A. Boron: This is
really frightening. Now the question is, do you think that all this
situation in Iraq, the invasion and the aftermath would affect in a
non-reparable manner the political stability of the region? What are
likely to be the side effects of this invasion in countries with a very
fragile political constitution like the South Arabia or even Syria,
Iran or even the Kurds? What may be the future of the Palestine question,
which still is of paramount importance in the area?
Noam Chomsky: Well, what's
going to happen in the Arab world is extremely hard to predict. I mean:
it´s a disorganized and chaotic world dominated by highly authoritarian
and brutal regimes. We know what the attitudes are. I mean, the US is
very concerned with attitudes in the region so they have pretty good
studies made by US Middle East scholars on the attitudes in the region,
and the results are pretty dramatic. One of the more recent ones, a
University of Maryland study covering from Morocco to the Gulf to Lebanon,
the entire area, shows that a very large majority of the population
wants religious leaders to have a greater role in government. It also
shows that approximately another 95% believe that the sole US interest
in the region is taking its oil, strengthening Israel and humiliating
the Arabs. That means near unanimity. If there is any popular voice
allowed in the region, any moves toward democracy, it could become sort
of like Algeria ten years ago, not necessarily radical Islamists but
a government with some stronger Islamist currents. This is the last
thing the US wants, so chances of any kind of democratic opening very
likely will be immediately opposed..
The voices of secular democracy
will also be opposed. If they speak up freely, about violation of UN
resolutions for example, they will bring up the case of Israel, which
has a much worse record than Iraq in this respect but is protected by
the United States. And they will have concerns for independence that
the US will not favor, so it will continue to support oppressive and
undemocratic regimes, as in the past, and as in Latin America for many
years, unless it can be assured that they will keep closely to Washington's
priorities.
On the other hand these chaotic
popular movements are so difficult to predict. I mean, even the participants
can't or don't know what they want. What we know is this tremendous
hatred, antagonisms and fear -probably more than ever before- On the
Israel-Palestine issue that is, of course, the core issue in the Arab
world, the Bush administration has been very careful not to take any
position, though there are actions, which undermine the prospects for
peaceful resolution: funding more Israeli settlement programs, for example.
They don't say anything significant.
The most they say is that we have a "vision," or something
equally meaningless. Meanwhile the actions have been taken, and the
US had continued to support the more extremist positions within Israel.
So what the press describes as George Bush's most significant recent
statements, then later reiterated by Colin Powell, was the statement
that said that settlement in the occupied territories can continue until
the United State determines that the conditions for peace have been
established, and you can move forward on this mythical "Road Map."
The statement that was hailed
as "significant" in fact amounts to a shift in policy, to
a more extremist form. Up until now the official position has been that
there should be no more settlements. Of course, that's hypocritical
of the United States because meanwhile it continues to provide the military,
and economic, and diplomatic support for more settlements, but the official
position has been opposed to it. Now the official position is in favor
of it, until such time as the US determines unilaterally that the "peace
process" has made enough progress, which means, basically indefinitely.
Also it wasn't very well noticed that last December, at the UN General
Assembly, the Bush administration shifted the US policy crucially on
an important issue. Up until that time, until last December, the US
has always officially endorsed the Security Council resolutions of 1968
opposing Israel's annexation of Jerusalem, and ordering Israel to withdraw
the moves to take over East Jerusalem and to expand Jerusalem, which
is now a huge area.
The US had always officially
opposed that, although, again hypocritically. As of last December the
Bush administration came out in support of it. This was a pretty sharp
change in policy, and it is also significant that it was not reported
in the United States. But it took place. So this is the only concrete
act, and continues like that. The US has in the past vetoed the European
efforts to place international monitors in the territories, which would
be a way of reducing political, violent confrontations. The US undermined
the December 2001 meetings in Geneva to implement the Geneva conventions
and as almost all the other contracting parties appeared the US refused
and that, essentially, blocked it. Bush then declared Sharon to be "a
man of peace" and supported his repressive activities, as was pretty
obvious. So the indications are that the US will move towards a very
harsh policy in the territories, granting the Palestinians at most some
kind of meaningless formal status as a "state". Of course,
this would dress up as democracy, and peace, and freedom, and so on.
They have a huge public relations operation and it would be presented
in that way, but I don't think the reality looks very promising.
Atilio A. Boron: I have two
more question to go. One is about the future of the United Nations system.
An article by Henry Kissinger recently reproduced in Argentina argued
that multilateralism is over and that the world has to come to terms
with the absolute superiority of the American armed forces and that
we've better go alone with that because the old system is dead. What
is your reflection on the international arena?
Noam Chomsky: Well you know,
it's a little bit like financial and industrial strategy. It is a more
brazen formulation of policies which have always been carried out. The
unilateralism with regard to the United Nations, as Henry Kissinger
knows perfectly well, goes far back. Was there any UN authorization
for the US invasion of South Vietnam 40 years ago? In fact, the issue
could not even come up at the United Nations. The UN and all the countries
were in overwhelming opposition to the US operations in Vietnam, but
the issue could literally never arise and it was never discussed because
everyone understood that if the issues were discussed the UN would simply
be dismantled.
When the World Court condemned
the United States for its attack on Nicaragua, the official response
of the Reagan administration, which is the same people now in office,
the official response when they rejected World Court jurisdiction was
that other nations do not agree with us and therefore we will reserve
to ourselves the right to determine what falls within the domestic jurisdiction
of the United States. I am quoting it. In this case, that was an attack
on Nicaragua. You can hardly can have a more extreme unilateralism than
that. And American elites accepted that, and so it was applauded and,
in fact, quickly forgotten. In your next trip to the US take a poll
in the Political Science Department where you are visiting and you will
find people who never heard of it. It's as wiped out as this. As is
the fact that the US had to veto the Security Council's resolutions
supporting the Court's decision and calling on all states to observe
international law. Well, you know that is unilateralism in its extreme,
and it goes back before that.
Right after the missile crisis,
which practically brought the world to a terminal nuclear war, a major
crisis, the Kennedy administration resumed its terrorist activities
against Cuba and its economic warfare which was the background for the
crisis and Dean Acheson, a respected statesman and Kennedy advisor at
the liberal end of the spectrum, gave an important address to the American
Society of International Law in which he essentially stated the Bush
Doctrine of September 2002. What he said is that no "legal issue"
arises in the case of a US response to a challenge to its "power,
position, and prestige." Can't be more extreme than that. The differences
with September 2002 is that instead of being operative policy now it
became official policy. That is the difference. The UN has been irrelevant
to the extent that the US refused to allow it to function. So, since
the mid 1960's when the UN had become somewhat more independent, because
of decolonization and the recovery of other countries of the world from
the ravages of the war, since 1965 the US is far in the lead in vetoing
Security Council resolutions on a wide range of issues -Britain is second-
and no one else is even close. All that renders the UN ineffective.
It means, you do as we say or else we will kick you in the pants. Now
it is more brazen.
The only correct statement
that Kissinger is making is that now we will not conceal the policies
that we are carrying out.
Atilio A. Boron: OK. Here
is my last question: What has been the impact of the Iraqi War on the
freedoms and public liberties of the American public? We have heard
horrifies stories about librarians been forced to indicate the names
of people checking out books regarded as suspicious or subversives.
What has been the real impact of the war in the domestic politics of
the US?
Noam Chomsky: Well, those
things are taking place but I don't think they are specifically connected
with the Iraq War. The Bush administration, let me repeat it again,
they are not conservatives; they are statist reactionaries. They want
a very powerful state, a huge state in fact, a violent state and one
that enforces obedience on the population. There is a kind of quasi-fascist
spirit there, in the background, and they have been attempting to undermine
civil rights in many ways. That's one of their long term objectives,
and they have to do it quickly because in the US there is a strong tradition
of protection of civil rights. But the kind of surveillance you are
talking about of libraries and so on is a step towards it. They have
also claimed the right to place a person -- even an American citizen
-- in detention without charge, without access to lawyers and family,
and to hold them there indefinitely, and that in fact has been upheld
by the Courts, which is pretty shocking. But they have a new proposal,
sometimes called Patriot Two, a 80 page document inside the Justice
department. Someone leaked it and it reached the press. There have been
some outraged articles by law professors about it. This is only planned
so far, but they would like to implement as secretly as they can. These
plans would permit the Attorney General to remove citizenship from any
individual whom the attorney general believes is acting in a way harmful
to the US interests. I mean, this is going beyond anything contemplated
in any democratic society. One law professor at New York University
has written that this administration evidently will attempt to take
away any civil rights that it can from citizens and I think it´s
basically correct. That fits in with their reactionary statist policies
which have a domestic aspect in the economy and social life but also
in political life.
Atilio A. Boron: Professor
Chomsky, it was a great pleasure to have you expressing your words for
the Argentine audience. I want to thank you very much for this interview
and I hope that we can be in touch again in the future. Have a good
day!