DN!: EXLUSIVE: Noam Chomsky on Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault

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DN!: EXLUSIVE: Noam Chomsky on Failed States

Fri, 31 Mar 2006 12:22:26 -0500

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March 31, 2006

 

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* EXCLUSIVE...Noam Chomsky on Failed States: The Abuse of Power and

the Assault on Democracy

 

The New York Times calls him " arguably the most important intellectual

alive. "

 

The Boston Globe calls him " America's most useful citizen "

 

He was recently voted the world's number one intellectual in a poll by

Prospect and Foreign Policy magazines.

 

We're talking about Noam Chomsky, professor of linguistics at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology and one of the foremost critics

of

U.S. foreign policy. Professor Chomsky has just released a new book

titled

" Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy. "

 

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Friday, March 31st, 2006

EXCLUSIVE...Noam Chomsky on Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the

Assault on Democracy

 

 

 

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The New York Times calls him " arguably the most important intellectual

alive. "

 

The Boston Globe calls him " America's most useful citizen "

 

He was recently voted the world's number one intellectual in a poll by

Prospect and Foreign Policy magazines.

 

We're talking about Noam Chomsky, professor of linguistics at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology and one of the foremost critics

of U.S. foreign policy. Professor Chomsky has just released a new book

titled " Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on

Democracy. " [includes rush transcript - partial]

 

It examines how the United States is beginning to resemble a failed

state that cannot protect its citizens from violence and has a

government that regards itself as beyond the reach of domestic or

international law.

 

In the book, Professor Noam Chomsky presents a series of solutions to

help rescue the nation from turning into a failed state.

 

They include: Accept the jurisdiction of the International Criminal

Court and the World Court; Sign the Kyoto protocols on global warming;

Let the United Nations take the lead in international crises; Rely on

diplomatic and economic measures rather than military ones in

confronting terror; and Sharply reduce military spending and sharply

increase social spending

 

In his first broadcast interview upon the publication of his book,

Professor Noam Chomsky joins us today from Boston for the hour.

RUSH TRANSCRIPT

 

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AMY GOODMAN: In this first broadcast interview upon publication of his

book, Professor Noam Chomsky joins us today from Boston for the hour.

We welcome you to Democracy Now!, Noam.

 

NOAM CHOMSKY: Glad to be with you again.

 

AMY GOODMAN: It's good to have you with us. Failed States, what do you

mean?

 

NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, over the years there have been a series of

concepts developed to justify the use of force in international

affairs for a long period. It was possible to justify it on the

pretext, which usually turned out to have very little substance, that

the U.S. was defending itself against the communist menace. By the

1980s, that was wearing pretty thin. The Reagan administration

concocted a new category: terrorist states. They declared a war on

terror as soon as they entered office in the early 1980s, 1981. `We

have to defend ourselves from the plague of the modern age, return to

barbarism, the evil scourge of terrorism,' and so on, and particularly

state-directed international terrorism.

 

A few years later -- this is Clinton -- Clinton devised the concept of

rogue states. `It's 1994, we have to defend ourselves from rogue

states.' Then, later on came the failed states, which either threaten

our security, like Iraq, or require our intervention in order to save

them, like Haiti, often devastating them in the process. In each case,

the terms have been pretty hard to sustain, because it's been

difficult to overlook the fact that under any, even the most

conservative characterization of these notions -- let's say U.S. law

-- the United States fits fairly well into the category, as has often

been recognized. By now, for example, the category -- even in the

Clinton years, leading scholars, Samuel Huntington and others,

observed that -- in the major journals, Foreign Affairs -- that in

most of the world, much of the world, the United States is regarded as

the leading rogue state and the greatest threat to their existence.

 

By now, a couple of years later, Bush years, same journals' leading

specialists don't even report international opinion. They just

describe it as a fact that the United States has become a leading

rogue state. Surely, it's a terrorist state under its own definition

of international terrorism, not only carrying out violent terrorist

acts and supporting them, but even radically violating the so-called

" Bush Doctrine, " that a state that harbors terrorists is a terrorist

state. Undoubtedly, the U.S. harbors leading international terrorists,

people described by the F.B.I. and the Justice Department as leading

terrorists, like Orlando Bosch, now Posada Carriles, not to speak of

those who actually implement state terrorism.

 

And I think the same is true of the category " failed states. " The U.S.

increasingly has taken on the characteristics of what we describe as

failed states. In the respects that one mentioned, and also, another

critical respect, namely the -- what is sometimes called a democratic

deficit, that is, a substantial gap between public policy and public

opinion. So those suggestions that you just read off, Amy, those are

actually not mine. Those are pretty conservative suggestions. They are

the opinion of the majority of the American population, in fact, an

overwhelming majority. And to propose those suggestions is to simply

take democracy seriously. It's interesting that on these examples that

you've read and many others, there is an enormous gap between public

policy and public opinion. The proposals, the general attitudes of the

public, which are pretty well studied, are -- both political parties

are, on most of these issues, well to the right of the population.

 

JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, Professor Chomsky, in the early parts of the

book, especially on the issue of the one characteristic of a failed

state, which is its increasing failure to protect its own citizens,

you lay out a pretty comprehensive look at what the, especially in the

Bush years, the war on terrorism has meant in terms of protecting the

American people. And you lay out clearly, especially since the war,

the invasion of Iraq, that terrorist, major terrorist action and

activity around the world has increased substantially. And also, you

talk about the dangers of a possible nuclear -- nuclear weapons being

used against the United States. Could you expand on that a little bit?

 

NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, there has been a very serious threat of nuclear

war. It's not -- unfortunately, it's not much discussed among the

public. But if you look at the literature of strategic analysts and so

on, they're extremely concerned. And they describe particularly the

Bush administration aggressive militarism as carrying an " appreciable

risk of ultimate doom, " to quote one, " apocalypse soon, " to quote

Robert McNamara and many others. And there's good reasons for it, I

mean, which could explain, and they explain. That's been expanded by

the Bush administration consciously, not because they want nuclear

war, but it's just not a high priority. So the rapid expansion of

offensive U.S. military capacity, including the militarization of

space, which is the U.S.'s pursuit alone. The world has been trying

very hard to block it. 95% of the expenditures now are from the U.S.,

and they're expanding.

 

All of these measures bring about a completely predictable reaction on

the part of the likely targets. They don't say, you know, `Thank you.

Here are our throats. Please cut them.' They react in the ways that

they can. For some, it will mean responding with the threat or maybe

use of terror. For others, more powerful ones, it's going to mean

sharply increasing their own offensive military capacity. So Russian

military expenditures have sharply increased in response to Bush

programs. Chinese expansion of offensive military capacity is also

beginning to increase for the same reasons. All of that threatens --

raises the already severe threat of even -- of just accidental nuclear

war. These systems are on computer-controlled alert. And we know that

our own systems have many errors, which are stopped by human

intervention. Their systems are far less secure; the Russian case,

deteriorated. These moves all sharply enhance the threat of nuclear

war. That's serious nuclear war that I'm talking about.

 

There's also the threat of dirty bombs, small nuclear explosions.

Small means not so small, but in comparison with a major attack, which

would pretty much exterminate civilized life. The U.S. intelligence

community regards the threat of a dirty bomb, say in New York, in the

next decade as being probably greater than 50%. And those threats

increase as the threat of terror increases.

 

And Bush administration policies have, again, consciously been carried

out in a way, which they know is likely to increase the threat of

terror. The most obvious example is the Iraq invasion. That was

undertaken with the anticipation that it would be very likely to

increase the threat of terror and also nuclear proliferation. And, in

fact, that's exactly what happened, according to the judgment of the

C.I.A., National Intelligence Council, foreign intelligence agencies,

independent specialists. They all point out that, yes, as anticipated,

it increased the threat of terror. In fact, it did so in ways well

beyond what was anticipated.

 

To mention just one, we commonly read that there were no weapons of

mass destruction found in Iraq. Well, it's not totally accurate. There

were means to develop weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and known to

be in Iraq. They were under guard by U.N. inspectors, who were

dismantling them. When Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and the rest sent in their

troops, they neglected to instruct them to guard these sites. The U.N.

inspectors were expelled, the sites were left unguarded. The

inspectors continued their work by satellite and reported that over a

hundred sites had been looted, in fact, systematically looted, not

just somebody walking in, but careful looting. That included dangerous

biotoxins, means to hide precision equipment to be used to develop

nuclear weapons and missiles, means to develop chemical weapons and so

on. All of this has disappeared. One hates to imagine where it's

disappeared to, but it could end up in New York.

 

AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Noam Chomsky, and we're going to come

back with him. His new book, just published, is called Failed States:

The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy. We'll be back with

Professor Chomsky in a minute.

 

[break]

 

[break]

 

AMY GOODMAN: Our guest today is Professor Noam Chomsky. His new book

is Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy.

Noam Chomsky, longtime professor at Massachusetts Institute of

Technology, world-renowned linguist and political analyst. I'm Amy

Goodman, here with Juan Gonzalez. Juan?

 

JUAN GONZALEZ: Professor Chomsky, in your book you have a fascinating

section, where you talk about the historical basis of the Bush

doctrine of preemptive war, and also its relationship to empire or to

the building of a U.S. empire. And you go back, you mention a

historian, John Lewis Gaddis, who the Bush administration loves,

because he's actually tried to find the historical rationalization for

this use, going back to John Quincy Adams and as Secretary of State in

the invasion by General Andrew Jackson of Florida in the Seminole

Wars, and how this actually is a record of the use of this idea to

continue the expansionist aims of the United States around the world.

 

NOAM CHOMSKY: Yeah, that's a very interesting case, actually. John

Lewis Gaddis is not only the favorite historian of the Reagan

administration, but he's regarded as the dean of Cold War scholarship,

the leading figure in the American Cold War scholarship, a professor

at Yale. And he wrote the one, so far, book-length investigation into

the roots of the Bush Doctrine, which he generally approves, the usual

qualifications about style and so on. He traces it is back, as you

say, to his hero, the great grand strategist, John Quincy Adams, who

wrote a series of famous state papers back in 1818, in which he gave

post facto justification to Andrew Jackson's invasion of Florida. And

it's rather interesting.

 

Gaddis is a good historian. He knows the sources, cites all the right

sources. But he doesn't tell you what they say. So what I did in the

book is just add what they say, what he omitted. Well, what they

describe is a shocking record of atrocities and crimes carried out

against what were called runaways Negros and lawless Indians,

devastated the Seminoles. There was another major Seminole war later,

either exterminated them or drove them into the marshes, completely

unprovoked. There were fabricated pretexts. Gaddis talks about the

threat of England. There was no threat from England. England didn't do

a thing. In fact, even Adams didn't claim that. But it was what Gaddis

calls an -- it established what Gaddis calls the thesis that expansion

is the best guarantee of security. So you want to be secure, just

expand, conquer more. Then you'll be secure.

 

And he says, yes, that goes right through all American administrations

-- he's correct about that -- and is the centerpiece of the Bush

Doctrine. So he says the Bush Doctrine isn't all that new. Expansion

is the key to security. So we just expand and expand, and then we

become more secure. Well, you know, he doesn't mention the obvious

precedents that come to mind, so I'll leave them out, but you can

think of them. And there's some truth to that, except for what he

ignores and, in fact, denies, namely the huge atrocities that are

recorded in the various sources, scholarly sources that he cites,

which also point out that Adams, by giving this justification for

Jackson's war -- he was alone in the administration to do it, but he

managed to convince the President -- he established the doctrine of

executive wars without congressional authorization, in violation of

the Constitution. Adams later recognized that and was sorry for it,

and very sorry, but that established it and, yes, that's been

consistent ever since then: executive wars without congressional

authorization. We know of case after case. It doesn't seem to bother

the so-called originalists who talk about original intent.

 

But that aside, he also -- the scholarship that Gaddis cites but

doesn't quote also points out that Adams established other principles

that are consistent from then until now, namely massive lying to the

public, distortion, evoking hysterical fears, all kinds of deceitful

efforts to mobilize the population in support of atrocities. And yes,

that continues right up to the present, as well. So there's very

interesting historical record. What it shows is almost the opposite of

what Gaddis claims and what the Reagan -- the Bush administration -- I

think I said Reagan -- the Bush administration likes. And it's right

out of the very sources that he refers to, the right sources, the

right scholarship. He simply ignores them. But, yes, the record is

interesting.

 

AMY GOODMAN: Noam Chomsky, I wanted to ask you a question. As many

people know, you're perhaps one of the most cited sources or analysis

in the world. And I thought this was an interesting reference to these

citations. This was earlier this month, program, Tim Russert, Meet the

Press, questioning the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General

Peter Pace.

 

TIM RUSSERT: Mr. Jaafari said that one of his favorite American

writers is Professor Noam Chomsky, someone who has written very, very

strongly against the Iraq war and against most of the Bush

administration foreign policy. Does that concern you?

 

GEN. PETER PACE: I hope he has more than one book on his nightstand.

 

TIM RUSSERT: So it troubles you?

 

GEN. PETER PACE: I would be concerned if the only access to

foreign ideas that the Prime Minister had was that one author. If, in

fact, that's one of many, and he's digesting many different opinions,

that's probably healthy.

 

AMY GOODMAN: That's General Peter Pace, head of the Joint Chiefs of

Staff, being questioned by Tim Russert, talking about Jaafari, who at

this very moment is struggling to be -- again, to hold on to his

position as prime minister of Iraq. Your response, Noam Chomsky?

 

NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, I, frankly, rather doubt that General Pace

recognized my name or knew what he was referring to, but maybe he did.

The quote from Tim Russert, if I recall, was that this was a book that

was highly critical of the Iraq war. Well, that shouldn't surprise a

prime minister of Iraq. After all, according to U.S. polls, the latest

ones I've seen reported, Brookings Institution, 87%, 87% of Iraqis

want a timetable for withdrawal. That's an astonishing figure. If it

really is all Iraqis, as was asserted. That means virtually everyone

in Arab Iraq, the areas where the troops are deployed. I, frankly,

doubt that you could have found figures like that in Vichy, France,

or, you know, Poland under -- when it was a Russian satellite.

 

What it means essentially is that virtually everyone wants a timetable

for withdrawal. So, would it be surprising that a prime minister would

read a book that's critical of the war and says the same thing? It's

interesting that Bush and Blair, who are constantly preaching about

their love of democracy, announce, declare that there will be no

timetable for withdrawal. Well, that part probably reflects the

contempt for democracy that both of them have continually

demonstrated, them and their colleagues, virtually without exception.

 

But there are deeper reasons, and we ought to think about them. If

we're talking about exit strategies from Iraq, we should bear in mind

that for the U.S. to leave Iraq without establishing a subordinate

client state would be a nightmare for Washington. All you have to do

is think of the policies that an independent Iraq would be likely to

pursue, if it was mildly democratic. It would almost surely strengthen

its already developed relations with Shiite Iran right next door. Any

degree of Iraqi autonomy stimulates autonomy pressures across the

border in Saudi Arabia, where there's a substantial Shiite population,

who have been bitterly repressed by the U.S.-backed tyranny but is now

calling for more autonomy. That happens to be where most of Saudi oil

is. So, what you can imagine -- I'm sure Washington planners are

having nightmares about this -- is a potential -- pardon?

 

JUAN GONZALEZ: I would like to ask you, in terms of this whole issue

of democracy, in your book you talk about the democracy deficit.

Obviously, the Bush administration is having all kinds of problems

with their -- even their model of democracy around the world, given

the election results in the Palestinian territories, the situation now

in Iraq, where the President is trying to force out the Prime Minister

of the winning coalition there, in Venezuela, even in Iran. Your

concept of the democracy deficit, and why this administration is able

to hold on in the United States itself?

 

NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, there are two aspects of that. One is, the

democracy deficit internal to the United States, that is, the enormous

and growing gap between public opinion and public policy. Second is

their so-called democracy-promotion mission elsewhere in the world.

The latter is just pure fraud. The only evidence that they're

interested in promoting democracy is that they say so. The evidence

against it is just overwhelming, including the cases you mentioned and

many others. I mean, the very fact that people are even willing to

talk about this shows that we're kind of insisting on being North

Koreans: if the Dear Leader has spoken, that establishes the truth; it

doesn't matter what the facts are. I go into that in some detail in

the book.

 

The democracy deficit at home is another matter. How have -- I mean,

they have an extremely narrow hold on political power. Their policies

are strongly opposed by most of the population. How do they carry this

off? Well, that's been through an intriguing mixture of deceit, lying,

fabrication, public relations. There's actually a pretty good study of

it by two good political scientists, Hacker and Pearson, who just run

through the tactics and how it works. And they have barely managed to

hold on to political power and are attempting to use it to dismantle

the institutional structure that has been built up over many years

with enormous popular support -- the limited benefits system; they're

trying to dismantle Social Security and are actually making progress

on that; to the tax cuts, overwhelmingly for the rich, are creating --

are purposely creating a future situation, first of all, a kind of

fiscal train wreck in the future, but also a situation in which it

will be virtually impossible to carry out the kinds of social policies

that the public overwhelmingly supports.

 

And to manage to carry this off has been an impressive feat of

manipulation, deceit, lying, and so on. No time to talk about it here,

but actually my book gives a pretty good account. I do discuss it in

the book. That's a democratic deficit at home and an extremely serious

one. The problems of nuclear war, environmental disaster, those are

issues of survival, the top issues and the highest priority for anyone

sensible. Third issue is that the U.S. government is enhancing those

threats. And a fourth issue is that the U.S. population is opposed,

but is excluded from the political system. That's a democratic

deficit. It's one we can deal with, too.

 

AMY GOODMAN: Noam Chomsky, we're going to have to leave it there for

now. But part two of our interview will air next week. Professor Noam

Chomsky's new book, just published, is called Failed States: The Abuse

of Power and the Assault on Democracy.

 

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