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Noam Chomsky, whom the New
York Times
has called “arguably the most important intellectual alive,” was voted
the leading living public intellectual in The 2005 Global Intellectuals
Poll conducted by the British magazine Prospect. Chomsky, Institute
Professor Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is a
world-renowned linguist, writer, and political analyst. He is the
author of many books on US foreign policy and international affairs,
the most recent of which is “Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the
Assault on Democracy.” This interview was
conducted by phone from Beirut on May 2, 2006.
Khatchig Mouradian- In an article
entitled
“Domestic Constituencies,” you say: “It is always enlightening to seek
out what is omitted in propaganda campaigns.”[1] Can you expand on what
is omitted in the US propaganda campaign on Lebanon and Syria after the
assassination of former Prime Minister Rafic Hariri in February 2005?
Noam Chomsky- The only thing being
discussed is
that there was an assassination and Syria was involved in it. How come
Syria is in Lebanon in the first place? Why did the US welcome Syria in
Lebanon in 1976? Why did George Bush I support Syrian presence and
domination and influence in Lebanon in 1991 as part of his campaign
against Iraq? Why did the US support the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in
1982? Why did the US support Israel’s 22 year occupation of parts of
Lebanon, an occupation in violation of Security Council resolutions?
All these topics, and many others, are missing from the discussion.
In fact, the general principle is that anything that
places US
actions in a questionable light is omitted, with very rare exceptions.
So if you blame something on an enemy, then you can discuss it, and
Syria, right now is the official enemy. That doesn’t necessarily mean
that the charges against Syria are wrong. It just means that everything
else is omitted.
K.M. - When speaking about regimes
in the Middle
East, you often quote the expressions “Arab façade” and “local
cop on
the beat.” What is the role of Lebanon in the area?
N.C. - The phrase “Arab
façade” comes from the
British Foreign secretary Lord Curzon after WWI. At the time, when the
British were planning the organization of the Middle East, their idea
was that there should be Arab façades which are apparent
governments,
behind which they would rule[2]. The _expression “local cop on the
beat” comes from the Nixon administration. It was their conception of
how the Middle East should be run. There should be a peripheral region
of gendarme states (Turkey, Iran under the Shah, Israel joined after
the ‘67 war, Pakistan was there for a while). These states were to be
the local cops on the beat while the US would be the police
headquarters.
The place of Lebanon was critical. It was primarily
of concern
because of the transition of oil and also because it was a financial
center. The US was concerned in keeping it under control to ensure that
the entire Middle East energy system remains controlled. Incidentally,
for the same reasons, the US has regarded Greece as part of the Near
East. Greece was actually in the Near East section of the State
Department until 1974, because its main role in US planning was to be
part of the system by which the Middle East oil gets transported to the
west. The same is true with Italy. However, Lebanon had a much more
crucial role in this respect, because it is right in the center of the
Middle East. The aforementioned, as well as the support for Israel’s
action- Israel being a local cop on the beat- were the motivating
factors behind Eisenhower’s dispatch of military forces to Lebanon in
1958.
K.M. - And what does the US
administration expect from Lebanon today?
N.C. - The role of Lebanon is to be
an obedient,
passive state which regains its status as a financial center but
accommodates to the major US policies, which do include control of the
energy resources.
K.M. – What about Lebanon’s role
within the context of pressuring Syria?
N.C. - The question of Syria is a
separate one.
Yes, Lebanon is expected to play a role for putting pressure on Syria.
However, the problem for the US is that Syria is not a subordinate
state. There are a lot of serious criticisms you can make about Syria,
but the internal problems of that country are of no special concern to
the US, which supports much more brutal governments. The problem with
Syria is that it simply does not subordinate itself to the US program
in the Middle East. Syria and Iran are the two countries in the region
that have not accepted US economic arrangements. And the policies
against such countries are similar.
Take the bombing of Serbia in 1999, for example. Why
was Serbia an
enemy? Certainly it wasn’t because of the atrocities it was carrying
out. We know that the bombing was carried out with the expectation that
it would lead to a sharp escalation in atrocities. We know the answer
from the highest level of the Clinton administration, and the answer
was that Serbia was not adopting the proper social and economic
reforms. In fact, it was the one corner of Europe which was still
rejecting the socioeconomic arrangements that the US wanted to dictate
for the world. The problem with Syria and Iran is more or less the
same. Why is the US planning or threatening war against Iran? Is it
because Iran has been aggressive? On the contrary, Iran was the target
of US backed aggression. Is Iran threatening anybody? No. Is Iran more
brutal and less democratic than the rest of the Arab world? It’s a
joke. The problem is that Iran is not subordinating.
K.M. - In this context, why is
Europe increasingly being supportive of US policies in the Middle East?
N.C. - If you look back over the
past decades, a
major concern of US policy –and it’s very clear in internal planning—is
that Europe might strike an independent course. During the cold war
period, US was afraid Europe might follow what they called “a third
way,” and many mechanisms were used to inhibit any intention on the
part of Europe to follow an independent course. That goes right back to
the final days of World War II and its immediate aftermath, when US and
Britain intervened, in some cases quite violently, to suppress the
anti-fascist resistance and restore tradition structures, including
fascist-Nazi collaborators. Germany was reconstructed pretty much the
same way.
The unwillingness to accept a unified neutral
Germany in the 1950s
was predicated on the same thinking. We don’t know if that would have
been possible, but Stalin did offer a unified Germany which would have
democratic elections which he was sure to lose, but on condition that
it would not be part of a hostile military alliance. However, the US
was not willing to tolerate a unified Germany. The establishment of
NATO is in large part an effort to ensure European discipline and the
current attempts to expand NATO are further planning of the same sort.
European elites have been, by and large, pretty
satisfied with
this arrangement. They’re not very different from the dominant forces
in the US. They are somewhat different, but closely interrelated. There
are mutual investments and business relations. The elite sectors of
Europe don’t particularly object to the US policies. You can see this
very strikingly in the case of Iran. The US has sought to isolate and
strangle Iran for years. It had embargos and sanctions, and it has
repeatedly threatened Europe to eliminate investments in Iran. The main
European corporations have pretty much agreed to that. China, on the
other hand, did not. China can’t be intimidated, that’s why the US
government is frightened of China. But Europe backs off and pretty much
follows US will. The same is true on the Israel-Palestine front.
The US strongly supports Israeli takeover of the
valuable parts of
the occupied territories and pretty much the elimination of the
possibility of any viable Palestinian state. On paper, the Europeans
disagree with that and they do join the international consensus on a
two-state settlement, but they don’t do anything about it. They’re not
willing to stand against the US. When the US government decided to
punish the Palestinians for electing the wrong party in the last
elections, Europe went along, not totally, but pretty much. By and
large, European elites do not see it in their interest to confront the
US. They’d rather integrate with it. The problem the US is having with
China, and Asia more generally, is that they don’t automatically accept
US orders.
K.M. - They don’t fall in line…
N.C. - Yes, they won’t fall in
line, and,
especially in the case of China, they just won’t be intimidated. That’s
why, if you read the latest National Security Strategy, China is
identified as the major long range threat to the US. This is not
because China is going to invade or attack anyone. In fact, of all the
major nuclear powers, they’re the one that is the least aggressive, but
they simple refuse to be intimidated, not just in their policies
regarding the Middle East, but also in Latin America. While the US is
trying to isolate and undermine Venezuela, China proceeds to invest in
and to import from Venezuela without regard to what the US says.
The international order is in a way rather like the
mafia. The godfather has to ensure that there is discipline.
Europe quietly pursues its own economic interests as
long as they
don’t fall in direct conflict with the US. Even in the case of Iran,
although major European corporations did pull out of country, and
Europe did back down on its bargain with Tehran on uranium enrichment,
nevertheless, Europe does maintain economic relations with Iran. For
years, the US has also tried to prevent Europe from investing in Cuba
and Europe pretty much kept away, but not entirely. The US has a mixed
attitude towards European investment and resource extraction in Latin
America. For one thing, the US and European corporate systems are very
much interlinked. The US relies on European support in many parts of
the world. For Europe to invest in Latin America and import its
resources is by no means as threatening to US domination as when China
does.
K.M. - In one of his recent
speeches, Hasan
Nasrallah, the secretary-general of Hizbullah, spoke of solidarity with
the resistance movement in the occupied territories and with “our
brother Chavez.” Let us speak about the common link that brings people
on different sides of the Atlantic, and of different ideological
background, together.
N.C. - The common thing that brings
them together
is that they do not subordinate themselves to US power. Hizbullah knows
perfectly well that they’re not going to get help from Venezuela, but
the fact that they are both following a course independently of US
power and, in fact, in defiance to US orders, links them together.
The US has been trying, unsuccessfully, to topple
the Cuban
government for more than 45 years now and it remains. The rise of
Chavez to power was very frightening to US elites. He has an enormous
popular support. The level of support for the elected government in
Venezuela has risen very sharply and it is now at the highest in Latin
America. And Chavez is following an independent course. He’s doing a
lot of things that the US doesn’t like a bit. For example, Argentina,
which was driven to total ruin by following IMF orders, has slowly been
reconstructing itself by rejecting IMF rules, and has wanted to pay off
its debt to rid itself of the IMF. Chavez helped them, and he bought a
substantial part of the Argentine debt. To rid oneself from the IMF
means to rid oneself from one of the two modalities of control employed
by the US: violence and economic force. Yesterday, Bolivia nationalized
its gas reserves; the US is only (only??) opposed to that. And Bolivia
was able to do that partly because of Venezuelan support.
If countries move in a direction of independent
nationalism, that
is regarded as unacceptable. Why did the US want to destroy Nasser? Was
it because he was more violent and tyrannical than other leaders? The
problem was that it was an independent secular nationalism. That just
can’t be accepted.
K.M. - You talked about the Chavez
government’s
popularity at home. The polls show that the same is not true about the
Bush Administration and its policies, both at home and abroad. Despite
the discontent on a wide range of issues, little has changed in terms
of US policy. How do you explain that?
N.C. - In a book that just came
out, I talk about
this at some length. The US has a growing and by now enormous
democratic deficit at home; there’s an enormous divide between public
opinion and public policy on a whole range of issues, from the health
system to Iraq. The Bush administration has a very narrow grip on
power- remember in the last election Bush got about 31 percent of the
electorate, Kerry got 29 percent. A few changes in the votes in Ohio
and it could have gone the other way- they’re using that narrow grip
desperately to try to institutionalize very radical and far reaching
changes in the US.
They can get away with it because there’s no
opposition party. If
there were an opposition party, it would have totally overwhelmed the
Bush administration. Every week, the Bush administration does something
to shoot itself in the foot, whether it’s Hurricane Katrina, corruption
scandals, or other issues, but the formal opposition party can’t make
any gains. One of the most interesting things about US politics in the
past years is that while support for the Bush administration, which was
always very thin, has declined very sharply because of one catastrophe
after the other, support for the Democrats hasn’t increased. It is
increasing only as a reaction to the lack of support to the
Republicans. This is because the Democrats are not presenting an
alternative.
K.M. - You mentioned your recent
book, Failed
States. In the Afterword of that book, you say, “No one familiar with
history should be surprised that the growing democratic deficit at home
is accompanied by declaration of messianic missions to bring democracy
to a suffering world.” How much are these “messianic missions” helping
the Bush Administration?
N.C. - They’re helping the
administration among
the educated classes. I discuss this in some length in the book. The
messianic missions came along right after the failure to discover
weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The invasion was only on the
ground that Iraq was just about to attack the US with nuclear weapons.
Well, after a few months, they discovered that there were no weapons of
mass destruction, so they had to find a new pretext for invading and
that became the messianic mission. The intellectual classes, in Europe
as well, and even in the Arab world, picked this up: the leader said it
therefore we have to believe it.
Among the general population, however, I don’t think
these
messianic missions have much influence, except indirectly. This whole
rhetoric is a weak effort, and in fact by now it’s pretty desperate.
K.M. - My final question is about
Turkey, one of
the local cops on the beat. I was quite disturbed by the recent
developments in the Southeast of the country. You have been to Turkey a
number of times, and you have also visited the Kurdish regions. What is
your take on the current status of freedoms in Turkey?
N.C. - As you most probably know,
the leading
Human Rights Watch investigator in Turkey, who is an extremely fine
person, Jonathan Sugden, was just expelled from the country because he
was investigating human rights violations in the Southeastern zone.
In 2002, the situation in Turkey and especially the
Kurdish zone
was pretty bad, but in the next few years it improved and now it’s
regressing again. Let me just give you a personal example. I was there
in 2002 to participate in the trial of a publisher who was being tried
for publishing some remarks of mine about Turkey. Now he is again on
trial for a different book.
There are many reasons for the regression. The
military is
exerting a much heavier hand; the reforms that were slowly taking place
are reduced. My own feeling is that one of the reasons for these
developments is the hostility of Europe towards allowing Turkey into
the EU. There’s a pretty strong element of racism in that, which Turks
are not unaware of.
[1] Noam Chomsky, “Domestic Constituencies,” Z
Magazine, 11:5, p. 18.
[2] Lord Curzon once said that Britain wanted an
“Arab facade
ruled and administered under British guidance and controlled by a
native Mohammedan and, as far as possible, by an Arab staff."
Khatchig Mouradian is a Lebanese-Armenian writer,
translator,
and journalist. He is an editor of the daily newspaper Aztag, published
in Beirut. He can be contacted at khatchigm@gmail.com.
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