Counterpoint InterviewOctober 25, 1993
The following is an interview broadcast over WPKN Bridgeport on 10/25/93. WPKN (89.5 FM) is a listener-supported radio station which broadcasts a public affairs show "Counterpoint" at 10PM Monday nights.
| In introducing Noam Chomsky, many of you know he is internationally known for his groundbreaking work in linguistics at M.I.T.; at the same time he is equally well known around the world for his informed critique of the political and economic structure of the United States. He has been referred to as the nation's leading progressive dissident. Dick Fugat (sp?), writing in the Whole Earth review recently said of one of Chomsky's books, said of NC's abilities as a commentator: "NC is one of those rare people whose insights are so penatrating that they can radically alter our perception of the world", and I think that that's a succinct way to pigeonhole Chomsky, which is a difficult thing to do. So, without further ado, we'll get to an interview that I conducted with Noam Chomsky just a few hours ago on the phone from his home in Massachusetts, and the subject of the talk was U.S. Foreign Policy in the Post-Cold War era, so we'll get to that talk right now.
Q: After the collapse of the Soviet Union, many people in this country and around the world looked forward to a revamped U.S. foreign policy, a policy that would put less emphasis on military domination and covert operations against nations of the developing world. I wondered if you would comment on that optimistic attitude that many people took with them after the collapse of the other superpower: How realistic was that?
Noam Chomsky: Oh, I think it was completely unrealistic, and it was based on a complete misunderstanding of what third world intervention has been about. I mean, of course, a completely understandable misunderstanding because for 70 years it has been claimed that third world intervention was somehow a response to a soviet threat, a threat that was claimed immediately after the Bolshevik revolution. But that was, I mean, anyone who looked at the case could see right off that that wasent true, and in fact the whole cold war more or less fell within the pattern of so called North-South conflict. The U.S. intervenes in the third world because a section tries to depart from its service function and moves towards independence. It doesn't matter what policies it's pursuing, people can be communists, or fascists, or liberation theology priests, or democratic capitalists, or whatever: it's independence that is unacceptable, and the documentary record is perfectly plain about this. the internal planning and historical record is plain. The Soviet Union, and in fact all Eastern Europe were a huge part of the original third world. They were Europe's service area. When they moved towards independence that immediately created a conflict: The west invaded at once and the conflict was going on instantly. They happened to be a part of the Third World with a big army, a military force, so it took years to grind them down and return them to their Third World status, which is pretty much what's happening now. Meanwhile, the game goes on elsewhere as before: George Bush celebrated the fall of the Berlin wall by invading Panama a couple of weeks later. It was so standard as to be barely a footnote to history, but it did have a different pretext. You could no longer appeal to the threat of the soviet Union, so we were there to defend ourselves from Hispanic narcotrafficers. And so it continues. There is a change, and the change was discussed back in the mid-'80's, I was writing about it then, and in fact it's explicit in the new Clinton foreign policy. About a month ago, in the last week of September, there was a series of major speeches and documents that came out from the Clinton administration outlining the "Clinton Doctrine," their new foreign policy. And with regard to intervention, the basic principle was stated clearly : we will now intervene where and how we choose with no longer any concern about a Soviet deterrent. That was said very plain, and in fact even the press reported it plain. And that's quite true, with the Soviet deterrent gone, that's just one barrier against intervention removed.
Q: I was certainly going to ask you specifically about the Clinton administration, how they've shaped foreign policy. in the early days of what is really the first presidency to take office in the Post Cold war era. As you mentioned, of the major speeches of Clinton, one stands out, the U.N. Speech.
Chomsky: Right.
Q: He stated and stressed support for "market democracies". What is your view of the value placed by Clinton and the elites of this country on the two components cited by Clinton: market economics and democracy?
Chomsky: The Clinton administration is exactly like its predecessors in that respect. With regard to markets, the U.S., and the west generally has generally had kind of a double edged stand. It would very much like to impose market discipline on the third world, because that will make it much easier to rob them. In a market situation, the rich and powerful win out. On the other hand, no developed country, certainly not the United States would accept market discipline at home. Every developed society, beginning with England in the 18th century, and up to the east Asian tigers today, and crucially including us, has gotten that way by radically violating market principles, and stays that way by doing exactly the same. The Reagan administration, for example, was one of the most protectionist in recent American history, and in fact James Baker, when he was secretary of the Treasury, took pains to announce quite proudly (to the business community, of course, not to the public) that the Reagan administration had been more protectionist than any in the past 50 years. This was quite accurate, and that remains the case. So, markets are great for them, because it makes it easier to rob them, but we'll violate the market principles as we like. and in fact part of the new Clinton program in this rash of speeches and panels and so on that came out in the last week of September coordinated was in fact an international economic policy which announced what they called a New Export strategy that would violate the GATT rules, the international trade agreement. It would violate them more radically than the Reaganites had done and they said so pretty straight. this would include new GATT violating subsidies through the export-import bank for purchase of U.S. goods, of course in violation of GATT as they always have been, and new subsidies for purchases of U.S. goods, and so forth and so on. Of course, they said we're opposed to the policies we're implementing, because they're interfering with the market, but then comes the usual apologia that by violating these principles we'll be in a better position to stop others from violating them. That's the standard "War means Peace" line, straight out of Orwell. As far as democracy's concerned, the Clinton administration is at one with its predecessors in being in favor of a certain form of democracy. And again, they're pretty explicit about it. So, for example one of the former Reagan state department officials who was involved in what they called "democracy enhancing" operations has just written a book and several articles about the Reagan administration policies. And he's an honest man, Thomas Carothers (sp?) is his name, and he takes the sincerity of the impulse for democracy very seriously although his own evidence suffices to show that it was totally cynical. But he does point out, correctly, that Reagan initiatives were negatively correlated with democracy; that is, where U.S. influence was least (like in the southern cone of Latin America) the moves towards democracy were greatest. And the Reagan administration opposed them, but later took credit for them. Where U.S. influence was strongest, like in Central America, the moves towards democracy were, in any meaningful sense, least, in fact negative by and large. And he also points out that though the Reagan administration talked about democracy, they, as he puts it "inevitably sought a kind of top down democracy which would leave intact the traditional centers of power, which as he admits were all strongly anti-democratic. And that's true, and the Clinton Administration is the same. So take their Haiti policy: They're simply carrying out what was the Bush policy without much change. They would like to get the elected president, president Aristide, back in office because it looks kind of embarrassing to have somebody overthrown, a democratically elected leader overthrown by a bunch of brutal military gangsters right under our eyes. They would like to get him back in office, but essentially in a cubicle, powerless. They've already forced him to select a prime minister who, as everyone concedes, is opposed to his populist reforms. The idea is to get what they call "moderate elements of the business community" in charge, people who agree with the U.S. policy of turning Haiti into an export platform, cut out the mass of popular organizations, which to everyone's amazement swept Aristide to power, and then broaden the government, as they're now talking about, to open the door to real right wing thugs in the interest of democracy. So, democracy must mean a spectrum going from the moderate right to the far right, which is a very narrow spectrum in Haiti, with the elected president a figurehead and the popular organizations either decimated and destroyed, or just marginalized: that's democracy, top down democracy which leaves traditional structures in place exactly as Thomas Carrothers pointed out, and has always been true.
Q: The Clinton administration also seems to have shown its cards in handling the recent crisis in Russia, where Boris Yeltsin dissolved his nation's parliament. American economics seem to once again take precedence over the democratic process, in that country in particular.
Chomsky: Well, that's market economics for them. Notice we definitely want Russia as part of the third world to accept market discipline of the kind we would never accept and we would demand that. Boris Yeltsin is a democrat because he went along with that. In fact, Boris Yeltsin is a tough, brutal former communist party boss. He was a boss at sverdlofs (sp?), one of the toughest communist party bureaucrats. He surrounded himself with his own bureaucracy, with his former subordinates. His latest moves, as quite a few Soviet scholars and others have pointed out, have simply reversed the democratic gains that had been made haltingly since 1989, initiated by Gorbachev, including the election of the parliament in 1990, which was just as democratic and free as his election. He just wants to destroy other centers of power and return Russia to a kind of dictatorship. And the West is perfectly in favor of that, as long as he opens up the country for investment and doesn't put up any barriers to export and utilization of Russian resources, and so on. That's the so called market economy.
Q: During the crisis in Russia, our media certainly presented a picture of what was going on as a choice between Boris Yeltsin, a "democrat", as you said, and what they termed "hard liners", those people who wanted to reimpose hard line communism on the people of Russia. How accurate, or inaccurate, in your view, was that analysis, which really was fairly consistent across the spectrum?
Chomsky: It was consistent, and it reflected the judgment of the financial markets, who much preferred Yeltsin for the reasons I mentioned. No, of course, it was total nonsense, I mean there were plenty of, the group around parliament was quite a diverse group. It included fascists, it included old-line communists, but the main people involved were exactly the people who supported Yeltsin. In fact they had backed him all the way through. The liberal leader who had been a western style liberal, Ronsev (sp?), who had been leading the effort to develop a new liberal constitution was with the parliament, for example. Overall, parliament was in favor of the same market reforms, but did not want them to be carried out in such a destructive fashion(reflecting popular concerns, incidentally). so certainly it was a mixture, there was no doubt that there were fascists and nazis and old time communists in the crowd there, just as there are around Yeltsin, in fact he himself an old time party boss as I mentioned. But the main center of parliamentary opposition was unacceptable to Yeltsin because they were and opposition, that is they had a different conception of how policy should be developed, and he wants to run it with an iron hand. The western media called them "hard liners" and "opposed to democracy" and so on because essentially that's the orders. The West will support all sorts. Like take somebody like Suharto, I mean a major mass murderer. Here's somebody who came into office with a major massacre in which half a million or a million people were slaughtered within the a few months. He's been carrying out a near genocidal war in East Timor and compiled one of the world's worst human rights records as Amnesty International has pointed out over and over, and in the West he's described as a moderate. He's a moderate who is "at heart benign", as the London Economist put it. The reason is he's opened up the country to Western exploitation. They liked Sadaam Hussein as long as he was following orders. I mean up until August 1, 1990, neither Britain or the United States had any objection to Saddam Hussein.
Q: When you look at the situation in Russia, certainly the fact that they have tens of thousands of nuclear weapons is important to this country and the rest of the world. What do you see happening there? The fact that Boris Yeltsin has won this round does not really determine what the final end will be in terms of restructuring that nation's domestic road. I mean what do you see happening there?
Chomsky: Well, the free market, what's called "market shock" that is the rapid imposition of market reforms which would devastate any society had a devastating effect on the stagnating and rather weak Soviet economy too. So, there's been a very sharp decline in production and living standards and so on, except for a small sector; there's been a new wealthy sector as happens in the third world. So theres, one Soviet scholor Robert Daniels called it a group of gangsters and mafiosi and speculators which is not very far from true. the population is now very much demoralized, the support for democracy has declined radically, as has Yeltsin's support. But according to polls, there are now very objective polls taken inside Russia, western run and domestically run and very reliable, and they indicate a strong tendency to, that just wants a strong leader, a strong dictatorial leader, and that's what Yeltsin will put himself forward as. A strong man who will somehow save them. How that will turn out is very hard to predict. It's not likely in my view that the population will long accept the sharp decline in the character of life thats a consequence of their return to the third world. But of course, in other countries its been possible to maintain it for a long time. Take a country like, say, Brazil, which is a super-rich country with huge resources and wasn't all that different from Russia say, prior to the Russian Revolution about 70 years ago, but now, and its had every imaginable advantage, its been the recipient of vast amounts of aid and investment, its been under U.S. tutelage almost completely since 1945, and very openly. For about 10% of the population, its great. You know, they live like rich western Europeans, and most of the rest live like people in central Africa. Its one of the biggest economies in the world, it ranks in 80th place, right next to Albania and Paraquay in the U.N. assessments of quality of life. Well, they've managed to hold the population down, often resorting to terror. Its very hard to predict these things.
Q: On another subject, going back to some of the hot-spots around the world, such as Somalia and Bosnia, I wonder how you feel the nation's elites now define U.S. interests during the Post Cold War Era. We have Senator Bob Dole, a Republican who have made statements negating any U.S. interest in places such as Haiti. Many others in mainstream political circles state that no U.S. interests exist in places such as Somalia or Bosnia, a very tragic war that has claimed hundreds, thousands of lives. What do you interpret as the political elites and how they determine their political and economic interests across the globe?
Chomsky: Very much as they have before. The basic question is: what are the interests of the U.S. based corporate and financial system, which increasingly means transnational corporations, international banks and investment firms, and so on, and what are the interests of the global system of which they are a central part. Global state supported capitalist system. That's U.S interest, and beyond that there are just tactical judgments,. Take Haiti. There's no, as far as I can see, substantial difference of opinion between Dole and Clinton on this. The question is how important it is to maintain Haiti as an export platform, for super cheap labor for U.S. run assembly plants, how disruptive would it be if the country just collapsed into total chaos and essentially self destructed. And does the U.S. have an interest in maintaining the pose of being concerned about democracy in the hemisphere. Thats roughly the difference between them. they have slightly different tactical judgments on this. On the Balkans, there is no substantial element of the U.S. elite that wants any direct involvement because it would just be too costly to their own interests. They would like to see the situation simmer down. In fact, you mentioned quite accurately Bosnia is a terrible tragedy: so it is. But compare it to, say, Angola which is as bad or worse a atrocity, with killings as bad or higher, and the destruction apparently greater as well. Compare the attention to Bosnia and Angola: its just radically different. Why should that be? Well, it has nothing to do with human rights. Human rights are being sacrificed and destroyed more in Angola. So Sarajevo's being destroyed and tortured, but probably twice as many people have been killed in Quito. So what's the difference? the difference is that what happens in the Balkens affects the interests of rich white people. It affects Europe's interests and it affects American interests. What happens in Angola doesn't affect those interests very much. Furthermore, in Bosnia you can sort of blame what happens on "bad guys", you know, crazed Serb peasants, and so on. In Angola, you have to blame it on UNITA and Jonas Savimbi, our man, who received a huge amount of U.S. aid and was hailed to the skies as a great freedom fighter, you know, the George Washington, the Thomas Jefferson of the 20th century by the Reaganites. Well, that doesn't look so good, so therefore its better to be concerned about Bosnia than Angola. But as far as U.S. interests are concerned, their interests, I mean not your interests or mine, but elite interests are concerned, they are to preserve their power, wealth, domination, authority, nothing novel about that, nor anything unique to the United States, and judgments are made accordingly. There are tactical differences within elite groups, but I don't see that they go very far.
Q: We're speaking with Noam Chomsky, professor of linguistics at M.I.T., Noam Chomsky being one of the most respected critics of the U.S. economic and political power structures. Professor Chomsky, I wondered if you would address the United Nations and their role now in the Post Cold War era. The U.S. has seemed to use the U.N., certainly starting with the Gulf War, and certainly driving the U.N. to take certain actions, having the military power and certainly the economic power to pressure various states around the world to participate, or to vote for various actions that the U.S. advocated. But certainly there are some drawbacks, were the U.N. may become tainted in the future, if it hasn't already in certain respects. I wonder if you have any hope that the U.N. can really can be an arbiter and a peacemaker around the world, especially as we've seen so much strife and nationalism coming to the fore, that was, for better or worse, held in check by the cold war for the last 40 years?
Chomsky: The U.N. is not an independent organization. It's the agency of the states of the world, and it cannot do anything that they don't initiate and approve of. Power among the states of the world is not evenly distributed, to put it mildly. The United States has always had overwhelming power, and ever since the founding of the United Nations. Now its degree of power has varied over the years. If you look at the U.S. government's attitude towards the U.N., and the attitudes of the media, the intellectual elites, and so on, (which is about the same), they reflect very closely the degree to which to which the U.N. follows U.S. orders. I've reviewed this in close detail, in print, and can show you some of the data if you want, but roughly its like this. At the time the U.N. was founded, U.S. power in the world was simply overwhelming. It was right after the second World War, there had been no historical parallel to U.S. power, and the U.N. was essentially an agency of the U.S., used for U.S. interests, primarily cold war interests, so against the Russians, and against the third world, and so on. At that time, the U.N. was very much loved, because it was doing exactly what we told it to, and the Russians were denounced for vetoing resolutions, and being obstructionist, and so on and so forth. Terrible communists. By the mid 1950's, that was beginning to change. For one thing, decolonization had brought many new members into the United Nations. The non-aligned movement had developed, Europe and Japan were recovering from the world war destruction and were becoming independent entities in their own right, and the U.N. became somewhat more independent of the U.S. for these reasons, and the U.S. became more hostile to it by the mid-late 1960's, the U.S. was very hostile to it. And in fact, in subsequent years, it virtually destroyed the organization. The U.S. is way ahead of anyone else in refusing to pay its dues. It specifically refused, especially under the Reagan Administration, tried to destroy and succeeded virtually in destroying UNESCO and other organs of the U.N. that were primarily devoted to third world interests. If you simply look at the record of vetos since the 1960's, the US is in the lead in security council vetos, Britain, which is a U.S. client, is second, France is third and Russia is fourth, far behind. So that's simply never reported. In the late `40s and `50s, there was much denunciation of the Russian veto, but since the 1970 you don't find anything about the U.S. veto, that's just a blocked story. Similarly, the occasional story will ask why is the world out of step, or something like that, the record in the General Assembly is quite the same, the U.S. was voting alone or almost alone against the entire world so you'd get votes like 150--1 on issues of international law, observing human rights, aggression, disarmament, a whole range of topics. So it was essentially not reported here, or else the U.N. was simply disparaged, by the late 1980's, the situation was shifting back. The Russians and the Eastern Europe were disappearing, Europe was backing off and abdicated, leaving the U.S. to do what it wanted. The third world was in total disarray, I mean there was a real catastrophe in the capitalist world in the 1980's as the traditional colonial domains were completely devastated. And of course, with the disappearance of the Soviet Union, any room for non-alignment had gone, so the U.N. became popular again, because now its doing what the U.S. tells it to again. Can the U.N. be an independent force for peace and justice and so on? In principle, but that depends on what happens internally in the powerful countries, primarily here. If U.S. citizens make a radical change, and they're the only ones who can do it, in the culture, and character, and stand and policies of the U.S., then the U.N. will reflect that.
Transcribed by Steve Hilles
|
