Noam Chomsky: American Power Under Challenge

http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176137/

by chishaku • 10 years ago

119 82 10 years ago

x5n13• 10 years ago

Good unilateralism is a stupid idea. May they all succeed and distribute power far and wide.

littletimmy2• 10 years ago

There is strong evidence to suggest that without the hegemony of the United States, there will be more war in the world.

There will certainly be more war in the Middle East (Iran vs Saudi Arabia, Israel vs Arab World), more war in Eastern Europe (Putin expanding into Crimea), more war in the Indian subcontinent (Pakistan is unstable), and so on. Is that the sort of world you want?

x5n13• 10 years ago

Strong evidence where written by whom? Do I want more war, no I don't. But I also don't support hegemony. Most of Islamic fundamentalism would not be possible with the Saudis and the Saudis would not be possible without the US. Israel would have to make better peace with its neighbors without the backing of the superpower. Pakistan would probably be less fundamentalist had it not been for the 70s CIA plots to fund Jihadism in Afgahnistan. America is the only big player on the board, it can make all sorts of justifications for its political moves. And there is no way of knowing what the world would look like without them. Only rhetoric and theory.

What the world needs to do, what Europe needs to do, is stand up on its two feet and quit being America's puppet. The same goes for pretty much everyone in the world. It is not good to rely on anyone else to represent your people and your economic interests in the world. Trusting other people's leadership is not a smart move, it keeps you incompetent.

edit: replying to the comment below.

So your point is that there is only enough room in the world for one ultra-national anti-internationalist country and the US is it. The end state of the game is when there is no such country in the world. That includes the US.

JonathanMoirth4• 10 years ago

From the number of comments commited so far, I realise that Americans don't want to touch the subject because it hurts. Noam's book should be read along with all the articles written by Paul Graig Roberts. In the end, the average American will realize that she/he complicit to the warmongering attitude of the United States and how it treats the entire world with 1000+ military bases around the world "spreading freedom". If you ask where the word complicit fits in, then look no further to the average American not voting or voting for politicians who have committed crimes against humanity (Clintons, Bush, Kerry etc) or the ones who will eventually commit (Trump) Good night America.

e40• 10 years ago

I'm an American and I agree with this. We have consistently either not voted or voted in people that push the same foreign policy decisions that have gone wrong over and over again.

Sadly, a lot of us thought our current POTUS would change that. Yes, we projected. That's why Sanders is getting so much support, IMO, because he has an actual track record to hang our hopes on.

sremani• 10 years ago

The real problem is not America itself, the forces of Geo-Politics are just too damn BIG and beyond the control of the actors i.e. the Nations and the diplomatic core.

Its absolutely Naive thinking that a President is going to wipe out and start new, Obama was right, no body starts with a Clean Slate. You are dealt a hand, you deal with it. Now, you can define and refine the approach, but the events themselves hardly controllable.

mkaziz• 10 years ago

It's easy to forget sometimes that our leaders are still humans. Bill Clinton was as human as Saddam Hussein - the only difference is that the US has strong institutions to check the powers of its human leaders, so Bill never became a Saddam. People like Donald Trump rise when when those institutions are rattled either internally (the GOP sold itself to hurt Obama) or externally (9/11 rattled the national apparatus and consciousness so much that the Iraq war was greenlighted, despite the tenuous link there).

The key is to focus on the institutions. As long as the institutions remain strong, we may be able to weather the occasional rogue leader.

jbattle• 10 years ago

I'm often struck how long the roman empire was able to continue operating even with terrible emperors at the helm for years or even decades. You almost get the sense that a Augustus or Trajan or Justinian was able to refill some deep well of energy / tradition / momentum in the bureaucracy that was then able to sustain itself through long decades of indifference or mismanagement. The time scales are mind-boggling compared to our typical 4/8 year perspective.

tremon3• 10 years ago

Haven't your institutions been subverted already? Secret courts, asset forfeiture, parallel construction, NSLs?

YeGoblynQueenne5• 10 years ago

So, what institutions are those that enable extrajudicial killings of your own citizens by drone? Or is Obama too, a rogue leader?

Guantanamo? Is there an institution that allows that, or was it a "rogue leader" that enabled that?

Iraq? Afghanistan? Bosnia? I don't even remember what war Regan was involved in and the guy before him and the guy before that guy. It seems like every US president in living memory, has made it a point to either start or continue an invasion of a sovereign nation against international law, reason and morality alike.

(apologies for the harsh tone; please feel free to reciprocate)

YeGoblynQueenne5• 10 years ago

> From the number of comments commited so far, I realise that Americans don't want to touch the subject because it hurts.

Give folks a chance to read through. It's almost 5k words! I for on am going to take my time reading it.

refurb4• 10 years ago

If the alternative is having China or Russia be the world's superpower, I'll take the US, every single time.

JonathanMoirth4• 10 years ago

Ah a, I see, therefore I was right: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article44605.htm http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article44604.htm Thank you for reminding that about that "complicit" thing. You should be proud.

popmystack2• 10 years ago

This statement means absolutely nothing.

JonathanMoirth4• 10 years ago

The problem is that US is no longer a democracy and Europe is bunch of vassal states doing what US tells them with no regard to freedom. You have missed the point! This not about China vs Russia vs US. It's about US being superpower and being oppressive on its citizens and on the world. Period

forinti• 10 years ago

Without advocating for either side, it seems to me that those countries that formed the Iron Curtain came out of the Cold War in better shape than those that orbited the USA (Central America, especifically).

Maybe they were in better shape to begin with. Still, I find it quite amazing that nearly every country in the Eastern Bloc built cars and all but Albania made microcomputers.

On the other hand, Guatemala came out of the Cold War in worse shape than Cuba.

davesque3• 10 years ago

What crimes against humanity have the Clintons and Kerry committed?

hindsightbias• 10 years ago

http://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2000/mar/04/weekend7....

ted12345• 10 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Shifa_pharmaceutical_factor...

okreallywtf• 10 years ago

I think it is important to be introspective as a nation and overall I agree, but I also agree with others that the US has been far less empire-y than other empires have been, even if we've been equally stupid. I think it is time to work really hard to improve standards of living and education all over the world so that power can be distributed more evenly, but so much of the world is in the hands of even worse people that it will be hard to do that. Perhaps if there is not a true climate disaster things can move that way, otherwise I'm afraid it will go much worse and will become truly an every-country-for-itself model.

Jtsummers5• 10 years ago

The US has behaved very differently than past empires, but still has been imperialistic.

Ostensibly, we aren't an "empire" because we don't do things like establish governors over different places we conquer (and we, again ostensibly, don't conquer anyone).

Instead we accomplish the same through the shadows. Encouraging certain dictatorships and coups, discouraging others. Wrecking nations through economic means when they step out of line (or attempt to). This is, in my opinion, much worse than the empires of old. We never control these things we create, which inevitably creates even greater hardship for the people dominated by the dictatorships and economic woes we inspired. And we publicly proclaim a desire for peace and democracy!

If we were a proper empire, expanding our domain, we would have ended up bringing new states into our union. The people that we subjugated gaining the right to vote at some point in the future via statehood (initially coming in as territories or protectorates). But we don't want that. We won't the control and influence without the accountability of their votes. This forces people to vote against us via other means. Often violent. We then condemn their actions, which we inspired, and put down these actors, or attempt to, and claim a victory for peace and democracy.

dbcurtis• 10 years ago

Well, but let's talk about the collapse of Yugoslavia for a while and the subsequent genocide in Bosnia. Here was something in Western Europe's back yard, and they were totally impotent, letting genocide happen right before their eyes. If US citizens are "complicit" in "crimes against humanity", are not European citizens complicit in the genocide that they let happen? Standing by and wringing your hands until the skin rubs off does not stop genocide. It took the US to get involved with a military deployment for any effective action to be taken.

I'm sick to death of being lectured by Europeans who can't be bothered to do anything beyond writing scolding editorials in newspapers.

selimthegrim2• 10 years ago

In before the "Camp Bondsteel is nothing but a guard post for oil pipelines!" conspiracy theorists...

mmagin• 10 years ago

If you are arguing that Western Europeans were powerless to do anything about it, yes, that is an argument in favor of having a sizable military -- but not necessarily an argument in favor of taking action with it.

If you are arguing that they just chose not to do anything, and the US intervention was virtuous -- that does not necessarily show that other US military actions in the past 30 years are similarly valuable.

JonathanMoirth4• 10 years ago

The "word" genocide is a word so much manipulated by you "humane" Americans "saving the world". You missed a number of genocides commited by the Bosnian Muslims and the UCK rebels financed by the CIA. We have all been fed the one sided story of Srebenitsa about the Serbs commiting "genocide" while it was pure execution of the soldiers who had massacred Serbs in the nearby villages in the first place. Then you send your phony Agelina Jolie to shed tears about the Muslims but no one tear for the Serbs. You hypocrites. Or how Germany, the main US lapdog of Europe, instigated the break up of Yugoslavia. As people, we revolted, but as always the European governments are bought up by the warmongering elite living in your country. I personally have felt what toxic fume tastes like thrown to me by police by protesting in the streets. A fried of mine lost his hearing while protesting. Please don't lecture us. Investigage your wars crimes and stop playing "the saviour". This is not Hollywood. It real life. And you are complicit in every way. But I accept that Europeans are complicing by laying down and letting the steam roller called "US foreing politics" roll over us.

uola2• 10 years ago

Well, at least we didn't start the war, not even under false pretenses, we welcomed a lot of refugees, held real trials, didn't torture or assassinate anyone and sent countless of soldiers on peacekeeping missions. And it wasn't like the US one day got involved and saved the day. NATO and the UN (Yes, the air strikes were UN sanctioned) was involved from the beginning of the war.

coldtea3• 10 years ago

Well, but let's talk about the collapse of Yugoslavia for a while and the subsequent genocide in Bosnia. Here was something in Western Europe's back yard, and they were totally impotent, letting genocide happen right before their eyes.

There were totally competent to do whatever they wanted. They just didn't care AND didn't want to step on each others toes, whereas the US didn't mind stepping on their collective toes.

As for the intervention, the US decision makers and military could not care less about stopping the genocide (in the same way they didn't care about "crimes against humanity" elsewhere, or actively helped some in other places when it was convenient, e.g. assisting Suharto, Pinochet, Nicaragua, etc., not to mention their own shit).

It was just a convenient excuse to establish Kosovo as another protectorate in Eastern Europe and give a general signal about their reach in the area.

e12e• 10 years ago

Some of us were protesting the war in Yugoslavia in the streets of our cities.

You seem to imply that the terror in the Balkans was an internal issue, not caused or fuelled by external intervention, or in part armed by western powers. I think the reality is closer to this paragraph from wikipedia[1]:

"The Bosnian government lobbied to have the arms embargo lifted, but that was opposed by the United Kingdom, France and Russia. US proposals to pursue this policy were known as lift and strike. The US congress passed two resolutions calling for the embargo to be lifted but both were vetoed by President Bill Clinton for fear of creating a rift between the US and the aforementioned countries. Nonetheless, the United States used both "black" C-130 transports and back channels, including Islamist groups, to smuggle weapons to Bosnian-Muslim forces, as well as allowed Iranian-supplied arms to transit through Croatia to Bosnia. However, in light of widespread NATO opposition to American (and possibly Turkish) endeavors in coordinating the "black flights of Tuzla", the United Kingdom and Norway expressed disapproval of these measures and their counterproductive effects on NATO enforcement of the arms embargo. Inter Services Intelligence also played an active role during 1992–1995 and secretly supplied the Muslim fighters with arms, ammunition and guided anti tank missiles to give them a fighting chance against the aggression."

A simplistic view that there were evil Serbians and good Bosnians seems a bit naive. I think there are some strong parallels with how the Mujahideen were "good" when fighting Soviet, and are now "evil" when fighting NATO. It's a compelling fiction, but it's not how the real world works. The real world is more like:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DynCorp#Bosnia_incidents

Just moving in with military force and expecting a Hollywood ending is completely unrealistic. How do you stop a genocide in a civil war? By committing genocide against the "offending" party?

And while I opposed the UN/NATO intervention (a landmark bending of the UN charter in favour aggression) your comment also seem to belittle the role of European troops in the peacekeeping effort. I have nothing but respect for those that served, even if I have mostly contempt for the politicians that sent them there.

Lastly, I don't see much point in creating a competition of guilt. As you ask:

are not European citizens complicit in the genocide that they let happen

Most certainly. We're also complicit in the murder of Iraqi , Syrian, Libyan and Afghan children, as we've been unable to stop the wars our government participates in, for some vague geopolitical agenda. But that doesn't change the fact that the US controls the largest war machine the world has seen, and seem more than willing to wield it with impunity across the globe.

It can be hard to fight off apathy and frustration when you pay taxes to a system that keeps killing (mostly innocent) people for what apparently seems like not very good reason, and perhaps even worse, based on very poor intelligence and complete disregard for history (What, the British were surprised at the situation in Afghanistan, after having been at war there for a hundred years or more? No one reads Kipling any more?).

But just because many things are terrible, doesn't mean one should stop to try to do good. But the opposite, in such times, everyone must do what they can. If everyone does something, then something can be done.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosnian_War#Warring_factions

dmerfield• 10 years ago

Are the 1000+ bases part of a strategy to avoid nuclear proliferation? America agrees to provide security to its allies and in return its allies agree not to acquire nuclear weapons? How else are Brazil, South Korea, Indonesia etc... able to protect themselves against nuclear states?

krapp3• 10 years ago

How else are Brazil, South Korea, Indonesia etc... able to protect themselves against nuclear states?

The US is a nuclear state, and the only state to have ever used nuclear weapons in warfare. Who's going to defend the world against the threat of American nuclear aggression? Will the world really be safer when only the US has nuclear weapons?

Reducing nuclear proliferation is a noble endeavor, but the United States should not be the one leading the effort towards it as long as it has no intentions of dismantling its own arsenal.

The world would be safer without nuclear weapons, but as long as the US remains an aggressive, nuclear military power that kidnaps, tortures and murders civilians in other countries with impunity, undermines their governments at will, supports terrorist groups and wages war on fabricated evidence, a nuclear-free world will remain impossible.

ChemicalWarfare• 10 years ago

The fundamental problem with Chomsky's approach is he's one-sidedly applying criminal justice concepts and 'moral compass' of the western society to international affairs.

The side these are applied to is of course 'the evil West'.

Then he turns around and acts as all apologetic when it comes to anti-Western regimes no matter how bloody or atrocious they get - going back to whitewashing of Viet Kong atrocities and Cambodian genocide back in the 70s.

YeGoblynQueenne5• 10 years ago

> whitewashing of Viet Kong atrocities and Cambodian genocide back in the 70s.

He's done nothing of the sort. He was suspicious of the official account of the Kambodian genocide and he had good reason to be suspicious of that account. It turned out it was true, and he admitted it.

> The side these are applied to is of course 'the evil West'.

Duh. The West is evil. You don't realise it because you're in the West and you don't live in fear of hellfire missiles from a clear blue sky or a mechanised army rolling over your village. But the rest of the world knows it very well.

unethical_ban• 10 years ago

Our electoral system makes it exceptionally difficult to break out of the two main parties. And, if you're paying attention to the details of the primaries: at a national level, it is very tough to get a true outsider into a campaign. Sanders got shoved out by the Democrat machine. Trump got in because, whether you like it or not, the Republican primaries are MORE open and democratic!

I also think Trump is talking out of his butt a lot, manipulating the voter bases he needs to succeed. I highly doubt he'll have his supposed way on what you perceive to be war crimes - in fact, many republicans are voting for him on the idea that we shouldn't be in the middle east, and that we should be "making deals".

The American voting public is a lot more complex than armchair foreigners give it credit for, and it's not as easy as saying "well, you can vote, and the elected are crap, therefore every voter has themselves to blame". Perhaps if we were a parliamentary system, or our legislature a proportional representative format, but it's not.

polshaw• 10 years ago

Jtsummers5• 10 years ago

It's a combination of flagging and flame war detection. While I'm participating here, politics really aren't a good fit for this forum. The discussions tend to get too heated to be productive and brings out the worst in people.

stcredzero3• 10 years ago

Chinese leaders understand very well that their country’s maritime trade routes are ringed with hostile powers from Japan through the Malacca Straits and beyond, backed by overwhelming U.S. military force. Accordingly, China is proceeding to expand westward with extensive investments and careful moves toward integration.

Expanding into the vastness of central Asia is a raw deal, historically. It's much too hard to secure borders, so security becomes a huge drain on resources. China would probably do better to increase trade with its neighbors, and lose some of its identity to a regional economic association. If China's trade routes become the mutual interest of her neighbors, being ringed by powerful neighbors goes from a detriment to an advantage.

The U.S. is suffering under the burden of maintaining overwhelming military superiority. The British Empire mortgaged world domination for help in WWI, then defaulted to the US for WWII and gave up many of her global network of naval bases to the US. The 1st half of the 20th century bankrupted the British Empire. Now the latter half of the 20th century and the first part of the 21st will be seen as the same process happening to the U.S.

Noam Chomsky: American Power Under Challenge

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