A Brief History of U.S. Imperialism with Noam Chomsky

good day and welcome to letters and politics i'm mitch jeserich today i'm very happy to welcome to the radio program noam chomsky noam chomsky is a world-renowned linguist and political activist he is the institute professor emeritus in the department of linguistics and philosophy at the massachusetts institute of technology and laureate professor of linguistics and chair in the program environment and social justice at the university of arizona he is the author of many books many translated into different languages he is has a new book out along with vijay prashad it's really a conversation between noam chomsky and vijay prashad called the withdrawal iraq libya afghanistan and the fragility of u.s power professor chomsky thank you so much for taking this time to join me today pleased to be with you i suspect we're going to be talking a lot about u.s imperialism and sometimes i'm guilty of using terms without really giving explanation to those terms so can i just begin by asking how do you define imperialism it's uh the power that one country exerts over others can take many forms and take the form of military occupation uh overthrow of governments uh strangling countries by brutal sanctions uh all sorts of means is it different from empire well empire usually is used to mean specific form of control uh literal domination the way say the british ruled india that's an empire but there are many looser forms of imperialism sometimes called soft power which can be pretty brutal i mean the united states for example doesn't occupy cuba but for 60 years it's been strangling and destroying the country uh no notice that there's anything wrong so you may have seen a couple of days ago a rather good article i think it was in the washington post about cuba's remarkable success in uh vaccination uh well beyond the united states or other countries and it describes it accurately and it describes the difficulties for example they can't get syringes because uh other countries are afraid to supply them because of the third party character of u.s sanctions and researcher has to go to europe to try to see if he can find some simple components that they can use to save people's lives and this is just described as if yes that's the weather today actually it's 60 years of brutal vicious torture now even to the extent of preventing them from they're carrying out a very successful program of uh staving the population for madrid disease but okay that's the way the wind's blowing today has america always been an imperial power well the united states has an unusual history the united states is about the only country i can think of that's been at war virtually every year since its founding almost always aggressive or a major reason maybe the main reason for the revolution was that uh king george iii of england had him imposed a royal proclamation which prevented the column the colonists from invading what was called the territory of the indian nations and the colonists didn't want that they wanted to expand and take over the lands and exterminate the population it included the founder of the country george washington great land speculator didn't want to be restricted by these constraints well the british were thrown out the constraints were lifted the colonists immediately invaded the indian nations and carried out what they themselves described as a program of extermination and expulsion don't have to run through the details but it ran through the 19th century meanwhile the u.s picked up half of mexico including where i live in a war that uh president grant described as one of the most wicked wars in history he greatly regretted his participation in it as a junior officer uh that brings us to the end of the century after that comes intervention violence uh overthrows of governments burden worldwide at an astonishing level no no country comes close so call it what name you want i think imperialism is a good name has it american imperialism always been on i guess a linear project projection or has it transformed over time to transform the united states can no longer do what it did routinely 50 or 60 years ago just send the marines you know you can't can't do that anymore you have to do it in more roundabout ways because the world has changed so for example in the 1980s reagan tried to duplicate what john f kennedy had done in vietnam 20 years earlier early 60s too much public opposition he went through the same steps as kennedy fake white paper or charges of the soviet intervention so on couldn't do it there was popular uprising so significant that had to back off and turn to massive state terror was horrible enough but nothing like what happened in indochina and today it would be hard to do even that that's why the united states is more and more reverting to indirect forms of uh destruction and subversion not direct intervention even the kind that overthrew the government of chile democratic government in 1973 on what we should call the first 911 much worse than the second 9 11. that would be hard to do today but there are other forms of subversion and undermining of governments sanctions punishments uh and remember that the united states has such overwhelming power that alone in the world when it imposes sanctions everyone has to accept them so when trump pulled out of the joint agreement on iran violating security council orders if anyone cares he then moved to punish iran for the united states having withdrawn from the agreement and posed very harsh sanctions europe opposed them they didn't they didn't like them they uh said they'd find a way around them but they ended up obeying them they don't want to offend the godfather the world actually runs very much like the mafia uh the godfather gives the orders and fathers disobey they're in trouble in the case of europe uh they didn't want to suffer the possibility of literally being thrown out of the international financial system which is pretty much run out of new york and washington so the the same with cuba other you look at the votes in the united nations it's a hundred and eighty four to two opposed to the sanctions the the two are of course the united states and israel which has to vote with the united states uh so you know essentially universal opposition makes no difference it barely even gets reported here okay so we're alone in the world in seeking to torture cuba but who cares it's our right to do it because we're the godfather is u.s imperialism unique in world history by no means the united states is simply picking up from its predecessor in world domination britain britain had a horrendous record of centuries of terror violence and torture you look over british wealth and power ask where it came from well go back to the elizabethan period came from piracy sir francis drake the great heroes were basically pirates they robbed spanish ships to steal gold and metals and so on great contribution to british wealth then they turned to the industrial you go back to the brit when the british took over india had about 25 of world gdp when the british got through with it it was about three percent they de-industrialized india stole its advanced it's much more advanced to technology uh ruined india turned it into a miserable uh suffering country uh later written turned to the most grotesque form of slavery in world history caribbean sugar tobacco and so on then moved on to cooperation with the us in uh instituting an even more vicious system of slavery in the south to get cheap cotton which was the fuel of the 19th century later britain turned to the largest non-co-trafficking operation in human history uh to try that's part of the large part of the reason for the extended conquest of india to force farmers to grow opium instead of food so that britain could break into the chinese market by force and violence and imposing uh drugs into the country well that's britain i'm not giving the details the details are horrifying you look at france saying the french said when the french were invaded algeria while the french intellectuals were talking about their civilizing mission the minister in charge was saying we must exterminate the algerians that's just recently for some reason the new york times has been running a uh interesting series on how france destroyed haiti with the help of the united united states and it's a horrifying story haiti had to be punished brutally for being the first free country of free men in the western hemisphere the united states of course was a slave society well can't get away with that so brutal punishment running right up to the prison a couple hundred years and that's france uh we can go through the rest of the record the united states is not breaking new ground it's taking the role of world dominant power and acting much in the way of its criticisms those were european countries is european imperialism unique in world history or is this just the path that the powerful take it's more than that there's also russian imperialism so you look at the history of russia begins with the duchy of muscovy little area around moscow extends to conquer much of the uh much of the world huge area of the world that's before the soviet union just talking about the czar then it takes other forms during the last century but it's hard to find i mean if you know you could say the same about the mongols who came out of the plains of eurasia and conquered large parts of the world i mean it's it's most of human history is it impossible to escape imperialism yes of course in fact we have substantially done it as i said ronald reagan wanted to duplicate kennedy couldn't too much popular opposition take iraq it was the first time in history that an imperialist invasion was protested massively even before it was officially launched well that didn't stop it but i think it certainly limited it the united states didn't do anything like what it did in say vietnam they're just too much internal opposition and that internal opposition can and may lead to a more civilized world in which there are greater constraints on the forces that want to oppress and dominate it's not a law of nature it's a matter of the way human institutions are constructed and popular activism can change things and has i mean i we're not on a there are a lot of rotten things today but it's a much more civilized society than it was say 50 or 60 years ago not by a gift from the gods and by dedicated popular activism by people who've been mostly forgotten most of the people involved nobody ever heard of so take the there was a strong international anti-war movement in the 60s and 70s the one the person who was mostly responsible for organizing it and keeping it going was peggy duff british woman amazing woman not only the international indochina any war movement but palestinians and other issues peggy was the one who basically kept it going i've you probably never heard of almost nobody ever heard of okay that's the way the world works a friend of mine is take colombia which has one of the most hideous human rights records in the hemisphere strongly supported by the us all the way well there was a popular movement trying to educate people about it to act to try to limit the atrocities passed away a couple of years ago cecilia zarate alone nobody ever heard of her except people who are directly involved they look around the world that's what you find you've heard of these people how how do you know of them did you know them we're close friends peggy who was a very close friend and society to him people who were directly involved know about them but there's enough suppression so it doesn't get very far out and these are not the kinds of i mean let's take one of the most amazing anti-war and terror popular movements in the united states the solidarity movement in the 1980s with central america is the first time in history that people from the aggressor society us not only protested but went to live with the victims to help them to provide whatever security you could provide with a white face against the reagan-run murderous terrorists uh it was from all over the country uh evangelical churches in kansas you know universities i mean very widespread nothing like it ever very significant it's out of history that's not the kind of thing that the media or the intellectual community wants people to know you don't want people to know that it's possible not only to protest the crimes of your own state but to go to help defend the victims not a good lesson so you have to look forward to find a record of that of course the people who are involved know all about it are we in danger of losing the names like peggy duff well partly i suspect the reason peggy isn't known as cause she was a woman but but it's much more than that uh people who really are on the front lines keeping things going uh they're not you know the people who are known and the ones who come and make speeches maybe doing a very good job very good job like martin luther king a remarkable person should be greatly honored but i'm sure he would have been the first person to tell you that he was riding on a wave that was created by snake workers young black students who were riding freedom buses in alabama facing real serious terror trying to encourage black farmers to dare to cast a vote people like that we don't remember their names i happen to know some of them but unless you were involved you don't know their names this is letters and politics and we are in conversation with renowned linguist and political activist noam chomsky noam chomsky has a new book out which is a conversation with vijay prashad a friend of this radio program it's called the withdrawal iraq libya afghanistan and the fragility of u.s power noam chomsky is u.s imperialism on a decline it's it's still the dominant force in the world uh there's no other country that has uh 800 military bases and all over the world forces fighting all over the world as i said no other country can impose sanctions in the manner that we can but it's declining the world is becoming more as it's called multipolar so there's a chinese poll of influence that's growing developing very largely by soft power commercial trade investment loans plenty of brutality you can find that too uh but it's expanding over all of eurasia the belton road initiative the shanghai co-op operation organization spreading into the middle east through the what's called the maritime silk road which includes the united arab emirates even extends to israel china runs the major port in israel haifa port u.s navy doesn't like that but happening moving into africa even into latin america u.s backyard where chinese trade now exceeds u.s trade and latin american countries african countries use chinese technology the united states is trying very hard to block countries from using advanced chinese technology but not working very well they'd prefer to have 5g from china than what the us can offer them in fact china's finding interesting ways around this they've china set up hundreds maybe thousands of schools technical schools in much of the world africa southeast asia where they teach chinese technology well that's what people are going to be trained in that's what they're going to be used you can say that it's a form of imperialism if you like but soft imperialism the u.s can't counter that can't counter that with guns can the us become a post-imperial country and what kind of changes if so would have to happen for that to be would our lives be different it's greatly to the benefit we have to distinguish what's called the us which means power centers distinguish that from the population from the general for the general population it would be much better to move towards an accommodation with china yes there's plenty of crimes in china lots of things wrong can condemn them but we should be moving towards we have to move towards cooperation or we'll all be destroyed the major issues that we face that don't have boundaries uh global warming is gonna destroy us all unless we deal with it properly and there's no boundaries threat of nuclear war has no boundaries you can't contain a nuclear war it's uh all of these things and the same is true advanced technology makes no sense you take a look at what just happened in congress the united states badly needs repair of infrastructure more research and advanced technology a whole range of things well republicans don't want to allow any infringement on the power of private concentrated private powers that they're always opposed but this one they agreed to it was framed as a competition compete with china act and if we want to rebuild bridges in the united states only way to get through congress say we have to compete with china it's a sign of a really sick society nom chomsky has been our guest again noam chomsky renowned linguist political activist new book he has called the withdrawal iraq libya afghanistan and the fragility of u.s power noam chomsky thank you thank you very much

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Length: 26min 57sec (1617 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 22 2022