A Conversation with Professor Noam Chomsky Part 2

welcome my name is Diane Fenner for the New York City Bar Association and today we are presenting part two of our conversations with Professor Noam Chomsky we are very privileged to have him and we recorded part one on April 13 but there were so many questions from our audience that we asked Professor Chomsky back and he was generous and kind enough to agree to come back and answer the questions that have been left unanswered in the first session so the part one will be already is posted on YouTube and I will now turn over the microphone to my co-host Suzanne ninenberg of the business and human Relations Committee of the New York City Bar Association uh yes Professor Chomsky thank you again for your truly thought-provoking presentation last week um as a brief recap you spoke about the world's order being in flux in terms of climate change and major events and shifts in U.S policies since uh World War II you also spoke about power shifts in the global order and the U.S position relative to Europe Russia China and the global South and you made some truly fascinating observations that Putin's invasion in Ukraine is a Triumph for Washington as it re-established its relationship with Europe but you also noted some critical points um that The Invasion puts the U.S position in the global world order to attest um you mentioned that the global South has not joined the US in Russian sanctions and the Russia and China relationship is now strengthening and particularly you questions how long Europe which is historically dependent on Russian men minerals will be willing to face decline by hanging on to Washington's hotels um and yeah as Diane mentioned winter hour was up we were left with a long list of actually all very interesting questions from our audience um and I'll do I do not think that we will ever get to answer all the questions that your um speech provoked we do want to thank you for coming back so that we can take a deeper dive into these questions that came up in response to your comments um and I guess to start us off um you mentioned various man-made events that have shaped the world order uh including two 911s the world war the Vietnam War the Russian invasion in Ukraine um and we were just curious how have these events shaped your thinking about the role of governments in society um very much so my the first 9 11 [Music] 1973 we're now coming the 50th Anniversary that was right in the midst of a period when I myself was deeply involved and both resistance against the Indochina War which was its final stages then and in the Affairs of Latin America which is in the midst of a plague of repression that was beyond anything else and it's terrifying history back to the Conquistadors launched by John F Kennedy in the early 1960s and then when the first 9 11 came along far worse than what we call 911 that naturally uh influenced considerably my own thinking about the events that were underway there were commonalities between the the United States the global power so when something's happening in one region it's commonly happening in others as well and in fact the 50th anniversary of the first 9 11. happens to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the formal though not actual end of the Vietnam war with the Paris agreement and the Kissinger was influenced was at the center Kissinger and Nixon were at the center of both of these events both the parish negotiations and their effective rejection by the United States in practice and of course the first 9 11 which was largely implemented by Kissinger and Nixon and who strongly supported the criminal atrocities that followed so there's Trace them right back to Washington in both cases and that of course influenced naturally my own perception of world affairs of further dramatic indication of the power of the global hegemon to shape a historical events and take the other cases same thing for each one of course they had effects yes and um you also you referenced the role of Corporations and governments um in these events and in the global order um one of our audience members uh is a former United Nations Observer for the National Association of women lawyers and she witnessed how effective National and Global ngos could be when consensus is achieved on a given topic um and it occurred to us that you did not mention the role of civil society and she is wondering do you believe that ngos can be influential and um where do you see the role of Civil Society in a changing World Order I think they don't have a direct effect on policy making they may direct themselves to political leaders as say I do too but of course it's not intended to reach their errors they don't listen what it's intended for is a way of educating mobilizing the public so that perhaps public opinion will crystallize uh come together act two change the calculus of choices that those in power make and in fact it does very strikingly so take what we were just talking about the peace agreement in 1973 50 years ago if you look at there is by now I can recommend a very good scholarly source that just appeared a couple of months ago and Carolyn eisenberg's book it's called what's the title to happen here Fire and Rain which is a detailed documentary study using the classified materials of how Nixon and Kissinger tried desperately to maintain U.S domination of Vietnam in the face of the fact that the uh the population was uncontrollable and one of the one of the populations they were concerned with was the United States it was the rising anti-war movement that they had to placate somehow in order to try to carry through their complicated geopolitical manipulations to try to save strengthen the U.S position in Indochina by then it was not just Vietnam the United States was carrying out massive attacks in Cambodia and Laos under Kissinger's Direction and question was how to maintain all this in the face of growing opposition in the United States and this was before the Modern Age of ngos but there were similar organizations that were engaged very significantly in organizing on the ground nationally internationally it was an International Peace movement it's uh it's not well studied because of its these are kind of subversive phenomena you don't study them and in particular the International Peace movement is almost never studied because it was run by a couple of women one of the women who should get a Nobel Peace Prize five or ten times if the prize meant anything is Peggy Duff who very few people know who weren't involved directly but Peggy who's close friend was basically entered running the International Peace movement for years very effectively Coral Weiss was another man her husband is a well-known American lawyer Peter West both of them were involved and there are a few others of that kind of the precursor to the ngos that have developed in later years but I think the goal is basically the same see if the public can be organized and mobilized to escape the controls of the highly effective propaganda system see the world as it is become directly engaged and trying to overcome serious crimes atrocities the ngos do quite a can do often do do a very effective job on that and do you believe it can be enough and the role of the ngos if when we balance it to the role of corporations in influencing uh politics well kind of a little bit misleading the distinction between corporations and state powers very thin there is a distinction but in practical purposes they're close to identical actually this was pointed out 250 years ago in the early stages of the modern capitalism by Adam Smith who discussed was interested of course in England particularly but what he pointed out about England is pretty much true 250 years later different mechanisms and forms but pretty much the same as he pointed out the what he called the masters of mankind those who are on the economy the Modern Age corporate system uh he said they are the principal architects of government policy and they make sure that their own interests on quoting him that their own interests are most peculiarly attended to meaning they said policy for their interests no matter how Grievous the effects on others including the people of England but primarily the victims of the Savage Injustice of the Europeans abroad and he was concerned particularly with British savagery in India than in its early stages well that's Adam Smith's 250 years ago pretty easily translatable into the modern world I can look into the details but there are some interesting divisions that take place between corporate centralized corporate power and state policy and they're interesting to look into I've discussed a number of them if it just happened to be talking about one of them and uh conference a couple hours ago but in Latin America but uh but overwhelmingly they're pretty much the same so it's not I mean there are there have been efforts to try to induce corporations to carry out a less destructive role in uh devastating the environment that's quite interesting to look at them we learn a lot about our own Society by looking into them so there's what's called a program of ESG environment sustainable governance and there's been an effort to public effort to induce corporations to adopt ESG programs through the shareholder organization and pressure and so on but it very quickly led to a backlash interesting backlash the Republican party which is dedicated to the destruction of the environment and the interests of short-term profit as an organization which you probably know about called Alec the American legislative exchange Council members are broadly supported throughout the whole corporate world strongly supported by the Republican Party they carry out a very clever programs they know that the at the state level it's very easy for corporate power to pass legislation doesn't take much to buy a state legislator it costs less than to buy a senator and the pressures that you can impose on state legislatures are far greater so they aim for the state legislatures and they try to get them to pass legislation which will be in the interests of the corporate sector and the more reactionary elements of the state many of the things they do are pretty interesting like one of the things is as you probably know every year there's about several billion dollars stolen from workers just by businesses refusing to hey what they're responsible under their contracts refusing to pay overtime just refusing to pay wages altogether and so on it's called wage theft amounts to billions of dollars a year well one of Alex's efforts which has succeeded is to get state legislatures to ban not only punishment for wage theft but even inquiry into wage theft you have to ban inquiry into this bad subject and they've succeeded and there's many other policies well one of their policies is to block ESG to get states to pass legislation which says they will punish corporations by withdrawing pension fund Investments and so on punished corporations if they dare to take ESG policies and it's been very effective it's just a recent study that showed that ESG policies have dropped very sharply in the last year or two under this corporate offensive to ensure that corporations will not do anything to improve a livable environment that's very significant both in its impact on the future if they're going to continue poisoning the environment we're done but but also because it tells us a lot about how the government actually works goes back to your question about corporations and government here's the way it actually works below the radar you know see headlines about it but if you look into the studies you see it and you see it on issue after issue the ESG the effect the success of the corporate offensive through Alec in Banning and undermining ESG investment is a very significant fact that's for its not only in what it teaches us about how government actually works sporting Adam Smith's observation but also because of its very significant impact on what life is going to be like in a generation or so notice it never gets discussed or reported these are not the kinds of things that the corporate media are much interested in yes and you mentioned ESG and um it is a it is an interesting field that has been particularly significant the last 10 years where we see um particularly in Europe that there have been a lot of mandatory due diligence loss um you mentioned that there has been backlash particularly India um us but we've also seen um we've also seen laws that have been adopted against the yuchao region in China labor laws that do impose a form of mandatory due diligence in um for Global Supply chains uh do you believe that these laws could form a counter on um corporations um the field where we're going right now not only the um the small legislations that have been issued in the U.S but also the mandatory due diligence legislations that are being negotiated right now in Europe and actually I believe the European Parliament is issuing a decision on its position this week these legislations have an effect on multinationals operating not just in Europe but also operating in um in the US do you believe that these type of laws can make a change to um sort of limit that corporate power well we should we can ask how they apply in the United States we have laws model laws on labor rights they're not implemented there is something called the National Labor Relations Board but it's been virtually powerless ever since Reagan doesn't do anything uh picking up slightly under Biden but under Reagan and Clinton it was just essentially nullified which meant that corporations could carry out all kinds of illegal acts without any within purpose complete impunity whether this will whether the Europeans can make these things more effective we don't know we should notice that the concern about Labor rights in China is part of something else that's part of the U.S run effort to try to prevent Chinese technological and economic development you know it's it's quite openly it's perfectly public nothing secret about it that we must find a way to prevent China from developing and one aspect of this is a sudden concern for labor not labor rights elsewhere like not labor rights here but labor rights in China that's part of the campaign against China it's a good thing to do but we might look at the history so go back to the say go back to NAFTA 19. the under Clinton 1993 1994. the at the time that NAFTA was rammed through over strong public objection in all three countries involved there were efforts by the labor movement and congress's own office of Technology assessment through given all the develop who developed an alternative to the Clinton version of NAFTA which is an executive investor rights agreement they tried to develop an agreement which would include things like bringing in concern about Labor rights and so on that was totally smashed it was never even recorded and the office of Technology assessment was in fact expanded shortly after Congress doesn't want kind of information but uh so there would there have been possibilities all the way along but now they're coming to the war as part of the part of the campaign against China development so the proposals are correct in themselves but we should look at the context and they be implemented depends operations have all sorts of ways of getting around them so for example let me just take something as simple as corporate investment in China the Biden Administration like the Trump Administration has tried very hard to get the corporations to break decouple from China and it's very interesting to see how what's happened so the if you look at the Asian press Asia times they've done some studies on the flow of the changes in trade in the Asian region uh since the these efforts have been started well it turns out that as what they found is that there's a great increase in Chinese exports to Asian countries and Asian countries exports to the United States what is it to you under U.S corporate control what that means is that the multinationals have figured out a simple way to get around the barriers on direct investment in China by putting up some subsidiaries in Vietnam and Malaysia which will be transfer points for the same operations I mean corporations aren't stupid you know they want to make profit and if the government throws a barrier in one way of doing it they'll quickly work out a way around it a little more complex maybe they lose a little money in the process but there's a huge incredible profit to make it's a it's kind of a rounding and if it's um if if we if we assumed a loss would not be affected uh effective because they would not be implemented then what can we do to prevent corporations from um abusing human rights what can we do to get corporations to promote EAC all the efforts that are being done but you have to follow what happens so pressure for ESG made a lot of sense but it was not able to count the enormous power of the Masters of mankind who found other ways to prevent it like through the Alec imposition of state legislations or what I just discriminate that of investing directly in China you just make a few manipulations and you get the same results by setting up transfer points uh one way of first or another is going to be avoided and it's pretty straightforward there is a principle which I think I quoted last time it's very important to Henry stimpson the Secretary of War during the first world under the Roosevelt administration to repeat if I or maybe to say I forgot whether I said it or not the uh the country in the early 19 in the 1940s was being mobilized for war everyone had to tighten their belts with one exception prophets had to flow and Stimson explained it did it straight out he said in a capitalist Society like ours if you want business to cooperate you got to pay them off they have to make profits that's that's the nature of an evolution sign and same here unless you figure out ways for business achieve the goal of course that doesn't have to be true like during the new deal period there were restraints on private profit uninfected led to a period of the greatest growth period in American history early the 50s and 60s which is relatively egalitarian growth no financial crisis uh high taxes on the corporate sector they weren't poor you know they made plenty of profit but nothing like the Savage capitalism that was unbeatable totally different so it can be changed but it makes a lot of work the labor movement popular organizations political parties and alternative political parties all of this in the 1930s and a sympathetic conversation did lead to a kind of moderate social democracy of the kind in Europe it's all changed in the last 40 45 years so we need to make the case that ESG is good for profits thank you he's right it's basically Adam Smith said I I I'm dying to jump in here because um I know we're going to get back to the international order but we I want to hold for a minute on uh this topic we've opened up about putting pressure on the government whether it comes from ngos or or other places and civil disobedience is um something that I know you Professor Chomsky started out um doing in the 60s and actually were one of leading figures in during Civil Rights and in the Vietnam War opposition well you've just now referred to the Vietnam War as an example of something where there was um pressure on the government that was successful and um in fact the Vietnam War was drawn to a close despite Kissinger and Nixon and the uh secret efforts to overcome popular opposition so knowing the importance of Civil Disobedience to that movement to to those two movements uh to other things in history and knowing that in our first lecture we heard about the imperative to address climate emergency um and also knowing a little bit that you've just mentioned that there's not a lot of sociological studies about what does succeed in changing government policy I wanted to ask you about Extinction Rebellion which is just now organizing for an April 21 demonstration and which seems to be the product of a Oxford Union scholar who's given analysis on how to change government um Direction um what Hallam says is that there and other people have said that I think Chris Hedges has said it there we are past the Tipping Point there is nothing but provoking a revolution there is nothing but um getting out to the streets and so I wanted to ask you to talk a little about the role of Civil Disobedience today Sizzle disobedience is a very significant issue I've been involved in it myself plenty of times I've rested plenty of times and so on but the point of civil disobedience is not just to show how angry I am the point of sickness obedience is to achieve some effect to bring others into some kind of Engagement and involvement in the issue you're saying I'm willing to go to jail you do something that's what civil defense is about If Civil Disobedience takes the form of I'm going to go to jail and I'm harming you you're achieving nothing in fact it's negative Civil Disobedience has to take if it's going to be of any moral political significance has to take place in an environment and which is a background of understanding for the actions that lead people so that the Civil Disobedience leads people to think and say well I ought to be doing it that's very significant go down pick the weather men in the 1970s young kids late 60s and early 70s enraged about the Vietnam so hideous how can we stand it so let's go down in Street and break break windwards and so on and that just builds up support under the war that's not the kind of action that has any moral or critical significance thanks everyone meanings International meetings that were arraigned by piggy Duff the woman I mentioned who basically ran the International Peace movement meetings that she set up in Paris where we had activists here who were meeting with Vietnamese talking about tactics and so on and the kinds of tactics that they proposed were so mild that American activists could barely left so they said the things that they were very much violent actions disruptive actions they understood perfectly well but this would simply lead to more sport to the war and they wanted to survive they didn't care whether Americans felt good but they proposed like I remember one meeting where some women from South Vietnam proposed and said that would really impress them was when a group of women in the United States stood in prayer at the graves of American soldiers that's what we saw it was an effective action because that would lead others to start thinking about it so they didn't care much about whether American activists felt good about what they were doing of no interest to them wanted to survive that they wanted tactics that would in fact lead people the general population to start thinking about these things and doing something about it well those are lessons that activists should keep in mind now take Extinction Rebellion done a lot of very good things it has very effective a lot of effect to the woods and they're aware of it and changing their taxes but one of the things they tried they may recall was shutting down the Metro in protest against failure what's the effect of shutting down the midroom means a lot of work can't get the word that doesn't continue to do something about the environment the negative backlash mandible we're familiar with that too I think it takes a tactic after this Floyd assassination of defund the police well there's a sensible version of defundableism was put forth by the black lives matter leaders by Bernie Sanders by ocasio-cortez and others what it meant was shift something about the police the police actions not two things that the police shouldn't be involved in like domestic disputes or you know the overdoses and lost dog things that should be done by Community Action and involvement that's different but even they said pay more to the police better training even the Police active that's being picked up the right wing picked up the slogan and said oh these guys want to take the police in your community and let you free from criminals running wild well you got to be careful when you produce slogans to make sure that the uh reactionary forces of the country which of course are powerful aren't going to pick it up and turn it to their benefit the slogan the fund the police sensible interpretation it was swamped and wiped out my right brain propaganda well you've got to think about these things when you're involved in tactical choices Financial choices are not trivial tactic sounds who cares is the big thing but it's the technical choices that have the human effect that's why you have to think them through and that's true of Civil Disobedience across the board I mean there are people who I greatly admire without acts of Civil Disobedience that I think are harmful so take the Catholic lift who break into uh say a submarines Connecticut and smash the those cons of submarines because they're committed passionately dedicated committed to trying to block nuclear destruction well I admire their I admire their courage their integrity their people who I think are I very admirable human beings but their actions are harmful the only effect sentences that no ground is prepared for the animals who has enraged construction worker the workers at the plan what are they blocking what we do it's not enough to say God is on their side you have to ask what's the what's the impact of the elections you're wearing him and that holds overall not just for sales of Americans but for all tactical choices I mean there's a distinction between feel-good tactics and do good tactics doesn't matter whether we feel that's not what it's about what matters is does it do good does it help the people or at the wrong end of the club that's what we're Grace they're very interesting remarks and um to shift a conversation a little bit back to um the world's order and one of our audience members asks what is state of Anarchy would look like and another one asked what your views are on cryptocurrency and blockchain um combining those questions do you think cryptocurrency could be a useful tool in taking the state out of people's social relationships and do you think that could be useful in the long run well I don't claim to be an expert on it but I'm very skeptical about cryptocurrencies I think mostly it's kind of a scam uh it's not going to replace currencies that have the kind of backing which uh establishes Trust which is crew money and currency or just based on trust nothing else why is gold stored because there's trust that it'll maintain its value it didn't maintain its value it's just like sand you know and the money can be anything as long as there's trust behind it crypticians and I don't I think they're if you look at the record there a lot of people are got in plenty of trouble with them and I don't think they've succeeded in doing anything so my own feeling I mean there's different opinions about this but my own sense is that it's a bypass it's not dealing with thesis there are important questions about what currencies should be used in World Trade right now there are efforts around the world to try to find some alternative is a dollar based system the post-war post-world War II International commercial system has been based on the dollar that's the reserve currency and the United States pretty much undermined that and at the time of so-called Nixon shock when Nixon eliminated the Reliance on gold but nevertheless the uh the currency remains unstable because of U.S power but it's much stuttering today there are many alternatives so much of the glue was saying I don't want to be down to the tolerated system remember the Dollar Baby style kinds of Power not just in the economy so for example why do take say the uh the sanctions against Cuba that's now since the early 1960s shocking harsh sanctions against Cuba I mean if Swiss chocolate uses uh Cuban sugar it's banned you know if if you've been nickel is used in something that's banned the world's overwhelmingly opposes this I mean even the organization of American states which is under the U.S thumb declared it to be a European Union tried to bring into the World Trade Organization so that the WTO would condemn the U.S sanctions as illegal well the U.S just told him to get lost this is the Clinton administration said none of your business we decide what we want to do the United States pulled out of pronunciations actually Clinton's statement was pretty interesting they said for 30 years we've been trying to overthrow the government of Cuba you have no right to prevent us so therefore we pull out of the negotiations therefore you'd better adhere to the sanctions because if not we throw you out of the International Financial system so you're keeps to the sanctions well a dollar-based currency has those uh does have those effects and much of the world just doesn't want it anymore so you take a look at the brics laundries Brazil Russia China and so on they're thinking of trying to work out some alternative currency that can be used in international trade there's just meetings recently and uh in between Brazil China Russia Indonesia to see if they can set up a currency in which there are no third parties involved in an interaction meaning if Brazil has dealings with United Arab Emirates they don't have to do it through the dollar third currency they can do it directly or maybe through bricks but these things are beginning to developed in opposition to the U.S effort to try to maintain Global Germany this is one of the things I talked about last time this conflict between a U.S effort to maintain a unipolar world in which the United States dominates uh versus efforts to create a multipolar word based on the legal framework of the United Nations not the United States and I think those are developing issues of considerable significance I think yes our next question is a um a blunt question and I think a difficult question to answer one of our participants asked in response to your comments up last week if the economic order is now worse than ever why do more people now have access to more material Goods than ever we have more iPhones consumer goods and much of the population in fact the majority of the population is living from paycheck to paycheck so we have a an economy in which consumer a lot of mostly frivolous consumer goods are much more available than before but you don't have Elementary security you want to get health care tough luck we don't provide that sort of thing in fact most bankruptcies are because of our crushing Health Care system you're a mother who had a big you want maternal care a maternal leave for a couple of weeks sorry folks we don't do that the United States the only country in the world to developed that doesn't do things like that oh yes there's there's the kind of economy which is very beneficial to the corporate sector they like to sell a lot of goods but not providing the kind of public goods that make life survive not us that's Savage capitalism so yes there are a lot of different varieties of iPhones you can buy but no Health Care I mean technically there is health care we actually have a Universal Health Care system in the United States it's called emergency rooms so you can somehow make your way to an emergency room you get good care and but uh that's the most cruel and expensive form of Universal Health Care but it's the one that's good for insurance companies private hospitals manufacturers of medical Goods they want profit not help so yes you have you can have the latest iPhone but a flick if you want something like maternal leave child care health care and so on that's not our business we don't make money out of that and is there still um hope for America we the system is from a social World welfare state like for instance my country the Netherlands or um Canada um Obama made a good attempt with Medicaid which is now um at risk of being taken away uh where do you see the future of America going is there is there hope for uh these sort of social protections oh his uh uh Medical Care system was a small Improvement of the awful system that delivered not very much and noticed that Obama gladly refused to consider even a public option the option of Universal Health even though about two-thirds of the population was in favor of it he said sorry we can't do this because of the Stimson principle you want to pass any legislation you got to make sure that private Capital makes profit out of them so that's so called Obamacare as you know of course Republicans are a hundred percent opposed even to that and if you look at the current house now under Republican Patrol one of their first uh legislative proposals first ones it for poor people can't get medicated the way they do this by imposing work requirements so if you've got a poor mother somewhere it's got three kids she's got to go to work to try to get medical for our kids of course you can't there's no child care sitting there with three kids and no money are you going to work a they're going to have a job around the car and but the savagery and cruelty of the class war where the Republican party is in the lead says sorry you can't get Medicaid in fact there are many republican-run states which simply refused to take federal funds to get them free refuse to take them because they'll be used and of course there's a little footnote there that remains black and there's a strong element of racism behind all of this so uh can we change sure we can take a look at what happened in the 30s or in the 60s with uh um President Johnson's uh Great Society legislation Medicare for example it it's not not what it ought to be but it was a big information the uh you can make the current GOP which is by now so reactionary can't even find them on the map but uh they're trying very but to destroy even the achievements of the nudity like Social Security they don't say so of course they will say well we're all in favor but if you look at the proposals limit the budget limit the budget but in course include Pentagon spending include corporate subsidies and so on but limit the budget well just take a look at the arithmetic what gets cut they don't want to say the notice that Kevin McCarthy has not come out with a budget because they don't want to say what they're going to have to cut they do the popular opposition will be overwhelming but it's Elementary in the original to find some devious way to make sure that there's nothing except which benefits the very rich in power no that's not um but it was just not different in the 30s very powerful to kind of be done sure there's no law of nature that says the United States has to be off the spectrum of developed societies and things as Elementary as healthy actually I just want to make a correction from something that I see was misunderstood last last week I pointed out that the United States is unique among developed countries any countries that I know of and the mortality is even doesn't happen anything happening among white working class mostly uh That's Unique deaths of Despair economists call them and the questioner pointed out that uh if you look at recent mortality uh there's lots of deaths in Russia and elsewhere that's coveted deaths I'm talking about the steady death toll independent of couples where the United States happens to have a forgotten record one of the worst others are worse still but if the general mortality has been declining even before covet and independently occurred an astonishing comment on the richest country in weird history that even mortality is increasing among white working class does that tell you about the Goods that are available actually yeah and thank you for clarifying that indeed when that was one of the questions that we got from the audience on the mortality rate um to uh to bring it back to the world's order um one of our audience members asked do you have a view as to how do Ukraine situation ought to be resolved which is obviously a very loaded question uh and to make it a little more specific uh another audience member asked do you think the ICC will be a the an ICC warrant for Putin may lead to an actual prosecution of him or have consequences for his leadership well that the Ukraine actually there was a pretty good article that just appeared in Newsweek but two international relations special which people may not like it but I think it's pretty sensible you might want to have a look but just think it through how can a war end well there's two possibilities either there's a negotiated settlement or one of the other science capitulates or else it just goes on indefinitely okay those are the three possibilities just logic War goes on indefinitely and still Maine gonna wipe out Ukraine just take a look at the relative power of Russia and Ukraine even with U.S Advanced Aid they're suffering very severely both the economy deaths most of the original armies destroyed they're using drifties they can't keep it the so the strong possibility is that stalemate will mean slow a lot of death on both sides a lot of Destruction but the longer term probably the Devastation Beyond recovery of Ukraine that's one possibility leaves negotiations or one or the other side so it's capitulates well it's almost certain that Russia is not going to capitulate they had if they ever face defeat which is not a prospect but if they ever did FaceTime they can up the end remember Russia fought the kind of war that the United States fights normally there are leading international figures like President Biden or treasury secretary Ellen The Finnish prime minister go to visit Kev how many people visited Baghdad when the United States was smashing into pieces not only did nobody visit but everybody was taken out you win Personnel were removed peace activists were removed it was too violent well a long way to go even with Conventional Weapons to make it harsher and more brutal could move to the American style of War what's happened in Ukraine is horrible enough but if you look at the facts it's not on the scale of other Wars take a look at the death toll of civilians we don't know a decent going but the best the only serious estimate we have was from the United Nations 8 000 kill it's a lot of people it's probably almost certainly an underestimate I suppose it's off by say a factor of 10 suppose it's 10 times that many well that could bring us into the range of Reagan's Slaughter and also in the 1980s about 80 000 civilians killed you're not getting anywhere near major Wars like Iraq we're not supposed to think about that that's a fact the uh and Russia if it ever came to that which I doubt has nuclear weapons reserved so the chances of Russia capitulating are very slight lots of possibilities of escalation where does that leave us possibility of the negotiated settlement well United States is important for them you know it's its position is going to continue the war to weaken fine for the United States but you know great the United States is getting a bargain out of it for a small fraction the Colossal budget you can severely degrade the military forces and the only military I mean it's openly discussed now in the United States so obvious so the United States basically has no incentive to bring the word of an end it's gaining in fact most of the world is suffering countries facing starvation Europe declining um one country that's gaining enormously Industries or profits are just booming military industry fossil fuel industry Europe's in our pocket anime is being degraded flying high no incentives to try to end it well I mean argument that's given for this you can read it in the current issue of Foreign Affairs again is we have to support Ukraine to put it in a better negotiating position who says it's going to be in a better negotiating position it's going to be any worse negotiating position as It suffers more and more in disasters this is all a couple we're saying we don't want negotiations we're doing something well how's the war going to end sync it through it's not going to be Russian capitulation if it's a stalemate devastating great going to be a negotiated settlement it's the only electrical option will it be undertaken opinion here you try to suggest it in the United you're condemned as a Putin lover a piece or Munich and so on and so but and we're told incidentally that European leaders are all supporting us until you look at the facts about the it's not reported here but the president of the European Council major organization part of the EU just Charles Michelle just said that most European leaders are pending to support Emmanuel macron and his approach to separating Europe from U.S control well that's certainly is clearly true among the populations polls are that strong support those are The Logical options see what's going to happen with another chance for God already the latter part of the question was the first part was how's the work went in but there was a second part uh the second part is do you think there will ever be um a prosecution of Putin and what will there be the consequences for him well that's a very interesting question all of a sudden for the first time a U.S opinion is in favor of Prosecuting war criminals have you ever heard it before who is the ICC prosecutor Africans could the ICC prosecute uh George W bush for carrying out the worst crime of this century and Beyond inconceivable in fact he's honored respected the United States even has laws as you may know Which authorized the president to use military force to rescue any American who's brought to the Hague even an American Soldier Prosecuting the U.S for crimes it's Beyond indescribable us is lauded for Crime let me take a look at the perpetrators of the Iraq War oh Lord you know the crimes so could one of our enemies be brought to the ICC I mean yeah shouldn't should happen war criminals would be prosecuted but they're not going to agree why should they and the rest of the world is mostly laughing at this in ridicule they know perfectly well what we're not allowed to think about you know we'll be willing to use legal measures against enemies but not not the U.S doesn't even ratify the ICC it doesn't even accept its jurisdiction and um to bring it back to um the settlements and the power to Dynamic in those potential settlements um what do you think would be a bigger driver of any settlement talks with Russia would it be uh its position as a nuclear weapon state or um its position as a state that is rich in minerals we're Russia we can't impose any conditions on Russia are you going to do it the only way you can impose conditions on Russia is if you destroy them so again you want the world to go up in Flames okay say so that's what happens if you try to impose conditions on Russia how can you get Russia to give up nuclear weapons I mean there is talk about that in the United States a lot of talk about breaking up the Russian Federation and so on is there any way that can be achieved I mean this is Imperial imbecility reaching stratosphericoids I mean can you get the United States to give up nuclear weapons I'd like to see it in fact I'd like to see the United States join the treaty International treaty on prohibition of nuclear weapons about 120 countries have signed it but none of the nuclear weapons States all right let's take the lead and then um we have some questions on technology companies um and the question is do you view advanced technology companies such as Google Apple as potential contributors to solutions to climate or geopolitical issues or do you think they are more tools for the powerful that are powerful to increase control and benefits from existing power structure these are private corporations whose goal is to maximize profit market share control they're not the American friends service committee they're not Amnesty International their private profit-making corporations uh not because they're bad guys it's just if they stop being that they go out of business so that's an Institutional effect so you can't look for them to try to carry I mean maybe for some public relations reasons they might do something nice but that's just ways of increasing profit part of the institutional structure and if they try to do something like the ESG we were talking about get a huge backlash from the rest of the corporate system which makes them back off uh but should they be controlled well I think so they can do a lot of harm in fact as you may have seen there was a recent petition signed by a couple of thousand uh of the leading practitioners and Advocates of the current uh AI technology falling for a moratorium on their development we'll save plenty of harmful consequences I didn't sign it myself because I thought it took the technology much too seriously but nevertheless I couldn't understand the reasons why Advocates of Technology wanted to be a country stopped until there's better controls instituted can it be done not so sure my own feeling is the Genies out of the bottle there's no way to control them these new developments are fabulous methods for disinformation or defamations or preying on people's gullibility in many cases of people fall in love with their chatbot asking questions and people even do it for things like people will ask it questions and take seriously the answers again it's going to be very harmful I mean if the assistant for you to do for things like personal care that's far too good and for years has been enormous amounts of investment in trying to get self-driven carbs too many hours in fact we have explained because automated systems for detecting uh missile attacks very sophisticated resistance fortunately there's human intervention repeatedly otherwise we'd all be there because they repeatedly report erroneously that there's a major missile attack maybe something bounced off the moon or something you know that nobody thought about or maybe there's a computer or which happened over time uh so there's plenty of them you can imagine these systems being useless or something but then you have to design them for utility it can be done in fact I'm using it right now take captions which I use because I'm hard of hearing well basically that's developed by the same Brute Force methods it's quite useful methods can be used but not when they're under the control of institutions which by virtue of the nature of the institutional system must seek profit and power it's like Health you put it in the hands of insurance it's in private why do you expect it's not their business um while we're on world order I'm curious about the rise of authoritarianism globally I think that um I've witnessed uh Mr Oban in Hungary uh Mr Modi in India um without going down the list I wonder if you could comment on whether there is a trend in the direction of authoritarian rule internationally globally on on the world scene and do you think that is connected no each country has its own reasons there but there are some commonalities one common of factor I think is the spread of the neoliberal assault on much of the world or much of the social workers since the 1980s that's been very harmful to people everywhere very beneficial to private power but quite harmful to the population left lots of presenting anger distrust institutions looking for something to say the thing well that's where I uh damn I can move in and say I'll save plenty of that it's different in different world in modi's case it's Hindu racism and do racism he wants to destroy India's secular battles sure very that of course means undermining and destroying uh independent institutions stress universities and salt research and so on and it's happening uh Oregon's Hungary is pretty similar is uh seizing on something that's the counterpart to it what's called the Great preserving Hungarian authenticity meaning keeping out anybody you can mobilize the population to fear immigrants and so on and uh also very effectively capturing all instruments of the society press universities so on under control similar elsewhere and remember that organized Hungary is the model Republican party openly uh Oregon had a ran a conference in Hungary of the reactionary movements and Europe those with neofascial Origins star conference was Donald Trump made a major speech Republican conservative political action caucus was a central element in it Tucker Carlson correctly was swooning with praise for or one's magnificence made a huge documentary about it it was a meeting in Dallas shortly after of the conservative political action caucus keynote speaker was Victor Orban not hidden that's the core part of the Republican party it's a soon very serious matter that's happening all over the world right here many attacks and functioning democracy here uh voting rights restrictions radical gerrymandering massive efforts to ensure that the minority Republican party will be able to be in permanent power that's the end of the functioning democracy let me uh jump in at that point with a question about the 2024 elections and there's a New York angle because um there are at least two cases we are Prosecuting against Mr Trump I wonder if you would care to comment I mean he's obviously committed endless crimes but the effect of the prosecutions will probably be to strengthen him politically he's a skilled Showman can turn it into a demonstration that the Deep State you know the evil deep state is conspiring to take away your leader to mobilize to support me even if it means a civil war could happen I mean they should continue I think that's the likelihood I'm in the prosecutions himself will probably be a tap on the takes a fox Dominion got away like gangsters um they were charged a fee which is a small part of the romance prophets they can probably write it off as a tax and they didn't have to concede that they couldn't have been lying and distortion you know you know as lawyers you know it's nice to know into the white color is very rarely prosecuted in any serious way it's all kind of ways it's not like some were a guy who breaks into a store because he's hungry that gets prosecuted and um leaning on to that um many of the issues uh the the um deteriorating Democracy in America um the the power of the Republican parties the upcoming elections um many issues results from the bipartisan system in America um do you believe that um a multi-party system would be an answer to to many of these um many of these issues that America is facing uh with between the Democratic party and the Republican Party um whereas other countries in the world such as Canada the Netherlands have multi-party systems that have additional sort of counter factors to uh to curb radical thinking in in government um I was wondering if you could comment on that the party system is a makes it a highly autocratic system means other voices can't be heard it's in parliamentary system which take something like the British labor party with the Canadian NLP and they couldn't arise because of the I mean there may be a way out of this if it's going to take a lot of popular at dedication and organization but that's only one of the many anti-democratic elements of the Constitutional system and remember that the constitution was instituted to try to prevent democracy no secret about that as I'm sure you know the major work on the Constitutional Convention gold standard and scholarship Michael Mormons a recent book couple years ago it's called the Kramer's coup against them James Madison was perfectly explicit about this the main room that we have to have an order the minority of the opulents are protected from them it's the basis of the Constitution sorts of devices to ensure that in the original system the most important component of the government was the Senate Senate Madison's Words which wasn't of course elected for until 1913 or so but I said the the wealth of the net represents the wealth of the nation it's the more responsible those who have respect for property owners and their work they don't he didn't say Property Owners they say property but of course property has no rights it's the property owner that's quite apart from the slavery and so on that was the framework of the Constitution and it remains and you know so I don't have to tell you this everybody knows it you know Wyoming and California both have two rivers molecular colleges uh [Music] but all of these are kind of minor uh in comparison with Adam's side the concentrated private power or the principal Architects the following they have overwhelming power the nature of policy 100 as either interesting greatness but very overwhelming some of this very studies of this and the mainstream political science literature showing that most of the population may be 70 percent or so it's just not represented the voters because their own Representatives pay no attention to their opinions there's no correlation between what they want and what their representatives vote for because they're listening to other voices you're elected of the House of Representatives first thing you do is get on the telephone to ensure the donors that you're not going to do anything that will harm them meanwhile a bunch of corporate lawyers are descending on your staff headquarters and overwhelming the staff and pretty much right legislation with your son amen a bit of a caricature but not much plenty of democratic features just built into the stuff can be overcome but by a lot of work um right I'm gonna have to ask it just a little to the next one uh yes it is 5 20 um I think we need to wrap um the I'm looking at the last questions from our last session um and I think we can be out by 5 30 is that okay sure okay what um the questioner asked foreign where you foresee A Change Is Possible in the world order any hope or solution going forward there's always hope there are opportunities there's many barriers but nothing that can't be overcome I mean remember we have two fundamental issues crucial issues they're not solved everything else is moved one of them's the right benefit of nuclear war both in Europe and Asia second is destruction environment we don't deal with this and that next Generation it doesn't matter whatever but anything else Christmas we're finished is there a hope for these yes there are feasible means to overcome them but one thing that's going to have to happen is there is going to have to be accommodation of some sort among the great powers China United States Russia other brics countries are going to have to accommodate because these problems have no borders they're common problems have to be dealt with by Common means and that's just a given if that doesn't happen nothing else is going to matter so can it happen this is going to be I mean go back to the question about the uh negotiations could there be a negotiated settlement on Ukraine well the position of the United States is can't have a negotiation which Rewards aggressors really where did that principle come from nobody believes it as anybody said you should sanction the United States for invading Iraq or destroying Libya one thing after another of course not so nobody believes in the principle but they all Proclaim it nobly okay that's uh part of the crime of the educated sectors to claim adherence to principles which you don't believe for one second you only use them as Weapons against others now let's take a look at the history of diplomacy it's interesting to think it through let's go back to 18 15. France that was the aggressor invaded largely destroyed large parts of Europe France was defeated there was a settlement concert of Europe did it punish France for its aggression no it brought France into the system as an equal that was the accommodation at the concert of Europe by Statesman they understood that there's not going to be any peace in Europe in this France the aggressors brought into the system well that led to about a century of relative peace not total but pretty peaceful by European standards and it's pretty substantial achievement compare that with the Versailles treaty where [Music] which essentially took revenge against Germany and punished Germany severely didn't bring it into the system what did that lead to the rise of Nazism in the Second World War well these are facts about diplomacy you want to feel good destroy yourself yes those are options you want to solve problems make a better world you have to think a little not just say I can take it that has to do with with a possible future can be like yes that is interesting and we've seen that of course in various peace agreements not to mention for instance the Columbia peace agreement where this was a big issue on the table is there punishment are we going to punish or what form of um how are we going to imprison Farm members that have committed aggression and ultimately very mild um amnesties were a big a big issue in those um Peace negotiations though we would think with Russia um the consequences of the aggression would be uh more severe um also in terms of and I think this will be the last session but their seat in Security Council their seat in um uh you know Global the global world's order um can we just assume that um that the future can remain the same that the status quo can be maintained after after there's a potential settlement uh maybe only because we have limited time to address the security Council seat well first of all let's settle a fundamental point there's an is there a single person who has any access to the public Arrangement who believes that aggressors should be punished there's an easy test for the find somebody who thinks that George W bush should be brought to the ICC and that the United States should be sanctioned see if you can find one such person I can't it therefore follows that there is no one who believes the principles that are proudly proclaimed it's a pretty significant thing everybody pompously issues the noble pronouncements not a single person believes what they're saying that's the comment on the entire educated class so let's put that in the basket when we turn to the next question uh nobody believes the principle well can anything be done in the security Council I just um if I can push back on your first question whether Bush should be prosecuted I actually would argue that a lot of people believe that I actually would argue that that's perhaps the reason that the United States never joined Jerome's statute of the ICC no no that was I'm sure I believe it you believe it what I said is there anyone who can speak in the public sector who believes it try to find one statement in the mainstream media in the international relations literature in scholarship in the American Journal of international law any Source you like find one statement saying that U.S aggression should be punished it's challenged see if it can do it I can't but nobody who has any access to the mainstream in education scholarship media believes it well what about the security Council there are proposals to allow the to modify the uh the United Nations structure so that there would be ways for the general assembly to override a veto by various technical means that would allow the general assembly to pick up issues where the secret Security Council is blocked now what we know if you read the commentary here it's all about how Russia blocks the security Council take a look at the record of Security Council vetoes it's a very interesting record go back to the early days of the United Nations early 50s Russia was blocking everything and there was a reason the United States was so powerful it could use as the United Nations as a a way to batter the Russians so of course they were redoing everything well as decolonization continued the United Nations got more shift the United States that we're doing everything the long period in which almost all the states even you know it's even vetoed resolutions calling on states to observe law because it was understood there directed against the United States then in more recent years you start getting Russia vetoing but the record is quite interesting so are there ways around this there might be there are ways for the Secretary General and uh with you know General Assembly to support to uh develop mechanisms that might overcome the case where a major atrocities continue and because of Vetoes that against dealing with them could happen but the great powers are going to have to agree to it can't do it unless they agree is the United States going to agree it's pretty hard to imagine the United States does not accept any International intervention and go through this rarely signs even the enabling conventions and the general assembly to I mentioned the World Trade Organization when Europe tried to get the World Trade Organization to consider the legality of the U.S embargo against sanctions against Cuba Clinton said simply it's on your business we're trying to overthrow the government of Cuba if you don't like it too bad get lost pulled out of the negotiations International court of justice condemned the United States for what amounts to International the United States told them the good Lord none of your business we're going to escalate and they did the United States is not going to agree as a currently constituted it's not going to agree to anything the U.S didn't even agree to I think I mentioned the genocide convention is not capital of the United States concern until we change the United States internally there isn't much hope for any positive U.S role in efforts to get around this security council's Stranglehold we can't do much about Russia China we can do a lot about ourselves since we play a major role that can have an effect those are wise words to end their conversation with um and give everybody in the audience I think a cause of action um because changing changing the us as we um noted I think in the first the first um part of our panel is that public opinion and Civil Society play a huge role in changing the US internally so I think our audience here has has work to do based on your words thank you thank you very much we've got others coming making the time for us thank you again

Channel: New York City Bar Association

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Id: VXP16WDEzaA

Length: 96min 58sec (5818 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 25 2023