Noam Chomsky Hegemony or Survival

vintage sacks is published by vintage books on the web at vintage books calm [Music] book TV is 48 hours of nonfiction books all weekend on c-span 2 coming up at noon Eastern Noam Chomsky considers American foreign policy in his latest hegemony or survival then Daniel Pipes on the israeli-palestinian conflict and possible solutions tonight on book TV on Korra book notes with Hugh price author of achievement matters after that on public lives a look at Austrian economist FA Hayek and at 9:15 p.m. Eastern another chance to see MIT linguistics professor Noam Chomsky [Music] noam chomsky critiques American foreign policy in his latest hegemony or survival this talk from the United Nations Correspondents Association in New York City is an hour and 40 minutes okay thanks thanks very much for coming I should explain I guess to the members of ANCA that there are many people who are strangers in our Mis that's because this is a joint event with the UN Society of writers that in fact they organized it hands Janacek who is the president of the UN Society of writers is here hands thanks very much for organizing this are the TV crews really now can we get going yeah thanks okay the first time I met Noam Chomsky was in 1984 in Nicaragua when I used to write for the Guardian newspaper in England which as many of you probably know is somewhat left-of-center and at the time I think the analysis of the situation in Nicaragua that norm and I were doing was not very popular in the United States I think we both subsequently felt vindicated when the International Court found against the United States government at the time and even more so when the iran-contra scandal blew and we found out that the Reagan administration had allowed a secret government to operate from the basement of the White House in contravention of statutes and contravention of law passed by Congress at the time I sort of uh naively thought that that was the worst violation of international law that I would ever see by an American government but as Kofi Annan has pointed out what we saw in Iraq last year was also a violation of international law and it is a violation of international law by the US government that brings us back together again and I welcome no here thanks very much for coming and do you want to speak first or write them do you want to go up to the podium there okay that's right so I see some of you have your tape recorders hell shunt them over okay he's gotta wanna swing I gotta work can you hear me back there yeah okay so the wireless is working and these things are all presumably working everybody national security team have their mic well this is strikes me while I'm here that this is about the time of the year when my students are going around for job interviews if they're lucky enough to get them I say this is the time of the year when my students are going around for job interviews if they're lucky enough to be invited and if they are they're expected to give a talk technical talk I have a few questions if they don't consult too many people on the faculty they may even be offered the job and I guess that's the same format so I'll try not to insult too many of you and maybe I had a chance with the award every self-respecting president has a doctrine attached to his name the for the current incumbent and Washington that's been expanded from a doctrine to visions and dreams as well but most presidents it's just doctrine these doctrines are interesting to investigate they're often important I'm sure it I'll keep just to the current bush doctrine which happens to be unusually prominent clearly articulated very dramatically implemented so there would be no doubt as to what it means and the widely discussed to an unusual extent the Bush Doctrine has several related components all of them clearly articulated just quote the first and most general component of it is that it is our responsibility to history to drive evil from the world and that's a far-reaching doctrine a special case of this has got to be relentless war on terror and furthermore quoting any state that harbors terrorists is a terrorist state and will be treated accordingly as we drive evil from the world the third and more formal enunciation of the doctrine is the national security strategy of September 2002 which effectively declared the right to use force to eliminate any perceived potential challenge to us global hegemony as Colin Powell put it the u.s. reserves the sovereign right to take military action where and how it chooses he happened to say that in Davos at the World Economic Forum meeting eliciting quite a negative reaction from the people who the business press the International Business press called the Masters of the Universe only slight touch of irony the national security doctrine also at the same time the Bush administration made it very clear some of the first aspect of the implementation of it was to make it clear where they stood with regard to international law and international institutions even before Powell's statement the government had made it clear to the United Nations that it could be relevant that was the term used if it endorsed what the US was planning to do anyway or else it could be as Powell explained the debating society but those were in effect the choices be relevant and endorsed what we're going to do or you can have polite discussions somewhere the very well one using the handle okay is this going to interfere with the other so I undo the other well this this announcement to the United Nations of its choice between relevance and debating society actually has come to thee is right on the front pages of the new of the press in England not here right now in the Katherine John case I'm sure you know Katherine gun is being tried because she leaked to the British press reports that she had seen from the American Embassy calling on British intelligence to illegally attack members of the Security Council so that the United States would know how to coerce or pressure them into becoming relevant that is inversing what the US was going to do those of you who know the history of the United Nations will recognize that this is coming full circle the San Francisco conference which established the UN at that conference delegations were also illegally attacked by the FBI so that the US would be able to control the proceedings properly so we know have a nice completion of the of the circle but that's expresses from the beginning and dramatically today the attitude towards international institutions and international law and it's not very surprising it's pretty much the way anyone predict that the world dominant power would behave it may be surprising to people who prefer illusions but historically it's not a great surprise the national security a security strategy the formal version of the doctrine it not only elicited great anger among the international business elite but also among the foreign policy a lead at home so immediately after it was announced in September 2002 the major establishment journal Foreign Affairs a few weeks later had a Polishness next issue with the lead article called describing what the author called the new imperial grand strategy and warning that it was going to cause serious problems for the world and for the United States the even before the doctrine had been officially announced it was clear it was gonna be a Henry Kissinger had described the doctrine as what he called a revolutionary doctrine which undermines of the UN Charter undermines international law in fact undermines the whole Westphalian system since 1648 which barred forceful intervention into the other sovereign states of course that was West Fed who was only for great powers but this as he as Kissinger correctly pointed out the new doctrine simply tears this whole framework to tatters which he thought was a good thing he basically supported the doctrine but like many others and the many other of the critics and the foreign policy elite criticized the implementation said reasonable position but not the way the implementation has many flaws and we'll call cause all sorts of dangers he also Kissinger is a realist scholar and he pointed out that we must not permit this doctrine to be universalized it cannot become a universal principle the in simple words this is a doctrine for the United States which it the right to use force at will against perceived or potential enemies is to be reserved to the United States it can delegate that right to some of its clients but no one else should line up for the privilege that's clear and explicit the national security doctrine was immediately followed by exemplary actions to make it clear to the world that it was meant seriously it's not just rhetoric the most obvious of them and the one that attracted the most attention was the invasion of Iraq the there were others that were to which less attention was paid but that might over the long term prove more significant one of them was the announcement just weeks after the national security doctrine the announcement by the Air Force Space Command of that US policy in accord with the national security doctrine was going to shift from control of space that was the Clinton doctrine to ownership of space so from now on the US would own space not just control it and then they went to spell out it spelled out what that difference is it means that any potential competitor in space will be destroyed and space means militarization of space as they explained and it we have docked the documents leading up to it spelling it out it means placing space platforms for highly destructive offensive weapons nuclear and non-nuclear this is under a first strike doctrine which is official the world will be under very tight surveillance by hypersonic drones so you can tell if a somebody's walking across the street and Bangkok and so on and it means in principle a command post could instantaneously without warning attack can destroy any place in the world without much need for forward facing and other annoyances and this system has to be owned not just controlled that was November 19 November 2002 the u.s. continued meanwhile to oppose unilaterally UN efforts to ban the militarization of space that has been going on for some years the most recent case was last December and again unilaterally with the reflexive votes of Israel and I think Micronesia the u.s. opposed the otherwise unanimous decision to reserve space for peaceful uses this has been going on for some years now UN disarmament Commission's have been deadlocked over Washington's refusal respect to Clinton to ban militarization of space however the advance from control to ownership is a substantial one and in line with the national security doctrine and very ominous in its implications I mean others plainly don't just say that's fine Russia has already responded by sharply increasing its military spending its offensive weaponry it has move to launch on warning automated response systems which were dangerous enough in the past and are far more dangerous today with the deteriorating command and control systems of this Russian state as the economy collapses just to cheer you up you may recall in 1995 what before the deterioration had set in we came to minutes from a missile launch which probably would have destroyed much of the world went when account there was a ten-minute countdown after the Russian computers had misidentified a space rocket as a missile attack it was aborted in two minutes short of flight instant retaliation presumably go beyond what Eisenhower predicted in nineteen in the 1950s that any such exchange would be mean the destruction of the northern hemisphere we've gotten much more violent and powerful since then these dangers are being enhanced Russia has also moved to a first-strike doctrine China is responding the same way as predicted what's called ballistic missile defense is understood both by adversaries and by advocates in the United States as being an offensive weapon it's called a shield a sword not just the shield on both sides and the reaction to it is to build up offensive military forces very threatening with the obvious ripple effects don't actually go into it so these are all severe challenges threats being significantly escalated all implementing the same thinking can't just attribute it to the Bush administration mentioned as roots before but the sharp escalation of it is significant very significant the moon shot that Chinese and American moon shots are very likely related to this the moon is if any of this gets off the ground to use a appropriate metaphor probably the moon will be used for military purposes as part of the militarization of space system and the Chinese challenge to land a shuttle is a challenge to the US official position of ownership of space which does not lead to attractive consequences if you think it through well let's get back to Kissinger and the justification for the revolutionary new doctrine and its implementation in Iraq the he gave the conventional justification the justification is that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction and is connected to terror well it's by now clear even from the scandalous Hutton report that bush and Blair and their associates sexed up the intelligence reports borrow the notorious BBC phrase which elicited interesting hermeneutic disquisition from Lord Hutton as you may have seen if you put yourself through the pain of reading the report but that the intelligence data was sexed up is not seriously in question and the purpose was to establish that Iraq was dangerous imminent threat because of its weapons of mass destruction and its ties to terror recall that that was presented as the only question repeatedly the only question by Colin Powell Jack Straw and others and rather clear that they had they had to know at that time that any evidence they had was shaky at best now we know how shaky but what is important is what they knew then well the failure to find weapons of mass destruction has been significant but I think its major significance has been somewhat overlooked the main significance of the failure to find weapons of mass destruction is that the bars for aggression have been lowered so the original doctrine was what Kissinger and the national security strategy stated state countries that have weapons of mass destruction are too dangerous if they're you know rogue states or whatever well now you have to change the doctrine and it has been changed so it is now just the possession or the intent or ability to produce weapons of mass destruction is sufficient to justify aggression the supreme crime of nuremberg that's a significant change because almost everyone has the ability the high school and your local community probably has the ability to produce chemical and biological weapons and the intent was just subjective evaluation which means that anyone is subject to attack now that's been made even more clear just a few days ago by Condoleezza Rice who reviewed what are now the official reasons for that justified the attack against Iraq and it's worth looking at them not as a criticism of her but to see what the conditions are that are now accepted for free aggression according to her Iraq the attack on Iraq was legitimate because it had used weapons of mass destruction in the past she omitted conventionally the word with our support those are never added secondly it had attacked neighbors twice again omitting the fact that the first attack was with our support and the second attack was followed by us authorization to saddam hussein to crush a shiite rebellion which might well have overthrown him a fact which is has an eerie similarity to what's happening right at this moment as the US the CPA is desperately evading the call of Iraqis for an election because in which the Shiite majority would obviously dominate so that's the second reason the third reason is that Saddam Hussein allowed terrorists to run in his country and was funding terrorists outside of his country well she didn't bother providing evidence for that we do have evidence namely that was that it was false but that it's but that now something like that is true so the evidence that we have and intelligence agencies and independent analysts pretty much agree on this is that before the US invasion Iraq had kept quite far from the international terrorist organizations but after the invasion predictably Iraq itself has become a terrorist state a another front in the war on terrorism and that recruitment for al-qaeda style groups has significantly increased so as predicted the war did increase the threat of terror and indeed succeeded for the first time in turning Iraq into a nest of terror fourth she there her fourth argument is that Iraq has refused to account for its weapons of mass destruction and said I'm concealed his programs well that's partially true actually Iraq was more closely investigated by inspectors than other countries which have anything like comparable programs but that aside there is another country in the region which has refused to account for its weapons of mass destruction and concealed its programs even though it's well known that it has hundreds of nuclear weapons and is producing chemical and biological weapons and is regarded as extremely hazardous in fact by the US military command the Strategic Command stretch um but that one doesn't count because that's a u.s. client so it's there for free of any of these obligations another US ally as we have has recently been made public that was known for a long time Pakistan has been openly involved in illegal proliferation for years it's all been quite public inconceivable that US intelligence agencies didn't know the worst of what's now being exposed was in the late 80s in the early 90s and it's hard to imagine that the National Security Adviser at the time or the head of the Pentagon didn't know what was publicly available on the streets of Islamabad meaning that the current Secretary of State and Vice President had to know about this right at the time there's no fuss being made properly because it is indeed some stream ly dangerous well those are the four reasons for attacking Iraq run through them they in fact eliminate any barriers to the use of force at will almost no pretense lift well let me drop that and turn to the corollary the idea that states that harbor terrorists must be attacked to eradicate evil here we have to make an exception we have to agree to exclude the category of harboring government of officials if we open that door the doctrine instantly reduces to absurdity so let's not talk about harboring government officials who are large-scale terrorists and keep to harboring what are called sub-national terrorists those aren't at the level of state planners or heads of state so what about heart which countries Harbor sub-national terrorists well there are many charges about pre-invasion here act kind that I've mentioned that you've heard but they're rather dubious and it isn't but there's much point paying much attention to them because there are some very clear cases of harboring terrorists therefore terrorist states where this is no controversy so take for example a current a case that's currently timely the case of the Cuban five which ought to be front-page news everywhere their appeal is coming up in about two weeks what are the Cuban Five well as I'm sure you know the United States has been engaged in large-scale terrorist attacks against Cuba since 1959 the US government direct participation in those attacks ended in the late seventies at least officially but and since that time instead of directly attacking Cuba the United States has been harboring terrorist networks that attack Cuba well again this is not particularly controversial its accepted for example by the FBI and the Justice Department so it takes a Orlando Bosch there's no living happily in Florida he is accused by the FBI of about thirty acts of terrorism quite serious ones like blowing up Cubana airliner with killing seventy three people and many others some committed on US soil the Justice Department US Justice Department regarded him regards him as a dangerous terrorist whose presence in the United States is a serious threat to the United States and says that for 30 years he has been engaged in implementing or organizing terrorist activities George Bush the first gave him a presidential pardon at the request of his son the governor of Florida so that major terrorist is now carefully harbored in Florida what about the Cuban 5 where do they fit into this in the early 90s when it was clear that terrorist attacks were going to go on from there Cuba Cuban agents infiltrated Florida terrorist groups for several years at one point they the Cuban government informed the FBI that they now had large-scale information about terrorist groups operating in the United States the FBI sent high-level officials to Havana where they were given thousands of pages of documentation and hundreds of hours of video and audio tape documenting terrorist actions being planned and some carried out in Florida and the FBI did react namely by immediately arresting the people who gave them the information that's the Cuban five they reacted by leaving the terrorist cells untouched and not pursuing the information but arresting the informants who had infiltrated them and provided them with the information three are now facing life sentences several spent a long time and went off whatever that is in solitary confinement their wives are not allowed to visit them though visas the you know the government insisted on trying the case in Miami the request for a change of venue was turned down the foreman of the jury and by saying that I regard Castro as a communist dictator and other members of the jury went on the prosecution conceded that they couldn't prove the case but a Miami trial was sufficient so that's the case of the Cuban 5 now coming up for appeal why is Cuba such a target for u.s. terror well actually that was explained nicely yesterday in the lead story of The Wall Street Journal they look at the lead story you see it described it says that Cuba has been dedicated to the cause of derailing the u.s. agenda in Latin America and therefore is a justified target for attack actually the author of the story probably didn't know it but he was virtually quoting from declassified CIA documents 40 years earlier which explained the reason for the attack at that time extensive terrorist attack on Cuba on the grounds that Cuba the that the very existence of the Castro regime is successful defiance of US policies going back 150 years so it just can't be meaning back to the days of the month or a doctrine when the u.s. intended to take over Cuba so no Russians nothing like that so obviously that can't be accepted and the wall street journal' more or less has it straight when they say that the crime is the dedication to the cause of the railing the u.s. is agenda in in latin america the same article of the Wall Street Journal goes on to say that Chavez in Venezuela is the heir apparent to Castro's cause of D railing the u.s. agenda and latin america which makes venezuela the successful existence of that government an unacceptable successful defiance of US policies going back 150 years with consequences that will be familiar to people who know about the history of this region and again it's timely just a few days ago a Venezuela sought extradition of two military officers who had fled Venezuela after they were charged with setting off bombs in Caracas there now here Venezuela's asking for extradition to more terrorists harbored here for the moment I will see what happens with that this is connected with the military coup a couple months ago which was openly backed by the Bush administration although it drew back when aroused an enormous opposition in Latin America and the military coup was overthrown according to the British press very good correspondence in the British press of Latin American specialists they claimed to have amassed evidence that the coup was instigated or at least in part instigated by three major figures of the Bush administration who have a long record of involvement in terrorist crimes in the 1980s namely Elliott Abrams Otto rife and John Negroponte II their involvement in terrorist crimes in the 1980s again isn't controversial for that we can turn to the World Court judgement that Tony mentioned and to Security Council resolutions endorsing the World Court judgement which of course were vetoed by the United States with Britain politely abstaining well just to draw some conclusions the Bush Doctrine quite directly implies that the United States is a terrorist state and should be treated accordingly obviously harboring terrorists my a few examples could easily add many others just add one more right across the river there's a leading terrorist being Harvard Amano al constant who was the head of the paramilitary organization that was responsible for killing thousands of Haitians during the in the period of the military junta which was supported not so tacitly by Bush one and even more by Clinton Haiti has asked for his active sentence did him in absentia they've asked for his extradition repeatedly they never get a response the general suspicion is that the u.s. doesn't want to extradite him because in a trial connections with the his connections with the US intelligence will come out but whatever the reasons are he's another terrorist Harvard here one might say that killing several thousand four black people doesn't really count as much of a crime so maybe it's not like other cases of harboring terrorists I won't go into that well without continuing it's it's not very hard to evaluate the doctrine of driving evil from the world if we accept the condition of universality but as Henry Kissinger accurately pointed out that's an error the doctrine is holds only only selectively the power is a doctrine that the powerful may invoke but not anyone else so therefore you could say that all the examples I've given are completely irrelevant and any others like them as for the imperial grand strategy this i think its implications are as revolutionary as Henry Kissinger indicated I think a good case can be made that the implications go far beyond and that it should be a matter of rather considerable concern thank you very much I hope we have time for a few quick questions [Applause] I know Hannah chick wants to present you with the medal of excellence but I think there are a few people who want to ask some questions and normally I I give myself the right to ask the first one but today I won't hug the microphone and I'll go to Ricardo I'll die of not Emacs first hi mr. Chomsky we got all that from not Emacs I won't trust good joke brave questions what is in your view the risk of four more years of Bush both inside the United States and for the international system what the impact will be and secondly do you think Kofi Annan should cede to us pressure to send back you and personnel to Iraq and does he have any room not to say having to say no it's very hard to predict the weather and predicting human affairs is extremely difficult but there is a fair possibility no possibility beyond what I think any rational person would want to accept that another four years of the same policies it could be extremely dangerous for the country and the world and could cause may be irreparable harm remember we have a lot of evidence it's not just the past four years the same people essentially were in office for 12 years 1981 to 1992 and there is a rich record of what they accomplished it is not discussed in the United States because we have a kind of a principle here that you're not supposed to look into the mirror it's not unique to the United States but very striking here so anything that happened in the past didn't happen okay because we've changed course or some miracle has taken place so we're therefore not permitted to carry out the rational approach that we would to anyone else I mean if Saddam Hussein appears in a trial and says well why are you bringing up all that old stuff from the 80s doesn't mean anything now I'm a nice guy I just had a born-again experience and you know I'm going right to heaven we wouldn't even bother laughing but when that is done year after year after year as it is by our own leaders we applaud okay that's what it means to be a disciplined intellectual and if we don't want to accept that discipline we can treat the matter just as we would in the case of Saddam's crimes or Stalin's crimes or anyone else's we can ask well what did they do during those 12 years and what are they been doing the last four years the more reactionary it's a reactionary selection from the first 12 years and it's clear enough now they have a domestic agenda which is not hidden I mean they're trying to unravel the progressive legislation of the past century to overcome the achievements of popular struggles hard ones to gain some benefits for people what we call a minimal welfare state to transfer power into the hands of unaccountable private tyrannies in one way or another every aspect of the program is like that internationally they have the programs that I've described they may back off from them because they may find them unfeasible but the programs are clear and that's only part of them I mean also program is about international economic arrangements I think these could be very dangerous in fact the kinds of programs I've just talked about could literally lead to destruction of the species you know again you can't put a probability on that we don't know what the likelihood of a devastating nuclear war in 1962 right when literally the world was one word away from a nuclear exchange one Russian submarine commander countermanded in an order to shoot off nuclear torpedoes during the Cuban Missile Crisis which very likely would have led to a devastating nuclear response and then on and on and in Eisenhower's destruction of the northern hemisphere one word that was 1962 January 1959 1995 was much more dangerous far greater destructive capacity at that point we were two minutes away as these threats are being increased militarization of space alone is increasing the threats significantly and you know rational people don't take chances like that and no matter what your subjective probability is but it will increase well you know basically no one has a right to be in Iraq but Iraqis so they should take the lead in determining what happened what the invasion has left such wreckage that how Iraqis might decide to deal with what remains you know I can't say we know what they say in polls you can make your own judgments from that in recent Iraqi polls the most favorable rating for a foreign leader is Jaxy Iraq the but by about 5 to 1 they regard the u.s. British forces as occupiers not liberators right after Bush made his speech about how we're changing course once again and want to bring democracy to the world actually reiterating what Reagan it said 20 years earlier and everyone else after that speech which was greeted with the usual reverential law in the United States there was a poll in Iraq about asking you know Iraqis why they thought the US was in Iraq and some agreed with President Bush and the commentators here one percent one percent thought that the goal was to bring democracy to Iraq about 70 percent thought it was to control Iraq's resources and to reorder the Middle East and consistently with the goals of the United States and Israel actually their responses were more nuanced and sophisticated when it went further it turned out that about half although one percent thought the US was trying to bring democracy about half thought that the United States wanted democracy if the US could control it now that's the sophisticated response the one that's based on history the one that is understood by everyone in Latin America for example or the one that Iraqis understand perfectly well from their own history I'm Sarah Lee were free you know under British rule since the 1920s but they know without reading British secret records that they were granted freedom on the grounds the internal British records that they would be an Arab facade behind which Britain would rule with various constitutional fictions and so on and same in Central America in the Caribbean yes you can be free and democratic as long as you do what we say and I presume that's the reaction of Iraqis and usually the victims have a reasonably good understanding of the world the people holding the hammers and guns usually don't understand very well but I think we should try to respond to their understand and if they want UN officials there a UN force there okay I mean if they want a military forces from the region to try to control the miserable security situation that's resulted from the invasion okay that's their decision if they want to accept the economic program that has been rammed down their throats by the CPA which no sovereign country would accept just opening the country up to complete purchase by foreigners meaning the mainly US corporations they decide they want that like they want to commit economic suicide all right fine if they decide they want the kinds of social and economic programs every sovereign state with any independence pursues that's fine too then we throw that out my child he was in this room not so long ago and he told us he loved the program he may I mean that program will have we know what that effect what effect such programs have those are the programs that created the third world I mean if anyone knows any economic history knows that say 200 years ago there wasn't much difference between what's now the first world and what's now the third world actually India and China with the commercial and industrial centers of the world Europe was kind of backwards in most respects but now they're very different usually different how did it happen the European states the developed States England United States France Germany Japan the one country that resisted colonialism up to the East Asian you know Tigers without exception they radically violated the principles of economic liberalism they insisted on massive state protection and subsidy just as the US economy does today it they were very highly protectionist an interventionist on the other hand they forced what is now the third world to accept economic liberalism program he wants an extreme form of it and it had the predicted effects so at the end of two hundred years of British rule India was not the commercial industrial center of the world anymore which Britain was stealing technology and so on it was an impoverished the peasant country with mortality rates about the same as they'd been 200 years earlier began to develop afterwards somebody could follow its own principles however in every one of these third-world countries everyone there is an elite which is extremely wealthy and privileged serves the interests of the foreign masters and they do just fine you know you go to the poorest country in sub-saharan Africa and there are people living at a lavish lifestyle we can't dream of so in Iraq too under this system there will be such people the ones working with the foreign bankers and international investors and with Halliburton and so on we don't have local managers know I'm running out of time there are various people who want to ask questions I see three hands but I can identify I think they're more back there I'd like to take three questions and then I think what I should do is allow those who want to leave to leave so I'm gonna recognize the Financial Times the Iranian news agency in tempo and any others who want to ask any questions I'll ask you to pause well have they will be the medal ceremony those who want to leave can leave and those who want to stay and I saw more questions if you if you can do it then well let you do that the other thing is perhaps I can ask you to be a type refrain your responses never hear that [Music] actually I was gonna ask two questions so I'm just gonna ask one now very specific question I was very interested in the stuff you're saying about space do you have a sense of where the debate is going now in the United Nations in terms of its - something I haven't followed enormous didn't hit our radar screen oh and what's gonna be coming up over the next year Thanks well we can that's very easy one to answer just take a look at the last debate was December at the General Assembly it's the first committee I guess the committee on the space and disarmament which is essentially the full General Assembly was last December there were several resolutions that came to the fore one was a reiteration of the effort to ban militarization of space I remember the numbers but I think it was voted something like you know 174 to 3 or something like that not a u.s. Israel and some Pacifica Pacific Island there was another important resolution which called for removing weapons of mass destruction from the Middle East and that was also voted overwhelmingly I can't I don't remember the numbers but overwhelmingly with the u.s. Israel and maybe a Pacific Islands opposed but you can look at the debates they're right there on the you know on the UN record and that's been going on for years the the the first committee this the disarmament and Security Committee I think it's called has been dealing as been meeting regularly for seven years and has been hung up on the question of militarization of space everyone on the committee's led by China but it's been essentially unanimous has been trying to put some teeth in the 1967 Outer Space Treaty which does loosely reserve space for peaceful uses and they want to enforce that and strengthen it and it's been blocked all the way by the United States all the way and there is no reporting on this it states actually virtually none had some friends do database searches you know you find a little newspaper in Utah that's mentioned it or something so it's basically unknown but it's public new coming the disarmament committee will continue to meet and the General Assembly will continue to meet but they can't do anything if the United States vetoes it I mean the same is true on the Outer Space Treaty itself there is a 1967 Outer Space Treaty which is not terribly specific but the implication of it as is to prevent the use of space for military purposes for a long time nobody did much with it a few years ago effort started coming along in the General Assembly to ratify it again re verify it the reason was the recognition that the u.s. intends to violate and it's come up year after year forget how many now that one the US doesn't vote against it abstains everyone votes for it and the US and Israel I abstain okay Israel doesn't matter but a u.s. abstention is ineffective veto a double veto the u.s. abstention vetoes the proposal and vetoes it from history which is why you don't know about so it's not reported and not discussed and so on so the double veto has succeeded in blocking efforts to so I said abstain but when the u.s. abstains it's in effect to lead to it's because that means not going to happen okay when the most powerful state in the world says look I mean do with this that's infected veto and in fact a double veto because reporting is also effectively veto and it disappears from history the and and that's in the course of the issue of militarization of space for probably five or six years now this goes back to the Clinton administration among all of this completely public incidentally so if you read the if you look take a look at the website of the Space Command that's open back around 1997 it's a Clinton year era the Space Command announced clearly its programs over then control of space not ownership of space now it's up to ownership for control of space very elusively I mean what kind of reading like a little Maoist book it said the US must control have military control of space to protect our investments and commercial interests and then it went on to give a little bit of history it said in the past countries needed armies and navies like written to control their commercial interests and investments and now the next frontier is space and we're gonna take control of that to control our commercial interests and investments ok very frank then they also pointed out here they agree with US intelligence projections that the process of so-called globalization will have exactly the opposite effects of what is predicted and they it will increase the it will lead to a widening economic divide a growing gap between the haves and the have-nots the US intelligence projections are the same it'll lead to a growing economic divide also financial volatility meaning lower growth and in this case of in situation with the growing with a widening economic divide and a growing number of have-nots it's gonna be harder to keep them under control so therefore we knew new devices like for example militarization of space during a news agency a professor what would be the role and situation of other players such leaders of Russia China France and others when they have to give up to some kind of compromise or what nobody has to do anything what they are likely to do is pretty much what they are doing Russia as I mentioned has in the last year has sharply increased I think by that thirty percent its military spending for offensive military purposes new offensive weapons and so on China is widely expected to do the same or maybe already be doing the same in in part in just in reaction to the ballistic missile defense development I mean everyone involved in that has predicted that of course China is going to respond by increasing its offensive military capacities others will respond in other ways I mean nobody is going to say thank you please cut my throat if you announce that you're going to attack people at will and destroy them at will they are likely to find some mode of response that's why many international well known international scholars have said that these policies in Crete or tend to increase proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and to increase terror those are reactions that people can use and sooner or later weapons of mass destruction and terror will come together maybe right here it's just a matter of time so those are possible reactions there are other things going on as well I mean militarily the world is unipolar no question about that I mean the u.s. probably spends as much as the rest of the world combined there close to it in military force and as far more advanced for example there isn't a space race now because there's only one country racing when the u.s. is talking about going from control to ownership it's not as if someone else is interfering with the control they're not so overwhelmingly ahead from a military point of view but not economically economically there's have been an are three major economic centers or less on a par your Europe Northeast Asia Japan China South Korea others interacting with them they're kind of on a par Europe is an economic unit of the same category as the United States Northeast Asia is the most dynamic economic region of the world it's it also happens to have about half of global foreign exchange reserves the former head of the Clinton's Council on economic advisors Laura Tyson really recently described the International economy in four simple words she said America spends Asia lens and how long that's going to go on nobody knows but it it's it's an area which has reserves which is growing fast which already has a greater GDP than North America does Europe is the same Europe countries of a lot of talk has approximately the same growth level productivity growth level per capita as the United States and can go off in its own direction these are issues that go way back to the end of the Second World War I mean it's right throughout the Cold War one of the concerns of u.s. planners was that Europe would become what was called a third force would go off on its own well that still remains the end of the Cold War had changed that and now there are comparable problems in East Asia a lot of the maneuvering around control over Middle East oil and the lesser but significant central Central Asian oil resources a lot of that maneuvering including Iran has to do with who's going to control those energy resources because whoever controls them if the u.s. controls them as it intends to do it will have what George cannon once called veto power over the decisions of other actors that was 50 years ago it's even more the case now so a lot of lot of alternative implemented something for example with the treasure of the world the war in Iraq what do you think fine I mean there's a lot of studies this by and large the media transmit a doctrinal position which is shared by state power by corporate power and by the media elites themselves were part of it it's easy to document it if you want to and if you want a close analysis concerning with concern with Iraq I'd suggest that you take a look at one careful study done by which you can pick up on the web done by the most important public attitudes study program in the world it's the program on international policy attitudes of at the university of maryland p IP a.org you can pick it up they did a study about a month ago or so called misimpressions of iraq okay in which they investigated beliefs that are so obviously outlandish that there's no serious debate about with the true or false and those are the misimpressions of direct and they evaluated them among the public they're extremely high but then in response to your question they traced those misimpressions to media sources turned out if you're getting people who are getting their news from Fox News about 80 percent had at least one serious misimpression many more people who were getting their news from major print media you know a leaf print press about fifty percent serious misimpression those who are getting it from National Public Radio about 25 percent serious misimpression these incidentally are missed impressions that I don't think anyone would have in Europe or Asia or anywhere else and that's misleading estimate as they point out because about 20 to 25 percent of the public somewhere in that neighborhood are getting their information from talk radio you just turn that on and you'll find out what that means and among young people when you'd sort of break down the demographics forgotten the numbers but I think a majority from say 18 to 22 roughly that range are getting their news from comic shows with better on television late at night you know these political comic shows well you know taking out that piece of the population but this is an indication of the way effectively the corporate media transmitted the kind of propaganda line not because they are subordinating themselves to it but because they agree with it mr. Chomsky we clearly could go on all afternoon here there are a lot of people I could see who would like to ask questions but we don't have time and hands Janacek does want to give you your medal for your sterling work over the years I'm gonna allow my colleagues who need to go off and file to leave and we'll go to the medal ceremony and then those who want to stay and ask some questions perhaps we might be able to squeeze in a few before lunch professor Chomsky it's a great honor for us that you accepted our invitation but even more so that you accepted our Award of Excellence which the Society of writers has been giving annually to outstanding literary and political figures for their contribution to peace and understanding in fact over the past 15 or 17 years so far and it was previously awarded to international statesmen such as Mikhail Gorbachev and great writers like Norman Mailer the members of the Society founded in 1989 our diplomats and journalists accredited to the United Nations as well as individual staff members with a distinguished literary record we deeply believe that there is a link between politics or diplomacy on one hand in literary art on the other because there are many things that you cannot say in a political or diplomatic fashion you need a literary element and this is one of the things that we have admired about you for so many years it's not only what you say it's how you say it and you can see what a response you have and you never raise your voice and you never swear and you never hit the table with your fist you always keep calm but persuasive persuasive indeed and this is why the citation for the award which is a medal I will take I will show it which is a medal on a blue ribbon with inscription x-men take office which I would say translated as from the spirit of the world but there are also other interpretation but what it means really is the conscience of mankind and that's what it's all about professor Chomsky we honor you today in gratitude he have kept the flame of reason and common sense alive when they were threatened you stayed calm in the clash of civilizations but recorded the conflict in a uniquely somber and persuasive style your voice is heard all over the globe they have earned the respect of millions eager to find the truth in a troubled world there is no better place to express our respect to you than here the United Nations whose spirit and principles you represent [Applause] now I know how my all right well we're I mean we're gonna be taking the professor upstairs to have some lunch shortly but are there any more questions does anybody well I only seem I only see I see three hands so I'm going to take those three questions and then I'm afraid that's going to be it and you leave the the pioneer of India thank you Oh yesterday George Bush he announced his budget and there's a increase in defense spending how alarming is that can you comment how alarming is the increasing defense spending well I mean it's Salar mning in many respects for one thing spending on one area provides what are called forgone opportunities means you don't spend on another there are very serious problems in the country that require major spending I don't have to enumerate them and there if you have more spending for what's euphemistically called defense you don't spend on those other things so those problems get worse and they are serious the military spending itself has two functions one function is of course intimidation and domination it's what's described in say they Clinton area zero Space Command document the public document brochure that I quoted to use military force to secure us investments in commercial interests and now that means in accord with the national security strategy as by now sharpened according the right to attack anyone you like without you know without pretext and in accord with the means now available with ownership of space and so on so that's one aspect and we don't have to talk about what that implies it's not pretty however there's another aspect of military spending which is often suppressed it keeps the economy alive now this is not what's called the military-industrial complex that's wrong what's called the new economy you know that everyone is so proud of what Alan Greenspan hails as the result of the entrepreneurial spirit of the free market and you've heard all of this stuff almost all of that comes out of the dynamic state sector of the economy that's one reason why the third world became the third world while the first world remained became the first world the first world relies on a dynamic state sector no country more than the United States so take a look at all the things you're you use you know computers electronics generally the internet trade which is based on containerization containers biotechnology run through the list they almost all derive from the state sector the public there are devices by which the public pays the costs and shares the wrist and then if anything comes out of it it's handed over to private power so like say the Internet it was for 30 years it was in the state sector that's when all the hard work was done around 1995 it was marketable so was handed over to private corporations computers throughout the nineteen fifty in the 1950s computer was something about the size of this room with vacuum tubes blowing up all over the place and paper floating all over during the 1950s under the pretext of air defense the places like MIT we're able to get computers down to the point where you could sell them to somebody the first mainframes company was a spinoff from that around 1960 that's why IBM has shifted from making typewriters to making computers they were part of this and it's the same with almost the entire dynamic part of the economy furthermore this goes way back in history so the if you go back a century the major engineering problems metallurgical and engineering problems and mechanical problems the major ones the hard ones that had to do with putting huge guns on moving platforms which were able to hit another moving target meaning naval guns that was an extremely difficult problem required complicated engineering electronics metallurgy and so on and it was carried out primarily by the English and the Germans then under the rubric of defense but then of course it's spun off into the automotive industry and all sorts of other things that gave the economy of that day economic historians of technology point out maybe accurately that space that the problems of space today are comparable to the problems of naval gunnery done 100 years ago and will have the same effect so that's without proceeding that's another part of the defense's so-called defence system it's a way of socializing risk and cost and creating the profits future economy everyone you know I mean this is all kind of suppressed in a way so we talk about free markets and the entrepreneurial spirit and everything else but the actual way the economy works is crucially like this and that's part of the military system too you could ask is it a good thing you know is it nice to have computers and the internet and so on well maybe maybe not but the real question is is that the way to do it I mean sure the decision to spend public funds to develop computers rather than say a health system should that be made by deceiving people into believing they're being protected from enemies or should it be made by the people themselves who are evaluating these decisions in other words do we believe in democracy if we believe in democracy back in the 1950s there wouldn't have been you know an air defense system designed to create computers that IBM could later sell there would have been a public informed discussion of whether we want our resources to go into having pcs 25 years from now or have a decent health care and school and transportation system I mean I know which way I would have vote it but that's for people to decide and those decisions are taken out of people's hands in large part through the military system it's another one of the devices for undermining democracy and for creating a particular kind of private run economy in the future that's quite apart from its role and the use of military force so all of this has to be considered I was just wondering would you have any comment on the price there Childress so far on the presidential race well no it's not a great secret that in the United States elections are basically bought large part of the population accepts that as true so right before the 2000 election before the election so no Florida trickery you know no Supreme Court before the election about 3/4 of the public regarded it as mostly farce some game involving rich contributors party bosses and the public relations industry huge public relations industry which trains candidates to keep away from issues to present what are called qualities you know I'm a nice guy to invent to talk about that I use but to keep away from the issues that are important to people and if even if they talk about those issues to do it in such a way that nobody can figure out where they stand which was essentially the case that's the attitude about 75% of the public and it's not inaccurate and the result is that whoever can flood the can flood the propaganda system overwhelmingly pins to win you look at the statistics over the years it's dramatic now in a democratic culture that concentration of power could be overcome so to say take Brazil recent case I'm in Brazil concentration of capital concentration of media is worse than it is here it's a much more repressive state than here here the state is minimally repressive by comparative standards nevertheless popular organizations were able to reach a level of activism engagement in which they were able to overcome these consequences in the United States right now that's just not imaginable it should be but it isn't in order to reach the level of say Brazil we would have to have a reconstruction revitalization of a democratic culture that has been very severely eroded consciously eroded I mean it doesn't just happen by itself and that's a hard word it's not going to happen by this election so this election will be like this one I presume in which it'll be bought who's my buy it well you know the Bush administration has money coming out of their ears the financial industry loves them the pharmaceutical industries you know just salivating over the wonderful gifts they're getting the rich in general are getting an enormous gifts from the administration and they're going to pay it back because they want to they want this train ride to continue fantastic for the extreme rich wealthy the financial institutions other top sectors of the economy they love it so they want it to stay and that means in the last no matter what Democrat is nominated in the last couple of weeks of the election campaign you can expect huge PR campaign I mean we can yes here's one guess as to what it will be I mean was pulling it out of a hat I mean if I was Karl Rove you know say planning what's gonna happen the last couple of months I'd say well you know here's a nice scenario let's right before the Democratic convention let's either kill or capture Osama bin Laden almost certain they know where he is you know how hard can it be to find somebody in a small area of Afghanistan or Pakistan so let's wait until right before the Democratic convention suddenly killer captures that Osama huge victory in the war on terror let's if they carry runs let's paste this achievement alongside of a picture of him standing next to Jane Fonda and stabbing our brave boys in the back and you know on and on then on to the coronation right here in New York by accident timed with the anniversary of 9/11 I don't have to tell you what that's going to look like yeah I mean you don't have to be a PR genius to figure out how to do this so something like that will presumably have and unless there's some very surprising changes I it's very hard for me to see how it can fail I hope it fails you know I had said I'd just take one more but how can I turn down a request like that so I Greek newspaper Illinois to be a professional many people claim that the Republican Party has become the official party of the Religious Right what are the consequences of this in the following year and the second part is why the underworld movement in the USA was not successful in stopping stopping the war in Iraq why couldn't separate the public opinion again I mean the Republican Party is basically a party of the super-rich and they have to have a popular base and one way in which they've organized the popular base is what are called in the PR industry values keep away from issues and focus on values in other words don't let people think about the fact that a job don't let him think about the fact that in the 20 years since the Republicans basically took over with a little interim average real wealth has actually declined for about ninety percent of the population don't let them think about that don't let them think about the fact that Americans have the highest workload in the world the lowest benefits the least social you know the only country with basically no advanced country with no health services you can't take care of your don't let people think about that sort of thing let them think about rising to heaven when all the evil has been destroyed and these souls are saved okay or let them think about having a lot of guns that they can run around with and killed all the aliens are gonna attack them or something like that they don't think about those things but keep away from the issues okay don't let them deal don't deal with the fact that they really oppose these internet these corporate run globalization systems everybody opposes them so let's not talk about them and if I let's just keep away from all the issues and focus on values so yeah you get a mobilization of the extremist fundamentalist group which is big in the United States this is this goes back to the art its origins not new and it goes back to the origins of the country this extreme fundamentalist strain I mean the people who conquered New England you know early at the pilgrims I mean they were raving fundamentalist a lunatic you know who were waving the holy book declaring themselves the children of Israel and exterminating the Amalekites story okay and it's for various reasons that stayed like that it didn't become a major political phenomenon until Carter Carter who I presume was sincere presented himself as a pious Christian and that clearly understood pretty well that that's an electoral gambit that we can use since that time just about every candidate for president almost everyone pretends to be a very religious you know Christian I mean you know like Bill Clinton made sure that every Monday morning there'd be a photograph in the newspaper about him lustily singing in the prayers of the Baptist so and so what's going on in his mind anybody's a certain question but this is just a precondition for entering the political system ever since this was discovered and it's a way of keeping people away from the issues just like in fact if you take a look at the last election year 2000 Bush managed to get roughly 50/50 split by getting a large white working-class vote and where the two main issues were not my job or the trade issues I hate or that kind of stuff the two main issues were religiosity and guns okay that's running a successful campaign keep entirely away from the issues that bother people and just go to something you can throw them red meat on so yeah that's a connection that's real there was a second part of the anti-war movement well I think it's a funny question they asked I mean it's like asking why in 1962 didn't the anti-war movement succeed in stopping the u.s. attack against South Vietnam well one reason is it wasn't any any war okay why didn't the anti-war movement in France in 1950 prevent France from reinvade in their former colony same answer that wasn't any idea where movement I mean by now opposition to war has reached far greater proportions by now you can have massive adding war movements even before a war is officially declared so so it's true it you know didn't quite succeed in stopping it but that's an enormous change over earlier years in the case of Vietnam for example it was seven or eight years before there was any visible anti-war movement by then South Vietnam was virtually destroyed in the case of the French conquest of Vietnam nothing you know destroyed a couple of people protested but no movement and those are changes over the years when the Belgians you know got rid of took over the Congo see any protests no it's just it's become a much more civilized world since then so yeah we should be thankful for that there's never been anything like the protests last February never here or anywhere else is it enough to stop another act of aggression well maybe not but it's certainly a lot better never was hi my name is chika mama I'm a retired librarian from the United Nations 1990 I retired I do not represent any newspaper I have a question that so which there might not be an easier answer the Berlin Conference of 1886 imposed boundaries on African countries and with which we have had to live what 20 30 years do you think that the United Nations should take the lead in freeing Africa from the burden of these imposed boundaries that have no logic whatsoever in considerations of the ethnicities involved the prime example is Nigeria of course from which I come where we have struggled with we've struggled endlessly with the ethnicities the diversity is which diversity is good in America diversity in Nigeria has given us a lot of trouble is it reasonable for the world to lift this burden from off the Africans shoulders so that peoples that cannot live together can peacefully be helped to separate if they are if they have a potential for viability in the intervening years Czechoslovak little Czechoslovakia is peacefully split into two things are going on in Yugoslavia in the Soviet Union where people have separate peoples have separated not always peacefully but I know in Nigeria Biafra tried to separate and was crushed so my question simply is should there not be an end to the burden of the Berlin conference of 1886 thank you I actually think that's a sub case of a much broader question that first the narrow question should the world overcome this problem for Africa they say the UN I don't think so I think those are problems have to be overcome in Africa I think Africans should overcome that problem in their way with whatever support and sympathetic support the rest of the world can give them how are these problems as you say are not unique to Africa these this is the development of the modern nation state system in the last hundreds of years I mean Europe which is the center of it was the bloodiest and most savage part of the world for hundreds of years because Europeans were slaughtering each other trying to establish a totally insane system namely the nation-state system which exactly as you say just in Europe doesn't correspond with people what people's cultures are what their connections are what their languages are whatever it's just some irrational system of force and domination that is imposed on people with tremendous violence I mean that's how Europe developed the kind of culture of violence which allowed it to conquer the world they were very practice slaughtering each other like the 30 years of war alone you know the later the Treaty of Westphalia probably killed about maybe 40 percent of the population of Germany these are not little things and in fact it would have gone which still would still be going on a lot of talk in political science about Democratic peace you know them accredit countries don't go to war well and look at the statistics but there's one fundamental reason why you're getting any results at all in 1945 Europeans you know the democratic countries realized that the next time they play their traditional game of slaughtering each other will be the last because they had constructed means of destruction so fantastic that this game is just over okay did it for the last 500 years we can't debate so we're gonna fight each other anymore we'll fight defenseless people but not each other you know go snow otherwise it's over I can't do it so yes there's a kind of a democratic peace does that mean that for Europe this is the right system no it's a highly artificial system in Europe too that's why you see in Europe in opposition to the centralizing tendencies of the European Union there are also regional tendencies development so if you look at Spain and England and other parts of Europe there's a kind of devolution going on into regions that are more autonomous that are reviving independent local cultures and languages and I think that so much it's a very healthy development in my view and not just free and this in in the rest of the world most of the conflicts that are going on not just Africa Asia Middle East are the results of Europe's forceful imposition of the state system okay in a way which had nothing to do with the people I mean taking what's Iraq Iraq was created by the British in order to ensure that they would have the oil not Turkey and that the country wouldn't have an access to the sea so they could control it okay and make it free and democratic yeah and and that's the same everywhere you look I mean personal remark I'm happened to be under investigation by the state security courts and Turkey because of a talk that I gave in the Arabic here southeast Turkey in which I said something nice about the Ottoman Empire you know I didn't suggest that we should go back to the Ottoman Empire you know a lot of rotten things about it but I did say I thought in many respects the Ottoman Empire had the right idea it there was a center which fortunately was very corrupt so did interfere with people too much all right but for the most part it left people alone to run their own affairs so you know an Armenian part of its affairs and somebody else could run something else you could travel from one place to another without having a visa you know and the local regions were pretty much autonomous and federated and related and so on and so forth and that's pretty sensible way for the world to be organized I think but that means unraveling a complex system of nation-states now very tightly linked to private power because they're called multinational corporations but they heavily rely on their home state for all kinds of support the financial cost and risk provision militaries and support and so on and so forth so this whole kind of thing has to be slowly unraveled and and I don't think there's any formula for it it's really gonna have to be done by people themselves coming to terms with this just you know destructive residue of history I would take the United States take the u.s. Mexico boundary okay what's that you know I mean half of Mexico was conquered by the United States okay now it's called the United States the Mexican US border like most borders was a result of conquest it wasn't a natural border it was a very porous border so people of the same similar people lived on both sides and they tended to move up and back in 1994 something interesting happened in 1994 NAFTA was passed with a lot of rhetoric about how we're unifying you know North America and so on and so forth also in 1994 Clinton who was no fool militarized the border for the first time operation gatekeeper militarized the border to make sure that people wouldn't move up and back Capitol yeah but not people so we got to stop this free movement of people looking back across a rather porous border and impose of a border that's semi-porous capital goes up and back easily but not people because these systems are not designed for people they're designed designed for capital and since then you get you know hundreds of people being killed on the border and so on and so forth well you know that border shouldn't be there just like other borders shouldn't but those are things that are going to have to be changed entirely through understanding and social revolution of it and social change I don't think they can be imposed from the outside professor Noam Chomsky it's been fascinating thanks so much [Applause] Noam Chomsky is a professor of linguistics and philosophy at MIT hegemony or survival America's quest for global dominance is published by metropolitan books an imprint of Henry Holton company visit H holcom for more information book TV on c-span 2 is brought to you every weekend as a public service of cable television coming up at 1:45 p.m. Eastern Daniel Pipes on the israeli-palestinian conflict and possible solutions then images of african-americans at the turn of the 20th century a small nation of people tonight on book TV on Quora book notes with Hugh price author of achievement matters after that on public lives a look at Austrian economist FA Hayek and at 9:15 p.m. Eastern another chance to see MIT linguistics professor Noam Chomsky two volumes thick and 2,300 pages long Samuel Johnson's dictionary of the English language published in 1755 marked

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Published: Wed Aug 01 2012