Prof. Noam Chomsky: Illegal but Legitimate: a Dubious Doctrine for the Times

good evening as principal of the University of Edinburgh it is my privilege to welcome you special welcome to our rector welcome to guests welcome to guests who are participating via the Internet and of course a warm welcome to students and my colleagues this skippered lecture is devoted to the memory of Professor Edward Saeed and our Gifford lecturer who so nicely welcomed is Professor Noam Chomsky he is of course famous for his works on linguistics and when I was younger I would have worked too as one at one of my heroes also and he's also known as a leading public intellectual dealing with very important ethical and political issues it's extremely fitting that he speak in the Givet series and historically speakers have included William James Albert Schweitzer Arnold Toynbee and various people who one would certainly label in the important public intellectual camp and given the topic it's especially fitting that he give this Gifford lecture devoted to the memory of Professor Saeed well I received the invitation with mixed emotions was naturally gratified but it was under the shadow of the absence of an old and the close friend Edward Sade who as you know fought a long and courageous struggle with incurable cancer but succumbed before he was able to deliver lectures here which is an immeasurable loss to you to everyone anywhere who cares about freedom and justice and intellectual and cultural achievement but I'm happy at least to be able to speak in his memory turn to the topic by comparative and historical standards we are all fortunate to enjoy great freedom freedom plainly offers opportunity opportunity confers responsibility responsibility to use the freedom that one enjoys wisely honestly and humanely we also happen to live in centers of enormous power accordingly our decisions as to how to face our responsibilities are sure to have far-reaching consequences I want to concentrate on one case primarily a case that everyone agrees is of enormous significance reaching quite literally to issues of human survival that's the question of resort to force in international affairs how its legitimacy has been understood over time how it is today as you know the hideous crimes of the 20th century led to dedicated Hertz in 1945 to save humans from the curse of war and the word save is no exaggeration surely since it became clear in 1945 that the likelihood of ultimate doom is well beyond what any rational person would be willing to tolerate actually the phrase ultimate doom is not mine I'm borrowing it from two prominent strategic analysts writing in the Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences not given to hyperbole they conclude that Washington's current military programs and aggressive stance quoting them carry an appreciable risk of ultimate doom and they express the hope that the threat that the US administration is posing to the world and to the American people will be countered by a coalition of peace-loving nations led by China we've come to a pretty pass when such thoughts are expressed at the heart of the establishment and what that implies about the state of American democracy is no less shocking and threatening and you may consider leave it to you to consider what the judgments imply about Britain which was not expected to lead the coalition well in considering their reasons - the reasons that led them to these conclusions good place to start is with an event that actually took place after their article appeared but is typical last November at the United Nations Commission Committee on disarmament it's basically the General Assembly which voted to support a treaty to ban production of fissile material for nuclear weapons the vote was 147 to 1 there were 2 abstentions the one you can guess the two abstentions were Israel which is reflexive and Britain which explained its abstention on the grounds I'm quoting the British ambassador on grounds that the resolution had divided the international community at a time at a time when progress should be a prime objective that divided it a hundred and forty seven to one so obviously actually we gained some insight into the ranking of survival of the species on the list of priorities that not only by the vote but by the publicity it received unfortunately it's only one of many illustrative examples the efforts to end the curse of war led to a consensus on the principles that should guide state action the United Nations Charter the consensus and subsequent declarations and treaties the consensus was reiterated last December by high-level UN panel which included the National Security Adviser for George Bush the first it was reiterated again by Kofi Annan a couple of days ago the panel reiterated the conclusions of the United Nations Charter that force can be deployed only when authorized by the Security Council or under Article 51 famous article 51 in defence against armed attack until the Security Council acts article 51 is generally interpreted to allow the use of force when quoting the necessity for action is instant overwhelming and leaving no choice of means and no moment of deliberation it's the classic wording of Daniel Webster case involving Britain any any other resort the force is a war crime in fact the supreme international crime differing from other war crimes in that it contains within it the accumulated evil of the whole the words of the Nuremberg Tribunal the December 2004 panel concluded that article 51 should be neither rewritten or reinterpreted the panel then adds a comment directed to Western intellectuals it says for those impatient with such a response the answer must be that in a world full of perceived potential threats the risk to the global order and the norm of non-intervention on which it continues to be based is simply too great for the legality of unilateral preventive action as distinct from collectively endorsed action to be accepted allowing one to so act is to allow all that final sentence proposes a principle that is the foundation of international law and of every moral code that merits even the slightest attention the principle of universality that is we apply to ourselves the same standards we do to others if not more stringent ones but that principle is flatly rejected by the political leadership of the most powerful states and also by the dominant moral and political culture of the educated elites within them again raising the prospects of ultimate doom the discussion of the article 51 in the UN panel last December was as I mentioned addressed the Western intellectuals in fact it was a direct response to many years of enthusiastic support by Western intellectuals for intervention that they determined to be legitimate even if illegal and it therefore takes on unusual significance even apart from the fact that it reaffirms the stand of the world outside of what the West calls the international community namely itself the for example the declaration of the South Summit in the year 2000 former non-aligned movement surely with the recent NATO bombing of Serbia in mind it's the highest level meeting ever of the former non-aligned countries now accounting for 80 percent of the world's population the declaration rejects what it calls the so-called right of humanitarian intervention which it perceives to be traditional imperialism and a new guise it also provided a detailed and quite sophisticated analysis of neoliberal globalization it was ignored apart from scattered derision and in in Britain in fact tantrums when it was mentioned interesting ones the forceful rejection of the post-war consensus and elite Western circles took place in the final years of the last millennium across the spectrum of articulate opinion there was enthusiastic celebration of what was called a normative revolution in world affairs these are all quotes with a claim for the idealistic new world bent on ending inhumanity which had entered a noble phase of its foreign see with a saintly globe for the first time in history a state is dedicated to principles and values acting from altruism and moral fervor alone as the leader of the self-declared enlightened States hence free to resort to force for which it's what its leaders determined to be right and that's a very small sample from an extraordinary deluge I've drawn only from the most respected liberal voices internationally after several years of such flights of self adulation which probably have no historical precedent of the bombing - its own return the these end of the millennium declarations do reflect a large range of a leaked perceptions in fact something close to unanimity but not those of the general public so in the United States large majority of the public very large majority continues to take the position that states are entitled to use force only if I'm now quoting the public opinion studies only if there is strong evidence that the country is in imminent danger of being attacked that is an overwhelming majority of the public rejects the bipartisan consensus on pre-emptive war rejects the Western intellectual consensus and agrees with the much-maligned South Summit and the recent UN panel the legitimate legitimacy of the use of force is not the only issue on which American public opinion diverges very sharply from elite political culture to take another current example which also raises issues of survival it's commonly reported that the United States refused to join the Kyoto treaty a month ago that's true only if the phrase United States excluded it's population that is it's true only if we dismiss democracy with total contempt the population overwhelmingly supported ratification of the treaty in fact so enthusiastically that a majority of bush voters believed that he agreed with them that the US should join because it's a genomicist thing to do very large majorities also believe that the United States should accept the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court and the World Court should rely on the United Nations to take the lead in international crises including issues of security reconstruction and political transition in Iraq that's been true since April 2003 a majority even believe that the United States should abandon the Security Council veto and accept majority rule and the same is true on many other issues large majorities believe that the United States should rely on diplomatic and economic measures more than military ones in the so-called war on terror and overwhelming majorities as in the past favor increased government spending on health care education and other social spending all of this is in sharp opposition to public policy and pretty much to elite intellectual consensus studies revealing these facts were released by the most prestigious institutions that monitor public opinion shortly before the November 2004 presidential elections plainly these results are of critical importance to functioning democracy the studies reveal that both political parties are far to the right of the population on many of the most crucial issues they barely received any mention none in the national press the observations unfortunately generalize and they lend further weight to the judgment of the strategic analysts who I quoted at the outset that the world's most powerful state is facing a serious Democratic deficit to use a term we apply to others these conclusions are reinforced by studies of public opinion taken by the same major or institutions that were taken shortly after the federal budget was announced a few weeks ago the public calls for sharp cuts in military spending along with sharply increased social spending it's education medical research job training conservation renewable energy increased spending for the United Nations and for economic and humanitarian aid and reversal of bush's tax cuts for the wealthy a government policy is dramatically the opposite in every respect there is rightly good deal of international concern about the consequences of the rapidly expanding twin deficits the trade deficit and the budget deficit closely related to those two is a third deficit the growing Democratic deficit which is very little discussed because it's welcomed by wealth and power which expend substantial efforts to try to turn the country into a failed state to adopt a fashionable notion a state that has formal democratic institutions but with the public largely removed from policy choices and implementation and that is a very serious threat much more so than in a small country somewhere this is after all the world's most powerful state the provisions of the United Nations Charter were spelled out further in particular at the Nuremberg Tribunal Tokyo judgments were far more severe although the principles that they enunciated were significant both of the tribunals were very deeply flawed the same by the most elementary moral standards they were both founded on the rejection explicit rejection of the principle of universality to bring the defeated war criminals to justice it was necessary to devise definitions of war crime and crime against humanity how this was done was explained by Telford Taylor the chief counsel for the prosecution distinguished international lawyer and historian in brief the operative definition of crime was crime that you carried out but we did not and as Taylor explained so urban bombing of urban civilian concentrations was not a crime because the Allies did more than the Germans as Taylor explains his words to punish the foe especially the vanquished foe for conduct in which the enforcing nation has engaged would be so grossly inequitable as to discredit the laws themselves which is correct but the operative definition of crime also discredits the laws themselves every subsequent tribunal is discredited by the same deep moral flaw the current Yugoslavia general as an example a group of international lawyers requested the tribunal to investigate NATO crimes that were recorded by the major international human rights organizations including admissions by the NATO command the prosecutors rejected the request without investigation it's in violation of the statutes of the tribunal stating that they accept NATO assurances of good faith Yugoslavia did proceed to bring charges to the World Court invoking the Genocide Convention the United States excused itself from the proceedings on the grounds that when Washington finally signed the Genocide Convention after 40 years it added a reservation excluding itself from charges and the court correctly accepted this argument after the flurry of anger fury over the reject the publication of the Justice Department memoranda which effectively authorized torture the Dean of the Yale Law School Harold Koh made a wrote an indignant article in which he said this is almost as if the government was claiming the right to commit genocide he failed to add that the government does a court itself that right and has done so since it finally signed the Genocide Convention much the same happened in the case brought by Nicaragua against the United States 20 years ago a core part of nicaragua's case which was presented by a distinguished Harvard Law Professor was rejected by the court on the grounds that in accepting world court jurisdiction in 1946 the United States had entered a reservation excluding itself from prosecution under multilateral treaties in particular excluding itself from the supreme crime of aggression in 1946 was of course a Liberal Democratic administration just as the u.s. decision to exclude itself from the world court proceedings brought by Yugoslavia was under the Clinton administration the court accepted this in the case of the Nicaragua case and it therefore restricted its deliberations to customary international law bilateral u.s. Nicaragua Treaty even on these very narrow grounds the court charged Washington with what it called unlawful use of force which in lay terms is international terrorism ordered it to terminate the crimes and pay substantial reparations which would go far beyond paying off the huge debt that's strangling Nicaragua the court was dismissed as a hostile forum to quote the New York Times editors reflecting the prevailing view of the United States then vetoed two Security Council resolutions affirming the court judgment with Britain politely abstaining and it proceeded to escalate the attack the targeted country was devastated thinking further into misery after the u.s. took over again in 1990 by now 60 percent of children under 2 suffer severe malnutrition and probable brain damage while much of the population survives on remittances that's a radical change from 20 years earlier when Washington was panicked by reports from UNICEF the World Bank and other international agencies about what they called Nicaragua's remarkable achievements that were laying a solid foundation for long-term socio-economic development while the country enjoyed one of the most dramatic improvements in child survival in the developing world no problems about that now and if there was anyone who actually fit the category of conservative if there was such a category of people they would have a very easy way to deal with the fact that 60% of the children under 2 are suffering probable brain damage namely by paying their debts simple conservative principle but that's beyond unthinkable compassionate conservatives want to go beyond that if they existed but they're much more interested in making political capital over the fact that a woman in a vegetative state shouldn't be allowed to die in dignity the significance of matters like these in Washington Western culture generally is revealed by the recent appointment of John Negroponte II to the new position of Director of intelligence he was the ambassador to Honduras running the world's largest CIA station not because Honduras is of any importance but because he was supervising the international terrorist war for which Washington was condemned by the International Court of Justice and the Security Council absent the veto he also part of his job was to deny regularly gruesome state crimes in Honduras so that the military aid could continue to flow for international terrorism when the inter-american Court tried Honduras an indeed convicted under oath for these crimes they requested that negroponte II testify but the Reagan and Bush number-one administration's refused to allow him to appear there has been virtually no reaction to the appointment of a leading international terrorist to the top counterterrorism position in the world at the very same time the heroine of the popular struggle that overthrew the murderous thug Somoza was denied a visa to teach at the Harvard Divinity School as a terrorist also eliciting little reaction or will would not have known whether to laugh or to weep rejection of the principle of universality is understandable just consider the consequences if we were willing to even admit the possibility of attending to elementary moral principles it really is unthinkable if the United States and its allies are granted the right of what's called anticipatory self-defense against terror in accord with the elite consensus then a fortiori cuba nicaragua host of others have long been entitled to carry out terrorist acts within the united states because there is no doubt of its involvement in very serious terrorist attacks against them extensively documented in impeccable sources classified US government documents and so on and in the case of nicaragua even condemned by the world court and the Security Council absent the veto again and surely Iran would be entitled to do so today in the face of very serious threats the conclusions are of course utterly outrageous and advocated by no one and there are still more still more outrageous conclusions no one for example would argue that Japan exercised the legitimate right of anticipatory self-defense when it bombed military bases in the US colonies of Hawaii and the Philippines even though the Japanese knew that b-17 Flying Fortresses were coming off the Boeing production line and they were surely familiar with the public discussions in the United States explaining how these planes could be used to incinerate depends wooden cities in a war of extermination flying from Hawaiian and Philippine bases to burn out the industrial heart of the Empire with fire bombing attacks on the teeming bamboo antiques as Air Force general Chenault recommended in 1940 that's a far more powerful justification for anticipatory self-defense than anything by bush and Blair and their associates so it's wise not to consider not even to even imagine entertaining the most elementary of moral principles Washington's unilateral right to force was articulated publicly by the Bush administration and the national security strategy of September 2002 breaking no new ground however writing in foreign affairs the main establishment journal even before the 2000 election Condoleezza Rice condemned what she called the reflexive appeal to notions of international law and norms and the belief that the support of many states or even better of institutions like the United Nations is essential to the legitimate exercise of power by the United States that is the usual exception prevails this extremist position has long been completely conventional I'll just keep to the liberal end of the spectrum for a few illustrations the elder statesman and Kennedy advisor Dean Acheson informed the American Society of international law in 1963 that his words no legal issue arises when the United States responds to a challenge to its power position and prestige by terror in this case he was speaking shortly after the Cuban Missile Crisis which had brought the world to the brink of nuclear war a few months earlier we only learned recently how close it was an important part of the background to this virtual annihilation of the species important part of it was the was Kennedy's campaign to bring the terrors of the earth to Cuba phrases historian and Kennedy advisor Arthur Schlesinger in his biography of Robert Kennedy who was assigned responsibility for bringing the terrors of the earth to Cuba and the campaign of international terrorism was in fact no slight matter and escalated in later years still keeping to the liberal side of the spectrum the Clinton doctrine was that the United States will if it chooses resort quoting again resort to unilateral use of military power to defend vital interests such as ensuring uninhibited access to key markets energy supplies and strategic resources without even the pretext that bush and Blair devised taken literally the Clinton doctrine is much more expansive than with his national security strategy which aroused the enormous fear and concern around the world and elicited very harsh criticism at once even within the foreign policy establishment in the United States the more expansive Clinton doctrine contrast was barely noticed the international affairs literature makes the difference clearer as explained by Clinton's Secretary of State Madeleine Albright although writing in foreign affairs she pointed out that with regard to the Bush Doctrine that every president has such a doctrine in his back pocket but it is simply foolish to smash people in the face with it and to implement it in a manner that will infuriate even allies a little tact is useful in other words so it's not good form to declare that there is no United Nations when the United States leads the United Nations will follow when it suits our interest to do so we will do so when it does not suit our interests we will not or perhaps it is good form the author of the words I quoted was just appointed and that US ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton the attitudes on use of force of the elite consensus receive a an instructive expression in the scholarly literature we one of the leading American Historians Yale University professor John Lewis Gaddis published the first book scholarly book that goes into the historical roots of the Bush administration so-called pre-emptive war doctrine which he basically supports with the usual provisos about style and tactics Gaddis traces the doctrine to one of his intellectual heroes the great grand strategist John Quincy Adams referring specifically to the justifications that Adams provided for Andrew Jackson's conquest of Florida and what's called the first Seminole War in 1818 Adams argues that the war was justified in self-defense Gatiss agrees in goddess's version after britain sacked washington in 1814 u.s. leaders recognized that expansion is the path to security that's the leading motif expansion as the path to security and therefore conquered Florida a doctrine now expanded to the whole world by Bush and Gaddis concludes that when Bush warned quoting him that Americans must be ready for pre-emptive action when necessary to defend their Liberty and defend our lives he was echoing an old tradition rather than establishing a new one reiterating principles that presidents from Adams to Woodrow Wilson would all have understood very well all of Bush's predecessor Gatiss explains recognized that America's security was threatened by what he calls failed States dangerous power vacuums that the US should to guarantee its own security from Florida in 1818 to Iraq in 2003 caddis is a good historian he cites the right historical sources primarily historian William Earl weeks did the major scholarly work on the Seminole Wars but Gattis omits what they say and so let me fill in a few of the details which are not uninformative weeks describes in lurid detail this is mostly quotes know at Jackson's exhibition of murder and plunder in the first Seminole War which was just another phase of his project of removing or eliminating Native Americans from the southeast which had been underway long before the sacking of Washington in 1814 which was totally irrelevant Florida was a problem both because it had not yet been incorporated into what the founding fathers called the expanding American Empire and because it was a haven for Indians and runaway slaves fleeing either the wrath of Jackson or slavery there was in fact an Indian attack which Jackson and Adams used as a pretext namely after US forces drove a band of Seminoles off their lands killing several of them and burning their village to the ground they retaliated by attacking a military supply boat and seizing the opportunity Jackson embarked on a campaign of terror devastation and intimidation destroying villages and sources of food and a calculated effort to inflict starvation on the tribes who sought refuge from his wrath and the swamps and so matters continued leading to a famous state paper in which Adams endorsed Jackson's unprovoked aggression to establish in Florida the Dominion of this Republic upon the odious basis of violence and bloodshed these words of the Spanish ambassador are a painfully precise description week's rights Adams had consciously distorted dissembled lied about the goals and conduct of American foreign policy to both Congress and the public weeks continues grossly violating his proclaimed moral principles implicitly defending Indian Removal slavery and the use of military force without congressional approval Adams recognized what weeks called the absurdity of his explanations but in Adams own arms his own words he felt that it is better to err on the side of vigor than on the side of weakness to speak in ways clearer than truth as Dean Acheson was to express the same sentiment in the earlier in the early post-war years the account Adams gave weeks right stands as a monumental distortion of the causes and conduct of Jackson's conquest of Florida reminding historians not to search for truth in official explanations of events the crimes of Jackson and Adams proved but a prelude to a second war of extermination against the Seminoles in which the remnants either fled to the west to enjoy the same fate later or were killed or forced to take refuge in the dense swamps of Florida all of this is remembered in American culture by the fact that the Seminoles are now the mascot of leading the football team wins the football championship weaks stresses the important point that by endorsing Jackson's crimes Adams shifted the power to make war from Congress to the executive in violation of the Constitution the principle remains in force not troubling strict constructionists weeks points out that Adams also established on quoting and the presidential rhetoric of Empire designed to MUP to mobilize at Marshall public and congressional support for its policies durable and essential aspect of American diplomacy inherited and elaborated by successive generations of American statesmen but fundamentally unchanged over time the rhetorical framework he points out rests on three pillars the assumption of the unique moral virtue of the United States the assertion of its mission to redeem the world by spreading its professed ideals and the American Way of life and the faith in the nation's divinely ordained destiny the theological framework reduces policy decision policy issues to a choice between good and evil thus undercuts reasoned debate and thins off the dred threat of democracy critics can be accused of anti-american and Americanism which is an interesting concept borrowed from the lexicon of totalitarianism the issue of defense against Britain the only potential enemy didn't arise the British Minister Castle ray was so eager to cement anglo-american relations that he even overlooked Jackson's murder of two innocent British citizens which Adams defended for what he called its salutary efficacy for terror and example week suggests that Adams was heeding the words of passages his favorite historian that crime once exposed had no refuge but you know audacity also a principle that persists well sealing filling in these and quite a few other instructive omissions the picture provided by goddesses scholarly sources lends considerable support to his judgement about the precedents for the Bush Doctrine and its implementation from Adams through what's called wilsonian idealism and on to the present sure that's uh needless to say this should be very familiar to anyone familiar with British history and many others as for the expansion of the precedents to the entire world others can make their own judgments and they have fear and often hatred of the United States have risen to unprecedented Heights significantly increasing the threat of terror as was anticipated and also anticipated by the United States and certainly by Britain and also increasing the threat of ultimate doom the same is true of the extension of the Clinton doctrine of control of space for military purposes to Bush's doctrine of quoting ownership of space which may mean instant engagement anywhere in the world putting any part in the world at risk of instant destruction that's the space-age version of the Adams doctrine that expansion is the path to security well to summarize briefly there is a spectrum of articulate opinion on the resort to military force at one extreme as the post-war consensus formally articulated in the UN Charter reiterated at the South Summit and once again by the high-level UN panel the rest of the spectrum and basically adopts the principle that the United States is uniquely exempt from international law and delegate this right to its client and entitled to resort to any measures it chooses to respond to a challenge to its power position and prestige and to ensure inhibited access to key markets energy supplies and strategic resources just keeping to the liberal internationalist end of the spectrum I should stress again however that the American public keeps quite firmly to the post-war consensus that is virtually excluded from the political system and to a large extent from our ticket opinion well at the margins we do find more nuanced opinions on the resort to war one of the most important is the International independent commission on ink of inquiry into the Kosovo war which was headed by the distinguished South African juror Justice Richard Goldstone the Commission rendered the harshest criticism of the NATO bombing anywhere near the mainstream concluding that it was illegal but legitimate illegal for obvious reasons but despite its illegality quoting it was legitimate because all diplomatic avenues had been exhausted and there was no other way to stop the killings and atrocities in Kosovo justice Goldstone concluded that the UN Charter may need revision in the light of the report of the commission that he headed that was the conclusion rejected by the UN panel last December the NATO intervention Goldstone explains is too important a precedent for it to be regarded as an aberration why because it was cowered carried out by the powerful States he also dismissing routinely the principle of universality he also stressed the need for objective analysis of human rights abuses well one question that objective analysis might address is whether indeed as the Commission concluded all diplomatic options had been exhausted in Kosovo fact is that when NATO decided to bomb there were two diplomatic options on the table and NATO proposal in a Serbian proposal after 78 days of bombing a compromise with rates between them which suggests that diplomatic options may well have been available a second question more important is whether indeed there was no other way to stop the killings and atrocities in Kosovo as the independent commission asserts clearly a crucial matter here objective analysis happens to be unusually easy there's a vast documentary record from impeccable Western sources US State Department published several compilations of documents the British Parliament had a lengthy investigation NATO OSCE others they all reach the same conclusion overwhelmingly the killings and the atrocities followed the bombing in the extensive literature on this topic from media to scholarship the documentation is almost universally ignored and the chronology is reversed I've reviewed the dismal record elsewhere and put it aside here justice Goldstone is in fact unusual and that he recognizes the facts in his words the direct result of the bombing was that almost a million people fled Kosovo into neighboring countries and about 500,000 were displaced within Kosovo itself a tremendous catastrophe for the people of Kosovo a catastrophe that was compounded by major crimes under NATO military occupation afterwards the consequences of the bombing should certainly have been no surprise they were predicted by NATO commander Wesley Clark as soon as the bombing began quite publicly other sources make it clear that the Clinton administration also anticipated the crimes that followed the bombing and in fact Clarke confirms that in more detail and his memoirs it's hard to imagine that the British authorities were more diluted Kosovo is in fact an ugly place before the bombing before the NATO bombing though regrettably not by international standards according to the major Western sources about 2,000 people had been killed in the year prior to the invasion many of them by KLA Albanian guerrillas attacking Serbs from Albania in an effort as they openly announced to elisa the harsh serbian response that could be used to rally western opinion to their cause the British government makes the astonishing claim that until January 1999 two months before the bombing most of the killings were the responsibility the KLA guerrilla is attacking from Albania and the rich Western documentation reveals that nothing substantial changed in the two months that followed up until the bombing one of the very few serious scholarly studies even to consider these matters estimates that serves were responsible for 500 of the 200 killed this is the careful and judicious studied by Nicholas wheeler who supports the NATO bombing on the grounds that there would have been worse atrocities had NATO not bombed so the argument is that by bombing at a time when most of the atrocities were attributable to the KLA guerillas with the anticipation that the bombing would lead to far worse atrocities NATO was preventing atrocities the fact that this is the argument contrived by the most serious analysts tells us a good deal about the decision to bomb particularly when we recall that there were diplomatic options on the table and that the agreement reached after the bombing was a compromise between them formally at least NATO instantly violated the agreement well Kosovo is one of the two great achievements that were brought forth to give retrospective proof that for the first time in history states were observing principles and values under the guidance of their anglo-american tutors and that the Charter must be revised to allow the West to carry out humanitarian it the other example adduced was east-timor that example is truly atrocious that it can even be brought up without shame as a remarkable comment on Western intellectual culture and here almost the entire West is complicit the US and British role are by far the worst that's extensively documented in print so I'll skip it along with some other recent examples that merit discussion and I think lead to the same conclusions well one case that can hardly be ignored has to do with the bush Blair invasion of Iraq which is based on a single question in their words as they and their associates repeatedly emphasized Iraq's refusal to obey Security Council orders to stop developing weapons of mass destruction after the collapse of these pretexts we were solemnly informed that the justification was not anticipate Ori self-defense as had been insistently proclaimed but rather Bush's messianic vision to bring democracy to the world as the new version is described by the liberal press well reactions to the announcement of the messianic vision ranged from rapturous aw to critical commentary which praised the nobility and generosity of the vision but warned that it may be beyond their means the beneficiaries may be too backward might be too costly that this is the guiding vision and always has been it is presupposed throughout a self-evident it's hard to find an exception within the mainstream you might try all that was missing was evidence evidently the declarations of our leaders suffice massive counter-evidence up to the present can be dismissed as irrelevant without comment well these strongest witnesses for the defense should be the leading scholars and the most enthusiastic advocates of what's called democracy promotion the most prominent among them is the director of the democracy and rule of law project at the Carnegie Endowment Thomas Carruthers he's just published a book reviewing the record of democracy promotion since the end of the Cold War and he finds what he calls a strong line of continuity running through all administrations quoting him now where democracy appears to fit in well with US security and economic interests the United States promotes democracy where democracy clashes with other significant interests it is downplayed or even ignored all administrations are in his words schizophrenic with curious consistency he predicts with regret that Iraq policies will likely exhibit similar contradictions between stated principles and political reality but the dedication to the principles is nonetheless unquestionable well didn't take long for his predictions about Iraq to be fulfilled the occupation authorities worked assiduously to avert the threat of democracy but the US and Britain were compelled with great reluctance to permit elections that was a major triumph of nonviolent resistance a few competent observers would disagree with the editors of the Financial Times quote them that the reason the elections took place was the insistence of the grand ayatollah ala Sistani and the mass popular resistance that he supported elicited I added that Sistani who vetoed three schemes by the us-led occupation authorities to shelve or dilute bush and Blair did not waste a single moment in declaring that they intended to subvert the elections that they had tried to prevent by rejecting any timetable for withdrawal as a large majority of the Arab population want and as even their own candidate yet allowi was compelled to include as a plank in his program so the strong line of continuity persists and the struggle is far from over Carruthers also wrote the standard scholarly work on democracy promotion in Latin America in the 1980s in part from an insider's perspective he was in reagan's State Department as in the programs of democracy enhancement he regards the programs as sincere but a failure and a systemic failure where US influence was least in the Southern Cone progress was greatest where US influence was greatest in the region's nearby progress with least and the reason Carruthers explains is that the United States would tolerate only limited top-down forms of democratic change that did not risk of setting the traditional structures of power with which the United States has long been allied Washington sought to maintain the basic order of quite undemocratic societies and to avoid populist base change in short the strong line of community continuity goes back a decade earlier to its Reagan roots and remember I'm not quoting a critic but the most prominent advocate of the scholarly advocate of the programs well it goes back far beyond but I'll skip that and none of it should come as any surprise it merely reveals that the United States is very much like other powerful states past and present pursuing strategic and economic interests of demonym sectors intellectuals have the task of covering it up and making it look as if it's dedicated to principles and values democracy is fine as long as it takes the top-down form that does not risk popular interference with primary interests of power and wealth and much the same doctrine holds internally where enormous efforts are made to promote to protect the minority of the opulent from the majority it's a primary goal of government and quoting the framer of the American constitutional system James Madison explaining explaining what the new system should be to his colleagues at the Constitutional Convention well popular struggle over these matters over the centuries has produced many victories for freedom and democracy but progress it is not a smooth upward trajectory there are periods of regression sometimes reaching so far that the population is almost completely marginalized in pseudo elections in recent years they're run by the same people who sell toothpaste and cars literally as we all know very well business despises and fears the markets of Orthodox economic doctrine and which informed consumers make rational choices in the United States business spends hundreds of billions of dollars a year to prevent that outcome projecting imagery to delude consumers uncontroversially that's the goal of advertising not information and the observation is as old as Adam Smith who warned that the interests of merchants and manufacturers is to deceive or even to oppress the public as they have done on many occasions now served by major industries developed for these purposes when the public relations industry is given the task of selling candidates it naturally resorts to the same techniques as it does in selling commodities projecting imagery to delude voters so deceit is employed to undermine democracy just it as as it is the natural device to undermine markets the November 2004 election presidential election in the United States provides a very striking example that one that takes real talent to miss the the United States where there's plenty of information about it as polls show voters had little idea of the stand of candidates on issues in fact only about 10 percent said that their vote is based on the candidates agendas ideas platforms and goals about which furthermore they were often deluded as I already mentioned important studies right before the election and virtually unreported showed that the bipartisan consensus is far to the right of public opinion on major issues that's a real triumph of marginalization of the population in a formal democracy and it's worth adding that the US political and economic managers are teaching useful lessons to their counterparts elsewhere I'm sure you can provide examples well that's a small sample of issues of major significance for the future not least among them is the propriety of the use of force inquiry might reveal genuine case of intervention that are illegal but legitimate but there's always a heavy burden of proof the prized example offered at Leeds this as a dubious doctrine for the times and tends to reinforce the measured judgment of the World Court in 1949 RIA form reaffirmed in the Nicaragua case and others and recently reiterated by the high-level UN panel to quote the court in 1949 the court can only regard the alleged right of intervention as the manifestation of a policy of force such as has in the past given rise to most serious abuses and such as cannot whatever be the defects in international organization find a place in international law from the nature of things intervention would be reserved revert by reserved for the most powerful states and might easily lead to perverting the administration of justice itself inquiry very definitely does reveal that state terror and other forms of threat and use of force have brought the world very close to the edge of ultimate doom it's actually shocking to observe how easily such discoveries are ignored in the intellectual culture including quite recent and astonishing ones today surely only the most blind and irrational will ignore the call that was issued by Bertrand Russell and Alfred Einstein exactly fifty years ago when they said here then is the problem which we present to you stark and dreadful and inescapable shall we put an end to the human race or shall mankind renounce war so now professor Chomsky will take some questions if you do pose a question it would be helpful if you started by telling us who you are please yeah my name is ash our mom from the University of Nottingham and I come from Algeria professor Chomsky thank you for the talk it's a really a pleasure - I'm glad I came from nothing to hear a speech my question is regarding the Middle East I didn't I wasn't lucky enough to come to you earlier talk today and I wanted to know what your thoughts were on the recent developments in the Middle East especially regarding the recent London summit and you know what your thoughts about what would happen or what's going to happen I didn't hear completely talk about the London summit er yeah intra general the Empire particularly recent developments in the middle seen highest real Arab conflict with Israel notably missing thank you and the most important state was not there namely the United States because part of the intellectual culture in England and most of the West and of course in the United States is to suppress a very crucial fact the barrier to a political settlement of the israel-palestine conflict for the last at least 30 years in fact beyond is the United States but we're not allowed to say that because we are by definition the enlightened States and that's our leader or so can't be true but they were missing and therefore what happened was mostly irrelevant the actual results of the summit were pretty much to reaffirm what happened in the Abbas Sharan truth the truce is better than no truth it's better to have less killing than more killing on the other hand it was tremendous victory for us Israeli rejection ISM the only substantive element and is pretty much the same in the London summit was to deny the legitimacy of any form and any resistance to the military occupation which means that the military occupation can continue and that doesn't mean just the military occupation it means all the topics which are not discussed and at the summit or at the Abbas Shoreham truth and those are would have been in the core of the conflict for 30 years increasingly so for the last 10 years that's the continual takeover of Palestinian land and resources including out the most valuable land including crucially the water resources Palestinians are left as among the most water deprived people in the world because about 80% of their water resources are used by Israel and this just continues constantly and read it in this morning's newspaper with the report of 3,500 new homes built between to the east of Jerusalem the paper didn't report that these programs were started by the doves Clara being in Paris and are now continuing to be implemented went on right through the Oslo agreements without any great peak year with the year 2000 clinton's last year and continues now and now it can continue without any parting to the agreements can continue without any disruption there are some vague talk who what they like to call Bush's vision of two states whatever that's supposed to mean some vision Egon but the fact of the matter is that for the last since 1976 when the u.s. first vetoed a Security Council resolution calling for a two-state settlement written abstaining the since then this has been the prime obstacle to settlement and unless somebody tries to deal with that it's over I should finally add that this is another one of those issues on which US public opinion is strongly opposed to government policy in fact the support for this position in the United States is about 17 percent 1 7 percent but that opposition is inactive because nobody has a clue about what's happening none of what has been going on for the virtually none of what's been going on for the past 30 years even reported and that you can't get barely even find it the scholarly literature which is very obedient I mean there are exceptions of course but to a large extent that's true if you look at the serious scholarship you can find it but nobody knows and the London summit unfortunately didn't carry it forward pretty good another question please thank you my name is Alma and I depend n burrow here and I'm a musician and I have a question for a professor Chomsky and looking at the recent events it seems to me that certainly the past two Bush elections have demonstrated more than anything that America is in crisis with itself as with itself as much as socially and politically is a crisis with itself America is a crisis with itself and a crisis with the - with itself at what point do the American people get their country back as it would seem to me I know we know we know for example that it's in past administrations there has always existed a conflict of interest visa vie business etc you know that but it would seem to me now that past revelations demonstrate clearly that business has perhaps well and truly taken over to use the local parent a lock stock and barrel and what I see for example in Iraq is not a government in charge but is big business in complete charge of the complete operation to the extent that security seems to be provided for example by privatized quasi mercenary so what my question then in a nutshell is at what point do you see the American people waking up what are they going to do about this well first of all what you're describing could pretty much be said about Britain and through its whole history and thing you know there's most likely differences here and there looks good it's and the British Empire for example was run by mercenaries to a far greater extent than the u.s. in Iraq how did Britain hold India how many British troops were there it was mostly local forces Gurkhas see poised taken from one area sent to kill people in some other area that so they waited Afghanistan and Africa and so on the reliance on civilian soldiers is very rare I mean it's in fact a mistake that the United States made in Vietnam you can't they learn that you can't rely on civilian soldiers to carry out a murderous colonial war Britain always knew that France always knew it others knew it that's why they really relied either on professional killers or on local forces that could be sort of used you know it's true that the United States that's why the top military and the top political Isilon in the United States turned against the draft against conscription in around 1970 because they finally learned the lesson that's familiar to every preceding imperial power and that the u.s. itself kept to in and invade the Philippines and others with conscripts and it's true now the second largest force the second largest military force in Iraq is not written it's private contractors some of them former US military some South African murderers some a lot of Latin Americans who were a lot of Latin American Chilean solid or and other other security forces armed and trained by the United States to carry out atrocities there there was much work to do so they're going off to Iraq but this is just the traditional pattern and the Alliance to business is of course very true but there's nothing novel about that and it's nothing specific to the United States in different degrees what's I mean the United States is not identical to other societies you know Britain's not literally but there are very striking similarities and in many respects what the United States is now is the direction towards which European elites are trying to move Europe including British it's not including the marginalization of the population which is not a new policy but continually takes new forms Chris Froome Gallants journalist you said that American public opinion is in many ways to the left of the parties do you see an imminent coherent force beginning to claim some of that public opinion back as even Hillary Clinton's beginning to pay homage to the right do you see any cause for optimism on the left well first of all remember what's called the left in the United States is the New York Times the I'm not joking the leading economists who I'm sure you'll be with giving an honorary degree through one of these days Greg Manko who's the head of probably get a Nobel Prize is the head of the Reagan's economic advisor he just opened an article by saying I'm not joking that Harvard University is probably the most left-wing institution on the face of the earth so that's the left you know if anybody knows what Harvard is like you'll appreciate the comment but Harvard the New York Times you know Democratic Party that's supposed to the left and there are so far to the right that the most of the population is way to the left of them can the actual pup so the real question is not really about the left but whether mainstream public opinion can be made to brought about growth to enter into policy formation that is can the country be turned into a functioning democracy not just a formal democracy but I think that's question you can ask your - it's not a question but specific to the United States the u.s. may be a couple of steps in advance of other industrial societies but it's you know you can answer the question very easily yourself is there hope for a change in the past frequently if you look over past history its reach the end of history in a utopia of the Masters has repeatedly been proclaimed here - background I think 1880 William Morris gave a which would be a famous speech in at Oxford and I wish I could remember the words because they're quite eloquent but the theme was he says he knows that it is received opinion that history is over and that everyone must subordinate themselves to the rule of business and the most brilliant minds tell him that but he knows he knows that if that's true civilization is at an end and he refuses to believe that it's true and he was right you know following that king quite important developments leading to the much higher degree of freedom and justice that we now have and that's been repeated over and over me and yeah this happens to be a moment of triumphalism for concentrated state private power the kinds of meeting at g8 here are pretty soon but there have been moments of triumphalism in the past repeatedly always shown to be wrong so yes there's plenty of opportunities to change it and now the opportunities are much greater than in the past because there already is a legacy of freedom which has been one which was much beyond what was available in the 1880s or the 1920s or the 1950s to take the last period in which there was such triumphalism so sure plenty of opportunities question is whether people use them so take one last question hi my name is Nina and I haven't got a fully formulated question but I was hoping that you could say a few words on on the connection between what you've been talking about and the abandonment of the rule of law between states and what is going on within states especially the so-called enlightened ones now to the run-up in the run-up to the g8 for example the clamp down on protests and political activism in this country in the run-up to the g8 there's a lot of clamp down on political activism and protest and I was hoping IDE the you are now a journey protester to geez running running up to the g8 rebels the security system - okay then engineer the there's been on well you know much better than I do plenty of a lot of hysteria stirred up about violently threat of violence at the g8 meetings that's what you're referring to big police presence security forces if that's what you mean yeah my suspicion is judging by past events that that's a conscious effort to stir up violence the if you take a look at past the government have a very strong interest in stirring up violence of such meetings governments and the private power that they are closely connected to they desperately do not want the issues to be discussed they want to keep the issues that the protesters are having mine off the agenda and they would like it best if nobody I've ever heard about the meetings but can't have that degree of secrecy so people hear about them and they come to have positions that they want to protest they don't like the frame were a lot of people in fact the overwhelming majority the world as far as we know certainly in countries where you can take polls is opposed to the agenda which the propaganda system calls globalization it's not globalization it's a very particular form of economic integration oriented towards assuring investor rights and undermining democratic choices I mean that's a particular form of international integration and a lot of people are opposed so for example in take the North American Free Trade Agreement NAFTA it's an unusual agreement that said it's not about free trade that none of the free trade agreements are about free trade it certainly was an agreement at least if populations are considered parts of their countries so in Canada and the United States we have good polls the majority of the population was opposed Mexico polls aren't so good so you can't be certain that there were plenty of opposition and in fact it's an unusual agreement and that all three countries the populations were opposed and they had alternatives like the labor movement in the United States presented a very substantive alternative for a free trade agreement but that couldn't be reported so and it wasn't to this day it's unreported Congress's own research bureau also proposed the alternative pretty similar the labor movement that couldn't be reported so as rammed through by executive agreement over popular opposition and of course those who carry the various stages forward would like to make sure the public is out of it well one way to keep the public out is to make sure that protests are limited to the stone-throwing and police gas masks and that sort of thing if as long as the incidents as the event is restricted to the discussions in private between the important people and stone-throwing by the unimportant people then you can be sure then there's a victory you know the issues are off the agenda so that they would like to stimulate violence as natural and if you look at the history in past recent cases it's often been true a good deal of the stone-throwing and so on turns out to be police provocateurs or else be just the very secure strong security presence you know kind of elicits a reaction from people who would like that you know what they regard as fun or something what the protesters ought to do was be aware of that and avoid it make sure that they use their strength which is the issues in the public support and the educational importance of building up organization to counter projects that they're opposed to what will happen we'll see we know the record of past events and it's often been what I describe sometimes as in Italy and the general ones it turned out there was a lot of violence turned out it was almost all attributable to the police police provocateurs they black bands would be breaking windows and banks and a couple of days later people would see them walking in and out of the police station I don't know if that will happen here but the very attempt to create an atmosphere of tension and security tends to promote that type of reaction okay the University of Edinburgh and the Gifford committee is very grateful to Professor Chomsky for coming here to lecture on these very important topics and for debating with the audience and I'm sure you'll want to join with me in thanking him again you

Channel: The University of Edinburgh

Views: 164,914

Rating: 4.7625232 out of 5

Keywords: noam, chomsky, professor, gifford, lecture, edinburgh, university, politics, philosophy, political_science, humanities, society

Id: xEvIDiVheys

Length: 82min 47sec (4967 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 18 2008