Special Noam Chomsky Interview: Most Dangerous Point in World History?

thank you welcome to this episode of talking foreign affairs with Arthur cotton today we are extremely honored to be joined by one of the most recognizable names not just in foreign policy but in general Academia someone recognizes one of the most critically engaged public intellectuals we would have all come across his work at some point in our lives Professor Noam Chomsky today's episode will be a broad conversation on topical issues impacting Global Affairs especially touching upon recent books and speeches released by Professor Chomsky this includes topics on the global change first pandemic the climate crisis and the future of internationalism we would also like to thank our listeners who submitted in questions we often hear this saying that this person needs no introduction and if there was ever a time they would be used now would be it as it is difficult to summarize Professor chomsky's extensive career however we will try our best Professor Noam Chomsky is an American theoretical linguist whose work from the 1950s revolutionized the field of linguistics known as the father of modern Linguistics there is contribution to related fields including cognitive psychology and the philosophies of mind and language Professor Chomsky helped to initiate and sustain what became known as the cognitive Revolution relevant to this discussion Professor Chomsky also gained a worldwide following as a political dissident for his analysis of foreign policy and intellectual culture he is the most quoted author still alive and the writer of many award-winning books Professor Chomsky is internationally recognized as one of the most critically engaged public intellectuals and continues to comment on foreign policy and Global Affairs he has numerous honor honorary degrees and has helped senior teaching positions at leading universities including MIT and Oxford his latest book talks about the need for a new Global Vision in light of the covert pandemic even at the age of 93 Professor Chomsky continues to be generous with his time and active in commentary Professor Chomsky welcome to the program thank you very much Professor Chomsky you've lived to some key moments in world history and written extensively on them you've spoken about hearing speeches from at the beginning of the second world war and you did recently say that we're approaching the most dangerous point in human history could you please explain why this is the case especially compared to other conflicts and issues we've had in the 20th century well a president Trump was the most dangerous person in human history pretty obvious uh we are facing a incredible crisis we are destroying the environment that sustains life uh you know that there are plenty of signs of it where you are but it's basically Beyond question president Trump was committed to race accelerating the race to destruction he was committed to this you expanding but that limit the use of the most dangerous fossil fuels and eliminating the regulatory apparatus which to some extent mitigated the crisis I mean pulling out of the Paris agreement was just a symbolic example there can't be anything more dangerous than that I mean Hitler was an utter monster but he wasn't trying to destroy the whole human species of course they don't say that Trump is trying to do this he probably doesn't care he just cares about increasing the profits of the constituency that he slavishly serves uh corporate sector Ultra rich and so on if this increases their profits who cares if the world goes down the tube and you speak also a lot in some of your recent speeches about a global vision sort of a new world um a new way of doing things um postcode what are some of those ideas that you have other approaches or to follow the recommendations of the ipcc many detailed plans that have been developed which show that we can in fact address the crisis of competing the climate for frying the world uh with quite feasible measures that would in fact mean a fraction of the expenditures that were are used to be allowed to the the rich corporations from there from what they lose during the covid crisis two or three percent of GDP it's all available there are detailed plans uh now in fact we're going backwards one of the major horrible consequences of the uh of Putin's invasion of Ukraine was that the much too limited efforts to deal with this uh existential crisis have been set into reverse so for example take the United States most important country obviously one day the ipcc ish ipcc issues another dire warning that we must begin to reduce fossil fuels right now no delay certain percentage every year till we phase them out in a few decades that's one day the next day President Biden announces a vast new areas of federal lands being handed over to energy corporations to exploit for oil notice that this is pure political theater has absolutely nothing to do with the problems of supplying fuel has nothing to do with inflation nothing these poisons will not even come into line for several years this is political Theater which has the effect of moving towards destruction of the conditions for organized human life I mean and what is missing is okay let's take instead of moving on to destroy the environment more quickly for political gain let's use the time available to move rapidly towards renewable energy in ways that are quite feasible and save ourselves and future Generations but that's not considered so are you still optimistic about the prospect of Net Zero by 2050 is it too late there are plenty of people mostly young people who are working energetically and actively to try to prevent This Disaster from happening with enough support they can succeed uh they're not getting the support when krita thundberg stands up at the Davos meeting and tells the millionaires there that you have betrayed us she's right yes my generation later generations have betrayed the young how do they react polite Applause hiding her on the head and saying nice little girl wanted to go back to school this or leadership in fact sometimes it gets so grotesque you can almost only last laugh you may have followed this about a week or two ago one of the chief investment officials of one of the top investment firms gave a speech to investors in which he said that you don't have to worry about all this liberal nonsense about global warming we're investors we're realistic we look a couple years ahead and investing in fossil fuels is very good business for the next couple weeks ahead so stop all these forget all these Tree Huggers and crazy liberals and just invest in fossil fuels well he received some criticism for that but then the editors of the Wall Street Journal plunged in leading Business Journal in the United States and said he is absolutely correct all these people are criticizing him don't understand anything they don't believe in the market and the market is telling us we should destroy the world as quickly as possible so if you don't believe in the market you're some kind of communism solution so of course he's right that's what we're hearing if you think of them that this is a parody I urge you to read it it's not a parody this is what we're hearing at the highest level of business and policy formation right now the meetings are going on in Davos maybe the last couple of days and this is a pretty good review of it by editor of the financial times it just makes fun of the vaporizing all kind of nice talk about uh responsible investing and then you go off to your uh jet plans your fancy parties and uh forget it all because you don't intend to do anything well that's our leadership so you would agree that these bodies such as the world economic Forum what's happening in Davos and the cop meetings or climate change they need some sort of drastically structure to actually address some of these concerns we'll take the latest meeting on climate change Glasgow there were actually two meetings going on only one judge a lot of recording one was inside the stately holes where the rich and Powerful were congratulating one another on the wonderful things they're going to do then there was another outside in the streets were tens of thousands of young people were demonstrating pleading with the people who hold the masters of the world pleading with them to do something instead of empty talk that's the important meeting in fact if you look into it it was interesting to see what happened the American representative John Kerry was euphoric he said we've won we have the market on our side as the big investors have promised that they hold you know 100 trillion dollars of Investments and they're going to use them to deal with the climate crisis so we've once finished uh there was a you know a piece or an article by one of the top political economists Adam twos in which he went through this and he said yes it's true although we think uh of BlackRock big investor uh informed the meeting that the investor Community with uh whatever it is 130 trillion dollars is now planning to devote themselves to attenuated dealing with climate change but there was a footnote the footnote is we will invest as long as it is profitable and if an investment doesn't work out we insist that the international monetary fund bail us out so we'll be happy to help if we can make money and if something goes wrong you the taxpayer will pay us for it that's a great gift that the investment Community is offering the world so we've won the markets on our side that's inside the holes outside the Halls young people can see exactly what this is a way to kick the ball down the road so they can keep making exorbitant profits and what happens to the world doesn't matter and I'll ask you to tie that into one of the questions we got from our listeners is what advice do you have for young people who feel that voice isn't being heard in global Affairs who aren't part of governmental policy making bodies what advice would you give for their voices to be considered for policy proposals we are racing to a precipice it'll be the end of organized human life not in the distant future not everyone's not going to die tomorrow but we will soon meet every Rich irreversible tipping points uh after which there's a steady decline to a world that is totally unlivable I mean we're coming close to the point where South Asia much of the Middle East and Africa will literally be unlivable I mean temperatures in Pakistan and India are reaching uh close to 50 degrees Celsius well I happen to live in the desert in Arizona where temperatures go into the 40s but this is a rich country I have solar panels on the roof air conditioning system okay we can manage not if you're a peasant in Rajasthan or in a Punjab you're not going to survive so what's going to happen what's going to happen to these tens of millions of people this uh investor advisor who I quoted before started by saying it doesn't matter if Miami is six feet under water we have the technology to keep going and what happens when Bangladesh is six feet under water a peasant up the coastal plains with tens of millions of people well that's somebody else's problem we just are worried about the rich and Powerful so what is the advice we know what to do we have the programs that can end this feasibly so get to work and make sure that the gangsters who run the world are compelled to pursue these Pro these policies that can be done we don't live in totalitarian States the Stormtroopers aren't coming in to throw us both into the gulag for talking like this okay that means we have a large measure of Freedom so let's use it moving on to the situation in Eastern Europe given the recent NATO expansion with members like Finland and Sweden joining what do you think these impacts would be on the on the crisis that's very interesting to watch so take right now Sweden and Finland are applying for membership in NATO Sweden's very interesting case when it looked like the Nazis were going to rule the world Sweden was neutral it was tilting towards the Nazis helping them that was but now there's a much more severe danger than the Nazis who is it the Russians and you take a look at Sweden and Finland actually I've just had some interviews there talking about it it's quite interesting they have two ideas in mind one idea is gloating over the fact that Putin has demonstrated that the Russian military is a paper tiger totally incompetent no leadership can't function you can't even conquer cities a couple of kilometers from the border so wonderful they've demonstrated that they're nothing just a paper tiger that's one idea second idea we have to cower in Terror before this paper tiger and arm ourselves to the teeth because it's Fanning to take over the whole world well George Orwell had a name for that he called it double think the capacity to have two contradictory ideas in mind and believe both of them and he thought that was a feature of hyper totalitarian States but it's in fact a feature of educated liberal Democratic societies which tells you something you can't believe both of these ideas and be sane what's happening is totally different has nothing to do with the security of Sweden and Finland both of them are Advanced industrial states with substantial military systems big military producers there is not not a slightest security concern but there are other concerns so for example the sub military Industries in Sweden would love to have a bigger market for its military production same with Finland major military producer itself they're both more or less integrated into the NATO military command already this small step to formalize it but if they do terrific markets and furthermore you can drive these countries farther to the right undermine what's left of their Social Democratic systems move them into the more neoliberal form of uh anti-social Democratic Continental Europe that's what's happening pretty obvious the security claim is absolutely zero it's not even a joke and take Germany Germany is now rapidly increasing its military production with current plans it will soon be the biggest military power on the continent comparable in military power to Russia not with nuclear weapons but of course they're supplied by the United States so it's no different well there are people like me who are old enough to have enough historical memory not to be too happy when they see Germany becoming the most powerful military force in the region well is that something we might think about is Germany doing this for defense what are the chances of Russia attacking Germany I mean it's more likely that Germany will be hit by an avalanche which will destroy the whole country I mean we're not even talking about the real world here so I know one of the other criticisms of the NATO expansion is that it might antagonize Russia I know you've touched upon this previously in the past is how in the 90s um the U.S program for the partnership of peace and that being a potential alternative to Native membership do you still sing a similar program to the partnership for peace could be applied in this situation you could Partnership of Peace which was the late the first George Bush Administration early Clinton years was not very different from Gorbachev's proposal for the post-war post-soviet world uh he called it a European common home with no military alliances well the wording of the you read Clinton's early speeches 1993 1994 he was developing the partnership of Peace it didn't eliminate NATO but it marginalized it was to the side you could be members of the partner of peace without being members of NATO to Tajikistan join after Russia could have joined as they were trying to do that was early in 1990s by the mid-1990s Clinton was changing his tune he was still telling his friend yelts and don't worry we're not going to go to your borders but he was telling the ethnic communities in the United States don't worry your countries are going to join NATO Polish Community vote for me we'll bring in to Nato totally domestic political concerns in fact Clinton conceded this I look at 1997 he had uh discussion with NATO with Yeltsin it's been Declassified in which he says to his friend Boris look I just have to bring Poland into NATO or I'm not going to win the next election but it doesn't mean anything we're not going to do anything about it so don't worry about it okay so how do you think this conflict will eventually end well as a matter of logic there's two ways for a conflict to end one is by a diplomatic settlement the other is one side capitulates there is no other way so that's how it'll end is Russia going to capitulate well not very likely what the West is doing the United States not Europe what the US is doing is carrying out a grisly experiment will prolong the war but underlay a diplomatic settlement and will experiment we'll see if maybe Putin will just slink away in total defeat and disappear or maybe he'll use the weapons that of course he has we all know that to devastate Ukraine and maybe set the stage for a wider war and meanwhile of course continue on the race to destroy the environment through Global heating make sure that millions of people die from starvation because the Black Sea region can't which is the main a major food producer can export but let's try the experiment it'll be interesting that's U.S policy in fact it's official take a look at it take a look at the meeting that just took place at the Ramstein Air Base the U.S Air Base in Germany a couple of weeks ago the U.S called the NATO powers number of others to meet at the U.S Air Base and basically gave them the marching orders it said the goal is to prolong the war to harm Russia and to ensure that Russia will never be able to carry out an act of aggression again well that sounds very nice but until you start to think for maybe 30 seconds so let's think for 30 seconds what does it mean to prevent Russia from ever carrying out aggression again well that's familiar that's the Versailles treaty was to ensure that Germany would not carry out aggression again didn't work too well uh a couple of years later we know what happened so therefore what the U.S is saying is we have to say something do something harsher than the pharaohsi treaty we have to basically destroy Russia maybe something like the morgenthal plan for Germany which was abandoned meanwhile Putin just sits and watches the other Russian leaders just sit in the watch and say gee that's a nice idea this is our leaders they are clinically insane clinically insane more accurately they just don't give a damn as long as you can maintain U.S domination who cares so if the world gets destroyed at somebody else's problem and you even find Scholars so-called Scholars just recently written one by Timothy Snyder saying you can't give Russia any off ramps don't give them any escape from this we gotta fight until Russia's basically finished and don't worry about it I assure you that it'll be fine because Putin doesn't care about the real world he just cares about an imaginary world which he can construct so if he's totally defeated he'll just invent some story in which it looks like a victory so we don't have to worry about the Russians responding this is what we're hearing from respected scholarship we're living in a mad house so you spoke about U.S domination and well I know you've spoken a lot about U.N reform issues of the feminine five uh The veto power what do you think of the recent Amendment or the reform where permanent members that use the veto power will now have to explain that vote to the ga do you think that will have any impact the United Nations was set up by the major Powers the Victorian World War II to ensure that nothing would interfere with their power it's primary primarily the initiative was the United States 1945 the overwhelmingly powerful state in the world nobody was even close and remains pretty much true but they insisted on the veto power so that there would be no interference with them in fact if you look at other U.S positions at the same time pretty much the same so World Court jurisdiction was framed by the United States which was with what was called the Conley Amendment uh uh senator who said we we accept jurisdiction but it'll have to be at the uh with only insofar as it's beneficial to the United States basically what it said and in fact when the world Court ruled against the United States charged the United States with unlawful use of force in Reagan's war against Nicaragua it was just dismissed it okay that's what you guys say we don't care in fact resolution was went to the security Council simply calling on states to observe international law not mentioning anyone but everyone knew who was intended USV told it uh veto power if you look at the security Council vetoes overwhelmingly the United States Russia China veto it when it's not in their interest so the United Nations can act in so far as the great Powers allow not Beyond and actually there are things the U.N could do but they don't want to step on the toes of the great powers speaking of great power rivalry I know you've spoken a lot about U.S China relations just curious for your opinion in regards to what are the key factors responsible for the increasing tensions between two countries in UC and your cold war between these two powers well as you've seen in the last few days uh Secretary of State blinken and Nick Lincoln affirmed as restated in clear terms what U.S policy is they said China is an intolerable threat it threatens U.S dominance in East Asia that's right it does it threatens U.S dominance in Asia and that can't be tolerated then he went on to talk about Chinese aggression which has to be countered well take a look at his examples of Chinese aggression the main example is that China is pouring money into developing advanced technology which might surpass the United States that's Chinese aggression it's also occurring out horse repression within China it's ugly should be condemned it's not aggression but in order to counter this Chinese aggression the United States has to follow the policy of what's called encircling China the official name encircling China means setting up a ring of so-called Sentinel States South Korea Japan Australia which will be heavily armed to with Advanced weapons aimed at China the Biden Administration recently extended it to Precision weapons Precision guided weapons all aimed at China uh they're backed by a fleet of nuclear submarines uh one U.S nuclear submarine can destroy almost 200 cities anywhere in the world with its Trident missiles but that's not enough so they're being replaced by more advanced submarines which can maybe kill 400 cities they have a fleet of them has to surround China Australia has to be brought in the Orca Steel kicking France in the face saying we rescind our agreement with you we get nuclear submarines from the United States and its British vessel which will lead us to completely dominate anything off the Waters of China in fact they're advertised it publicly as being able to sink the Chinese Fleet in 72 hours to get into a Chinese Port without being detected but it's all for peace it's all because we're so peace loving we have to prevent aggression uh the uh but as benkin said The crucial issue is U.S dominance in the Asian region we can't sacrifice that the world has to be ruled by the United States that's official policy we have to dominate and it's perfectly correct because we're so benign and lovely and we never do anything wrong so you can trust us uh that it's not a novelty in world affairs you look at the time look at our predecessor in World control Britain when Britain was ruling the waves same story we are noble we are wonderful we're an Angelic power we just work for the benefit of everyone so just trust us and everything will be fine this is a universal U.S is following the traditional rules except this time the stakes are a lot higher if we continue to do that we'll all be dead do you think China would ever take the us as the world stopped power and I think it's there's been a lot of talk about that for the last 20 years or so and my own view is it's total nonsense uh China is way behind the United States and by just about every measure that people talk about purchasing power parity but add the per capita element to it in GDP purchasing power parity uh China's way behind the United States per capita furthermore militarily it's not even close U.S spending is greater than maybe the next 10 highest military expenditures the uh in China of course has very serious internal problems demographic ecological China has enemies on all sides United States has none it's a extreme imbalance now this nevertheless may happen the reason is because the United States is destroying itself from within uh you can read the headlines every day okay a couple days ago another massacre in a school can't do anything about it this has to be everybody has to have a Arsenal full of assault rifles to protect ourselves meanwhile slaughtering children killing everyone else homicide suicide rate is Way Beyond any other country with guns in fact this is the only country where mortality is increasing among the white middle Working Class People in the 25 to 50 year old age range wait the mortality is increasing is that having any happening anywhere else it's not a decline in the birth rate they're dying from uh opioids you know overdoses suicides and so on the country is destroying itself from within and that may lead to a situation in which China is the world dominant power thank you for that and we'll just move into some questions submitted in by our listeners um the first one is some Daniel he asks do you have written on the easiness with which people subordinate themselves to government and other paths an answer they give is enforced or manufactured consent in recent years we have seen countless examples of people swaying from traditional political powers spread an uptake of conspiracy quote fake news Freedom protests climate protest etc etc are people becoming less subordinate is consent harder to manufacture that was a quote from my favorite philosopher David Hume in what amounts congregard as the first major work of what is now called political science that's called first principles of government 350 years ago he opens by saying that he's amazed by the easiness with which the many subordinate themselves to the few and he concludes that this miracle can happen only by imposing consent somehow the the Masters the rich and the powerful can impose consent on the masses who actually have the power to govern if they realize it well go back to the first world war on a crucial moment in the development of these Concepts uh in the United States the uh as in every every country that was at War uh carried out a major propaganda campaign to convince their own citizens that their cause was noble and just uh the United States as well when the U.S the U.S entered the war in 1917 it established the country's first major propaganda agency was called the committee commit on public information to or Willian term when you hear States talk about information they mean disinformation so this was the Committee on Public disinformation which had the task of converting a pacifist population which didn't want any War into raving anti-german maniacs and it works and a number of the members of the commission were very impressed two of them became very influential one was Walter Lippmann became the leading public intellectual of the 20th century the other was Edward Bernice who became a founder of the public relations industry which is in fact the world's largest propaganda agency both of them were both were liberals Wilson Kent Roosevelt Kennedy liberals they concluded they said we have learned a lesson from this it is easy to manufacture consent that slipman to engineer consent let's burn eyes we now have what they called a new art in the practice of democracy we have a way of ensuring that these I'm quoting the stupid and ignorant masses will not get involved in something which is not their business public policy that has to be kept to the Smart Guys us and we have to be protected from the trampling and the Roar of the bewildered herd the population and now we've learned how to do it with techniques of Manufacturers consent well these have become huge Industries particularly in the more free societies and the more brutal harsh societies it's not that important you can beat people over the head and send them to prison but in our sight is like ours has to be more sophisticated now you have to do it in other ways and it has been turned into a major art we see it now very easily and so for example the kinds of things I was just talking about although they're perfectly public cannot appear in any U.S media even official U.S documents like Biden's proposal to last September 2 extend the programs of integrating Ukraine into the NATO military command with more military training more armaments joint military exercises part of an enhanced program as it was called for NATO membership can't report that in the United States try to find a word the Russians of course know it they can read the White House web page even as a press can and they see it happening uh State Department in March after the invasion stated that the U.S does not take into account any Russian security concerns well barely a word about that in the United States but the Russians surely you know it says no negotiations okay we don't take into account your security concerns it's virtually an invitation to war doesn't justify the war but it's important if you want to understand something about it you can't say that and I said I did some small experiments just to illustrate the degree of the thought control it's uh required in the United States now if you want to be a serious person that when you talk about the war in Ukraine you have to call it the unprovoked war in Ukraine so if you Google that phrase you'll get about a million hits because everybody uses it well I did a little of experiment I looked up unprovoked war and Iraq unprovoked invasion of Iraq basically nothing couple of people who opposed the war and wrote a letter to the editor but not a single phrase in the mainstream well that's interesting enough in itself but it becomes more interesting when you look at the facts the invasion of Iraq was totally unprovoked not a hint of provocation the war in Ukraine was criminal aggression but it was certainly provoked just given partial examples then but you have to a hundred percent of educated people have to say the opposite that's pretty good propaganda and it's just an illustration of what you can see happening all over in fact the tightening of censorship in the United States has been really interesting to watch if you look at U.S media you cannot find what the Russians are saying you want to find out what foreign minister loveroff is saying and maybe you can go to Indian State TV or the Aeropress and they report it but Americans are not allowed to hear it this is you know again this is just Insanity you don't want to hear what the enemy is saying you've got to be so tight in the propaganda that you can't hear it it's pretty extreme yeah some really interesting points and you actually touch and pretty much answer another question in regards to the coverage of different conflicts um especially comparing Iraq to Ukraine um the next question we had was you have spoken in the past about it being likely that be an apocalypse that is due to a strategic mistake and miscalculation rather than deliberate strike on this note history has shown us whether it be through Cuba North Korea or Russia um that we are being close to nuclear warfare yet uh never happened this the theory of mutually assured destruction guarantee the fact that there'll be no nuclear warfare in the future well you want to take a chance it's your business actually if you look at the cases uh miscalculation alone came within minutes of causing total destruct nuclear war in during the Cuban Missile Crisis uh U.S destroyers were bombing Russian submarines to try to enforce Kennedy's quarantine the Russian submarines had were old-fashioned submarines designed for the North Sea they get barely function in the tropical waters they had lost contact with Center central control in Moscow they were being attacked with death charges they assumed that a war had broken out they were equipped with Torpedoes with nuclear warheads uh the uh uh procedure the rules of procedure are that three officers have to authorize the sending off of the nuclear tip torpedo two authorized it the third Vladimir decided not to vasilia decided not to that's why we're alive it's happened again several times there was a time when defense secretary William Perry was on the phone ready to call President Carter to tell him to launch a retaliatory strike when he got a notice from Central Command that there had been an error they had played an old type which was a type tape which was a training tape by mistake but it was not a real date so he canceled the call and it goes on like this you feel confident with that game okay uh I think it's this is quite a part from The Reckless acts which brought the world close to nuclear war uh it's a mirror if you look at the record it's a miracle that we've survived and it's not very wise to take a chance on Miracles perpetuating themselves thank you so much Professor Chomsky for you generous with your time we know you have a busy schedule and thank you for answering my questions thank you for answering us so many listeners questions and this was a very educational experience an inviting experience we appreciate your contribution thank you very much thank you it's my pleasure

Channel: Adil Cader

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Id: L72vOPS016s

Length: 50min 0sec (3000 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 18 2023