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Does The USA Intend To Dominate The Whole World By Force?
(Noam Chomsky, ZNet, June 2, 2003)
The first e-mail is from Norberto Silva, from the Cape Verde islands, and he says: "Could the USA and president Bush lead the world into a nuclear war with their policy of pre-emptive attacks?" . . .
NOAM CHOMSKY
They very definitely could. First of all we should be clear - it is not a policy of pre-emptive attacks. Pre-emption means something in international law. A pre-emptive attack is one that is taken in the case of an imminent, on-going threat. For example, if planes were flying across the Atlantic to bomb New York, it would be legitimate for the US Air Force to shoot them down. That's a pre-emptive attack. This is what is sometimes called preventive war. That's a new doctrine that was announced last September in the National Security Strategy. It declares the right to attack any potential challenge to the global dominance of the United States. . . . that, in effect, gives the authorisation to attack essentially anyone. Could that lead to a nuclear war? Very definitely. . . . The preventive war doctrine is virtually an invitation to potential targets to develop some kind of deterrent, and there are only two kinds of deterrent. One is weapons of mass destruction, the other is large-scale terror. . . . The National Security Strategy states fairly explicitly that the US intends to dominate the world by force, which is the dimension in which it rules supreme, and to ensure that there is never any potential challenge to this domination. . . . the US record, incidentally with the support of Australia, since the period of its global dominance in the 1940s, is one of instigating war and violence and terror on a very substantial scale. The Indochina War, just to take one example in which Australia participated, was basically a war of aggression. The United States attacked South Vietnam in 1962. The war then spread to the rest of Indochina. The end result was several million people killed, the countries devastated, and that's only one example. So history does not support the conclusion and the principle that one state should have a unique right to rule the world by force. That's an extremely hazardous principle, no matter who the country is. . . . The fact that a country has a constitution and is internally democratic does not mean that it does not carry out violence and aggression. There is a long history of this. England, for example, was perhaps the most free country in the world in the 19th century and was carrying out horrifying atrocities throughout much of the world, and the case of the United States is similar. The record goes back very far. The United States was a democratic country, for example, when it invaded the Philippines a century ago, killing several hundred thousand people and leaving it devastated. It was a democratic country in the 1980s, when the current incumbents in Washington carried out a devastating war of terror in Nicaragua, leaving tens of thousands dead and the country practically ruined, an attack for which they incidentally were condemned by the World Court and the Security Council in a veto-ed resolution, but then escalated the attack, and so it continues. As to the democratic election, yes, true, there is an election, and the Republicans have explained very clearly how they intend to overcome the fact that their policies are pretty strongly opposed by the majority of the population. They intend to overcome it by driving the country into fear and panic, so that they will huddle under the umbrella of a powerful figure who will protect them. . . . At the last minute, at the Azores summit, he said that, even if Saddam Hussein and his associates leave the country, the United States is going to invade anyway - meaning the US wants to control it. . . . I have never seen, that I can recall, such clear and brazen contempt and hatred for democracy as has been expressed by US elites. Just have a look. Europe, for example, was divided into what was called Old and New Europe. There was a criterion - Old Europe were the countries where the governments, for whatever reason, took the same positions as the vast majority of their populations. That's called democracy. New Europe - Italy, Spain, Hungary - were the countries where the governments overrode an even larger percentage of their populations. The population was more opposed in those countries than in Old Europe, but the governments disregarded their populations - maybe 80 or 90 percent of them - and followed orders from Washington, and that's called good! Turkey is the most striking example. Turkey was bitterly attacked by US commentators and elites, because the government took the same position as about 95 percent of the population. Paul Wolfowitz, who is described as the great exponent of democratisation, a few weeks ago condemned the Turkish military for not intervening to compel the government to, as he put it, "help Americans", instead of paying attention to 95 percent of their own population. This expresses brazen contempt for democracy, and the record supports it. . . . the current justice department has claimed the right to arrest people, including American citizens, put them in confinement indefinitely, without charge, without access to lawyers and families, until the president declares that the war on terror is over. They have even gone beyond that. The new plans include plans to actually take away citizenship if the attorney general decides to do so. . . . Churchill had something to say about this. He said, and this is virtually a quote, [that] for a government to put a person in prison without trial by his peers is in the highest degree odious, and the foundation of all totalitarian governments, whether nazi or communist. He said that in 1943, condemning proposals of a similar nature in England, which weren't enacted. Remember, in 1943 England was in pretty desperate straits - it was under attack and facing destruction by the most vicious military force in history, and nevertheless Churchill rightly described measures like these as "in the highest degree odious", and "the foundation of totalitarian governments". Yes, people should be very upset about it. . . . among the regions that are targeted for so-called preventive war, one of them is almost certainly the Andes region. It's a region of substantial resources. It is, to a certain degree, out of control. The US already has extensive military resources - a large military basing system in Ecuador, the Dutch islands, El Salvador - surrounding the region, and quite a few forces on the ground. My suspicion is that the US will probably, in Venezuela, once again support a coup as it did last year. But if that doesn't work, direct intervention is not impossible. Remember, this has long been planned. . . . The United States is calling on the world to proliferate weapons of mass destruction and terror, if only as a deterrent. . . . The United States is not different from other countries in the world in this respect. There is great fear and concern about the policies that the Bush administration is pursuing. If you eliminate the element of panic, which was induced by the propaganda, which is unique to the United States, then opposition to the war and to the security strategy here are approximately the same as elsewhere. I and in fact other people who are willing to speak publicly are simply overwhelmed by requests and demands to discuss these issues.

posted by Lorenzo 6:52 PM