|
Comment on this article |
View comments |
Email this Article
|
|
News :: Miscellaneous |
|
September 11th and Its Aftermath: Where is the World Heading? |
Current rating: 0 |
by Noam Chomsky
(No verified email address) |
04 Feb 2002
Modified: 05 Feb 2002 |
The following is a transcription of Chomsky's Public Lecture at the Music Academy, Chennai (Madras), India: November 10, 2001
Presented by Frontline magazine and the Media Development Foundation and supported by 22 representative organizations |
(As he takes his position at the lectern in an overflowing auditorium,
Noam Chomsky is greeted in traditional South Indian style, with a
ponnadai, a brocade shawl, to audience applause.) Oh, what's going to make
it stay on? [Told he is free to take it off]: It's going to fall in one
minute, so I might as well take it off [audience laughter]. Thank you.
A few years ago, one of the great figures of contemporary biology, Ernst
Mayr of Harvard published some reflections on the search for
extra-terrestrial intelligence. His conclusion was that the likelihood of
success was effectively zero. His reasoning had to do with the adaptive
value of what we call higher intelligence, meaning the particular human
form of intellectual organisation. Mayr estimates the number of species
since the origin of life at about 50 billion, only one of which, he
writes, achieved the kind of intelligence needed to establish a
civilisation. It did so very recently, perhaps a hundred thousand years
ago in a small breeding group of which we are all survivors. And he
speculates that this form of intellectual organisation may not be favoured
by selection, and points out that life on earth refutes the claim that
"it's better to be smart than stupid," at least judging by biological
success, which is great for beetles and bacteria but not so good as you
move higher up the level of cognitive organisation. And he also makes the
rather sombre observation that the average life expectancy of a species is
about a hundred thousand years.
We are entering a period of human life that may provide an answer to the
question of whether it's better to be
smart than stupid. The most hopeful prospect is that the question will not
be answered. If it receives a definite answer, that answer can only be
that humans were a kind of biological error, using their allotted hundred
thousand years to destroy themselves and, in the process, much else. The
species has certainly developed the capacity to do just that, and an
extra-terrestrial observer, if one could exist, might conclude that they
have demonstrated that capacity throughout their history, dramatically in
the past several hundred years, with an assault on the environment that
sustains life, on the diversity of more complex organisms, and with cold
and calculated savagery, on each other as well. September 11th and the
Aftermath are a case in point. The shocking atrocities of September 11th
are widely regarded as a historic event and that, I think, is most
definitely true. But we should think clearly about exactly why it's true.
These crimes had perhaps the most devastating instant human toll on
record, outside of war. But the word ``instant'' should not be overlooked.
It's unfortunate but true that the crime is far from unusual in the annals
of violence that falls short of war. The aftermath of September 11th is
only one of innumerable illustrations of that. Although the scale of the
catastrophe that has already taken place in Afghanistan can only be
guessed, and we can hardly do more than speculate about what may follow,
we do know the projections on which policy decisions are based. And from
these we can gain some insight into the question of where the world is
heading. The answer, unfortunately, is that it's heading along paths that
are well travelled, though there certainly are changes. The crimes of
September 11th are indeed a historic turning point -- but not because of
the scale, rather because of the choice of target. For the United States,
this is the first time since the British burnt down Washington, in 1814,
that the national territory has been under attack, or for that matter even
under threat. And I don't have to review what's happened in those two
centuries. The number of victims is huge. Now, for the first time, the
guns have been pointed in the opposite direction, and that's a dramatic
change. The same is true, even more dramatically of Europe. Europe has
suffered murderous destruction, but that's Europeans slaughtering one
another. Meanwhile, Europeans conquered much of the world -- not very
politely. With rare and limited exceptions, they were not under attack by
their foreign victims, so it is not surprising that Europe should be
utterly shocked by the terrorist crimes of September 11th. And while
September 11th is indeed a dramatic change in world affairs, the aftermath
represents no change at all, and therefore passes with very little notice.
All of this raises questions that should be considered with some care --
if we hope to avert still further tragedies. And lurking not very far in
the shadows is the question I already mentioned. Is the species on the
verge of demonstrating that higher intelligence is simply a grotesque
biological error? Some of these questions have to do with immediate
events, some with more lasting and fundamental issues. Among the questions
that come to mind are these: First of all and most critically important,
what's happening right before our eyes? Secondly, a bit more general, what
is the "new war on terrorism"? Thirdly, what about the tendencies that are
already underway? There are several that I'd like to mention at least. One
is the rapid increase in the means of mass destruction. Second is the
threat to the environment that sustains human life. And third is the
shaping of international society by the world's dominant power centres,
state and private, what's misleadingly called "globalisation." And
throughout we should ask quite seriously, I think, to what extent ominous
tendencies that are all too easy to perceive reflect choices that are
natural and, in fact, even rational within existing institutional and
ideological structures. To the extent that they do, that's the greatest
danger of all. Let's begin, briefly at least, with the first and most
immediate question: What's happening before our eyes and what do we learn
from it about where the world is heading under the leadership of its most
powerful forces? Even before September 11th, much of the population of
Afghanistan was relying on international food-aid for survival. Current
estimates by the United Nations and others in a position to know are not
seriously challenged. The estimates are that the number at risk since
September 11th, as a direct consequence of the threat of bombing and the
attack itself has risen by about two-and-a-half million, by 50 per cent,
to approximately seven-and-a-half million. Pleas to stop the bombing to
allow delivery of desperately needed food have been rebuffed virtually
without comment. These have come from high U.N. officials, from charitable
agencies, and others. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO)
had already warned, even before the bombing, that over seven million
people would face starvation if military action were initiated. After the
bombing began, it advised that the threat of a humanitarian catastrophe in
the short term was very grave, and furthermore that the bombing has
disrupted the planting of 80 per cent of the country's grain supplies, so
that the effects next year will be even more severe. What the effects will
be, we will never know. Starvation is not something that kills people
instantly. People eat roots and leaves and they drag on for a while. And
the effects of starvation may be the death of children born from
malnourished mothers a year or two from now, and all sorts of
consequences. Furthermore, nobody's going to look because the West is not
interested in such things and others don't have the resources. There are
plenty of examples of that. So in August 1998, Clinton bombed the Sudan,
destroyed half of its pharmaceutical supplies and the factory that
produced them. The consequences there are unknown. The few attempts to
estimate the toll, the death toll, are in the neighbourhood of tens of
thousands of people -- by the German Embassy in Sudan, by a few
independent investigators, who have looked. Actually nobody really looked
carefully because nobody cares! It's not important, it's normal, it's
ordinary for a couple of bombs to have the effect of leaving tens of
thousands of corpses in a poor African country. Something comparable,
though probably on a considerably greater scale, is unfolding right in
front of us at this moment. What the consequences will be we do not know
and probably never will know in any detail. But what we know is that these
are the expectations on which Western civilisation is relying as it lays
its plans. And only those who are entirely ignorant of modern history will
be surprised by the course of events, or by the justifications that are
provided by the educated classes. These are important topics that I'll
reluctantly put aside for lack of time. I might say that the combination
of sadistic cruelty and starry-eyed self-adulation is captured... well, to
give one example, captured accurately enough by the American press just
about a hundred years ago during the noble campaign to ``uplift and
christianise" the Philippines, as the President described it. And they
succeeded in uplifting about half-a-million Filipinos within the next few
years by slaughtering them, along with horrifying war crimes carried out
by old Indian fighters who were killing the `Niggers', as they put it.
That finally aroused some disquiet at home and the press explained that it
takes patience to overcome evil, that it will be a long war, and that we
will have to go on "slaughtering the natives in English fashion [until]
the misguided creatures" who resist us will at least come to "respect our
arms" and later will come to understand that we wish them nothing but
"liberty [and] happiness." As in Afghanistan today, and all too many other
places for hundreds of years. Well, it's much too brief, but let me put
that terrifying issue aside and turn to the second question. What is the
"new war on terrorism"? The goal of the civilised world has been announced
very clearly in high places. We must "eradicate the evil scourge of
terrorism," a plague spread by "depraved opponents of civilisation itself"
in a "return to barbarism in the modern age,'' and so on. Surely a noble
enterprise! To place the enterprise in proper perspective, we should
recognise that the Crusade is not new, contrary to what's being said. In
fact, the phrases just quoted are from President Ronald Reagan and his
Secretary of State, George Schultz, twenty years ago. They came to office
at that time - Reagan, and shortly after, Schultz -- proclaiming that the
struggle against international terrorism would be the core of U.S. foreign
policy. And they responded to the plague by organising campaigns of
international terrorism of unprecedented scale and violence, even leading
to a condemnation by the World Court of the United States for what the
Court called "the unlawful use of force," meaning international terrorism.
This was followed by a U.N. Security Council Resolution calling on all
states to observe international law, which the United States vetoed. It
also voted alone, with one or two client states, against successive
similar U.N. General Assembly Resolutions. So the ``New War on
Terrorism'' is, in fact, led by the only state in the world that has been
condemned by the International Court of Justice for international
terrorism and has vetoed a resolution calling on states to observe
international law, which is perhaps appropriate. The World Court order to
terminate the crime of international terrorism and to pay substantial
reparations was dismissed with contempt across the spectrum. The New York
Times informed the public that the Court was a "hostile forum" and
therefore we need pay no attention to it. Washington reacted at once to
the Court's orders by escalating the economic and the terrorist wars. It
also issued official orders to the mercenary army attacking from Honduras
to attack "soft targets" -- those are the official orders: Attack ``soft
targets,'' undefended civilian targets like health clinics, agricultural
cooperatives and so on -- and to avoid combat, as the army could do,
thanks to total U. S. control of the skies and the sophisticated
communications equipment that was provided to the terrorist forces
attacking from foreign bases. These orders aroused a little discussion.
Not much, and they were considered legitimate, but only with
qualifications. Only if pragmatic criteria were satisfied. So one
prominent commentator, Michael Kinsley, who's regarded as the spokesperson
of the Left in mainstream discussion (he happened to be writing for The
Wall Street Journal this time), argued that we should not simply dismiss
State Department justifications for terrorist attacks on "soft targets.''
He wrote that a "sensible policy" must "meet the test of cost-benefit
analysis." That is, an analysis of "the amount of blood and misery that
will be poured in, and the likelihood that democracy will emerge at the
other end." "Democracy" means what Western elites decide is democracy.
And that interpretation was illustrated quite clearly in the region at
that time. It's taken for granted that Western elites have the right to
conduct the analysis and pursue the project if it passes their tests. And
pass their tests, it did. When Nicaragua, the target, finally succumbed to
superpower assault, commentators across the spectrum of respectable
opinion lauded the success of the methods adopted to "wreck the economy
and prosecute a long and deadly proxy war until the exhausted natives
overthrow the unwanted government themselves," with a cost to us that is
"minimal," leaving the victims with "wrecked bridges, sabotaged power
stations, and ruined farms'' -- and tens of thousands of corpses, which
are not mentioned -- and thus providing the U. S. candidate with "a
winning issue": ending "the impoverishment of the people of Nicaragua.''
That happens to be Time magazine, but it was pretty characteristic. We are
"United in Joy" at this outcome," The New York Times proclaimed, proud of
the``Victory for U.S. Fair Play," as a Times headline read. We are now
"united in joy" once again, just a few days ago on Nov. 6, as the U. S.
candidate won the Nicaraguan election after very stern warnings by
Washington of the consequences if the Nicaraguan people did not understand
their responsibilities. The Washington Post, the other national newspaper,
explained the victory cheerfully The U. S. candidate "focused much of his
campaign on reminding people of the economic and military difficulties of
the Sandinista era," referring to the U. S. terrorist war and economic
strangulation that destroyed the country. Meanwhile, a leering George Bush
peers at us from television, instructing us that the "one universal law"
is that all variants of terror and murder are "evil." Unless, of course,
we're the agents, in which case terror and murder lead us to a "noble
phase'' of our foreign policy with a "saintly glow," so the The New York
Times, the newspaper of record, informs us. There's nothing particularly
new about this. This goes back hundreds of years and you can find examples
among the hegemonic powers consistently. Prevailing Western attitudes are
revealed with great clarity by the reaction to the appointment of the new
U.N. Ambassador to lead today's "New War against Terrorism,'' John
Negroponte. Negroponte's record includes his service as Pro-Consul in
Honduras in the 1980s, where he was the local supervisor of the
international terrorist war for which his government was condemned by the
World Court and the Security Council -- irrelevantly of course in a world
that's governed by the rule of force. There was no detectable reaction to
that either in the United States or in Europe. Another of Negroponte's
condemned colleagues, Donald Rumsfeld, was just here. He was here for a
few hours, which gave him enough time to declare that "`We' Crush Terror."
That was the headline for an enthusiastic front-page article in the
national press here a few days ago. I think even Jonathan Swift would be
speechless at all of this [audience laughter]. I mentioned the case of
Nicaragua not because it's the most extreme example of international
terrorism, unfortunately far from it, but because it's uncontroversial,
given the judgments of the highest international authorities.
Uncontroversial that is, among people who have a minimal commitment to
human rights and international law. One can estimate the size of that
category by determining how often these elementary matters have been
mentioned in the period since September 11th and from that (don't bother
carrying out an extensive enquiry, you'll find approximately zero) and
from that exercise alone, you can draw some grim conclusions about what
lies ahead. During the first war on terrorism, the Reagan years, U.
S.-sponsored state terrorism in Central America left hundreds of thousands
of tortured and mutilated corpses, millions of maimed and orphaned, four
countries in ruins. Also in the same years, the Reagan years,
Western-backed South African depredations killed about a
million-and-a-half people and caused sixty billion dollars of damage in
neighboring countries-massive international terrorism backed by the United
States and Britain and others. I don't have to speak of West and
South-East Asia, South America, or much else. It's a serious analytical
error proceeding to describe terrorism as a weapon of the weak, as is
often done. It's simply not the case, radically not the case. There's a
great deal more to say about terrorism - the terrorism of the weak against
the powerful and the unmentionable but far more extreme terrorism of the
powerful against the weak. That both pose severe threats is hardly in
doubt. The threats are enhanced by the fact that the policies are
considered rational within the frameworks in which they are pursued. And
there's reason for that. A major historian, Charles Tilly, who studied the
history of these issues in Europe particularly, observed quite accurately
that over the last millennium "war has been the dominant activity of
European states." And for good reason: "The central tragic fact is simple:
coercion works; those who apply substantial force to their fellows get
compliance and, from that compliance, draw the multiple advantages of
money, goods, deference, access to pleasures denied to less powerful
people." It's a truism understood all too well by most of the people of
the world, even if its significance has not penetrated the heights of
intellectual enlightenment. Well, let me turn to the third category of
questions, long-term tendencies that are underway and that will persist
without the essential change, though there's a change there too. They're
being escalated as state and private power exploit the window of
opportunity that is provided by the fear and anguish of the population
after Sept. 11 and naturally use that opportunity to ram through harsh and
regressive measures that would otherwise arouse resistance. As usual, one
participant in class war pursues its path with unrelenting intensity. It's
their victims who are enjoined to be subdued and acquiescent in the
interest of patriotism. The range of measures being implemented in this
fashion is far ranging. I'll mention only a few. The most important of
them is the instant escalation of the policies that pose the greatest
immediate threat to survival, namely, expanding the means of mass
destruction. For the powerful, nuclear weapons are the weapon of choice.
The U. S. Strategic Command, the highest military authority, describes
nuclear weapons as the core of the arsenal, because "unlike chemical or
biological weapons, the extreme destruction from a nuclear explosion is
immediate, with few if any palliatives to reduce its effect.''
Furthermore, "nuclear weapons always cast a shadow over any crisis or
conflict.'' This study advises further that planners should not "portray
ourselves as too fully rational and cool-headed." "That the United States
may become irrational and vindictive if its vital interests are attacked
should be part of the national persona that we project.'' It's
"beneficial" for our strategic posture if "some elements appear to be
potentially `out of control'.'' The United States is unusual, I think
unique, in the access that it allows to high-level planning documents and
I'd be rather surprised if those of other countries were fundamentally
different. The important study that I've just been quoting from is called
``Essentials of Post-Cold War Deterrence," a Clinton era document. It's
been available for years but it's unknown, it's known only to readers of
dissident literature that's scrupulously marginalised, although I presume
intelligence services of other countries read it and draw the appropriate
conclusions. For the future, we also have to face the fact that small
nuclear weapons can be smuggled into any country with relative ease and
remember they are small - a 15-pound plutonium bomb can be carried across
a border in a suitcase. There's a recent technical study that concludes
that "a well-planned operation to smuggle weapons of mass destruction into
the United States would have at least a 90 per cent probability of
success, much higher than ICBM (Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile)
delivery even in the absence of [National Missile Defence]." These
dangers, not just to the United States, are enhanced by the most immediate
threat that was identified by a high-level U.S. Department of Energy task
force, namely, "forty thousand nuclear weapons in the former Soviet Union,
poorly controlled and poorly stored.'' One of the first acts of the
incoming Bush Administration was to cut back a small programme to assist
Russia in safeguarding and dismantling these weapons and providing
alternative employment for nuclear scientists. That decision increased the
risks of accidental launch and leakage of what are called ``loose nukes,''
followed by nuclear scientists who have no other way to employ their
skills. Current plans for ballistic missile defence are expected to
enhance the threats further. U. S. intelligence predicts that any
deployment will impel China to develop and deploy new nuclear-armed
missiles. They predict it will expand its nuclear arsenal by a factor of
ten, probably with multiple warheads, MIRV (Multiple Independently
Targetable Re-entry Vehicles), which will "prompt India and Pakistan to
respond with their own build-ups," with a likely ripple effect throughout
the Middle East. These same analyses, intelligence analyses and others,
also conclude that Russia's "only rational response would be to maintain,
and strengthen, the existing Russian nuclear force." The Bush
administration announced on September 1st of this year that "it has no
objections to [China's] plans to build up its small fleet of nuclear
missiles" - that's a sharp shift in official policy -- in the hope of
gaining Chinese acquiescence to the planned dismantling of the core arms
control agreements. Chinese resumption of nuclear tests is also being
quietly endorsed. On the same day that this was announced, the national
press also reported that the Bush Administration will impose sanctions on
China for allowing the transfer to Pakistan of "missile parts and
technology that are essentially for weapons that can carry nuclear
warheads." All quoting from The New York Times. You can figure out what
all that means without further comment. Extension of the arms race to
space has been a core programme for quite a few years. `Arms race' is a
misleading term for it. The United States, for now at least, is competing
alone in this race, although there are others who appear to be eager to
join the race to mutual destruction. Rightly or wrongly, that's how
India's stand is being interpreted in the United States. That received
great applause from the more hawkish and jingoist U. S. strategic
analysts. Writing after the Foreign Minister's visit to the United States
a few months ago, Lawrence Kaplan wrote in the liberal New Republic that
when President Bush unveiled his plans to expand these programmes, "the
rest of the world carped that the plan would provoke a new arms race, but
India took a mere six hours to declare its support,'' while Foreign
Minister [Jaswant] Singh boasted that Delhi and Washington are
"endeavouring to work out together a totally new security regime, which is
for the entire globe.'' Whether that's the right interpretation or not,
you can determine, but that's the interpretation. Kaplan went on to quote
Administration hawks who recognised that Pakistan is "not an ally
anymore," but rather a "rogue state," unlike India, which will now be
admitted into the club that includes the United States, Britain, Taiwan
and Israel. It's true this was three months ago. And since then all of us
have observed a small lesson in Axiom One of international affairs: States
are not moral agents. Their solemn pledges mean exactly zero. They serve
domestic power interests. And they do as they please, unless they are
constrained externally or by their own citizens, the choice that lies in
their hands at least in the more free and democratic societies. All of
these programmes increase the danger of destruction for the United States
as for others. But that's nothing new. It's very common to pursue
programmes with the conscious knowledge that they increase the danger of
destruction for the participants, the advocates. The history of the arms
race during the Cold War provides many examples and there's ample
precedent going back far in history. Furthermore, all these choices make
sense within the prevailing value system. Both of these topics bear quite
directly on the assessment of the biological success of higher
intelligence. Let's look at a couple of cases. Fifty years ago, there was
only one major threat to U. S. security, at that time only potential:
ICBMs, which did not yet then exist but were being developed. It was quite
likely that the Soviet Union would have accepted a Treaty banning
development of these weapons, knowing it was far behind. There is a
standard history of the arms race by McGeorge Bundy, the National Security
Adviser for the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations. He had access to
internal documents. He reported that he could find no record of any
interest in pursuing the possibility of eliminating the sole potential
threat to U.S. security. Russian archives, quite a lot of them, have been
released recently and these bear on this question. They strongly reinforce
the assessments by high-level U.S. analysts that after Stalin's death,
Khrushchev, when he took over, called for mutual reduction of offensive
military forces and, when these initiatives were ignored by the Eisenhower
Administration, he implemented them unilaterally over the objection of his
own military command. Kennedy's planners, when they came in forty years
ago, doubtless shared Eisenhower's understanding that, in his words, "a
major war would destroy the Northern hemisphere." They also knew, we now
know, of Khrushchev's unilateral steps to reduce Soviet offensive forces
radically and they also knew that the United States was far ahead by any
meaningful measure. Nevertheless, they chose to reject Khrushchev's plea
for reciprocity, preferring to carry out a massive conventional and
nuclear force build-up, thus driving the last nail into the coffin of
"Khrushchev's agenda of restraining the Soviet military." I'm quoting
historian Matthew Evangelista, in a monograph reviewing the U.S. and
Soviet archival records, published by the main history project on this
topic. Without continuing, there's not much novelty in the Clinton-Bush
preferences. To comprehend the logic of these programmes and why mutual
destruction seems an entirely rational policy to pursue, it's necessary to
recall a doctrinal truism. It's conventional for attack to be called
"defence." And this case is no exception. Ballistic missile defence is
only a small component of much more far-reaching programmes for
militarisation of space. The goal is to achieve what is called Full
Spectrum Dominance, that is, a monopoly of the use of space for offensive
military purposes. These plans have been available in public documents of
the U.S. Space Command and other government agencies for some years and
the projects outlined have been under development. They were expanded in
the first months of the Bush Administration and again sharply expanded
after September 11th in a crude exploitation of the fear and horror that
was engendered by these crimes. These plans are disguised as ballistic
missile defence. But that's only a small component of what's under
development and even that small component is an offensive weapon. That's
understood by such potential adversaries as Russia and China and also by
close allies. China's top arms control official simply reflected common
understanding when he observed that "Once the United |
Comments
|
sudden CIA arrest? |
by jay
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
05 Feb 2002
|
|
could someone please post the end of this lecture, if there is one. |
|
