Noam Chomsky: American Power Under Challenge
tomdispatch.com
tomdispatch.com
Sadly, a lot of us thought our current POTUS would change that. Yes, we projected. That's why Sanders is getting so much support, IMO, because he has an actual track record to hang our hopes on.
Its absolutely Naive thinking that a President is going to wipe out and start new, Obama was right, no body starts with a Clean Slate. You are dealt a hand, you deal with it. Now, you can define and refine the approach, but the events themselves hardly controllable.
I understand that politicians are under huge pressure to do this or that, but the LEAST we can do is hold them accountable. Saying that hey they don't control this, sure and who does? Who takes the decision to invade a country ultimately if not the President of the US?
Ukraine was a mess even before Russia moved in. Even so, I think the situation in Ukraine is more Europe's problem than the US's, and as a European I do not blame Obama for ignoring it.
Saying that hey they don't control this, sure and who does?
Eventually, the UN carries that responsibility. The US lost a lot of goodwill in Europe over its "unilateral" decision to enter Iraq the second time around. Obama insisted on going through the UN, and I think that was a good decision.
I get the impression that the US' prevailing opinion is that Obama made the US look weak. In Europe, the opinion is more that Obama exposed the UN for the toothless organization it is, and the US only looks stronger for it.
The key is to focus on the institutions. As long as the institutions remain strong, we may be able to weather the occasional rogue leader.
The Roman Empire worked because it was able to harness the self-interest of many parties and the population in general. It is a model of oppression through the exploitation of self interest and class distinction. (A system fluid enough for slaves to work their way up to becoming wealthy citizens.) Amazing how many parallels there are between the US and the Roman Empire.
Guantanamo? Is there an institution that allows that, or was it a "rogue leader" that enabled that?
Iraq? Afghanistan? Bosnia? I don't even remember what war Regan was involved in and the guy before him and the guy before that guy. It seems like every US president in living memory, has made it a point to either start or continue an invasion of a sovereign nation against international law, reason and morality alike.
(apologies for the harsh tone; please feel free to reciprocate)
Give folks a chance to read through. It's almost 5k words! I for on am going to take my time reading it.
And let me be clear, if any of the Western European countries (or Aus/NZ) were an option, I'd take them over Russia and China too.
If you're not American, substitute your country for "US". My point is that it's easy for you to say you'd take the US over Russia, China etc any day because it's already your country. To everyone else though it's just a foreign power threatening them with military might.
Let's look at it another way. If the US were a small country and Canada was a superpower (democratic), would I be annoyed when Canada throws its weight around? Probably, in the grand scheme of things it could be much worse.
There's no other way to describe a political entity that will bomb your village to kill one man it suspects may be somehow involved in an insurgency against its military. Not to mention all the other brutal stuff the US does.
I'm saying: you don't like dictatorships. Great, but your country is the world's own brutal dictator. It could be much worse, OK, but it could also be a lot better, if your country didn't "throw its weight around". Or its bombs. Or its army etc.
(Again, that is _if_ you're American, which I don't know).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Russia [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_China
There is a vast difference in the 2 forms of government.
No, what GP means is that the US is no longer a democratic republic (which is, as the term "democracy" is generally used today, a form of "democracy", rather than an alternative to it.) The complaint GP makes does not contrast with a republic in any way, as all a Republic means is that it is a system of government where government isn't by (or exercising powers derived, at least in principle, from) a monarch.
They define a republic to be a government of laws, and not of men. If this definition be just, the British constitution is nothing more nor less than a republic, in which the king is first magistrate. This office being hereditary, and being possessed of such ample and splendid prerogatives, is no objection to the government’s being a republic, as long as it is bound by fixed laws, which the people have a voice in making, and a right to defend. An empire is a despotism, and an emperor a despot, bound by no law or limitation but his own will; it is a stretch of tyranny beyond absolute monarchy. -- Novanglus, February 6, 1775
The opposite of republic is not monarchy, it is tyranny. The only way out of tyranny for the U.S. is, by definition, to restore the rule of law, which the GP seems to clamour for.
democracy: A system of government in which power is vested in the people, who rule either directly or through freely elected representatives
_Vastly_ different
Maybe they were in better shape to begin with. Still, I find it quite amazing that nearly every country in the Eastern Bloc built cars and all but Albania made microcomputers.
On the other hand, Guatemala came out of the Cold War in worse shape than Cuba.
While there may be some merit to that as a positive indicator, all other things being equal, I think that you have to look more broadly.
(Which is not to say that US-allied countries universally did better than Communist Block countries that were comparable prior to the Cold War; neoliberal trade certainly has a strong core/periphery effect; I think US-aligned countries in the core -- e.g., Europe particularly -- did better than comparable Communist Bloc countries, and the results are considerably more mixed otherwise.)
Latin America was not actually aligned with the US and the First World during the Cold War era. They're only orbiting the US in the sense of being within the US sphere of influence and geography.
Much of Latin America was, as demonstrated by the 1962 OAS resolution prohibiting participation by the Government of Cuba (without actually expelling Cuba), explicitly on the basis that "adherence by any member of the Organization of American States to Marxism-Leninism is incompatible with the inter-American system and the alignment of such a government with the communist bloc breaks the unity and solidarity of the continents".
We don't live in a perfect world. Human collateral alone is not enough to justify the label of war criminal.
Ostensibly, we aren't an "empire" because we don't do things like establish governors over different places we conquer (and we, again ostensibly, don't conquer anyone).
Instead we accomplish the same through the shadows. Encouraging certain dictatorships and coups, discouraging others. Wrecking nations through economic means when they step out of line (or attempt to). This is, in my opinion, much worse than the empires of old. We never control these things we create, which inevitably creates even greater hardship for the people dominated by the dictatorships and economic woes we inspired. And we publicly proclaim a desire for peace and democracy!
If we were a proper empire, expanding our domain, we would have ended up bringing new states into our union. The people that we subjugated gaining the right to vote at some point in the future via statehood (initially coming in as territories or protectorates). But we don't want that. We won't the control and influence without the accountability of their votes. This forces people to vote against us via other means. Often violent. We then condemn their actions, which we inspired, and put down these actors, or attempt to, and claim a victory for peace and democracy.
There's the Philippines.
I'm sick to death of being lectured by Europeans who can't be bothered to do anything beyond writing scolding editorials in newspapers.
If you are arguing that they just chose not to do anything, and the US intervention was virtuous -- that does not necessarily show that other US military actions in the past 30 years are similarly valuable.
Stopping genocide is the clearest justification for "taking action" with a large military.
IMO, the issue is not that the US has a large military. Scale is hard to judge, but the US has a ridiculously huge military. The US military is designed to fight 3 wars at the same time which seems to be vast overkill. The #1 Air Force in the world in term of military strength is US Air Force, #2 Air Force in the world is the US Navy. That's vastly beyond what it takes to deal with local genocide.
PS: Consider the F-15 Eagle introduced in 1976 currently has a world wide 100:0 kill loss ratio in Aerial Combat, that took an insane amount of R&D and training. In fact the production is scheduled to in in 2019. While impressive it's hard to call that anything but overkill.
This was all factored into place when Europe responded - before the US - to the Bosnian crisis. Very definitely, mistakes were made - but the conflagration was defused and there is now - relatively speaking - a peace in the area. Bosnia could've been Europes' Syria/(Israel,Palestine). However, it isn't today - and the reason for this is the cool headedness of European leadership. Not the arrogant bragadocio of American militarism.
There were totally competent to do whatever they wanted. They just didn't care AND didn't want to step on each others toes, whereas the US didn't mind stepping on their collective toes.
As for the intervention, the US decision makers and military could not care less about stopping the genocide (in the same way they didn't care about "crimes against humanity" elsewhere, or actively helped some in other places when it was convenient, e.g. assisting Suharto, Pinochet, Nicaragua, etc., not to mention their own shit).
It was just a convenient excuse to establish Kosovo as another protectorate in Eastern Europe and give a general signal about their reach in the area.
Since WWII, IIRC, most NATO militaries have been structured (in part originally with US support and in some cases insistence, though the US preference has changed on this, especially since the end of the Cold War) to be dependent on the US as the core of any major operations (this was, IIRC, a substantial issue for the UK, particularly as to the structure of its naval forces, in the Falklands.)
> As for the intervention, the US decision makers and military could not care less about stopping the genocide. It was about establishing Kosovo as another protectorate in Eastern Europe.
Kosovo was the tail end of the breakup of Yugoslavia; it certainly wasn't the motivation for the US intervention in Bosnia-Hercegovina, which substantially predate the crisis in Kosovo, unless you are suggesting some kind of long conspiracy that even the harshest critics of US policy in the region have never suggested before.
UK, France, Italy, Germany, et al. were more than perfectly capable of winning a war with the tired army of the 1/3 of an ex-socialist Yugoslavia.
>Kosovo was the tail end of the breakup of Yugoslavia; it certainly wasn't the motivation for the US intervention in Bosnia-Hercegovina, which substantially predate the crisis in Kosovo, unless you are suggesting some kind of long conspiracy that even the harshest critics of US policy in the region have never suggested before.
The Kosovo has been a point of interest in the area (and a conflict zone) way before the US intervention in Bosnia-Hercegovina -- even in mid-eighties. Everybody, including "tied" Germany, made its moves, to be a player in the future of Yugoslavia, even before the county dissolved.
And, by the way, 5-10 years ahead are not "long", they're literally nothing much in diplomatic and foreign affairs planning.
The US have a plan for Cuba after Castro dies for decades now (revised to new situations of course), and similar, players in international politics play the long game, including centuries of interventions and moves, all the time.
You seem to imply that the terror in the Balkans was an internal issue, not caused or fuelled by external intervention, or in part armed by western powers. I think the reality is closer to this paragraph from wikipedia[1]:
"The Bosnian government lobbied to have the arms embargo lifted, but that was opposed by the United Kingdom, France and Russia. US proposals to pursue this policy were known as lift and strike. The US congress passed two resolutions calling for the embargo to be lifted but both were vetoed by President Bill Clinton for fear of creating a rift between the US and the aforementioned countries. Nonetheless, the United States used both "black" C-130 transports and back channels, including Islamist groups, to smuggle weapons to Bosnian-Muslim forces, as well as allowed Iranian-supplied arms to transit through Croatia to Bosnia. However, in light of widespread NATO opposition to American (and possibly Turkish) endeavors in coordinating the "black flights of Tuzla", the United Kingdom and Norway expressed disapproval of these measures and their counterproductive effects on NATO enforcement of the arms embargo. Inter Services Intelligence also played an active role during 1992–1995 and secretly supplied the Muslim fighters with arms, ammunition and guided anti tank missiles to give them a fighting chance against the aggression."
A simplistic view that there were evil Serbians and good Bosnians seems a bit naive. I think there are some strong parallels with how the Mujahideen were "good" when fighting Soviet, and are now "evil" when fighting NATO. It's a compelling fiction, but it's not how the real world works. The real world is more like:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DynCorp#Bosnia_incidents
Just moving in with military force and expecting a Hollywood ending is completely unrealistic. How do you stop a genocide in a civil war? By committing genocide against the "offending" party?
And while I opposed the UN/NATO intervention (a landmark bending of the UN charter in favour aggression) your comment also seem to belittle the role of European troops in the peacekeeping effort. I have nothing but respect for those that served, even if I have mostly contempt for the politicians that sent them there.
Lastly, I don't see much point in creating a competition of guilt. As you ask:
> are not European citizens complicit in the genocide that they let happen
Most certainly. We're also complicit in the murder of Iraqi , Syrian, Libyan and Afghan children, as we've been unable to stop the wars our government participates in, for some vague geopolitical agenda. But that doesn't change the fact that the US controls the largest war machine the world has seen, and seem more than willing to wield it with impunity across the globe.
It can be hard to fight off apathy and frustration when you pay taxes to a system that keeps killing (mostly innocent) people for what apparently seems like not very good reason, and perhaps even worse, based on very poor intelligence and complete disregard for history (What, the British were surprised at the situation in Afghanistan, after having been at war there for a hundred years or more? No one reads Kipling any more?).
But just because many things are terrible, doesn't mean one should stop to try to do good. But the opposite, in such times, everyone must do what they can. If everyone does something, then something can be done.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosnian_War#Warring_factions
The US is a nuclear state, and the only state to have ever used nuclear weapons in warfare. Who's going to defend the world against the threat of American nuclear aggression? Will the world really be safer when only the US has nuclear weapons?
Reducing nuclear proliferation is a noble endeavor, but the United States should not be the one leading the effort towards it as long as it has no intentions of dismantling its own arsenal.
The world would be safer without nuclear weapons, but as long as the US remains an aggressive, nuclear military power that kidnaps, tortures and murders civilians in other countries with impunity, undermines their governments at will, supports terrorist groups and wages war on fabricated evidence, a nuclear-free world will remain impossible.
How about the Indian sub-continent? Nuclear weapons have largely been responsible for keeping Pakistan and India from going at each other. Both know that their enemy has the ability to wipe each other out with nukes.
Nuclear weapons should also be credited with keeping Sino-Soviet tempers from flaring too hot before the end of the Cold War. Some of the border incidents would have easily escalated to full war if Beijing hadn't been intimidated by Soviet nukes.
The side these are applied to is of course 'the evil West'.
Then he turns around and acts as all apologetic when it comes to anti-Western regimes no matter how bloody or atrocious they get - going back to whitewashing of Viet Kong atrocities and Cambodian genocide back in the 70s.
He's done nothing of the sort. He was suspicious of the official account of the Kambodian genocide and he had good reason to be suspicious of that account. It turned out it was true, and he admitted it.
>> The side these are applied to is of course 'the evil West'.
Duh. The West is evil. You don't realise it because you're in the West and you don't live in fear of hellfire missiles from a clear blue sky or a mechanised army rolling over your village. But the rest of the world knows it very well.
I also think Trump is talking out of his butt a lot, manipulating the voter bases he needs to succeed. I highly doubt he'll have his supposed way on what you perceive to be war crimes - in fact, many republicans are voting for him on the idea that we shouldn't be in the middle east, and that we should be "making deals".
The American voting public is a lot more complex than armchair foreigners give it credit for, and it's not as easy as saying "well, you can vote, and the elected are crap, therefore every voter has themselves to blame". Perhaps if we were a parliamentary system, or our legislature a proportional representative format, but it's not.
Expanding into the vastness of central Asia is a raw deal, historically. It's much too hard to secure borders, so security becomes a huge drain on resources. China would probably do better to increase trade with its neighbors, and lose some of its identity to a regional economic association. If China's trade routes become the mutual interest of her neighbors, being ringed by powerful neighbors goes from a detriment to an advantage.
The U.S. is suffering under the burden of maintaining overwhelming military superiority. The British Empire mortgaged world domination for help in WWI, then defaulted to the US for WWII and gave up many of her global network of naval bases to the US. The 1st half of the 20th century bankrupted the British Empire. Now the latter half of the 20th century and the first part of the 21st will be seen as the same process happening to the U.S.
There will certainly be more war in the Middle East (Iran vs Saudi Arabia, Israel vs Arab World), more war in Eastern Europe (Putin expanding into Crimea), more war in the Indian subcontinent (Pakistan is unstable), and so on. Is that the sort of world you want?
What the world needs to do, what Europe needs to do, is stand up on its two feet and quit being America's puppet. The same goes for pretty much everyone in the world. It is not good to rely on anyone else to represent your people and your economic interests in the world. Trusting other people's leadership is not a smart move, it keeps you incompetent.
edit: replying to the comment below.
So your point is that there is only enough room in the world for one ultra-national anti-internationalist country and the US is it. The end state of the game is when there is no such country in the world. That includes the US.
> "What the world needs to do, what Europe needs to do, is stand up on its two feet"
Advocating ultra-nationalist, anti-internationalist policies is, precisely, what leads to the mass conflict the grandparent was talking about.
There's no reason for the US to maintain the overwhelming global military presence that it does, particularly in Europe. World War 2 is over, and the US will never actually go to war with an enemy like Iran, Russia or China, or any country that might actually pose a legitimate threat to global security, so why keep up the pretense of being the "world's policeman?"
Btw, I do respect your points. I'm rather conflicted about this topic myself. We don't really know what the world would be like if the US were to practice isolationism - and we don't get do-overs for history if we mess it up. The powers that be seem to have decided that a forced stability is better than the risk of global instability.