Chomsky - Failed States (2006) - Synopsis

UFPPC (www.ufppc.org) Digging Deeper: July 10, 2006, 7:00 p.m. Noam Chomsky, Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2006). Theme: “[T]he growing democratic deficit in the United States is accompanied by declaration of messianic missions to bring democracy to a suffering world” (251). Preface. Four issues of importance: “nuclear war, environmental disaster, and the fact that the government of the world’s leading power is acting in ways that increase the likelihood of these catastrophes . . . [and] the sharp divide between public opinion and public policy” (1). Ch. 1: Stark, Dreadful, Inescapable. U.S. hypocrisy: there is not a double standard, but a “single standard,” expressed by Adam Smith as the “vile maxim of the masters of mankind: . . . All for ourselves, and nothing for other people” (3-8). U.S. courts “ultimate doom” (John Steinbruner & Nancy Gallagher) because of nuclear weapons (8-10). U.S. pursues militarization of space (1014). The danger of international terrorists getting nuclear weapons (14-16). U.S. ignores the danger of environmental catastrophe (16-18). Counterproductive U.S. “war on terror”: “Unless enemies can be completely crushed, violence tends to engender violence in response” (18-24). U.S. efforts to provoke a casus belli in Iraq (2428). Demonstration that dealing with terror is a low priority for the U.S. (28-36). The U.S.’s real priority: “controlling the world’s major energy resources” (36-38). Ch. 2: Outlaw States. A principle of international law is that states are “equal and parties to agreements that bind them,” as John Rawls put it in The Law of Peoples (1999) (39-40). U.S. criminal practices in torture scandals, Guantánamo (40-43). U.S. dismissal of international law authorities (43-46). Fallujah, a “major war crime” (46-50). “The scale of catastrophe in Iraq is so extreme that it can scarcely be reported” (50-54). Aside on rhetoric of atrocity (54-55). U.S. diverts attention from effects of the U.N. sanction regime on Iraq (55-59). The corruptness of occupation regime is all but ignored, while oil-for-food scandal trumpeted (59-63). The U.S. generally exempts itself from international legal requirements (64-69). U.S. subversion of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) (69-78). Ch. 3: Illegal but Legitimate. The U.N. Charter, the December 2004 U.N High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change, the September 2005 U.N. World Summit affirm the same principles (79-80). But “the elite intellectual, moral, and political culture of the most powerful states” rejects the consensus and assert a right to pre-emptive war (81-88). John Lewis Gaddis’s sources in his history of the Bush pre-emptive war doctrine (Surprise, Security, and the American Experience [2004]) turned against him to show that the U.S. was motivated by territorial expansion (89-94). Withering analysis of Richard Goldstone’s analysis of the NATO bombing of Serbia as “illegal but legitimate” (94-101). Ch. 4: Democracy Promotion Abroad. Investigation of the claim that democracy promotion is the goal of U.S. policy rendered more difficult by “barriers to understanding” that power deliberately erects (102-04). “Righteous exceptionalism” is the rule rather than the exception (104-06). New categories invented after the end of the Cold War: “war on drugs,” “terrorist state,” “rogue state,” “failed state,” are all problematic (106-10).

“[I]nquiry reveals that the real enemy of the United States has long been independent nationalism” (110). Chile (111-12). Cuba (112-14). Haiti (114). Russia (114-16). Indonesia (116-17). Indochina (117-21). WWII (121-23). Cold War (124-25). Post-Cold War (125-29). Iraq (129-33). Paul Wolfowitz’s supposed devotion to democracy (13336). Venezuela (136-38). El Salvador (138-40). Uzbekistan (140-41). Azerbaijan (141-42). Iraq in 1958 (142-43). Egypt’s Nasser (143-44). Iraq in 1963 and in 1990 (144). Iraq today (145-48). Thomas Carrothers’s Critical Mission (2004) on U.S. post-Cold War policy (14965). Ch. 5: Supporting Evidence: The Middle East. U.S. policy toward Lebanon has not furthered democracy (16668). The democracy movement in Egypt, Kifaya, founded in 2000, is in fact anti-American (169). The U.S. has generally opposed pro-democracy forces in the Middle East (169-71). In Palestine, the U.S. & Israel support elections only if “they come out the right way” (171-72). Arafat (172-73). Sadat’s 1971 peace offer rejected (17375). U.S. diplomacy had blocked progress on IsraelPalestine (176). But Judith Miller’s obituary of Arafat in the New York Times represents Arafat as the prime obstacle to peace (177-79). In fact, the 2000 Camp David proposals “could not possibly be accepted by any Palestinian leader”; cites “the most careful analysis by Israeli scholars, Ron Pundak and Shaul Arieli” (179-81). Taba negotiations, Jan. 2001 (181-82). Pundak and Miller (following Dennis Ross) compared (182-84). Benny Morris’s op-ed on Arafat’s death in the N.Y. Times (18485). Israel, too, has suffered from “U.S. and Israeli rejectionism” and “subordination to the settlers in the occupied territories” (183-88). International consequences: Israeli dependency on U.S. (188-89). The Separation Barrier, which is a “device to destroy the remnants of Palestinian society” whose “security pretext is frivolous” (190-93). The Gaza pullout and “disengagement plan” was “in reality an expansion plan” to seize the West Bank, theatrically orchestrated (193-98). “Meanwhile, the takeover of the West Bank continues” (198-201). 2004 Defense Science Board study concluded: “Muslims do not ‘hate our freedoms,’ but rather they hate our policies” (202-03). “[T]he United States is very much like other powerful states, pursuing the strategic and economic interests of dominant sectors to the accompaniment of rhetorical flourishes about its exceptional dedication to the highest values” (203-04). Ch. 6: Democracy Promotion at Home. Barbara Olshanksy, Robert Dahl, Thomas Ferguson, and Robert McChesney have criticized “seriously undemocratic features of the U.S. political system” (205-06). Madison’s initial design has been distorted by rights granted to corporations (206-09). The danger “demonic messianism” poses to the U.S. political system, fueled by a need for an ideology that distracts from increasing inegalitarianism (209-13). The neoliberal subversion of democracy since the 1960s (214-19). Analysis of 2004 voting patterns and an electoral system designed for deception and oppression (220-25). Supposed and real moral values of George W. Bush’s program (226-28). Radical disjunction between U.S. population’s opinions and U.S. public policy (228-36). Reactionary statists who “defame the term conservative” serve business interests (236-38).

Campaign to muzzle educational system, which is still not “a wholly owned subsidiary of the state-corporate system” (238-41). Hurricane Katrina reveals the consequences of U.S. “pro-business, pro-government policies” (241-43). Bush policies are succeeding in redistributing wealth “even further upward than before” (243-44). Real healthcare crisis in the U.S. (244-47). Social Security pseudo-crisis (247-50). Afterword. U.S. favors democracy abroad, except where U.S. interests adversely affected (251-52). Iraq has been “surprisingly difficult,” and given Iran the “situation could get worse” (252-53). China, Russia, and India (253-55). Latin America poised to escape U.S. domination (256-60). Election of Hamas poses a problem to U.S. and Israel (26061). Haiti (261-62). Chomsky’s proposals: “(1) accept the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court and the World Court; (2) sign and carry forward the Kyoto

protocols; (3) let the U.N. take the lead in international crises; (4) rely on diplomatic and economic measures rather than military ones in confronting terror; (5) keep to the traditional interpretation of the U.N. Charter; (6) give up the Security Council veto and have ‘a decent respect for the opinion of mankind,’ as the Declaration of Independence advises, even if power centers disagree; (7) cut back sharply on military spending and sharply increase social spending. For people who believe in democracy, these are very conservative suggestions: they appear to be the opinions of the majority of the U.S. population, in most cases of the overwhelming majority” (262). Concludes on a positive note: “Opportunities for education and organizing abound” (263). Notes. 36 pp. Index. 11 pp.