This is part 1 of 9 of an extended discussion of Imperial Ambitions, a collection of interviews of one of the the world’s leading intellectuals and foreign policy critics, Noam Chomsky (Professor of Linguistics and Philosophy, MIT) with journalist David Barsamian. 

In the first interview in Cambridge, Massachusetts on March 22, 2003, titled “Imperial Ambitions”, Chomsky first mentions that he agrees with world opinion outside the U.S. that the U.S. invasion of Iraq might be part of a disturbing “new norm in the use of military force” articulated in the National Security Strategy of the United States of America, announced in September 2002 and followed by the administration’s PR and rhetoric which led almost half of the population to link Saddam Hussein with Osama bin Laden and the attacks of September 11, 2001.  This link was known to be false (in fact bin Laden and Hussein are acknowledged enemies), and prior to administration rhetoric (repeated virtually without question in the media), almost no one in the American public, even after the hysteria of 9/11, thought Iraq or Hussein had anything to do with it.  Chomsky also notes that “George Bush has succeeded within a year in converting the United States to a country that is greatly feared, disliked, and even hated” citing statistics compiled by the Christian Science Monitor and other news organizations and scholarly publications around the world [1].

Chomsky goes on to trace the history of regime change in theory to Dean Acheson, a senior advisor to the Kennedy administration in 1963 [2], but notes that now the kind of ‘extreme nationalism’ and ‘imperial violence’ [3] advocated by a few voices has now found it’s way into official policy [4].

Further responses from Chomsky led to explorations of the role of Iraq’s considerable oil fortunes in the decision to go to war, and Washington’s relations with other oil-rich countries, like Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Colombia, and Nigeria.  Chomsky thinks that in this other countries outside the Middle East, the U.S. wants access, but in the Middle East it wants control (p.7).  He then suggested the Turkey-U.S.-Israeli opposition to Iran could lead Iran to be split up or even attacked, drawing off a 2002 report in The Times (London) [5] wherein Ariel Sharon advised the Bush administration to go after Iran “the day after” they were finished with Iraq.  From there the discussion veered into the impact of the Iraq War and occupation for Palestine, where Chomsky argued that the current U.S. administration has been taking significant steps prolonging the conflict by ignoring much of the world’s call for the establishment of Palestinian state and an end to Israeli occupations declared illegal under international law [6].

Then addressing domestic matters, such as what Chomsky regards as the “unprecedented” [7] public protest and resistance to the Iraq war before the war began and the ”threats to and intimidation of dissidents” inside the United States, the veteran intellectual critic and activist compares U.S. wages, working conditions, and benefits to those in Europe and argues that the current administration’s extraordinary and largely unprecendented power grab and the undermining of social programs is damaging most of the population so that an elite few can become very rich and powerful, undermining meaningful democracy [8].  He states that what the current administration is trying to do is institutionalize “doctrines of imperial domination” and economic exploitation.

The final question Barsamian asks Chomsky is worth quoting in full, as encouragement to U.S. peace activists:

Barsamian: What do you say to the peace activists in the United States who labored to prevent the invasion of Iraq and who now are feeling a sense of anger, and despair, that their government has done this?

Chomsky: That they should be realistic.  Consider abolitionism.  How long did the struggle go on before the abolitionist movement made any progress?  If you give up every time you don’t acheive the immediate gain you want, you’re just guaranteeing that the worst is going to happen.  These are long, hard struggles.  And, in fact, what has happened in the last couple of months should be seen quite positively.  The basis was created for expansion and development of a peace and justice movement that can go on to much harder tasks.  And that’s the way things are.  You can’t expect an easy victory after one protest march.

I have long found Chomsky to be, at the very least, one of the most useful writers and commentators on U.S. foreign policy [9].  Certainly he cannot be said to be an expert in many of the fields on which he speaks, but his books [10] are filled with useful references to the scholarly literature and expert opinion on the subjects addressed, as well as the mainstream and alternative press from the U.S. and around the world.  The scope of his reading and familiarity is really quite astounding, and his books offer a uniquely inter-disciplinary perspective on U.S. affairs that is very popular outside of the U.S. but has long been marginalized within [11].  Chomsky has been criticized by those most familiar with his political work as going further rhetorically than most scholars would, and in his public speeches and interviews one can certainly find examples of this; however, Chomsky is a scholar and astute moralist, indeed a somewhat ‘prophetic’ figure, and not a pundit, ideologue, or anything near your average American political personality, who many of us find uninformative, dogmatic, and downright frustrating, whether they be so-called “conservatives”, “liberals”, or “moderates”.

- Peter Broady 

 [1] See polls cited in Hegemony or Survival

[2] Dean Acheson, Proceedings of the American Society of International Law, no. 13/14

[3] Chomsky, “Confronting the Empire” 2 February 2003 www.chomsky.info/talks/20030201.htm

[4] Referring to National Security Strategy of the United States of America, September 2002

[5] Stephen Farrell, Robert Thomson, and Danielle Haas, The Times (London), 5 November 2002

[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_law_and_the_Arab-Israeli_conflict

[7] interview with Cynthia Peters, ZNet, March 2003

[8] See “Power Grab” by Elizabeth Drew  in The New York Review of Books, June 22, 2006  http://www.nybooks.com/articles/19092

[9] Chomsky and collegue Edward Herman have written significant analysis of U.S. role in Indonesia and East Timor, as well as U.S. mass media, see The Political Economy of Human Rights Vol. I and II and Manufacturing Consent

[10] Most recently Perilous Power with Gilbert Achbar, Failed States, Hegomony and Survival, and collections of interviews 9/11 and Imperial Ambitions

[11] The New York Times Book Review has referred to Chomsky as “perhaps the most widely read voice on foreign policy on the planet”, which he has found ironic due to his little, and mostly negative, coverage in the Times or other American newspapers and media