This is part 3 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.

‘How complicated is it to understand the truth or to know how to act?’ asks Noam Chomsky rhetorically at the conclusion of this interview (September 11, 2003 in Cambridge, Massachusetts).  To hear one of the ‘world’s leading intellectuals’ and ‘perhaps the most widely read voice on foreign policy on the planet’ (New York Times Book Review) tell it, as he has for more than forty years, anyone can do it.  I tend to agree, and I suspect that many of my fellow bloggers and developing activists would too.  The hard part, which isn’t complicated but requires extended effort over time, is in the doing, and in the changing of ourselves.

This interview, like the others, is wide ranging and reveals the breath and some of the depth of Chomsky’s (and Barsamian’s) thought.

Barsamian’s first question concerns some of the history of U.S. involvement in ‘regime change’ [1], specifically the 1953 joint British-American coup that overthrew Mohammed Mossadegh.  Chomsky notes that although ‘regime change’ is a new term, the United States has been involved in regime change for quite some time, often with questionable intent and disasterous or near-disasterous results.  Chomsky notes, as Robert McNamara has in the recent documentary Fog of War [2], that the U.S. desire for a regime change in Cuba during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations almost helped lead the world into “a terminal nuclear war (pg. 45)”.

The discussion of the history of regime change by imperial states is obviously relevant to the situation in Iraq today, and Chomsky and Barsamian compare the British regime change in Iraq after the First World War to the U.S. regime change in Iraq today.  Lord Curzon, the British foreign secretary, called what the British set up at the time an “Arab facade” and Chomsky compares this to the government the U.S. set up in Iraq, citing an article and organizational chart in the New York Times in 2003 [3] showing how that the country would be run by American and British representatives with only a hint of Arab involvement.

The most interesting parts of this interview come when the conversation turns to the characteristics and psychology of imperialism now and throughout history and the surprising (to Chomsky) failure of the U.S. takeover of Iraq.  Starting with the occupation (remember this is in 2003), Chomsky says:

I should say, though, to my amazement, the occupation is not succeeding.  It takes real talent to fail in this.  For one thing, military occupations almost always work…Furthermore, Iraq is an unusually easy case.  Here is a country that has been decimated by a decade of murderous sanctions that killed hundreds of thousands of people and left the whole place in tatters, devastated by wars, and run by a brutal tyrant.  The idea that you can’t get a military occupation to run under these circumstances, and with no support from the outsidefor the resistance, is almost inconceivable…The occupation of Iraq has been an astonishing failure…It’s a big surprise to me.  I thought this would be a walkover (pp. 46-47).

The rest of the discussion mostly concerns the psychology and history of imperialism and its relation to aggression, occupation and regime change.  Here is some of what Chomsky had to say:

Racism is inherent in imperial rule - it’s almost invariable.  And I think you can understand the psychology.  When you have your boot on somebody’s neck, you can’t just say, “I’m doing this because I’m a brute.” You have to say, “I’m doing it because they deserve it.  It’s for their good.  That’s why I’ve got to do it.”

Responding to a well-known quote from the 1919 essay “The Sociology of Imperialisms” by Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter [4];

You just change the words from Rome to Washington.  One of the standard arguments for going to war these days is to “maintain credibility”…To make clear who’s the boss…This logic should be familiar to anyone who watches television programs about the mafia.  The don has to make sure that people understand he’s the boss.  You don’t cross him.  He sends out goons to beat somebody to a pulp - not because he wants his resources, but because the guy’s standing up to him.”

Chomsky argues that the U.S. has done this before in the bombing of Serbia in 1999 under president Clinton, and even perhaps in Iraq, though as should be fairly trivial, resources (namely, oil) play a major role in shaping our military policies there [5].

Much else is discussed (as is almost always the case in interviews with Chomsky), but I want to cite one more thing discussed by Chomsky, and that is the (probably sincere) benevolent motives expresses by leaders and thinkers in justifying acts of aggression and terrorism perpetrated upon mostly civilian populations.  Discussing justifications of imperialism by a top U.S. policy expert, Michael Ignatieff [6], Chomsky notes that even one of the greatest philosophers of modern times, the English philosopher and ethicist John Stuart Mill wrote a well-known essay of the uniqueness of Britain in the world, because of it’s good intentions and pure motives as compared to all other countries throughout history [7].  He shows that Ignatieff and other American intellectuals who try to justify military intervention by citing ”American exceptionalism” are really “just repeating very familiar rhetoric (pg. 60).”

- Peter Broady, pbroady@gmail.com

[1] see Stephen Kinzer, Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq for a review of some of this history

[2] I will be posting a review/comments here and on my website soon

[3] James Dao and Eric Schmitt, New York Times, May 7, 2003

[4] From Joseph A. Shumpeter, Imperialism and Social Classes, ed. Paul Sweezy, 1951, pg. 68:

There was no corner of the world where some interest was not alleged to be in danger or under actual attack.  If the interests were not Roman, they were of Rome’s allies; and if Rome had no allies, then allies would be invented.  When it was utterly impossible to contrive such an interest - why, then it was the national honor that had been insulted.  The fight was always invested with an aura of legality.  Rome was always being attacked by evil-minded neighbors, always fighting for breathing space.  The whole world was pervaded by a host of enemies, and it was manifestly Rome’s duty to guard against their indubitably aggressive designs.

See also the editorial from Monthly Review 54, no. 7 (December 2002)

[5] See Michael T. Klare, Blood and Oil

[6] New York Times Magazine, 5 January 2003; and New York Times, 28 July 2002; and Empire Lite

[7] “A Few Words on Non-Intervention” (1859), Mill, Collected Works