Failed States, Rogue States and America

[Guest guest]

A short excerpt from an interview with Norm Chomsky regarding his

new book: Failed States, Rogue States and America.:

 

 

Well, over the years there have been a series of concepts developed

to justify the use of force in international affairs for a long

period. It was possible to justify it on the pretext, which usually

turned out to have very little substance, that the U.S. was defending

itself against the communist menace. By the 1980s, that was wearing

pretty thin. The Reagan administration concocted a new category:

terrorist states. They declared a war on terror as soon as they

entered office in the early 1980s, 1981. 'We have to defend ourselves

from the plague of the modern age, return to barbarism, the evil

scourge of terrorism,' and so on, and particularly state-directed

international terrorism.

 

A few years later, Clinton devised the concept of rogue states. " It's

1994, we have to defend ourselves from rogue states. " Then, later on

came the failed states, which either threaten our security, like

Iraq, or require our intervention in order to save them, like Haiti,

often devastating them in the process. In each case, the terms have

been pretty hard to sustain, because it's been difficult to overlook

the fact that under any, even the most conservative characterization

of these notions -- let's say U.S. law -- the United States fits

fairly well into the category, as has often been recognized. By now,

for example, the category -- even in the Clinton years, leading

scholars, Samuel Huntington and others, observed that -- in the major

journals, Foreign Affairs -- that in most of the world, much of the

world, the United States is regarded as the leading rogue state and

the greatest threat to their existence.

 

By now, a couple of years later, Bush years, same journals' leading

specialists don't even report international opinion. They just

describe it as a fact that the United States has become a leading

rogue state. Surely, it's a terrorist state under its own definition

of international terrorism, not only carrying out violent terrorist

acts and supporting them, but even radically violating the so-

called " Bush Doctrine, " that a state that harbors terrorists is a

terrorist state. Undoubtedly, the U.S. harbors leading international

terrorists, people described by the FBI and the Justice Department as

leading terrorists, like Orlando Bosch, now Posada Carriles, not to

speak of those who actually implement state terrorism.

 

And I think the same is true of the category " failed states. " The

U.S. increasingly has taken on the characteristics of what we

describe as failed states. In the respects that one mentioned, and

also, another critical respect, namely the -- what is sometimes

called a democratic deficit, that is, a substantial gap between

public policy and public opinion. Those are pretty conservative

suggestions. They are the opinion of the majority of the American

population, in fact, an overwhelming majority. And to propose those

suggestions is to simply take democracy seriously. It's interesting

that on these examples that you've read and many others, there is an

enormous gap between public policy and public opinion. The proposals,

the general attitudes of the public, which are pretty well studied,

are -- both political parties are, on most of these issues, well to

the right of the population.

 

There has been a very serious threat of nuclear war. It's not --

unfortunately, it's not much discussed among the public. But if you

look at the literature of strategic analysts and so on, they're

extremely concerned. And they describe particularly the Bush

administration's aggressive militarism as carrying an " appreciable

risk of ultimate doom, " to quote one. " Apocalypse soon, " to quote

Robert McNamara and many others. And there's good reasons for it, I

mean, as they explain. That's been expanded by the Bush

administration consciously, not because they want nuclear war, but

it's just not a high priority. So the rapid expansion of offensive

U.S. military capacity, including the militarization of space, which

is the U.S.'s pursuit alone. The world has been trying very hard to

block it. Ninety-five percent of the expenditures now are from the

U.S., and they're expanding.

 

All of these measures bring about a completely predictable reaction

on the part of the likely targets. They don't say, you know, " Thank

you. Here are our throats. Please cut them. " They react in the ways

that they can. For some, it will mean responding with the threat or

maybe use of terror. For others, more powerful ones, it's going to

mean sharply increasing their own offensive military capacity. So

Russian military expenditures have sharply increased in response to

Bush programs. Chinese expansion of offensive military capacity is

also beginning to increase for the same reasons. All of that raises

the already severe threat of accidental nuclear war. These systems

are on computer-controlled alert. And we know that our own systems

have many errors, which are stopped by human intervention. Their

systems are far less secure; in the Russian case, deteriorated. These

moves all sharply enhance the threat of nuclear war. That's serious

nuclear war that I'm talking about.

 

There's also the threat of dirty bombs, small nuclear explosions.

Small means not so small, but in comparison with a major attack,

which would pretty much exterminate civilized life. The U.S.

intelligence community regards the threat of a dirty bomb, say in New

York, in the next decade as being probably greater than 50 percent.

And those threats increase as the threat of terror increases.

 

And Bush administration policies have, again, consciously been

carried out in a way, which they know is likely to increase the

threat of terror. The most obvious example is the Iraq invasion. That

was undertaken with the anticipation that it would be very likely to

increase the threat of terror and also nuclear proliferation. And, in

fact, that's exactly what happened, according to the judgment of the

CIA, National Intelligence Council, foreign intelligence agencies,

independent specialists. They all point out that, yes, as

anticipated, it increased the threat of terror. In fact, it did so in

ways well beyond what was anticipated.

 

To mention just one, we commonly read that there were no weapons of

mass destruction found in Iraq. Well, it's not totally accurate.

There were means to develop weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and

known to be in Iraq. They were under guard by U.N. inspectors, who

were dismantling them. When Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and the rest sent in

their troops, they neglected to instruct them to guard these sites.

The U.N. inspectors were expelled, the sites were left unguarded. The

inspectors continued their work by satellite and reported that over a

hundred sites had been looted, in fact, systematically looted, not

just somebody walking in, but careful looting. That included

dangerous biotoxins, means to hide precision equipment to be used to

develop nuclear weapons and missiles, means to develop chemical

weapons and so on. All of this has disappeared. One hates to imagine

where it's disappeared to, but it could end up in New York.

 

bob