CHOMSKY INTERVIEW ON WPKN 10/25/93

The following is an interview broadcast over WPKN Bridgeport on
10/25/93. WPKN (89.5 FM) is a listener-supported radio station
which broadcasts a public affairs show "Counterpoint" at 10PM
Monday nights.

---------------- Scott Harris: In introducing Noam Chomsky, many
of you know he is internationally known for his groundbreaking
work in linguistics at M.I.T.; at the same time he is equally well
known around the world for his informed critique of the political
and economic structure of the United States. He has been referred
to as the nation's leading progressive dissident. Dick Fugat
(sp?), writing in the Whole Earth review recently said of one of
Chomsky's books, said of NC's abilities as a commentator: "NC is
one of those rare people whose insights are so penatrating that
they can radically alter our perception of the world", and I think
that that's a succinct way to pigeonhole Chomsky, which is a
difficult thing to do.  So, without further ado, we'll get to an
interview that I conducted with Noam Chomsky just a few hours ago
on the phone from his home in Massachusetts, and the subject of
the talk was U.S. Foreign Policy in the Post-Cold War era, so
we'll get to that talk right now.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, many people in this
country and around the world looked forward to a revamped U.S.
foreign policy, a policy that would put less emphasis on military
domination and covert operations against nations of the developing
world. I wondered if you would comment on that optimistic attitude
that many people took with them after the collapse of the other
superpower: How realistic was that?

Noam Chomsky: Oh, I think it was completely unrealistic, and it
was based on a complete misunderstanding of what third world
intervention has been about. I mean, of course, a completely
understandable misunderstanding because for 70 years it has been
claimed that third world intervention was somehow a response to a
soviet threat, a threat that was claimed immediately after the
Bolshevik revolution. But that was, I mean, anyone who looked at
the case could see right off that that wasent true, and in fact
the whole cold war more or less fell within the pattern of so
called North- South conflict. The U.S. intervenes in the third
world because a section tries to depart from its service function
and moves towards independence. It doesn't matter what policies
it's pursuing, people can be communists, or fascists, or
liberation theology priests, or democratic capitalists, or
whatever: it's independence that is unacceptable, and the
documentary record is perfectly plain about this. the internal
planning and historical record is plain. The Soviet Union, and in
fact all Eastern Europe were a huge part of the original third
world. They were Europe's service area.  When they moved towards
independence that immediately created a conflict: The west invaded
at once and the conflict was going on instantly.  They happened to
be a part of the Third World with a big army, a military force, so
it took years to grind them down and return them to their Third
World status, which is pretty much what's happening now.
Meanwhile, the game goes on elsewhere as before: George Bush
celebrated the fall of the Berlin wall by invading Panama a couple
of weeks later. It was so standard as to be barely a footnote to
history, but it did have a different pretext.  You could no longer
appeal to the threat of the soviet Union, so we were there to
defend ourselves from Hispanic narcotrafficers. And so it
continues.  There is a change, and the change was discussed back
in the mid-'80's, I was writing about it then, and in fact it's
explicit in the new Clinton foreign policy. About a month ago, in
the last week of September, there was a series of major speeches
and documents that came out from the Clinton administration
outlining the "Clinton Doctrine," their new foreign policy.  And
with regard to intervention, the basic principle was stated
clearly : we will now intervene where and how we choose with no
longer any concern about a Soviet deterrent. That was said very
plain, and in fact even the press reported it plain. And that's
quite true, with the Soviet deterrent gone, that's just one
barrier against intervention removed.

S.H.: I was certainly going to ask you specifically about the
Clinton administration,  how they've shaped foreign policy. in the
early days of what is really the first presidency to take office
in the Post Cold war era.  As you mentioned, of the major speeches
of Clinton, one stands out, the U.N. Speech.

N.C.: Right.

S.H.: He stated and stressed support for "market democracies".
What is your view of the value placed by Clinton and the elites of
this country on the two components cited by Clinton: market
economics and democracy?

N.C.: The Clinton administration is exactly like its predecessors
in that respect. With regard to markets, the U.S., and the west
generally has generally had kind of a double edged stand. It would
very much like to impose market discipline on the third world,
because that will make it much easier to rob them. In a market
situation, the rich and powerful win out. On the other hand, no
developed country, certainly not the United States would accept
market discipline at home. Every developed society, beginning with
England in the 18th century, and up to the east Asian tigers
today, and crucially including us, has gotten that way by
radically violating market principles, and stays that way by doing
exactly the same. The Reagan administration, for example, was one
of the most protectionist in recent American history, and in fact
James Baker, when he was secretary of the Treasury, took pains to
announce quite proudly (to the business community, of course, not
to the public) that the Reagan administration had been more
protectionist than any in the past 50 years. This was quite
accurate, and that remains the case. So, markets are great for
them, because it makes it easier to rob them, but we'll violate
the market principles as we like.  and in fact part of the new
Clinton program in this rash of speeches and panels and so on that
came out in the last week of September coordinated was in fact an
international economic policy which announced what they called a
New Export strategy that would violate the GATT rules, the
international trade agreement. It would violate them more
radically than the Reaganites had done and they said so pretty
straight.  this would include new GATT violating subsidies through
the export- import bank for purchase of U.S. goods, of course in
violation of GATT as they always have been, and new subsidies for
purchases of U.S. goods, and so forth and so on. Of course, they
said we're opposed to the policies we're implementing, because
they're interfering with the market, but then comes the usual
apologia that by violating these principles we'll be in a better
position to stop others from violating them. That's the standard
"War means Peace" line, straight out of Orwell.  As far as
democracy's concerned, the Clinton administration is at one with
its predecessors in being in favor of a certain form of democracy.
And again, they're pretty explicit about it. So, for example one
of the former Reagan state department officials who was involved
in what they called "democracy enhancing" operations has just
written a book and several articles about the Reagan
administration policies. And he's an honest man, Thomas Carothers
(sp?) is his name, and he takes the sincerity of the impulse for
democracy very seriously although his own evidence suffices to
show that it was totally cynical. But he does point out,
correctly, that Reagan initiatives were negatively correlated with
democracy; that is, where U.S. influence was least (like in the
southern cone of Latin America) the moves towards democracy were
greatest. And the Reagan administration opposed them, but later
took credit for them. Where U.S.  influence was strongest, like in
Central America, the moves towards democracy were, in any
meaningful sense,  least, in fact negative by and large. And he
also points out that though the Reagan administration talked about
democracy, they, as he puts it "inevitably sought a kind of top
down democracy which would leave intact the traditional centers of
power, which as he admits were all strongly anti-democratic. And
that's true, and the Clinton Administration is the same.  So take
their Haiti policy: They're simply carrying out what was the Bush
policy without much change. They would like to get the elected
president, president Aristide, back in office because it looks
kind of embarrassing to have somebody overthrown, a democratically
elected leader overthrown by a bunch of brutal military gangsters
right under our eyes. They would like to get him back in office,
but essentially in a cubicle, powerless.  They've already forced
him to select a prime minister who, as everyone concedes, is
opposed to his populist reforms. The idea is to get  what they
call "moderate elements of the business community" in charge,
people who agree with the U.S. policy of turning Haiti into an
export platform, cut out the mass of popular organizations, which
to everyone's amazement swept Aristide to power, and then broaden
the government, as they're now talking about,  to open the door to
real right wing thugs in the interest of democracy. So, democracy
must mean a spectrum going from the moderate right to the far
right, which is a very narrow spectrum in Haiti, with the elected
president a figurehead and the popular organizations either
decimated and destroyed, or just marginalized: that's democracy,
top down democracy which leaves traditional structures in place
exactly as Thomas Carrothers pointed out, and has always been
true.

S.H.: The Clinton administration also seems to have shown its
cards in handling the recent crisis in Russia, where Boris Yeltsin
dissolved his nation's parliament. American economics seem to once
again take precedence over the democratic process, in that country
in particular.

N.C.: Well, that's market economics for them. Notice we definitely
want Russia as part of the third world to accept market discipline
of the kind we would never accept and we would demand that. Boris
Yeltsin is a democrat because he went along with that. In fact,
Boris Yeltsin is a tough, brutal former communist party boss. He
was a boss at sverdlofs (sp?), one of the toughest communist party
bureaucrats. He surrounded himself with his own bureaucracy, with
his former subordinates. His latest moves, as quite a few Soviet
scholars and others have pointed out, have simply reversed the
democratic gains that had been made haltingly since 1989,
initiated by Gorbachev, including the election of the parliament
in 1990, which was just as democratic and free as his election. He
just wants to destroy other centers of power and return Russia to
a kind of dictatorship. And the West is perfectly in favor of
that, as long as he opens up the country for investment and
doesn't put up any barriers to export and utilization of Russian
resources, and so on. That's the so called market economy.

S.H.: During the crisis in Russia, our media certainly presented a
picture of what was going on as a choice between Boris Yeltsin, a
"democrat", as you said, and what they termed "hard liners", those
people who wanted to reimpose hard line communism on the people of
Russia. How accurate, or inaccurate,  in your view, was that
analysis, which really  was fairly consistent across the
spectrum?

N.C.: It was consistent, and it reflected the judgment of the
financial markets, who much preferred Yeltsin for the reasons I
mentioned. No, of course, it was total nonsense, I mean there were
plenty of, the group around parliament was quite a diverse group.
It included fascists, it included old-line communists, but the
main people involved were exactly the people who supported
Yeltsin. In fact they had backed him all the way through. The
liberal leader who had been a western style liberal, Ronsev (sp?),
who had been leading the effort to develop a new liberal
constitution was with the parliament, for example. Overall,
parliament was in favor of the same market reforms, but did not
want them to be carried out in such a destructive
fashion(reflecting popular concerns, incidentally). so certainly
it was a mixture, there was no doubt that there were fascists and
nazis and old time communists in the crowd there, just as there
are around Yeltsin, in fact he himself an old time party boss as I
mentioned. But the main center of parliamentary opposition was
unacceptable to Yeltsin because they were and opposition, that is
they had a different conception of how policy should be developed,
and he wants to run it with an iron hand. The western media called
them "hard liners" and "opposed to democracy" and so on because
essentially that's the orders. The West will support all sorts.
Like take somebody like Suharto, I mean a major mass murderer.
Here's somebody who came into office with a major massacre in
which half a million or a million people were slaughtered within
the a few months. He's been carrying out a near genocidal war in
East Timor and compiled one of the world's worst human rights
records as Amnesty International has pointed out over and over,
and in the West he's described as a moderate.  He's a moderate who
is "at heart benign", as the London Economist put it.  The reason
is he's opened up the country to Western exploitation. They liked
Sadaam Hussein as long as he was following orders. I mean up until
August 1, 1990, neither Britain or the United States had any
objection to Saddam Hussein.

S.H.: When you look at the situation in Russia, certainly the fact
that they have tens of thousands of nuclear weapons is important
to this country and the rest of the world. What do you see
happening there? The fact that Boris Yeltsin has won this round
does not really determine what the final end will be in terms of
restructuring that nation's domestic road. I mean what do you see
happening there?

N.C.: Well, the free market, what's called "market shock" that is
the rapid imposition of market reforms which would devastate any
society had a devastating effect on the stagnating and rather weak
Soviet economy too.  So, there's been a very sharp decline in
production and living standards and so on, except for a small
sector; there's been a new wealthy sector as happens in the third
world. So theres, one Soviet scholor Robert Daniels called it a
group of gangsters and mafiosi and speculators which is not very
far from true. the population is now very much demoralized, the
support for democracy has declined radically, as has Yeltsin's
support. But according to polls, there are now very objective
polls taken inside Russia, western run and domestically run and
very reliable, and they indicate a strong tendency to, that just
wants a strong leader, a strong dictatorial leader, and that's
what Yeltsin will put himself forward as. A strong man who will
somehow save them. How that will turn out is very hard to predict.
It's not likely in my view that the population will long accept
the sharp decline in the character of life thats a consequence of
their return to the third world. But of course, in other countries
its been possible to maintain it for a long time. Take a country
like,  say, Brazil, which is a super-rich country with huge
resources and wasn't all that different from Russia say, prior to
the Russian Revolution about 70 years ago, but now, and its had
every imaginable advantage, its been the recipient of vast amounts
of aid and investment, its been under U.S. tutelage almost
completely since 1945, and very openly. For about 10% of the
population, its great. You know, they live like rich western
Europeans, and most of the rest live like people in central
Africa. Its one of the biggest economies in the world, it ranks in
80th place, right next to Albania and Paraquay in the U.N.
assessments of quality of life. Well, they've managed to hold the
population down, often resorting to terror. Its very hard to
predict these things.

S.H.: On another subject, going back to some of the hot-spots
around the world, such as Somalia and Bosnia, I wonder how you
feel the nation's elites now define U.S. interests during the Post
Cold War Era. We have Senator Bob Dole, a Republican who have made
statements negating any U.S. interest in places such as Haiti.
Many others in mainstream political circles state that no U.S.
interests exist in places such as Somalia or Bosnia, a very tragic
war that has claimed hundreds, thousands of lives. What do you
interpret as the  political elites and how they determine their
political and economic interests across the globe?

N.C.: Very much as they have before. The basic question is: what
are the interests of the U.S. based corporate and financial
system, which increasingly means transnational corporations,
international banks and investment firms, and so on, and what are
the interests of the global system of which they are a central
part. Global state supported capitalist system. That's U.S
interest, and beyond that there are just tactical judgments,. Take
Haiti. There's no, as far as I can see, substantial difference of
opinion between Dole and Clinton on this. The question is how
important it is to maintain Haiti as an export platform, for super
cheap labor for U.S. run assembly plants, how disruptive would it
be if the country just collapsed into total chaos and essentially
self destructed. And does the U.S. have an interest in maintaining
the pose of being concerned about democracy in the hemisphere.
Thats roughly the difference between them. they have slightly
different tactical judgments on this. On the Balkans, there is no
substantial element of the U.S. elite that wants any direct
involvement because it would just be too costly to their own
interests. They would like to see the situation simmer down. In
fact, you mentioned quite accurately Bosnia is a terrible tragedy:
so it is. But compare it to, say, Angola which is as bad or worse
a atrocity, with killings as bad or higher, and the destruction
apparently greater as well. Compare the attention to Bosnia and
Angola: its just radically different. Why should that be? Well, it
has nothing to do with human rights. Human rights are being
sacrificed and destroyed more in Angola. So Sarajevo's being
destroyed and tortured, but probably twice as many people have
been killed in Quito. So what's the difference? the difference is
that what happens in the Balkens affects the interests of rich
white people. It affects Europe's interests and it affects
American interests. What happens in Angola doesn't affect those
interests very much. Furthermore, in Bosnia you can sort of blame
what happens on "bad guys", you know, crazed Serb peasants, and so
on. In Angola, you have to blame it on UNITA and Jonas Savimbi,
our man, who received a huge amount of U.S. aid and was hailed to
the skies as a great freedom fighter, you know, the George
Washington, the Thomas Jefferson of the 20th century by the
Reaganites. Well, that doesn't look so good, so therefore its
better to be concerned about Bosnia than Angola. But as far as
U.S. interests are concerned, their interests, I mean not your
interests or mine, but elite interests are concerned, they are to
preserve their power, wealth, domination, authority, nothing novel
about that, nor anything unique to the United States, and
judgments are made accordingly. There are tactical differences
within elite groups, but I don't see that they go very far.

S.H.: We're speaking with Noam Chomsky, professor of linguistics
at M.I.T., Noam Chomsky being one of the most respected critics of
the U.S. economic and political power structures. Professor
Chomsky, I wondered if you would address the United Nations and
their role now in the Post Cold War era. The U.S. has seemed to
use the U.N., certainly starting with the Gulf War, and certainly
driving the U.N. to take certain actions, having the military
power and certainly the economic power to pressure various states
around the world to participate, or to vote for various actions
that the U.S. advocated. But certainly there are some drawbacks,
were the U.N.  may become tainted in the future, if it hasn't
already in certain respects. I wonder if you have any hope that
the U.N. can really can be an arbiter and a peacemaker around the
world, especially as we've seen so much strife and nationalism
coming to the fore, that was, for better or worse, held in check
by the cold war for the last 40 years?

N.C.: The U.N. is not an independent organization. It's the agency
of the states of the world, and it cannot do anything that they
don't initiate and approve of. Power among the states of the world
is not evenly distributed, to put it mildly. The United States has
always had overwhelming power, and ever since the founding of the
United Nations. Now its degree of power has varied over the years.
If you look at the U.S. government's attitude towards the U.N.,
and the attitudes of the media, the intellectual elites, and so
on, (which is about the same), they reflect very closely the
degree to which to which the U.N. follows U.S. orders. I've
reviewed this in close detail, in print, and can show you some of
the data if you want, but roughly its like this. At the time the
U.N. was founded, U.S. power in the world was simply overwhelming.
It was right after the second World War, there had been no
historical parallel to U.S. power, and the U.N. was essentially an
agency of the U.S., used for U.S. interests,  primarily cold war
interests, so against the Russians, and against the third world,
and so on. At that time, the U.N. was very much loved, because it
was doing exactly what we told it to, and the Russians were
denounced for vetoing resolutions, and being obstructionist, and
so on and so forth. Terrible communists. By the mid 1950's, that
was beginning to change. For one thing, decolonization had brought
many new members into the United Nations. The non-aligned movement
had developed, Europe and Japan were recovering from the world war
destruction and were becoming independent entities in their own
right, and the U.N. became somewhat more independent of the U.S.
for these reasons, and the U.S. became more hostile to it by the
mid-late 1960's, the U.S. was very hostile to it. And in fact, in
subsequent years, it virtually destroyed the organization. The
U.S. is way ahead of anyone else in refusing to pay its dues. It
specifically refused, especially under the Reagan Administration,
tried to destroy and succeeded virtually in destroying UNESCO and
other organs of the U.N. that were primarily devoted to third
world interests. If you simply look at the record of vetos since
the 1960's, the US is in the lead in security council vetos,
Britain, which is a U.S. client, is second, France is third and
Russia is fourth, far behind. So that's simply never reported. In
the late '40s and '50s, there was much denunciation of the Russian
veto, but since the 1970 you don't find anything about the U.S.
veto, that's just a blocked story. Similarly, the occasional story
will ask why is the world out of step, or something like that, the
record in the General Assembly is quite the same, the U.S. was
voting alone or almost alone against the entire world so you'd get
votes like 150-1 on issues of international law, observing human
rights, aggression, disarmament, a whole range of topics. So it
was essentially not reported here, or else the U.N. was simply
disparaged, by the late 1980's, the situation was shifting back.
The Russians and the Eastern Europe were disappearing, Europe was
backing off and abdicated, leaving the U.S. to do what it wanted.
The third world was in total disarray, I mean there was a real
catastrophe in the capitalist world in the 1980's as the
traditional colonial domains were completely devastated. And of
course, with the disappearance of the Soviet Union, any room for
non-alignment had gone, so the U.N. became popular again, because
now its doing what the U.S. tells it to again. Can the U.N. be an
independent force for peace and justice and so on? In principle,
but that depends on what happens internally in the powerful
countries, primarily here. If U.S. citizens make a radical change,
and they're the only ones who can do it, in the culture, and
character, and stand and policies of the U.S., then the U.N. will
reflect that.

Transcribed by Steve Hilles 10/28/93

Hilles@igc.apc.org

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