"Dominance and Its Dilemmas"

Noam Chomsky

Transcript of the speech given by Noam
Chomsky in Havana, Cuba on November 3, 2003

The past year has been a momentous one in world
affairs. In the normal rhythm, the pattern was set in
September, a month marked by several important and
closely related events.

The most powerful state in history announced a new
National Security Strategy asserting that it will
maintain global hegemony permanently: any challenge
will be blocked by force, the dimension in which the
US reigns supreme. At the same time, the war drums
began to beat to mobilize the population for an
invasion of Iraq, which would be "the first test [of
the doctrine], not the last," the New York Times
observed after the invasion, "the petri dish in which
this experiment in pre-emptive policy grew." And the
campaign opened for the mid-term congressional
elections, which would determine whether the
administration would be able to carry forward its
radical international and domestic agenda.The new "imperial grand strategy," as it was aptly
termed at once by John Ikenberry, presents the US as
"a revisionist state seeking to parlay its momentary
advantages into a world order in which it runs the
show," a "unipolar world" in which "no state or
coalition could ever challenge" it as "global leader,
protector, and enforcer. These policies are fraught
with danger even for the US itself, he warned,
joining many others in the foreign policy elite.

What is to be "protected" is US power and the
interests it represents, not the world, which
vigorously opposed the conception. Within a few
months, polls revealed that fear of the United States
had reached remarkable heights, along with distrust of
the political leadership, or worse. As for the test
case, an international Gallup poll in December, barely
noted in the US, found virtually no support for
Washington's announced plans for a war carried out
"unilaterally by America and its allies": in effect,
the US-UK "coalition."

The basic principles of the imperial grand strategy
trace back to the early days of World War II, and have
been reiterated frequently since. Even before the US
entered the war, planners and analysts concluded that
in the Postwar world the US would seek "to hold
unquestioned power," acting to ensure the "limitation
of any exercise of sovereignty" by states that might
interfere with its global designs. They outlined "an
integrated policy to achieve military and economic
supremacy for the United States" in a "Grand Area," to
include at a minimum the Western Hemisphere, the
former British empire, and the Far East, later
extended to as much of Eurasia as possible when it
became clear that Germany would be defeated.

Twenty years later, elder statesman Dean Acheson
instructed the American Society of International Law
that no "legal issue" arises when the US responds to a
challenge to its "power, position, and prestige." He
was referring specifically to Washington's post-Bay of

Pigs economic warfare against Cuba, but was surely
aware of Kennedy's terrorist campaign aimed at "regime
change," a significant factor in bringing the world
close to Nuclear war only a few months earlier, and
resumed immediately after the Cuban missile crisis was
resolved.

A similar doctrine was invoked by the Reagan
administration when it rejected World Court
jurisdiction over its attack against Nicaragua. State
Department Legal Adviser Abraham Sofaer explained that
most of the world cannot "be counted on to share our
view" and "often opposes the United States on
important international questions."

Accordingly, we must "reserve to ourselves the power
to determine" which matters fall "essentially within
the domestic jurisdiction of the United States" -- in
this case, the actions that the Court condemned as the
"unlawful use of force" against Nicaragua; in lay
terms, international terrorism.

Their successors continued to make it clear that the
US reserved the right to act "unilaterally when
necessary," including "unilateral use of military
power" to defend such vital interests as "ensuring
uninhibited access to key markets, energy supplies and
strategic resources."

Even this small sample illustrates the narrowness of
the planning spectrum.

Nevertheless, the alarm bells sounded in September
2002 were justified. Acheson and Sofaer were
describing policy guidelines, and within elite
circles. Other cases may be regarded as worldly-wise
reiterations of the maxim of Thucydides that "large
nations do what they wish, while small nations accept
what they must." In contrast, Cheney-Rumsfeld-Powell
and their associates are officially declaring an even
more extreme policy.

They intend to be heard, and took action at once to
put the world on notice that they mean what they say.
That is a significant difference.

The imperial grand strategy is based on the assumption
that the US can gain "full spectrum dominance" by
military programs that dwarf those of any potential
coalition, and have useful side effects. One is to
socialize the costs and risks of the private economy
of the future, a traditional contribution of military
spending and the basis of much of the "new economy."
Another is to contribute to a fiscal train wreck that
will, it is presumed, "create powerful pressures to
cut federal spending, and thus,perhaps, enable the
Administration to accomplish its goal of rolling back
the New Deal," a description of the Reagan program
that is now being extended to far more ambitious
plans.

As the grand strategy was announced on September 17,
the administration "abandoned an international effort
to strengthen the Biological Weapons Convention
against germ warfare," advising allies that further
discussions would have to be delayed for four years. A

month later, the UN Committee on disarmament adopted a
resolution that called for stronger measures to
prevent militarization of space, recognizing this to
be "a grave danger for international peace and
security," and another that reaffirmed "the 925 Geneva
Protocol prohibiting the use of poisonous gases and
bacteriological methods of warfare." Both passed
unanimously, with two abstentions: the US and Israel.
US abstention amounts to a veto: typically, a double
veto, banning the events from reporting and history.

A few weeks later, the Space Command released plans to
go beyond US "control" of space for military purposes
to "ownership," which is to be permanent, in accord
with the Security Strategy. Ownership of space is "key
to our nation's military effectiveness", permitting
"instant engagement anywhere in the world... A viable
prompt global strike capability, whether nuclear or
non-nuclear, will allow the US to rapidly strike
high-payoff, difficult-to-defeat
targets from stand-off ranges and produce the desired
effect... [and] to provide warfighting commanders the
ability to rapidly deny, delay, deceive, disrupt,
destroy, exploit and neutralize targets in
hours/minutes rather than weeks/days even when US and
allied forces have a limited forward presence," thus
reducing the need for overseas bases that regularly
arouse local antagonism.

Similar plans had been outlined in a May 2002 Pentagon
planning document, partially leaked, which called for
a strategy of "forward deterrence" in which missiles
launched from space platforms would be able to carry
out almost instant "unwarned attacks." Military
analyst William Arkin comments that "no target on the
planet or in space would be immune to American attack.

The US could strike without warning whenever and
wherever a threat was perceived, and it would be
protected by missile defenses." Hypersonic drones
would monitor and disrupt targets. Surveillance
systems are to provide the ability "to track, record
and analyze the movement of every vehicle in a foreign
city." The world is to be left at mercy of US attack
at will, without warning or credible pretext. The
plans have no remote historical parallel. Even more
fanciful ones are under development.

These moves reflect the disdain of the administration
for international Law and institutions, or arms
control measures, dismissed with barely a word In the
National Security Strategy; and its commitment to an
extremist version of long-standing doctrine.

In accord with these principles, Washington informed
the UN that it can be "relevant" by endorsing
Washington's plans for invading Iraq, or it can be a
debating society. The US has the "sovereign right to
take military action," Colin Powell informed the
January 2003 Davos meeting of the World Economic
Forum, which also strenuously opposed Washington's war
plans. "When we feel strongly about something we will
lead," Powell informed them, even if no one is
following us.

Bush and Blair underscored their contempt for
international law and institutions at their Azores
Summit on the eve of the invasion. They issued an
ultimatum - not to Iraq, but to the Security Council:
capitulate, or we will invade without your meaningless
seal of approval. And we will do so whether or not
Saddam Hussein and his family leave the country. The
crucial principle is that the US must effectively rule
Iraq.

Since the mid-1940s, Washington has regarded the Gulf
as "a stupendous source of strategic power, and one of
the greatest material prizes in world history" -- in
Eisenhower's words, the "most strategically important
area of the world" because of its "strategic position
and resources." Control over the region and its
resources remains a policy imperative. After taking
over a core oil producer, and presumably acquiring its
first reliable military bases at the heart of the
world's major energy-producing system,Washington will
doubtless be happy to establish an "Arab façade," to
borrow the term of the British during their day in the
sun. Formal democracy will be fine, but only if it is
of the submissive kind tolerated in Washington's
"backyard," at least if history and current practice
are any guide.

To fail in this endeavor would take real talent. Even
under far less propitious circumstances, military
occupations have commonly been successful. It would be
hard not to improve on a decade of murderous sanctions
that virtually destroyed a society that was,
furthermore, in the hands of a vicious tyrant who
ranked with others supported by the current incumbents
in Washington: Romania's Ceausescu, to mention only
one of an impressive rogues gallery. Resistance in
Iraq would have no meaningful outside support, unlike
Nazi-occupied Europe or Eastern Europe under the
Russian yoke, to take recent examples of unusually
brutal states that nevertheless assembled an ample
array of collaborators and achieved substantial
success within their domains.

The grand strategy authorizes Washington to carry
out "preventive war": Preventive, not pre-emptive.
Whatever the justifications for pre-emptive war may
sometimes be, they do not hold for preventive war,
particularly as that concept is interpreted by its
current enthusiasts: the use of military force to
eliminate an invented or imagined threat, so that even
the term "preventive" is too charitable. Preventive
war is, very simply, the "supreme crime" condemned at
Nuremberg.

That is widely understood. As the US invaded Iraq,
Arthur Schlesinger wrote that Bush's grand strategy is
"alarmingly similar to the policy that imperial Japan
employed at Pearl Harbor, on a date which, as an
earlier American president said it would, lives in
infamy." FDR was right, he added, "but today it is we
Americans who live in infamy." It is no surprise that
"the global wave of sympathy that engulfed the
United States after 9/11 has given way to a global
wave of hatred of American arrogance and militarism,"
and the belief that Bush is "a greater threat to peace
than Saddam Hussein."

For the political leadership, mostly recycled from
more reactionary sectors of the Reagan-Bush
administrations, "the global wave of hatred" is not a
particular problem. They want to be feared, not loved.
They understand as well as their establishment critics
that their actions increase the risk of proliferation
of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and terror. But
that too is not a major problem. Higher in the scale
of priorities are the goals of establishing global
hegemony and implementing their domestic agenda:
dismantling the progressive achievements that have
been won by popular struggle over the past century,
and institutionalizing these radical changes so that
recovering them will be no easy task.

It is not enough for a hegemonic power to declare an
official policy. It must establish it as a "new norm
of international law" by exemplary action.
Distinguished commentators may then explain that law
is a flexible living instrument, so that the new norm
is now available as a guide to action. It is
understood that only those with the guns can establish
"norms" and modify international law.

The selected target must meet several conditions. It
must be defenseless, important enough to be worth the
trouble, and an imminent threat to our survival and
ultimate evil. Iraq qualified on all counts. The first
two conditions are obvious. For the third, it suffices
to repeat the orations of Bush, Blair, and their
colleagues: the dictator "is assembling the world's
most dangerous weapons [in order to] dominate,
intimidate or attack"; and He "has already used them
on whole villages leaving thousands of his own
citizens dead, blind or transfigured....If this is not
evil then evil has no meaning."

President Bush's eloquent denunciation surely rings
true. And those who contributed to enhancing evil
should certainly not enjoy impunity: among them, the
speaker of these lofty words and his current
associates, and those who joined them in the years
when they were supporting the man of ultimate evil
long after he had committed these terrible crimes and
won the war with Iran, with decisive US help. We must
continue to support him because of our duty to help US

exporters, the Bush administration explained. It is
impressive to see how easy it is for political
leaders, while recounting the monster's worst crimes,
to suppress the crucial words: "with our help, because

we don't care about such matters." Support shifted to
denunciation as soon as their friend committed his
first authentic crime: disobeying (or perhaps
misunderstanding) orders by invading Kuwait.
Punishment was severe -- for his subjects. The tyrant
escaped unscathed, and his grip on the tortured
population was further strengthened by the sa.

Also easy to suppress are the reasons why Washington
returned to support for Saddam immediately after the
Gulf war as he crushed rebellions that might have
overthrown him. The chief diplomatic correspondent of
the New York Times explained that "the best of all
worlds" for Washington would be "an iron-fisted Iraqi
junta without Saddam Hussein," but since that goal
seems unattainable, we must be satisfied with second
best.

The rebels failed because Washington and its allies
held that "whatever the sins of the Iraqi leader, he
offered the West and the region a better hope for his
country's stability than did those who have suffered
his repression." All of this is suppressed in the
commentary on the mass graves of the victims of
Saddam's US-authorized paroxysm of terror, crimes that
are now offered as justification for the war on "moral
grounds." It was all known in 1991, but ignored for
reasons of state: successful rebellion would have left
Iraq in the hands of Iraqis.

Within the US, a reluctant domestic population had to
be whipped to a proper mood of war fever, another
traditional problem.. From early September 2002, grim
warnings were issued about the threat Saddam posed to
the United States and his links to al-Qaeda, with
broad hints that he was involved in the 9-11 attacks.
Many of the charges "dangled in front of [the media]
failed the laugh test," the editor of the Bulletin of
Atomic Scientists commented, "but the more ridiculous
[they were,] the more the media strove to make
whole-hearted swallowing of them a test of
patriotism."

As often in the past, the propaganda assault had at
least short-term effects. Within weeks, a majority of
Americans came to regard Saddam Hussein as an imminent
threat to the US. Soon almost half believed that Iraq
was behind the 9/11 terror. Support for the war
correlated with these beliefs. The propaganda
campaign proved just enough to give the administration
a bare majority in the mid-term elections, as voters
put aside their immediate concerns and huddled under
the umbrella of power in fear of the demonic enemy.

The brilliant success of "public diplomacy" was
revealed when the President "provided a powerful
Reaganesque finale to a six-week war" on the deck of
the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln on May 1. The
reference, presumably, is to Reagan's proud
declaration that America was "standing tall" after
conquering the nutmeg capital of the world in 1983,
preventing the Russians from using it to bomb the US.
Reagan's mimic was free to declare -without concern
for skeptical comment at home - that he had won a
"victory in a war on terror [by having] removed an
ally of Al Qaeda." It is immaterial that no credible
evidence was provided for the alleged link between
Saddam Hussein and his bitter enemy Osama bin Laden
and that the charge was dismissed by competent
observers. Also immaterial is the only known
connection between the victory and terror: the
invasion appears to have been a "huge setback in the
`war on terror'," by sharply increasing al-Qaeda
recruitment, as US official concede.

More astute observers recognized that Bush's
carefully-staged Abraham Lincoln extravaganza "marks
the beginning of his 2004 re-election campaign," which
the White House hopes "will be built as much as
possible around national-security themes." The
electoral campaign will focus on "the battle of Iraq,
not the war," chief Republican political strategist
Karl Rove explained" the "war" must continue, if only
to control the population at home. Before the 2002
elections, he
had instructed Party activists to Stress security
issues, diverting attention from unpopular Republican
domestic policies. All of this is second-nature to the
recycled Reaganites now in office. That is how they
held on to political power during their first tenure
in office, regularly pushing the panic button to evade
public opposition to the policies that left Reagan the
most unpopular living President by 1992, ranking
alongside Nixon.

Despite its narrow successes, the intensive propaganda
campaign left the public unswayed in more fundamental
respects. Most continue to prefer UN rather than US
leadership in international crises, and by 2-1, prefer
that the UN, rather than the United States, should
direct reconstruction in Iraq.

When the occupying army failed to discover WMD, the
administration's stance shifted from "absolute
certainty" that Iraq possessed WMD to the position
that the accusations were "justified by the discovery
of equipment that potentially could be used to produce
weapons." Senior officials suggested a "refinement" in
the concept of preventive war that entitles the US to
attack "a country that has deadly weapons in mass
quantities." The revision "suggests instead that the
administration will act against a hostile regime that
has nothing more than the intent and ability to
develop [WMD]." The bars for resort to force are
significantly lowered. This modification of the
doctrine of "preventive war" may prove to be the most
significant consequence of the collapse of the
declared argument for the invasion.

Perhaps the most spectacular propaganda achievement
was the lauding of the president's "vision" to bring
democracy to the Middle East in the midst of a display
of hatred and contempt for democracy for which
no precedent comes to mind. One illustration was the
distinction between Old and New Europe, the former
reviled, the latter hailed for its courage. The
criterion was sharp: Old Europe consists of
governments that took the same position as the vast
majority of their populations; the heroes of New
Europe followed orders from Crawford Texas,
disregarding an even larger majority, in most cases.
Political commentators ranted about disobedient Old
Europe and its psychic maladies, while Congress
descended to low comedy.

At the liberal end of the spectrum, Richard Holbrooke
stressed "the very important point" that the
population of the eight original members of New Europe
is larger than that of Old Europe, which proves that
France and Germany are "isolated." So it does, if we
reject the radical left heresy that the public might
have some role in a democracy. Thomas Friedman urged
that France be removed from the permanent members of
the Security Council, because it is "in kindergarten,"
and "does not play well with others." It follows that
the population of New Europe must still be in nursery
school,judging by polls.

Turkey was a particularly instructive case. The
government resisted heavy US pressure to prove its
"democratic credentials" by overruling 95% of its
population and following orders. Commentators were
infuriated by this lesson in democracy, so much so
that some even reported Turkey's crimes against the
Kurds in the 1990s, previously a taboo topic because
of the crucial US role -- though that was still
carefully concealed in the lamentations.

The crucial point was expressed by Paul Wolfowitz, who
condemned the Turkish military because they "did not
play the strong leadership role that we would have
expected" and did not intervene to prevent the
government from respecting near-unanimous public
opinion. Turkey must therefore step up and say "We
made a mistake...Let's figure out how we can be as
helpful as possible to the Americans." Wolfowitz's
stand is particularly instructive because he is
portrayed as the leading figure in the crusade to
democratize the Middle East.

Anger at Old Europe has much deeper roots than
contempt for democracy. The US has always regarded
European unification with some ambivalence, because
Europe might become an independent force in world
affairs. Thus senior diplomat David Bruce was a
leading advocate for European unification in the
Kennedy years, urging Washington to "treat a uniting
Europe as an equal partner," -- but following
America's lead. He saw "dangers" if Europe "struck
off on its own, seeking to play a role independent of
the United States." In his "Year of Europe" address 30
years ago, Henry Kissinger advised Europeans to keep
to their "regional reponsibilities" within the
"overall framework of order" managed by the United
States. Europe must not pursue its own independent
course, based on its Franco-German industrial and
financial heartland.

In the tripolar world that was taking shape at that
time, these concerns extend to Asia as well. Northeast
Asia is now the world's most dynamic economic region,
accounting for almost 30% of global GDP, far more than
the US, and holding about half of global foreign
exchange reserves. It is a potentially integrated
region, with advanced industrial economies and ample
resources. All of this raises the threat that it too
might flirt with challenging the over all framework of
order, which the US is to manage permanently, by force

if necessary, Washington has declared.

Violence is a powerful instrument of control, as
history demonstrates. But the dilemmas of dominance
are not slight.

NOAM CHOMSKY speaking on Cuba

David versus Goliath: Cuba and the U.S. Government

9th U.S./Cuba Friendshipment dedicated

to the Doctors and Nurses of Cuba
Sponsored by IFCO and Pastors for Peace

Recorded by Roger Leisner on June 1, 1999
at the Old South Church in Boston

Available on audio for $11.00 and VHS video for $20.00


HOWARD ZINN
People's History of U.S. Relations with Cuba (A/V)

Maine Let Cuba Live Fundraiser for the 11th Annual

Pastors for Peace U.S./Cuba Friendshipment Caravan

Recorded by Roger Leisner on October 4, 2000 at the
First Parish Church in Brunswick, Maine

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$20.00


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