EU-US: Professor Noam Chomsky (MIT)
Lunchtime discussion with linguist and political dissenter Noam Chomsky
January 19, 2006
About the Speech:
Professor Noam Chomsky visited the Institute of European
Affairs to discuss the role of Europe and America in maintaining global
stability.
Speaking to Foundation & Corporate members of the Institute, Chomsky criticised
what he viewed as the hypocritical history of ‘humanitarian’ interventionism
from J.S. Mill’s support for British action in India in the late 18th Century to
the NATO action in East Timor. Following his speech, Chomsky and the audience
engaged in a lengthy, mutually challenging exchange.
About the Speaker:
Chomsky is Institute Professor Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology. He is famous for his work in the linguistic field. In Logical
Structure of Linguistic Theory (1955), he introduced his theory of
‘transformational grammars’ and revolutionised the field. The basis hypothesis
is that humans have innate knowledge of the basic grammatical structure common
to all human languages. With a limited set of grammar rules and a finite set of
terms, humans are able to produce an infinite number of sentences.
However, he is also famous for his pronouncements on international affairs.
Professor Chomsky has argued, since the Vietnam War, that the US and other
complicit governments are themselves prime offenders against the international
peace, except in situations where the status quo serves their interests.
The Prospect Magazine/Foreign Policy 2005 poll named MIT Professor Noam Chomsky
the \"World\'s Top Public Intellectual\".
[ATTENDANCE
LIMITED / MEMBERS ONLY]
Transcript of Noam Chomsky’s speech EUROPE AND AMERICA AS
UNDERWRITERS OF THE INTERNATIONAL ORDER at the Institute of European Affairs, 19
January 2006.“Since time is very tight I won’t take my 20 minutes so we can have time to
talk, which is more interesting. The idea that Europe – later the United States
– is the guarantor of world order is very old as you know.
“One can begin to discuss it with the classic essay on humanitarian intervention
that’s studied in every law school and so on. That’s John Stuart Mill’s essay on
humanitarian intervention [J.S. Mill, "A Few Words on Non-Intervention,"
Fraser's Magazine, December 1859.] - the first one specifically directed to this
topic. Needless to say Mill was a person of unusual intelligence and moral
integrity, so we’re discussing the peak of the justification for this. His essay
asked the question of whether England should intervene in the ugly world, Europe
and elsewhere, or whether it should keep to its own business and let the
barbarians fight it out. His conclusion, nuanced and complex, was that balancing
the various conditions, England should undertake to intervene. Although, as he
said, by doing so, England will endure the obloquy and abuse of the Europeans,
who will seek base motives in what England is doing because they cannot
comprehend that England is what he called a “novelty in the world,? an angelic
power that seeks nothing for itself and acts only for the benefits of others.
Though it bears the cost of intervention, it shares the benefits of its labour
with others equally. And since that’s so incomprehensible to Europeans they
assign us base motives, and so on.“His immediate concern was India, and he was calling for the expansion of the
occupation of India to several new provinces. The timing of the article is quite
revealing. It appeared in 1859. That’s immediately after what was called in
British history the ‘India mutiny’: the Sepoy rebellion [in 1857], which Britain
put down with extreme savagery and brutality. This was very well known in
England. There were parliamentary debates – huge controversy over it. There were
people who opposed it: Richard Cobden, a real committed liberal, and a few
others. Mill knew all about it. He was a corresponding secretary of the East
India Company, and was following it all closely. The purpose of the expansion of
British power over India, as he knew, was to try to obtain a monopoly over opium
so that England could somehow break into the Chinese market. They couldn’t sell
goods to China because, as they complained, Chinese goods were comparable and
they didn’t want British goods. So the only way to break into the Chinese market
was by gunboats and to force them to become a nation of opium addicts at the
point of a gun and by obtaining a monopoly of the opium trade – didn’t quite
make it, American merchants got a piece of it – they could compel Chinese to
become opium addicts and gain access to Chinese markets. And in fact he was
writing right at the time of the Second Opium War [from 1856 to 1860], which
achieved that. Britain established the world’s most extensive narco-trafficking
enterprise; there’s never been anything remotely like it. Not only were they
able to break into China for the first time, but also the profits from opium
supported the Raj, the costs of the British Navy, and provided very significant
capital which fuelled the industrial revolution in England.
“Mill was very aware of this. Had to be. But nevertheless his picture is that
since England is an angelic power we should help the barbarians who can’t solve
their own affairs. This is typical. I won’t go through the record. But the
United States is the same. Germany was the same. Japan was the same. The
Japanese records in Manchuria and China, they’re internal records that were
seized after the war and translated in English by the RAND corporation. They’re
just overflowing with the milk of human kindness: Japan’s going to create an
“earthly paradise,? expending its own resources for the benefit of barbarians;
its going to support the Manchukuo Government – which actually was headed by
authentic Chinese nationalists – it was going to protect them from the bandits
who were trying to prevent Japan’s noble efforts. This was probably very
sincere. These are internal records. The Emperor Hirohito in his surrender
declaration gave an eloquent statement with the same noble intentions. Hitler
gave the same arguments when he took over Czechoslovakia. The goal was to
eliminate ethnic conflicts, let everyone live in peace and harmony under the
tutelage of civilised Germany. And so it continues to the present moment.
“Oddly, the world never accepts this nobility. There was a big revival of this
in the latter part of the twentieth century, which I think was one of the most
disgraceful periods of intellectual history. The last few years of the end of
the millennium, there was an outburst of self adulation on the part of leading
western intellectuals across the spectrum describing particularly US foreign
policy as having entered what was called a “noble phase? with a “saintly glow,?
described by the New York Times and Washington Post as “the idealistic new
world,? leading the way to an era of peace. Václav Havel made a speech about how
a country for the first time in history is acting for “principles and values?
with no self-interest. It went on and on like this. Leading journals ran
articles about how the “enlightened states,? meaning us, had not only the right,
but the responsibility, to carry out intervention for the benefit of suffering
people in the world, and so on.
“There were two incidents cited in retrospect as having justified the
self-adulation. One of them was the bombing of Serbia in 1999. We now know a
tremendous amount about it. There are two major collections of State Department
documents to justify the bombing. The British Parliament carried out a lengthy
parliamentary inquiry into those events.
[1]
The OSCE produced extensive detailed
accounts almost daily up to the bombings. The KVM monitors were producing
reports. They all say the same thing - almost uniform: it was an unpleasant
place. There were about 2,000 people killed the year before the bombing. The
British Government, which was the most hawkish element, draws an utterly
astonishing conclusion. I didn’t believe it when I first read it but now it’s
backed up by the parliamentary inquiry. Their judgement was that the majority of
killings up to January 1999 (and from the OSCE records we know that nothing
substantial changed afterwards) was by the KLA guerrillas who were coming from
across the border to try to elicit a harsh Serbian response, they were supported
by the CIA in early 1999, which could be used to provide justification for
bombing. And so it continued until March 1999, at which point Blair and Clinton
decided to bomb, with the anticipation, as we now know, that it would lead to
significant atrocities, as indeed it did. As soon as the bombing began, the
anticipated reaction began, the ethnic cleansings, atrocities, and so on. There
were diplomatic options on the table, we know that. That’s the jewel in the
crowd. How it’s dealt with in the intellectual scholarship is to reverse the
chronology and to suppress the documentation. Take a look, go through it, it’s a
quite interesting incident of intellectual history.“That’s one case. The other case that’s brought is far more grotesque. East
Timor. In the case of East Timor, that’s probably the example that’s closest to
genocide in the post Second World War period, the US and Britain strongly
supported the Indonesian invasion of East Timor. Britain was the major supplier
of arms, France came in, other Europeans, even Sweden joined in to get a bit of
the loot. The killings went on from 1975 to 1999. In early 1999, the atrocities
picked up the same time as Kosovo. It was much worse than anything described in
Kosovo. Britain and the US continued to support it. It led finally to a
referendum in August 1999, in which, to everyone’s amazement the Timorese voted
for independence – they were under terrific threat. At that point the Indonesian
Army just went wild and practically wiped the place out and Blair and Clinton
continued to support them. Eight days after the Indonesian Army had practically
destroyed Dili, and driven out the population, Clinton said it’s the
responsibility of the Indonesians, we can’t do anything about it. The British
Government literally continued to provide arms to Indonesia after the EU had
declared a boycott, in fact after the Australian peacekeeping forces entered.
Couldn’t stop supplying it. There was never any intervention. What happened was
that on September 11 1999 at an international conference in New Zealand, Clinton
came under terrific pressure internationally, and by then domestically (it was
coming from powerful right wing sources and from a popular movement). He was
under tremendous international diplomatic pressure. And what he did was inform
the Indonesian generals that it was finished. And they withdrew as soon as the
got the order from the master. That tells you exactly how it could have been
stopped for 25 years: just stop participating and it’s over. They left though
they swore they never would. After the Indonesians withdrew, the UN peacekeeping
mission entered, headed by Australia, which was a very good thing, and they
dampened down the remaining militia conflict. That’s the second proof of
humanitarian intervention.
“The issue has come up internationally, repeatedly. Last, about a year ago,
December 2004, the United Nations had a high level panel to reconsider the
Charter, to ask if the UN Charter needed some revision particularly with regard
to what’s called ‘responsibility to protect’, humanitarian intervention. The
panel included people like Brent Scowcroft, National Security Advisor for Bush
the first, long experience in the security system, Gareth Evans of Australia,
other distinguished figures. Their conclusion was that the crucial issue is
Article 51. Everyone agreed that Chapter 7 interventions are legitimate: the
Security Council calls for intervention, that’s not in question. The issue was
Article 51, which states that the one exception to the use of force that says
that states are entitled to the use of force when they’re under direct attack or
that’s usually interpreted as under imminent threat of direct attack, using
Daniel Webster’s famous formulation, the Carolina case. Their conclusion was
that Article 51 needs no revision or emendation. The restriction on the use of
force should remain as it was in the original Charter formulation with no
revision. Last September there was a world summit which again reviewed the issue
and came to the exact same conclusion. The former non-aligned countries, around
80% of the world population, have taken a very strong position on this.
Immediately after the bombing of Serbia – which was extremely unpopular around
the world, it was even condemned in countries like Israel, India and so on,
contrary to the European perception – they had their highest ever meeting of the
South Summit, the first meeting ever at the level of heads of state. They had a
long declaration which was an interesting one, a long critique of neo-liberal
globalisation, which was derided or dismissed in the West – virtually no
commentary – and in it they said they condemned the so-called ‘right’ of
humanitarian intervention, which is just another expression of traditional
imperialism. The World Court has issued the same judgement, that goes back to
the Corfu case in 1949, again in the Nicaragua case and elsewhere. In fact
there’s essential unanimity on this apart from the powers that prefer to
intervene unilaterally: primarily now the United States, and what the journal of
the royal institute in Britain calls the ‘spear-carrier of pax Americana’
[Michael MccGwire, International Affairs, journal of the Royal Institute of
International Affairs, 1 January 2005], referring to Tony Blair’s England. Apart
from those two, there’s no call for a right of humanitarian intervention. And
that’s the issue. Has some miracle happened that has somehow changed things
since maybe five minutes ago? If it has, that’s something that is unknown to the
third world, the usual victims, or to western high level panels that have
reiterated it. As far as I know, we’re back in the days of John Stuart Mill on
this issue: nothing has changed.\"
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