With the Cold War over is peace now at hand?

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U.S. troops during the Panama invasion: Preparing for "low-intensity wars."

"Overwhelming military might may terrorize small nations, but how can the American public be persuaded or coerced into supporting endless wars when the Soviet threat has gone?"

SOCIALIST ACTION DECEMBER1991 11 "Deterring Democracy" by Noam Chomsky. Verso Press, New York, 421 pages, 1991.

Now that the Soviet Union is in disarray, and the Warsaw Pact has been dissolved, America's rulers consider that the 30,000 nuclear warheads in their arsenal are rather excessive. Already President Bush has taken strategic bombers and intercontinental ballistic missile silos off the hair-trigger 24-hour alert.

Under the START treaty signed last July, U.S. and Soviet nuclear stockpiles will be reduced by 30 percent. Some Amer• • 00 ONAS EL : 32% RESO ican military experts say cut the number to 100 missiles. Others speculate on a completely nuclear-free country.

Before we succumb to the euphoria of peace and disarmament, we should read Noam Chomsky's new book, "Deterring Democracy." President Bush has no intention of seriously reducing American armaments, Chomsky contends. He is only focussing the military machine to meet an old threat that will not go away.

That threat, says Chomsky, is democracy-genuine democracy that empowers the masses to determine their own future. This collides with U.S. determination to make the world safe for American power and profit. Even the possibility of real democracy must be deterred, should it arise in Grenada, Nicaragua, or Vietnam.

"Deterring Democracy" is partly a compendium of articles Chomsky has written in Zeta (Z) magazine since 1988. Published in 1991, the book includes the start of the Gulf War. Chomsky expresses the most eloquent condemnation of our ruling class, which wages war on democracy in the name of democracy. He also displays his contempt for the "establishment liberals"

...Yeltsin (continued from page 10: “Chechen-Ingush defeat Yeltsin's first attempt at crackdown”)

that the emergency-rule degree could not be enforced because of the existence of "dual power" in the autonomous republic.

The doughty mountaineers complained that asking them to give up their arms was like asking them to take off their trousers. In any event, it was Yeltsin who was left politically undraped. The Russian Supreme Soviet backed off from endorsing the implementation of emergency rule in Chechen-Ingushetia.

Why the crackdown fizzled What is more, the political movement on which Yeltsin has based himself, "Democratic Russia", ', rejected the crackdown on Chechen-Ingushetia, and even who put a democratic gloss on the most barbarous campaigns of mass murder.

The Cold War, Chomsky points out, made it easier to win public support for campaigns of aggression in Central America and Asia. The "Evil Empire," like the child's bogey man, would get us if we didn't slaughter peasants thousands of miles away.

No 'Evil Empire' to kick around Now this military threat has all but vanished, and imperialism faces a new situation. As Chomsky describes it, America came out of World War I with a sound economy facing an economically prostrate world. Today, America's economy is not so sound, and it confronts a German-European trading bloc and the Japanese economic powerhouse.

While no longer supreme on the economic front, America now has no serious rival to its military might. Where previously the U.S. may have been inhibited sometimes by fear of a nuclear exchange with Russia, now Washington feels no such restraints. The "New World Order" is to be a strictly American order, enforced by all the power displayed in the Persian Gulf.

The Gulf War reflects American determination and ruthlessness. It also demonstrates the effectiveness of what the military call "low intensity" warfare: no need for the ultimate weapon. The devastaexperienced a small split of right-wing Russian nationalist forces, the leaders of the so-called People's Understanding Bloc (Narodnoe Soglasie), who objected to the majority accepting the "divisibility" of Russia.

At the Nov. 12 press conference of "Democratic Russia" in Moscow, the cochair of the movement, Yuri Afanasiev, sharply criticized Yeltsin: "President Boris Yeltsin and the Russian government did not accept the slogan of the divisibility of Russia." The Nov. 15 Russkaya Mysl, a liberal organ that is no friend of the 1917 Russian Revolution, summarized bis remarks as follows:

"He [Afanasiev] declared that the government headed by Yeltsin has clearly demarcated the contours of the future Russian empire. The decree introducing a state of emergency in Chechen-Ingushetia ... was the logical continuation of the great-power line pursued by Yeltsin and his local tion unleashed by conventional weapons serves as a warning to small nations that thwarting America's interests means risking a "desert storm" on their territory.

Overwhelming military might may terrorize small nations, but how can the American public be persuaded or coerced into supporting endless wars when the Soviet threat has gone? Here Chomsky presents the major thesis of his book.

Fear of the common people Bourgeois democracy, he says, never included the common people. The 17thcentury English Puritans who cut off their monarch's head feared the British common people more. Chomsky quotes a contemporary who observed, "It is dangerous to 'have a people know their own strength."" Another said, "When we mention the people, we do not mean the confused promiscuous body of the people." And further, "Day laborers and tradesmen, the spinsters and dairymaids must be told what to believe."

Chomsky writes, "Such ideas have ample resonance today, including [philosopher John] Locke's stern doctrine that the common people should be denied the right even to discuss public affairs. This doctrine remains a basic principle of modern democratic states, now implemented by a variety of means to protect the operations of the state from public scrutiny.

viceroy. The speaker recalled the failure of Denikin's attempt [during the civil war against the Bolsheviks in 1918-21] to defend the slogan of a one and indivisible Russia in the northern Caucasus. The Bolsheviks, speculating on the aspiration of the peoples for independence, were able largely as a result of this to win victory in the area."

A resolution of the congress of "Democratic Russia" rejected the use of force in Chechen-Ingushetia and "hailed the victory of the peoples of Chechen-Ingushetia over the Communist regime."

In fact, Yeltsin's "local viceroy" in Chechen-Ingushetia, A. Arsanov, whose coded message was used as grounds for declaring the state of emergency, denied in an interview with Interfax that he had recommended any such measure.

Clearly, the "Democratic Russia" movement proved a completely unreliable instrument for Yeltsin in a key test of The point is made that "control of thought is more important for govemments that are relatively free and popular than for despotic and military states. "They can control their people by force, but as the state loss this weapon, other devices are required to prevent the ignorant masses from interfering with public affairs, which are none of their business," says Chomsky.

He observes, "It is not often appreciated how profoundly and deeply rooted is the contempt for democracy in the elite culture, and the fear it arouses." The public are to be observers, not participants. They are to be consumers of ideology as well as of commodities. "There is no infringement of democracy if a few corporations control the information system—in fact that is the essence of democracy," say apologists for the system.

Ultimately, public acceptance must be obtained for government to work. In normal times, acceptance can be created. Chomsky says that "the manufacture of consent" has become "a self-conscious art and a regular organ of popular government."

Role of liberals

The major role in this process is played, according to Chomsky, by establishment liberals who have never found an American war they could not endorse, and who distinguish between the bestial terrorism of the enemy and the benign terrorism of American forces. Their "expertise," displayed on op-ed pages and TV talk shows as impartial opinion, never challenges the basic goals of capitalist policy.

Chomsky speaks of the success of corporate efforts "to change the attitudes and values of workers" and to tum "worker apathy into corporate allegiance."

Bush, however, is finding the limits of public relations manipulation of the voters. Desert Storm euphoria has faded as the cold chill of recession spreads across the land. No amount of talk will convince the unemployed worker that she or he has a job.

Here, it seems Chomsky pushes his thesis too far. He does not introduce the countervailing forcesconditions on the job, trade unions, the unremitting class struggle.

Chomsky also makes a serious error of fact on page 361, where he charges that Lenin and Trotsky " ... in 1917, moved to dismantle organs of popular control, including factory committees and soviets, thus proceeding to deter and overcome socialist tendencies."

In reality, the govermental slogan of the Bolshevik Party, led by Lenin and Trotsky, was "all power to the soviets." After the Revolution, control by the workers and oppressed was increased rather than being "dismantled." Later, the other left parties— the Mensheviks and the Social Revolutionaries-walked out of the Soviets, but the Bolsheviks remained.

Chomsky's acceptance of this distortion of one of the greatest events of the 20th century leads to the pessimism with which he concludes his book. Despite this, Chomsky offers a valuable exposition of the true relations between rulers and the ruled in capitalist America, and demonstrates that hope for real disarmament is an illusion so long as American imperialism rules.

strength. The movements of the minority peoples in the Russian Federation will certainly grow, and have been greatly strengthened by this defeat for the Russian government. They are not all small or remote. The Tartars for example are as numerous as all the Baltic peoples put together and live in a strategic area, with important resources.

However, the implications of Yeltsin's defeat in his confrontation with a small people of Caucasian mountaineers go far beyond the question of minorities or the national question.

They indicate that he does not have the authority or the instruments to implement the policy of the bureaucracy.

He, too, is failing to accomplish the job that the Gorbachev goverment could not do; that is, to force the working class to accept the cost of restoring capitalism and, in the immediate future, a big round of price increases.