Ammunition Against THE EMPIRE

By Barry Weisleder / April 2007 issue of Socialist Action Newspaper

Need a crash course on the present state of the world? Want to untangle the terminology, separate the victims from the victimizers, understand the dynamics of unilateralism, and deduce what can be done about it all? A good place to begin is the book Hugo Chavez recommended from the podium of the United Nations last September.

"Hegemony or Survival, America's Quest for Global Dominance", by Noam Chomsky (Metropolitan Books, Henry Holt and Co., New York 2003, 278 pages), lives up to its title. The prolific MIT professor of linguistics and philosophy explains how the American ruling class has long been in the business of imposing its will over an ever-expanding domain of lands and peoples. Its behemoth state was built on the decimation and displacement of aboriginal tribes, the seizure of vast Mexican lands, and the conquest of Spanish possessions in the Caribbean and Southeast Asia.

Power was consolidated by the concentration of wealth, the suppression of organized working-class opposition, and the penetration of foreign markets. U.S elite interest in world affairs often masqueraded as ‘spreading democracy’, but was actually about maximizing the conditions for private profit extraction.

Chomsky provides a telling example: "The rise of fascism in the interwar period elicited concern, but was generally regarded rather favorably by the US and British governments, the business world, and a good deal of elite opinion. The reason was that the fascist version of extreme nationalism permitted extensive Western economic penetration and also destroyed the much-feared labour movements and the left, and the excessive democracy in which they could function."

Chomsky's sarcasm, as in the "excessive democracy" phrase, sometimes confounds his meaning or devolves towards cynicism. But his trenchant critique resurrects: "Like Saddam Hussein half a century later, [Nazi Germany] retained substantial Anglo-American support until Hitler launched direct aggression that infringed too seriously on US and UK interests." (Lest we forget, Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King was also a Hitler admirer through the 1930s, and later turned away a shipload of Jewish refugees.)

The American ruling rich employed nationalist protectionism to promote home industries, and resorted to gunboat diplomacy to subdue resistors to its hemispheric hegemony. Protected from the ravages of European and Asian conflagration by two oceans, the U.S. voraciously conscripted public funds to amass and deploy an enormous war machine, and graduated to post-WW II super-power status. Its prime objective then became the elimination of the other super power, whose post-capitalist basis posed a permanent obstacle, if not an active challenge, to the world capitalist system.

"Concern over Soviet economic development and its demonstration effect persisted into the 1960s, when the Soviet economy began to stagnate, in large measure because of the escalating arms race that Soviet Premier Khrushchev had sought desperately to prevent."

Chomsky describes the 1962 Cuban missile crisis in this context, along with a series of bloody U.S. (direct and indirect) interventions to thwart movements for social change from Iran to Nicaragua, from Palestine to Grenada, from Indonesia to Chile. The official excuse offered was "containment of the USSR" and the derivative "war against state-sponsored terrorism".

The heavy irony inherent in the extensive global conduct of U.S. state terrorism (as in the 1989 bombardment of civilian neighborhoods and the killing of thousands of Panamanians just to flush out a single man, the former U.S. client-dictator Manuel Noriega), was not lost on many Latin Americans.

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, however, the stated rationale for U.S. aggressive exertions shifted to a more frank, if not novel, expression. Washington now speaks of "preventive" as opposed to "pre-emptive" war. It thus asserts the right to intervene with force against any nation whose leadership the U.S. claims is considering the development of weapons of mass destruction. Naturally, this criterion does not apply to itself or to its client states. Nor is the approval of the United Nations or adherence to international law required.

With that Chomsky walks us through two invasions of Iraq, the exorbitant U.S. subsidy and integration of the colonial-settler state known as Israel, the erosion of civil liberties in the West, the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan and the establishment of U.S. military bases in proximity to Central Asian oil reserves, and most worrisome, the placement of weapons of mass destruction in outer space—a zone the U.S. intends to 'own', not just control.

What hope is there for our endangered species? The answer seems to come up a bit lame: "the slow evolution of a human rights culture" will act as the "restraining influence on state violence". This will be supplemented by "popular activism" and "global justice movements". But isn't the problem 'the system'? And aren't there signs of a revolutionary challenge to it?

Chomsky's companion piece, part of the publisher's American Empire Project series, is "Imperial Ambitions, Conversations on the Post-9/11 World, Interviews with David Barsamian" (Metropolitan Books, New York 2005, 226 pages). This fast-flowing dialogue retraces some ground, but delves more into strategic questions, though not always rewardingly.

Chomsky returns to the theme of 'state security', Washington's long-standing excuse for foreign intervention. He relates how this is often a hard line for other states to swallow. When Mexico refused to go along with Kennedy's terrorist attacks on Cuba, "the Mexican ambassador said, 'If we publicly declare that Cuba is a threat to our security, forty million Mexicans will die laughing.'"

Elite distrust of democracy and the masses goes back to the foundation of the American republic, so the political establishment has a lot of experience stealing elections and distorting the truth. Chomsky is the expert on how the 'consent' of the powerless majority is 'manufactured', including by a kept corporate media. From there it is a short journey to an "embedded press" in a zone of foreign military occupation and to gag laws that curtail domestic dissent and put swarthy immigrants and selfless lawyers like Lynne Stewart in jail.

Long before anti-communism was invented, the U.S. rulers employed their own aggressive nationalism against the aspirations of defenseless, oppressed nations. Now it's the "war on terrorism", which was well underway but benefited by a big boost after Sept. 11, 2001. "Clinton's bombing of Sudan and Afghanistan in 1998 effectively created Al Qaeda", says Chomsky.

The price tag for this manufactured war is manifold, including the reality that "Forty-five million Americans have no [health-care] coverage whatsoever." Add to that, "thirty years of either stagnation or decline in real wages, with people working longer hours with fewer benefits." While "household debt is out of sight ... corporate debt is very low. In fact, corporations are making huge profits" and "barely pay taxes". Money for militarism is diverted from already disintegrating public schools, hospitals, roads, and water services.

The book argues that Washington’s current drive to cut Social Security and similar benefits is a drive to reverse the past gains won by labour and other social movements, to the benefit of Wall Street and the capitalist fraternity, who use 'national security' propaganda to dull the senses.

You might ask, is the 'war on terrorism' turning the U.S. into 'a failed state'? And who will come to the rescue, if not the awakened ranks of the other global super-power, the vast legions of antiwar, progressive humanity, including its potentially explosive U.S. section?

Such an awakening, the stirrings of which were evident in the massive immigrants' rights protests across America on May 1, 2006, need to be nurtured by teachings that promote political independence from the institutions of capitalist rule. Herein lies a fundamental weakness of the work at hand.

Chomsky's indignation at the Empire's crimes dissolves disappointingly into the poisonous brine of lesser-evil politics. Hardly pausing for breath, after exposing the 'liberal' Bill Clinton edition of anti-democratic subversion and military aggression, Chomsky the self-conscious libertarian lobbies for votes for the Democratic Party—which for well over a century has been the main war party of U.S. imperialism.

After devoting thousands of pages, and a myriad of examples of the fundamental similarity and common class loyalties of the Democrats and Republicans, Chomsky feebly submits: "These may not look like huge differences, but they translate into quite big effects for the lives of people. Anybody who says, 'I don't care if Bush gets elected' is basically telling poor and working people in the country, 'I don't care if your lives are destroyed."

But who destroyed the lives of over 50,000 U.S. soldiers (not to mention millions of Vietnamese), and who cut welfare, health care, and education in favour of more cops and jails in America if not the Democrats? And who joined the nearly unanimous vote in Congress to invade Iraq and Afghanistan, and who are amongst the front rank of loyal supporters of Zionist apartheid, anti-Cuba terrorism, militarism and subversion of democracy from Indonesia to Somalia to Venezuela?

Chomsky reveals that his "views grew out of the anarcho-syndicalist tradition." He affirms his "belief in the value of classical liberal doctrines. … Enlightenment ideals—rationality, critical analysis, freedom of speech, freedom of inquiry". In this way, he exposes the extreme limitations of his outlook and "ideals."

Chomsky’s limitations are expressed insofar as he fails to challenge the political monopoly exercised by the capitalist minority, insofar as he capitulates to at least one of the lying, cheating, murderous political gangs of the plutocracy, and insofar as he declines even to speculate on the prospect of working-class self-emancipation.

The latter is an essential step towards which would be the formation of an independent party based on working-class organizations and a set of policies to advance the basic class interests of the overwhelming majority of Americans. That’s the tragedy that dulls the brilliance of Chomsky's body of work, these two books being no exception.