Tomgram: Noam Chomsky, What Principles Rule the World?
By Noam Chomsky
Posted on May 10, 2016, Printed on May 10, 2016
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176138/ ;
The Costs of Violence
Masters of Mankind (Part 2)
By Noam Chomsky
[This piece, the second of two parts, is excerpted from Noam Chomskys new
book, Who Rules the World? (Metropolitan Books). Part 1 can be found by
clicking here.]
In brief, the Global War on Terror sledgehammer strategy has spread jihadi
terror from a tiny corner of Afghanistan to much of the world, from Africa
through the Levant and South Asia to Southeast Asia. It has also incited
attacks in Europe and the United States. The invasion of Iraq made a
substantial contribution to this process, much as intelligence agencies had
predicted. Terrorism specialists Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank estimate
that the Iraq War generated a stunning sevenfold increase in the yearly
rate of fatal jihadist attacks, amounting to literally hundreds of
additional terrorist attacks and thousands of civilian lives lost; even when
terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan is excluded, fatal attacks in the rest of
the world have increased by more than one-third. Other exercises have been
similarly productive.
A group of major human rights organizations -- Physicians for Social
Responsibility (U.S.), Physicians for Global Survival (Canada), and
International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (Germany) --
conducted a study that sought "to provide as realistic an estimate as
possible of the total body count in the three main war zones [Iraq,
Afghanistan, and Pakistan] during 12 years of war on terrorism,'" including
an extensive review of the major studies and data published on the numbers
of victims in these countries, along with additional information on
military actions. Their "conservative estimate" is that these wars killed
about 1.3 million people, a toll that "could also be in excess of 2
million." A database search by independent researcher David Peterson in the
days following the publication of the report found virtually no mention of
it. Who cares?
More generally, studies carried out by the Oslo Peace Research Institute
show that two-thirds of the regions conflict fatalities were produced in
originally internal disputes where outsiders imposed their solutions. In
such conflicts, 98% of fatalities were produced only after outsiders had
entered the domestic dispute with their military might. In Syria, the number
of direct conflict fatalities more than tripled after the West initiated air
strikes against the self-declared Islamic State and the CIA started its
indirect military interference in the war -- interference which appears to
have drawn the Russians in as advanced US antitank missiles were decimating
the forces of their ally Bashar al-Assad. Early indications are that Russian
bombing is having the usual consequences.
The evidence reviewed by political scientist Timo Kivimäki indicates that
the protection wars [fought by coalitions of the willing] have become the
main source of violence in the world, occasionally contributing over 50% of
total conflict fatalities. Furthermore, in many of these cases, including
Syria, as he reviews, there were opportunities for diplomatic settlement
that were ignored. That has also been true in other horrific situations,
including the Balkans in the early 1990s, the first Gulf War, and of course
the Indochina wars, the worst crime since World War II. In the case of Iraq
the question does not even arise. There surely are some lessons here.
The general consequences of resorting to the sledgehammer against vulnerable
societies comes as little surprise. William Polks careful study of
insurgencies, Violent Politics, should be essential reading for those who
want to understand todays conflicts, and surely for planners, assuming that
they care about human consequences and not merely power and domination. Polk
reveals a pattern that has been replicated over and over. The invaders --
perhaps professing the most benign motives -- are naturally disliked by the
population, who disobey them, at first in small ways, eliciting a forceful
response, which increases opposition and support for resistance. The cycle
of violence escalates until the invaders withdraw -- or gain their ends by
something that may approach genocide.
Playing by the Al-Qaeda Game Plan
Obamas global drone assassination campaign, a remarkable innovation in
global terrorism, exhibits the same patterns. By most accounts, it is
generating terrorists more rapidly than it is murdering those suspected of
someday intending to harm us -- an impressive contribution by a
constitutional lawyer on the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta, which
established the basis for the principle of presumption of innocence that is
the foundation of civilized law.
Another characteristic feature of such interventions is the belief that the
insurgency will be overcome by eliminating its leaders. But when such an
effort succeeds, the reviled leader is regularly replaced by someone
younger, more determined, more brutal, and more effective. Polk gives many
examples. Military historian Andrew Cockburn has reviewed American campaigns
to kill drug and then terror kingpins over a long period in his important
study Kill Chain and found the same results. And one can expect with fair
confidence that the pattern will continue.
No doubt right now U.S. strategists are seeking ways to murder the Caliph
of the Islamic State Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who is a bitter rival of
al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri. The likely result of this achievement is
forecast by the prominent terrorism scholar Bruce Hoffman, senior fellow at
the U.S. Military Academys Combating Terrorism Center. He predicts that
al-Baghdadis death would likely pave the way for a rapprochement [with
al-Qaeda] producing a combined terrorist force unprecedented in scope, size,
ambition and resources.
Polk cites a treatise on warfare by Henry Jomini, influenced by Napoleons
defeat at the hands of Spanish guerrillas, that became a textbook for
generations of cadets at the West Point military academy. Jomini observed
that such interventions by major powers typically result in wars of
opinion, and nearly always national wars, if not at first then becoming
so in the course of the struggle, by the dynamics that Polk describes.
Jomini concludes that commanders of regular armies are ill-advised to
engage in such wars because they will lose them, and even apparent
successes will prove short-lived.
Careful studies of al-Qaeda and ISIS have shown that the United States and
its allies are following their game plan with some precision. Their goal is
to draw the West as deeply and actively as possible into the quagmire and
to perpetually engage and enervate the United States and the West in a
series of prolonged overseas ventures in which they will undermine their
own societies, expend their resources, and increase the level of violence,
setting off the dynamic that Polk reviews.
Scott Atran, one of the most insightful researchers on jihadi movements,
calculates that the 9/11 attacks cost between $400,000 and $500,000 to
execute, whereas the military and security response by the U.S. and its
allies is in the order of 10 million times that figure. On a strictly
cost-benefit basis, this violent movement has been wildly successful, beyond
even Bin Ladens original imagination, and is increasingly so. Herein lies
the full measure of jujitsu-style asymmetric warfare. After all, who could
claim that we are better off than before, or that the overall danger is
declining?
And if we continue to wield the sledgehammer, tacitly following the jihadi
script, the likely effect is even more violent jihadism with broader appeal.
The record, Atran advises, should inspire a radical change in our
counter-strategies.
Al-Qaeda/ISIS are assisted by Americans who follow their directives: for
example, Ted carpet-bomb em Cruz, a top Republican presidential
candidate. Or, at the other end of the mainstream spectrum, the leading
Middle East and international affairs columnist of the New York Times,
Thomas Friedman, who in 2003 offered Washington advice on how to fight in
Iraq on the Charlie Rose show: There was what I would call the terrorism
bubble... And what we needed to do was to go over to that part of the world
and burst that bubble. We needed to go over there basically, and, uh, take
out a very big stick, right in the heart of that world, and burst that
bubble. And there was only one way to do it... What they needed to see was
American boys and girls going house to house from Basra to Baghdad, and
basically saying, which part of this sentence dont you understand? You
dont think we care about our open society, you think this bubble fantasy
were going to just let it go? Well, suck on this. Ok. That, Charlie, was
what this war was about.
Thatll show the ragheads.
Looking Forward
Atran and other close observers generally agree on the prescriptions. We
should begin by recognizing what careful research has convincingly shown:
those drawn to jihad are longing for something in their history, in their
traditions, with their heroes and their morals; and the Islamic State,
however brutal and repugnant to us and even to most in the Arab-Muslim
world, is speaking directly to that... What inspires the most lethal
assailants today is not so much the Quran but a thrilling cause and a call
to action that promises glory and esteem in the eyes of friends. In fact,
few of the jihadis have much of a background in Islamic texts or theology,
if any.
The best strategy, Polk advises, would be a multinational, welfare-oriented
and psychologically satisfying program... that would make the hatred ISIS
relies upon less virulent. The elements have been identified for us:
communal needs, compensation for previous transgressions, and calls for a
new beginning. He adds, A carefully phrased apology for past
transgressions would cost little and do much. Such a project could be
carried out in refugee camps or in the hovels and grim housing projects of
the Paris banlieues, where, Atran writes, his research team found fairly
wide tolerance or support for ISISs values. And even more could be done by
true dedication to diplomacy and negotiations instead of reflexive resort to
violence.
Not least in significance would be an honorable response to the refugee
crisis that was a long time in coming but surged to prominence in Europe in
2015. That would mean, at the very least, sharply increasing humanitarian
relief to the camps in Lebanon, Jordan, and Turkey where miserable refugees
from Syria barely survive. But the issues go well beyond, and provide a
picture of the self-described enlightened states that is far from
attractive and should be an incentive to action.
There are countries that generate refugees through massive violence, like
the United States, secondarily Britain and France. Then there are countries
that admit huge numbers of refugees, including those fleeing from Western
violence, like Lebanon (easily the champion, per capita), Jordan, and Syria
before it imploded, among others in the region. And partially overlapping,
there are countries that both generate refugees and refuse to take them in,
not only from the Middle East but also from the U.S. backyard south of the
border. A strange picture, painful to contemplate.
An honest picture would trace the generation of refugees much further back
into history. Veteran Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk reports that one
of the first videos produced by ISIS showed a bulldozer pushing down a
rampart of sand that had marked the border between Iraq and Syria. As the
machine destroyed the dirt revetment, the camera panned down to a
handwritten poster lying in the sand. End of Sykes-Picot, it said.
For the people of the region, the Sykes-Picot agreement is the very symbol
of the cynicism and brutality of Western imperialism. Conspiring in secret
during World War I, Britains Mark Sykes and Frances François Georges-Picot
carved up the region into artificial states to satisfy their own imperial
goals, with utter disdain for the interests of the people living there and
in violation of the wartime promises issued to induce Arabs to join the
Allied war effort. The agreement mirrored the practices of the European
states that devastated Africa in a similar manner. It transformed what had
been relatively quiet provinces of the Ottoman Empire into some of the least
stable and most internationally explosive states in the world.
Repeated Western interventions since then in the Middle East and Africa have
exacerbated the tensions, conflicts, and disruptions that have shattered the
societies. The end result is a refugee crisis that the innocent West can
scarcely endure. Germany has emerged as the conscience of Europe, at first
(but no longer) admitting almost one million refugees -- in one of the
richest countries in the world with a population of 80 million. In contrast,
the poor country of Lebanon has absorbed an estimated 1.5 million Syrian
refugees, now a quarter of its population, on top of half a million
Palestinian refugees registered with the U.N. refugee agency UNRWA, mostly
victims of Israeli policies.
Europe is also groaning under the burden of refugees from the countries it
has devastated in Africa -- not without U.S. aid, as Congolese and Angolans,
among others, can testify. Europe is now seeking to bribe Turkey (with over
two million Syrian refugees) to distance those fleeing the horrors of Syria
from Europes borders, just as Obama is pressuring Mexico to keep U.S.
borders free from miserable people seeking to escape the aftermath of
Reagans GWOT along with those seeking to escape more recent disasters,
including a military coup in Honduras that Obama almost alone legitimized,
which created one of the worst horror chambers in the region.
Words can hardly capture the U.S. response to the Syrian refugee crisis, at
least any words I can think of.
Returning to the opening question Who rules the world? we might also want
to pose another question: What principles and values rule the world? That
question should be foremost in the minds of the citizens of the rich and
powerful states, who enjoy an unusual legacy of freedom, privilege, and
opportunity thanks to the struggles of those who came before them, and who
now face fateful choices as to how to respond to challenges of great human
import.
Noam Chomsky is institute professor emeritus in the Department of
Linguistics and Philosophy at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A
TomDispatch regular, among his recent books are Hegemony or Survival and
Failed States. This essay, the second of two parts, is excerpted from his
new book, Who Rules the World? (Metropolitan Books, the American Empire
Project, 2016). To read part 1, click here. His website is www.chomsky.info.
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest
Dispatch Book, Nick Turses Next Time Theyll Come to Count the Dead, and
Tom Engelhardt's latest book, Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars,
and a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World.
Copyright 2016 Valeria Galvao Wasserman-Chomsky
© 2016 TomDispatch. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176138
Tomgram: Noam Chomsky, What Principles Rule the World?
By Noam Chomsky
Posted on May 10, 2016, Printed on May 10, 2016
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176138/ ;
[Note for TomDispatch Readers: Below is part 2 of Noam Chomskys essay,
Masters of Mankind, excerpted from his new book, Who Rules the World? I
hardly need say it, but you really should pick up a copy of the book. Its
remarkable that, so many decades later, Chomskys thinking is still so fresh
and insightful (or perhaps its a sad measure of how little has actually
changed when it comes to power and pain on this planet). If you missed the
first part of his essay, click here to read it.
And a small reminder as well about the pile of TomDispatch-recommended books
thats undoubtedly been growing by your bedside, just in case you want to
raise it a little higher: for any of you willing to contribute $100 or more
($125 if you live outside the United States), a signed, personalized copy of
Nick Turses powerful new Dispatch Book, Next Time Theyll Come to Count the
Dead, is still available, as is Rebecca Gordons American Nuremberg: The
U.S. Officials Who Should Stand Trial for Post-9/11 War Crimes. Check our
donation page for the details. To read the Turse essay that launched his new
book at TD, click here. Tom]
The Costs of Violence
Masters of Mankind (Part 2)
By Noam Chomsky
[This piece, the second of two parts, is excerpted from Noam Chomskys new
book, Who Rules the World? (Metropolitan Books). Part 1 can be found by
clicking here.]
In brief, the Global War on Terror sledgehammer strategy has spread jihadi
terror from a tiny corner of Afghanistan to much of the world, from Africa
through the Levant and South Asia to Southeast Asia. It has also incited
attacks in Europe and the United States. The invasion of Iraq made a
substantial contribution to this process, much as intelligence agencies had
predicted. Terrorism specialists Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank estimate
that the Iraq War generated a stunning sevenfold increase in the yearly
rate of fatal jihadist attacks, amounting to literally hundreds of
additional terrorist attacks and thousands of civilian lives lost; even when
terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan is excluded, fatal attacks in the rest of
the world have increased by more than one-third. Other exercises have been
similarly productive.
A group of major human rights organizations -- Physicians for Social
Responsibility (U.S.), Physicians for Global Survival (Canada), and
International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (Germany) --
conducted a study that sought "to provide as realistic an estimate as
possible of the total body count in the three main war zones [Iraq,
Afghanistan, and Pakistan] during 12 years of war on terrorism,'" including
an extensive review of the major studies and data published on the numbers
of victims in these countries, along with additional information on
military actions. Their "conservative estimate" is that these wars killed
about 1.3 million people, a toll that "could also be in excess of 2
million." A database search by independent researcher David Peterson in the
days following the publication of the report found virtually no mention of
it. Who cares?
More generally, studies carried out by the Oslo Peace Research Institute
show that two-thirds of the regions conflict fatalities were produced in
originally internal disputes where outsiders imposed their solutions. In
such conflicts, 98% of fatalities were produced only after outsiders had
entered the domestic dispute with their military might. In Syria, the number
of direct conflict fatalities more than tripled after the West initiated air
strikes against the self-declared Islamic State and the CIA started its
indirect military interference in the war -- interference which appears to
have drawn the Russians in as advanced US antitank missiles were decimating
the forces of their ally Bashar al-Assad. Early indications are that Russian
bombing is having the usual consequences.
The evidence reviewed by political scientist Timo Kivimäki indicates that
the protection wars [fought by coalitions of the willing] have become the
main source of violence in the world, occasionally contributing over 50% of
total conflict fatalities. Furthermore, in many of these cases, including
Syria, as he reviews, there were opportunities for diplomatic settlement
that were ignored. That has also been true in other horrific situations,
including the Balkans in the early 1990s, the first Gulf War, and of course
the Indochina wars, the worst crime since World War II. In the case of Iraq
the question does not even arise. There surely are some lessons here.
The general consequences of resorting to the sledgehammer against vulnerable
societies comes as little surprise. William Polks careful study of
insurgencies, Violent Politics, should be essential reading for those who
want to understand todays conflicts, and surely for planners, assuming that
they care about human consequences and not merely power and domination. Polk
reveals a pattern that has been replicated over and over. The invaders --
perhaps professing the most benign motives -- are naturally disliked by the
population, who disobey them, at first in small ways, eliciting a forceful
response, which increases opposition and support for resistance. The cycle
of violence escalates until the invaders withdraw -- or gain their ends by
something that may approach genocide.
Playing by the Al-Qaeda Game Plan
Obamas global drone assassination campaign, a remarkable innovation in
global terrorism, exhibits the same patterns. By most accounts, it is
generating terrorists more rapidly than it is murdering those suspected of
someday intending to harm us -- an impressive contribution by a
constitutional lawyer on the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta, which
established the basis for the principle of presumption of innocence that is
the foundation of civilized law.
Another characteristic feature of such interventions is the belief that the
insurgency will be overcome by eliminating its leaders. But when such an
effort succeeds, the reviled leader is regularly replaced by someone
younger, more determined, more brutal, and more effective. Polk gives many
examples. Military historian Andrew Cockburn has reviewed American campaigns
to kill drug and then terror kingpins over a long period in his important
study Kill Chain and found the same results. And one can expect with fair
confidence that the pattern will continue.
No doubt right now U.S. strategists are seeking ways to murder the Caliph
of the Islamic State Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who is a bitter rival of
al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri. The likely result of this achievement is
forecast by the prominent terrorism scholar Bruce Hoffman, senior fellow at
the U.S. Military Academys Combating Terrorism Center. He predicts that
al-Baghdadis death would likely pave the way for a rapprochement [with
al-Qaeda] producing a combined terrorist force unprecedented in scope, size,
ambition and resources.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/162779381X/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20
http://www.amazon.com/dp/162779381X/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20Polk cites
a treatise on warfare by Henry Jomini, influenced by Napoleons defeat at
the hands of Spanish guerrillas, that became a textbook for generations of
cadets at the West Point military academy. Jomini observed that such
interventions by major powers typically result in wars of opinion, and
nearly always national wars, if not at first then becoming so in the
course of the struggle, by the dynamics that Polk describes. Jomini
concludes that commanders of regular armies are ill-advised to engage in
such wars because they will lose them, and even apparent successes will
prove short-lived.
Careful studies of al-Qaeda and ISIS have shown that the United States and
its allies are following their game plan with some precision. Their goal is
to draw the West as deeply and actively as possible into the quagmire and
to perpetually engage and enervate the United States and the West in a
series of prolonged overseas ventures in which they will undermine their
own societies, expend their resources, and increase the level of violence,
setting off the dynamic that Polk reviews.
Scott Atran, one of the most insightful researchers on jihadi movements,
calculates that the 9/11 attacks cost between $400,000 and $500,000 to
execute, whereas the military and security response by the U.S. and its
allies is in the order of 10 million times that figure. On a strictly
cost-benefit basis, this violent movement has been wildly successful, beyond
even Bin Ladens original imagination, and is increasingly so. Herein lies
the full measure of jujitsu-style asymmetric warfare. After all, who could
claim that we are better off than before, or that the overall danger is
declining?
And if we continue to wield the sledgehammer, tacitly following the jihadi
script, the likely effect is even more violent jihadism with broader appeal.
The record, Atran advises, should inspire a radical change in our
counter-strategies.
Al-Qaeda/ISIS are assisted by Americans who follow their directives: for
example, Ted carpet-bomb em Cruz, a top Republican presidential
candidate. Or, at the other end of the mainstream spectrum, the leading
Middle East and international affairs columnist of the New York Times,
Thomas Friedman, who in 2003 offered Washington advice on how to fight in
Iraq on the Charlie Rose show: There was what I would call the terrorism
bubble... And what we needed to do was to go over to that part of the world
and burst that bubble. We needed to go over there basically, and, uh, take
out a very big stick, right in the heart of that world, and burst that
bubble. And there was only one way to do it... What they needed to see was
American boys and girls going house to house from Basra to Baghdad, and
basically saying, which part of this sentence dont you understand? You
dont think we care about our open society, you think this bubble fantasy
were going to just let it go? Well, suck on this. Ok. That, Charlie, was
what this war was about.
Thatll show the ragheads.
Looking Forward
Atran and other close observers generally agree on the prescriptions. We
should begin by recognizing what careful research has convincingly shown:
those drawn to jihad are longing for something in their history, in their
traditions, with their heroes and their morals; and the Islamic State,
however brutal and repugnant to us and even to most in the Arab-Muslim
world, is speaking directly to that... What inspires the most lethal
assailants today is not so much the Quran but a thrilling cause and a call
to action that promises glory and esteem in the eyes of friends. In fact,
few of the jihadis have much of a background in Islamic texts or theology,
if any.
The best strategy, Polk advises, would be a multinational, welfare-oriented
and psychologically satisfying program... that would make the hatred ISIS
relies upon less virulent. The elements have been identified for us:
communal needs, compensation for previous transgressions, and calls for a
new beginning. He adds, A carefully phrased apology for past
transgressions would cost little and do much. Such a project could be
carried out in refugee camps or in the hovels and grim housing projects of
the Paris banlieues, where, Atran writes, his research team found fairly
wide tolerance or support for ISISs values. And even more could be done by
true dedication to diplomacy and negotiations instead of reflexive resort to
violence.
Not least in significance would be an honorable response to the refugee
crisis that was a long time in coming but surged to prominence in Europe in
2015. That would mean, at the very least, sharply increasing humanitarian
relief to the camps in Lebanon, Jordan, and Turkey where miserable refugees
from Syria barely survive. But the issues go well beyond, and provide a
picture of the self-described enlightened states that is far from
attractive and should be an incentive to action.
There are countries that generate refugees through massive violence, like
the United States, secondarily Britain and France. Then there are countries
that admit huge numbers of refugees, including those fleeing from Western
violence, like Lebanon (easily the champion, per capita), Jordan, and Syria
before it imploded, among others in the region. And partially overlapping,
there are countries that both generate refugees and refuse to take them in,
not only from the Middle East but also from the U.S. backyard south of the
border. A strange picture, painful to contemplate.
An honest picture would trace the generation of refugees much further back
into history. Veteran Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk reports that one
of the first videos produced by ISIS showed a bulldozer pushing down a
rampart of sand that had marked the border between Iraq and Syria. As the
machine destroyed the dirt revetment, the camera panned down to a
handwritten poster lying in the sand. End of Sykes-Picot, it said.
For the people of the region, the Sykes-Picot agreement is the very symbol
of the cynicism and brutality of Western imperialism. Conspiring in secret
during World War I, Britains Mark Sykes and Frances François Georges-Picot
carved up the region into artificial states to satisfy their own imperial
goals, with utter disdain for the interests of the people living there and
in violation of the wartime promises issued to induce Arabs to join the
Allied war effort. The agreement mirrored the practices of the European
states that devastated Africa in a similar manner. It transformed what had
been relatively quiet provinces of the Ottoman Empire into some of the least
stable and most internationally explosive states in the world.
Repeated Western interventions since then in the Middle East and Africa have
exacerbated the tensions, conflicts, and disruptions that have shattered the
societies. The end result is a refugee crisis that the innocent West can
scarcely endure. Germany has emerged as the conscience of Europe, at first
(but no longer) admitting almost one million refugees -- in one of the
richest countries in the world with a population of 80 million. In contrast,
the poor country of Lebanon has absorbed an estimated 1.5 million Syrian
refugees, now a quarter of its population, on top of half a million
Palestinian refugees registered with the U.N. refugee agency UNRWA, mostly
victims of Israeli policies.
Europe is also groaning under the burden of refugees from the countries it
has devastated in Africa -- not without U.S. aid, as Congolese and Angolans,
among others, can testify. Europe is now seeking to bribe Turkey (with over
two million Syrian refugees) to distance those fleeing the horrors of Syria
from Europes borders, just as Obama is pressuring Mexico to keep U.S.
borders free from miserable people seeking to escape the aftermath of
Reagans GWOT along with those seeking to escape more recent disasters,
including a military coup in Honduras that Obama almost alone legitimized,
which created one of the worst horror chambers in the region.
Words can hardly capture the U.S. response to the Syrian refugee crisis, at
least any words I can think of.
Returning to the opening question Who rules the world? we might also want
to pose another question: What principles and values rule the world? That
question should be foremost in the minds of the citizens of the rich and
powerful states, who enjoy an unusual legacy of freedom, privilege, and
opportunity thanks to the struggles of those who came before them, and who
now face fateful choices as to how to respond to challenges of great human
import.
Noam Chomsky is institute professor emeritus in the Department of
Linguistics and Philosophy at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A
TomDispatch regular, among his recent books are Hegemony or Survival and
Failed States. This essay, the second of two parts, is excerpted from his
new book, Who Rules the World? (Metropolitan Books, the American Empire
Project, 2016). To read part 1, click here. His website is www.chomsky.info.
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest
Dispatch Book, Nick Turses Next Time Theyll Come to Count the
Deadhttp://www.amazon.com/dp/1608464636/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20, and
Tom Engelhardt's latest book, Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars,
and a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World.
Copyright 2016 Valeria Galvao Wasserman-Chomsky
© 2016 TomDispatch. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176138
