After seeing a recent thread about Isreal’s recent activity, figured I’d share this opinion piece by Noam Chomsky I read a few weeks back that is pretty good.
The question of how foreign policy is determined is a crucial one in world affairs. In these comments, I can only provide a few hints as to how I think the subject can be productively explored, keeping to the United States for several reasons. First, the U.S. is unmatched in its global significance and impact. Second, it is an unusually open society, possibly uniquely so, which means we know more about it. Finally, it is plainly the most important case for Americans, who are able to influence policy choices in the U.S. — and indeed for others, insofar as their actions can influence such choices. The general principles, however, extend to the other major powers, and well beyond.
There is a “received standard version,” common to academic scholarship, government pronouncements, and public discourse. It holds that the prime commitment of governments is to ensure security, and that the primary concern of the U.S. and its allies since 1945 was the Russian threat.
There are a number of ways to evaluate the doctrine. One obvious question to ask is: What happened when the Russian threat disappeared in 1989? Answer: everything continued much as before.
The U.S. immediately invaded Panama, killing probably thousands of people and installing a client regime. This was routine practice in U.S.-dominated domains — but in this case not quite as routine. For first time, a major foreign policy act was not justified by an alleged Russian threat.
Noam Chomsky is an outright communist and a traitor to his country and people. He spouts racist slurs against the US and Israel like there is no tomorrow and is loved for it by European leftists, who by and by have become the same anti-western and anti-zionist sh**heads they never fail to criticize when talking about the dark period of the 20th century when it was okay rob to jews of their hard earned wealth and lifes.
Never heard of Noam Chomski, skimmed through the article. It was decent but there was a lot of stuff I thought were of . Good post though
My oh my, where do we even begin if we decide to do so.
On another note, why do americans keep mentioning liberty and freedom like it’s something unique to them? I mean Western Europe is free, Latin America, India, S.E and East Asia. I suppose it’s cause we don’t get fries as the side order.
Most of those nations are free today because the US led the fight against communism throughout the Post-WWII 20th century. But, I don’t actually hear Americans often talking about freedom and liberty.
And hipsters. Not kidding at all. It’s a very popular stance among the fedora tipping, scarf wearing crowd that Israel is the bad guy. Which is fine, except those trendy dorks have no idea why they like Samsung phones or dislike Israel in the first place.
The fact that most of those nations are free has nothing to do with the US fighting against communism, and in many cases they were allied with the communists or communists themselves. Not to mention the fact that the US happily collaborated with communists in China against communists in Russia.
Why are defenders of Palestinians anti-Semites? Palestinians are Semites too.
My opinion is that the Palestinians have plenty of legitimate grievances, but that Hamas’ strategies and actions are indefensible - you can’t negotiate with someone whose stated mission is to exterminate you, except perhaps to get them to drop that objective - but they have a very good PR machine. I think Israel needs to commit to abandoning the settlements in the West Bank, or surrender equivalent amounts of land of similar quality in exchange, though I don’t see how their political process will ever get there.
It has very much to do with America’s fight against communism. In Latin America, the US extended the Monroe Doctrine against the USSR. The Cuban Missle Crisis was propogated by America’s firm defense against the USSR’s attempt to infect Latin America with communism (though Cuba was a notable failure of the doctrine, despite American attempts). NATO would not have had any teeth without the US miilitary, and Western Wurope would have beenc completely vulnerable. In all likelihood all or part of Western Europe would have fallen to the Soviets.
The US also collaborated with USSR (and China) in WWII to defeat another brand of totalitarianism. That is irrelevent to the point that the world today was shaped by America’s principles rather than the USSR’s. Had the US chosen isolationism, the world today would be far less free.
That doesn’t make any sense. Many of the largest countries in Latin America were under little threat from Soviet Communism - Brazil (which crushed a communist uprising), Argentina, and Mexico are free with little or no influence from the US, and countries like Chile who were free prior, were put under dictatorships ordered by the US. Same thing in Asia, communist China was a collaborator with the US (is China free?) and now has a lot of hegemony over SE Asia, not to mention India which was a Soviet ally is free in spite of US oppposition. Furthermore in Iran, a very popular leader in Mossadegh gets deposed by the US, Pakistan sees the rise of a military dictatorship due to US influence in order to resist Russia. Are they free?
US involvement in all these countries had to do with resisting Soviet Influence, just like how the Soviets themselves were allies when another brand of totalitarianism was the enemy, and all strategic options were considered, it has nothing to do with freedom.
It’s not like it was a clean process. But you kind of discredit yourself when you say that the US had little involvement in Latin America. America had made it clear for decades that any involvement by the USSR in Latin America would precipitate an American military response. That was demonstrated pretty early on during the Cuban Missle Crisis. The US didn’t need to have soldiers running around to protect Latin America from USSR insurgencies. The whole point was deterrence. The same goes with Western Europe. Do you really think that the USSR would have stayed behind the Berlin Wall had America not clearly asserted its unwavered military support to NATO?
The world likes to mock America’s mighty military, but the reason it’s so might is because it served to stand guard for decades against the USSR, which clearly had interests to expand the scope of communism and its reach into the world.
The US didn’t succeed in its endeavors everywhere. But that doesn’t mean that it didn’t succeed in most regions. The world today is far more free today because America invested trillions of dollars in its military to guard the world from totalitaranist communism. Mock America’s military might if you want, but the fact is that you would probably be sitting typing in the shadow of one of Lenin’s statues without it.
If your statement is that the US acted out of self interest, I agree, nothing wrong with that. If you think the US acted in order to protect freedom, you’re dead wrong.
If you ever lived under communist doctrines, you would know that your last statement is wrong. If it wasnt for the Marshall Plan and the formation of the Nato, Europe would have become communist (numerous uprisings in Germany, Italy, France showed the potential support for that). Simply because national socialism was a sidebranch of socialsm (i.e. communism) and most libertarians were executed or fled the continent there was not enough momentum in Europe itself to keep communism from taking over. Imagine Europe turned communist, what could have protected the US from madmen like Stalin or Brezhnev, when they could have stationed their ICBMs in Greenland? Communism is not about influence, it is about domination. If communism is not introduced world wide people will always vote with their feet. Communism must, in order to function reasonably well, eliminate all alternative lifestyles. When people dont know any different they will stand in line for 6h for one loaf of bread and wait 9 years for a car. Communism cannot tolerate choice and thus freedom. And so in the end, even if the US was simply acting on economic rationals, inadvertently they were fighting for the freedom of mankind.
