COMMENTS ON NOAM CHOMSKY’S NEW BOOK - FAILED STATES -
by Stephen Lendman

Noam Chomsky hardly needs an introduction.  Throughout
his lifetime as an internationally esteemed academic,
scholar and activist he’s the rarest of individuals I
know.  He’s world renown twice over - in his chosen
field of linguistics where he’s considered the father
of modern linguistics and as a leading voice for
equity, justice and peace for over four decades.
Although the dominant US corporate media religiously
ignore him (especially on air), the New York Times
Review of Books said of him a generation ago that
“judged in terms of the power, range, novelty and
influence of his thought, Noam Chomsky is arguably the
most important intellectual alive today.”  He still
is, and someone should inform the Times he’s also
still alive, but you’d never know it from the silence
today from “the newspaper of record” and the rest of
the corporate media as well.

Noam, as his friends call him, is the Institute
Professor Emeritus of linguistics at MIT where he
taught in his chosen field beginning in 1955.  He’s
written many dozens of books, and despite a nonstop
schedule that would challenge most anyone half his
age, he still travels the world to speak to large
enthusiastic audiences where he’s in great demand.  He
also gives many interviews that appear in print and on
air and continues his prolific writing producing many
articles and a new book about every year or two.  I
don’t know how he does it, and I lost count of the
number of books he’s written.  But I’m proud to say
I’ve read and have on my shelves at home about 45 of
them (the political ones) and always look forward to
his newest when it’s available.

For those who feel as I do and admire him greatly,
it’s always with anticipation and great expectation of
more vintage Chomsky when his latest book arrives.
One just did, called Failed States, and I couldn’t
wait to read it and again immerse myself in the
thinking and discourse of this great man.  It’s a
privilege and honor to write about it as I’m about to
do while taking a little editorial license to add a
few of my own comments.

Noam Chomsky may dislike labels as much as I do.  But
if forced to choose he’s likely to call himself a
libertarian socialist or anarcho-syndicalist (a fancy
word meaning a political and economic system where
workers are in charge).  He’s engaged in political
acitivism all his adult life and was one of the
earliest critics of US policies in Southeast Asia in
the 60s.  He’s also probably done more than anyone
else to document and expose US imperial crimes abroad
as well as be a leading critic of our policies at home
in support of corporate and elitist interests at the
expense of the great majority - a democracy for the
privileged few alone.

The Theme and Issues Covered in the Book

In his latest book, Failed States, Chomsky addresses
three issues he says everyone should rank among their
highest ones: “the threat of nuclear war,
environmental disaster, and the fact that the
government of the world’s only superpower is acting in
ways that increase the likelihood of (causing) these
catastrophes.”  He also raises a fourth issue: “the
sharp divide between public opinion and public policy,
one of the reasons for fear….that the ‘American
system’....is in real trouble….(and) heading in a
direction that spells the end of its historic values
(of) equality, liberty and meaningful democracy.” 

In Failed States, Chomsky continues the theme he
developed in his previous book, Hegemony or Survival.
He began that book by citing the work of “one of the
great figures of contemporary biology,” Ernst Mayr,
who speculated that the higher intelligence of the
human species was no guarantee of its survival.  He
noted that beetles and bacteria have been far more
successful surviving than we’re likely to be.  Mayr
also ominously observed that “the average life
expectancy of a species is about 100,000 years” which
is about how long ours has been around.  He went on to
wonder if we might use our “alloted time” to destroy
ourselves and lots more with us.  Chomsky then noted
we certainly have the means to do it, and should it
happen which is quite possible, we likely will become
the only species ever to deliberately or otherwise
make ourselves extinct.  The way we treat ourselves
and the planet, that might come as considerable relief
to whatever other species remain should we
self-destruct.

The US Has the Characteristics of A “Failed State”

Having laid out his premises, Chomsky believes the US
today exhibits the very features we cite as
characteristics of “failed states” - a term we use for
nations seen as potential threats to our security
which may require our intervention against in
self-defense.  But the very notion of what a failed
state may be is imprecise at best, he states.  It may
be their inability to protect their citizens from
violence or destruction.  It may also be they believe
they’re beyond the reach of international law and thus
free to act as aggressors.  Even democracies aren’t
immune to this problem because they may suffer from a
“democratic deficit” that makes their system unable to
function properly enough.

Chomsky goes much further saying if we evaluate our
own state policies honestly and accurately “we should
have little difficulty in finding the characteristics
of ‘failed states’ right at home.”  He stresses that
should disturb us all, and I would add, as a citizen
of this country and now in my eighth decade, it
obsesses me.  Chomsky then spends the first half of
his book documenting how the US crafts its policies
and uses its enormous power to threaten other states
with isolation or destruction unless they’re
subservient to our will.  He also explains how we
react when they go their own way and how routinely and
arrogantly we ignore and violate sacred international
law and norms in the process. 

Chomsky sees the US as an out of control predatory
hegemon reserving for itself alone the right to wage
permanent war on the world and justify it under a
doctrine of “anticipatory self-defense” or preventive
war.  The Bush administration claims justified in
doing so against any nation it sees as a threat to our
national security.  It doesn’t matter if it is, just
that we say it is.  Sacred international law, treaties
and other standard and accepted norms observed by most
other nations are just seen as “quaint (and) out of
date” and can be ignored.  It hardly matters to those
in Washington that in the wake of WW II, the most
destructive war ever, the UN was established primarily
“to save succeeding generations from the scourge of
war” and possibility of “ultimate doom.”  Although it
was left unstated at the time, it was clear that
language meant the devastation that would result from
a nuclear holocaust. 

The UN Charter became international law binding on all
states that are signatories to it as members including
the US, of course.  Under the Charter, force can only
be used under two conditions: when authorized by the
Security Council or under Article 51 which allows the
“right of individual or collective self-defense if an
armed attack occurs against a Member…..until the
Security Council has taken measures to maintain
international peace and security.”  In other words,
necessary self-defense is permissible.  The Nuremburg
Tribunal that tried the Nazis after WW II also set an
inviolable standard for the crime of illegal
aggression which it called “the supreme international
crime.”  The Nazis found guilty of it were hanged.
Chomsky has said at other times that “If the Nuremburg
laws were applied today, then every Post War (WW II)
American president would have to be hanged.”  In my
judgment, a lot of the pre-WW II ones would as well
including some of the ones we most revere.

Chomsky rightly explains the US today operates under
the doctrine of a “single standard” so it needn’t
bother with the laws it chooses to ignore.  It’s the
standard he’s noted often in other books that Adam
Smith called the “vile maxim of the masters of
mankind:....All for ourselves and nothing for other
people.” It was true in Smith’s day and as much so now
except for much bigger stakes.  Chomsky then gives
examples like on the major issue of the day - terror.
By it we mean theirs against us, not ours against them
which, of course, is far greater and more destructive,
but that’s never mentioned. 

The same standard holds in what weapons are allowed.
However one may define WMD (in fact, only nuclear ones
qualify), it’s unacceptable for anyone to use them
against us but quite acceptable for us to use any
weapon we have or may develop against any designated
enemy.  Again, it doesn’t matter and is never
mentioned that using these weapons may risk “ultimate
doom.”  The standard also holds in the use of torture
which is outlawed under the Geneva Conventions and UN
Convention against Torture.  Although we’re
signatories to these binding international laws,
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales dismissed them as
“quaint” and “obsolete” in a memo he wrote the
president when he was White House counsel in 2002.  He
further advised George Bush to rescind the conventions
even though they are “the supreme law of the land.”

US History and Current Behavior Offer Proof that This
Country Is A “Failed State”

Chomsky devotes much of the book reviewing events,
past and more recent, showing how through our actions
this country demonstrates the attributes of a failed
state.  It all began even before the country entered
WW II when our high level planners wanted us “to hold
unquestioned power” in the post-war global system.
They developed “an integrated policy to achieve
military and economic supremacy (in the) Grand Area”
which was to be the Western Hemisphere and Far East.
Before the war ended that was expanded to include as
much of Eurasia as possible as well.  It seems quite
accurate to state today we see our “Grand Area” as the
whole planet including our closest allies, at least to
the degree we can control and dominate them.  This
reasoning explains the way we act.  The only rules of
law we respect are the ones we choose or make up as we
go along.  So because we flaunt international law and
obligations, Chomsky claims rightly we’re also an
“outlaw (or rogue) state.”  Only we alone claim the
right to decide what’s acceptable or not even on
matters as serious as life and death or war and peace
as well as most everything else.  So we’ve used an
ill-defined “war on terror” as a casus belli to select
target countries we choose to fight and then declare
war on them after properly scaring the public enough
to get them to go along with it. 

Iraq, of course, is the main example, and Chomsky
documents the initial crime of aggression we committed
plus all the others since March, 2003 as well as those
before that date from the brutal economic sanctions
throughout the 1990s.  And to satisfy our insatiable
appetite for war and conquest, Chomsky reviews our
past actions in Southeast Asia, Central America,
Serbia/Kosovo and elsewhere and what we may have in
mind ahead against Iran, Venezuela or others.  The
rhetoric has especially intensified against these two
countries, and hostilities against one or both could
erupt at any time, by any means and using any weapons
we choose.  Chomsky doubts it will and feels
Washington’s saber rattling against Iran is intended
to try to provoke their leadership to adopt more
repressive policies which could foment internal
disorder enough to give us more justifiable cause for
war at a later time. 

An April 29 Update from Noam Chomsky on Prospects for
New US Hostile Actions against Iran and Venezuela

I hope Chomsky’s assessment in the book is right that
a second Middle East war is not imminent.  However, I
read the signs less optimistically, and from an April
29 email I received from him responding to this review
which I sent him he’s now more inclined to believe the
US plans hostile actions against Iran and Venezuela.
He added he “wouldn’t be surprised to see (US
inspired)secessionist movements in the oil producing
areas in Iran, Venezuela and Bolivia, all in areas
that are accessible to US military force and alienated
from the governments, with the US then moving in to
‘defend’ them and blasting the rest of the country if
necessary.”

On April 28, IAEA Director General and Nobel peace
laureate Mohammed ElBaradei showed where his true
loyalties lie (to the empire where else) by doing
little to defuse the US led inflammatory rhetoric
against Iran in his report to the UN Security Council.
In it he said Iran is conducting a uranium enrichment
program in defiance of the UN Security Council demands
to halt it.  The report also claimed IAEA inspectors
found evidence that Iran may expand its operations and
that because there are information gaps, “including
the role of the military in Iran’s nuclear program,
the Agency is unable to make progress in its efforts
to provide assurance about the absence of undeclared
nuclear material and activities in Iran.” 

What the report apparently left out is far more
important than what it said: namely that there’s no
evidence whatever that Iran is not in full compliance
with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and
thus has every legal right to enrich uranium for its
commercial nuclear operations, US and Western hostile
rhetoric to the contrary notwithstanding.  As a man
honored by the Nobel award he received and now
anointed to be an emissary for peace, it must give one
pause to wonder how this report on April 28 serves
that end.

The US led heated rhetoric and growing pressure
against Iran as well as similar tactics being used
against Hugo Chavez only adds to my knowledge and
information that the US now has plans for the fourth
time to oust the Venezuelan president by what means
won’t be apparent until the fireworks begin.  Those
plans may even be stepped up in light of the major
article published in the Wall Street Journal on April
24 about “Chavez Plans to Take More Control of Oil
Away from Foreign Firms.”  The article claims Chavez
is “planning a new assault on Big Oil” that may lead
to nationalization of the oil industry and hurt oil
company profits.  The article had a very hostile tone
making inflammatory and unjustifiable claims with no
recognition that Venezuela and all other nations have
every right to majority ownership of and most of the
benefits from their own natural resources.  They also
have the right to be able to collect a fair and
equitable amount of tax revenue from their foreign
investors. 

In my judgment, the Bush administration clearly is on
course toward hostile action of some kind against Iran
and Venezuela, but also, by its own admission, has a
long list of other potential “rogue countries” on its
target list with no plans to run out of them.  It’s a
kind of perverted Pax Americana under the Bush
doctrine of “anticipatory self defense” or preventive
war making it easy, if they can continue to sell this
notion, to get the public to accept the idea of a
“permanent” state of war. 

The US Has Corrupted the Meaning of Democracy - First
How It’s Done It Abroad

Chomsky discusses how we try selling the notion of
“anticipatory self-defense” to the public and the
world by claiming it’s part of a democracy project -
to bring our democratic system to those who don’t have
it, or don’t have enough of it, as part of Bush’s
“messianic mission” and “grand strategy.”  As an old
marketing MBA and now retired marketer I can
appreciate the techniques they use to sell it.  They
are indeed clever and slick, but they should be as
they’re designed by advertising and PR experts who
know their craft well and execute with precision -
even if it is all baloney or worse.  Despite our pious
rhetoric, the one thing we most don’t want and won’t
tolerate in the states we target is real democracy -
meaning, of course, freely elected governments and
leaders who then run them to serve the needs and
interests of their own people instead of ours.  The
reason we choose a target country is because they
refuse to become a subservient client state.  That’s
intolerable to us so regime change becomes the chosen
method to fix the problem including by war if other
less extreme methods fail.  That’s what happened in
Iraq and Afghanistan.  It had nothing to do with
leaders in either country who oppressed their people
or threatened to attack anyone.

Using Iraq as an example, Chomsky shows how allowing
real democracy there would undermine every goal the US
set out to achieve by invading in the first place.  He
explains that although Iraqis have no love for Iran,
they’d prefer friendly relations to conflict with
their neighbor and would cooperate with efforts to
integrate Iran into the region.  Moreover, the Iraqi
Shiite religious and political leadership have close
links with Iran, and their success in Iraq is
encouraging the Shiite population in Saudi Arabia to
want the same freedoms and democracy.  The Saudi
Shiites just happen to be the majority in the eastern
part of the country where most of the Saudi oil is.
Should all this happen in a democratic process it
would be Washington’s worst nightmare - a loose Shiite
dominated alliance including Iraq, Iran and the oil
rich part of Saudi Arabia. 

And if that isn’t bad enough, Chomsky then explains it
could be still worse.  This independent bloc might
join with Iran in establishing major energy projects
jointly with China and India and do it using a basket
of currencies to denominate oil instead of only the
dollar as most countries now do.  Iran is already
beginning to do it, so others doing the same would
seem quite sensible and likely.  Should all that
happen, it would be a potential earthquake to the US
economy which then would have major consequences for
the global economy.  It’s fair to assume the US would
do everything possible to prevent this scenario from
ever happening.

The same Bush commitment to “democracy promotion” has
played out in our one-sided relations with Israel
which have so adversely affected the Palestinians for
nearly 40 years and especially so post 9/11 and now

after the election of Hamas as the Palestinians’
democratically chosen government.  Despite all the
rhetoric to the contrary, there never was a peace
process as the US continues to support an illegal
Israeli occupation, liberally fund it, and turn a
blind eye to the worst abuses committed under it.
Those abuses, or more accurately daily war crimes and
crimes against humanity, have created the most extreme
hardships for a beleaguered people who’ve been unable
to receive any meaningful redress in the UN or world
community.  They’re forced to endure an endless array
of daily assaults including targeted and random
assassinations, the denial of their most basic rights,
and now closed borders and a cutoff of desperately
needed funding from the West.  Those funds include the
tax revenues they pay the Israelis from which they’re
entitled to receive payments back to provide the means
to run their government and provide the essentials of
life including food to eat.

If it wished to, the US could easily broker a
diplomatic solution guaranteeing Israel the security
its people want (but the Israeli government doesn’t)
and the Palestinians a viable state of its own with
fixed borders and other major grievances ameliorated
and most basic demands satisfied.  It would solve the
longest running Middle East conflict and make it much
easier for both Israel and the US to have a more
normal state-to-state relationship with other
countries in the region instead of the strained ones
both countries now have.  It would also go a long way
to ending open conflict in the region.  It won’t
happen because neither the US nor Israel want it to,
and they both continue to block every effort toward
that end despite their pious rhetoric to the contrary.
The result is the most basic Palestinian rights are
denied and the notion of a democratic Israel is a
myth.  So much for “democracy promotion” and conflict
resolution in the region.

How the US Has Corrupted the Notion of Democracy at
Home

Chomsky devotes the latter part of his book showing
how undemocratic, in fact, the US political system
really is.  He characterizes it as a “corporatized
state capitalist democracy” which is little more than
a system of legalized private tyrannies.  He begins by
quoting Robert Dahl whom he calls the most prominent
scholar on democratic theory and practice and notes
that Dahl’s writings explain the “serious undemocratic
features of the US political system.”  He also quotes
Robert McChesney (one of my favorite media critics and
scholars along with Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky),
founder of the Free Press of which I’m a member and
supporter.  In his important writings, McChesney has
done so much to document and explain how the dominant
US corporate media controls and corrupts the
information we get and does it so effectively.
Chomsky notes that McChesney cited the abysmal
coverage of the 2000 presidential election calling it
a “travesty” which then caused further deterioration
of media quality and more disservice to the public
interest.  This, Chomsky explains, is how concentrated
private power corrupts democracy, and even mainstream
commentators publicly admit that “business is in
complete control of the machinery of government.”  The
public is also aware enough of this to have become
apathetic about the political process and not much
care which party gains power because neither one will
serve its interests.  Sadly, that’s the case.

Chomsky also quotes “America’s leading
twentieth-century social philosopher,” John Dewey, who
believed that “politics is the shadow cast on society
by big business,” and that won’t change as long as
power is in “business for private profit through
private control of banking, land, industry, reinforced
by command of the press, press agents, and other means
of publicity and propaganda.” Chomsky concludes reform
alone won’t correct this abusive imbalance.  Real,
meaningful democracy is only possible through
“fundamental social change.”

Chomsky goes on to explain that our present political
system had its roots with the initial design crafted
by our Founding Fathers even though the way things are
today would have appalled them.  He quotes James
Madison who believed power should be in the hands of
“the wealth of the nation….of more capable set of
men.”  He might have also quoted John Jay who was even
clearer and more brazen (he’s done it in his other
writings) when he said “Those who own the country
ought to govern it.”  Jay was a Founding Father and
our first Supreme Court chief justice.  His tradition
is well represented on today’s High Court.  Adam
Smith, the ideological godfather of free market
capitalism, had a different view that was certainly
well known to our framers.  Smith, whose teachings
have been distorted and corrupted by our modern “free
market uber alles” apostles, wrote that “civil
government, so far as it is instituted for the
security of property, is in reality instituted for the
defense of the rich against the poor.” Smith had a lot
more to say in defense of small and local business and
his opposition to the transnational variant so
dominant today.

Chomsky explains further that our state capitalist
system is oppressive enough even in its “stable form,”
but under the Bush administration it’s become so
extreme some critics have begun to question its very
viability.  One such critic compared the disturbing
similarities today to Nazi Germany and Hitler’s
demonic appeal to his “divine mission (as) Germany’s
savior” and sold his message to the public in
(Christian) religious terms.  Chomsky makes a dramatic
point explaining this descent to barbarism happened
rapidly in a country that was “the pride of Western
civilization in the sciences (Einstein and others),
philosophy (Marx, Freud), and the arts (Goethe, Bach,
Beethoven and Mozart and Haydn as well if Austria is
included).”  It was the very “model of democracy.”
That history should be a stark message and reminder
now of how fragile our sacred civil liberties are and
how easily they may be lost when the public slumbers
and lets tyrants in sheep’s clothing run amuck
unchecked and unchallenged.

Chomsky then goes on at length to explain and document
how since the 1970s Trilateralists (representatives of
the wealth and power structure of North America,
Europe and Japan) saw a “crisis of democracy” that led
to “an excess of democracy” endangering their
privileged status.  What followed was over three
decades up to the present crafting ways for them to
reverse this imbalance in their eyes.  Ronald Reagan
put their ideas and policies on a fast track, and the
first Bush administration maintained a somewhat
restrained version of them.  Bill Clinton picked up
the pace considerably and certainly made the rich and
powerful gleeful from all he gave them once he settled
into office.  But neoliberal nirvana was reached under
the current administration with one of their own in
power.  They now had a man in the White House who
never met a corporate tax cut he didn’t love or any
way he could find to transfer wealth from the poor and
diminishing middle class to the rich. 

The result, as they say, is history.  The rich and
powerful have never had it better and the poor and
deprived have suffered greatly as has the so-called
middle class that keeps shrinking as wages stagnate
below the level of inflation and more good,
high-paying jobs get exported to developing countries
where the same tasks can be done at a far lower labor
cost.  The widening gap between rich and poor keeps
expanding and essential social benefits like health
care and education keep eroding in an unending
downward cycle that characterizes a society hostile to
its people and also one that may be headed for
decline.  That decline has only intensified under the
Bush policy of endless war requiring unsustainable
levels of spending and rising debt that one day must
be paid for.

Chomsky gives many more examples of how the US has
become a nation totally beholden to power and
privilege, especially to those who sit in corporate
boardrooms and have the ultimate say in how things are
run.  The result is a serious and growing “democratic
deficit” with those holding elitist and extremist
views now in charge.  The rest of the world has taken
notice, and one day an effective majority of our
public may as well and decide enough is enough.
What’s ahead may be growing outrage and real
resistance at home and an unraveling of our global
dominance abroad.  An example of the former may be the
mass and continuing historic protests all over the
country demanding equity and justice for immigrants
that may be a forerunner of other protests to come.
And key nations forming alliances outside the US orbit
for their mutual benefit and protection is an
important example of the latter.  It’s likely others
may decide to do the same.

Solutions Chomsky Proposes

Chomsky ends his book by suggesting some possible
solutions to the dismal and dangerous state of our
nation, but I doubt he sees any of them being adopted.
He lists: (1) accepting the jurisdiction of the
International Criminal Court and World Court; (2)
signing and adopting the Kyoto protocols; (3) allowing
the UN to lead in international crises; (4)
confronting terror by diplomacy and economic measures,
not military ones; (5) adhering to the UN Charter; (6)
ending the Security Council veto power and practicing
real democracy; and (7) cutting military spending
sharply and using it for greater social spending.  He
calls these very conservative suggestions and what the
majority of the public wants.  Up to now, that
majority has been ignored, denied and deprived in a
society that only serves the privileged. 

Will any of these changes happen?  Not likely unless
enough people act strongly enough to demand them.
Chomsky ends by noting past social gains were never
willingly given.  They were only gotten by “dedicated
day-by-day engagement” to win them.  But he believes
we have many ways to do so and, in the process,
promote the democratic process.  His final thought is
a call to us to do it collectively.  If we don’t, it
“is likely to have ominous repercussions: for the
country, for the world, and for future generations.”

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at
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address at sjlendman.blogspot.com