US Secretary of State Colin Powell
said while explaining the National Security Strategy
(NSS) of September 2002 to a hostile audience at the
World Economic Forum that Washington has a "sovereign
right to use force to defend ourselves" from nations
that possess weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and
cooperate with terrorists, the official pretexts for
invading Iraq. The collapse of the pretexts is well
known, but there has been insufficient attention to its
most important consequence: the NSS was in effect
revised to lower the bars to aggression. The need to
establish ties to terror was quietly dropped. More
significant, President George W Bush and colleagues
declared the right to resort to force even if a country
does not have WMD or even programs to develop them. It
is sufficient that it have the "intent and ability" to
do so.
Just about every country has the ability,
and intent is in the eye of the beholder. The official
doctrine, then, is that anyone is subject to
overwhelming attack. Colin Powell carried the revision
even a step further. The president was right to attack
Iraq because its president, Saddam Hussein, not only had
"intent and capability" but had "actually used such
horrible weapons against his enemies in Iran and against
his own people" - with continuing support from Powell
and his associates, he failed to add, following the
usual convention. National Security Adviser Condoleezza
Rice gave a similar version. With such reasoning as
this, who is exempt from attack? Small wonder that, as
one Reuters report put it, "if Iraqis ever see Saddam
Hussein in the dock, they want his former American
allies shackled beside him".
In the desperate
flailing to contrive justifications as one pretext after
another collapsed, the obvious reason for the invasion
was conspicuously evaded by the Bush administration and
commentators: to establish the first secure military
bases in a client state right at the heart of the
world's major energy resources, understood since World
War II to be a "stupendous source of strategic power"
and expected to become even more important in the
future. There should have been little surprise at
revelations that the administration intended to attack
Iraq before September 11, 2001, and downgraded the "war
on terror" in favor of this objective. In internal
discussion, evasion is unnecessary. Long before they
took office, the private club of reactionary statists
had recognized that "the need for a substantial American
force presence in the [Persian] Gulf transcends the
issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein". With all the
vacillations of policy since the current incumbents
first took office in 1981, one guiding principle remains
stable: the Iraqi people must not rule Iraq.
The
2002 National Security Strategy and its implementation
in Iraq are widely regarded as a watershed in
international affairs. "The new approach is
revolutionary," Henry Kissinger wrote, approving of the
doctrine but with tactical reservations and a crucial
qualification: it cannot be "a universal principle
available to every nation". The right of aggression is
to be reserved for the United States and perhaps its
chosen clients. We must reject the most elementary of
moral truisms, the principle of universality - a stand
usually concealed in professions of virtuous intent and
tortured legalisms.
Historian Arthur Schlesinger
agreed that the doctrine and implementation were
"revolutionary", but from a quite different standpoint.
As the first bombs fell on Baghdad, he recalled
then-president Franklin Roosevelt's words after the
bombing of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii: "a date which will live
in infamy". Now it is Americans who live in infamy, he
wrote, as their government adopts the policies of
imperial Japan. He added that George W Bush had
converted a "global wave of sympathy" for the US into a
"global wave of hatred of American arrogance and
militarism". A year later, "discontent with America and
its policies had intensified rather than diminished".
Even in Britain support for the war had declined by a
third.
As predicted, the war increased the
threat of terror. Middle East expert Fawaz Gerges found
it "simply unbelievable how the war has revived the
appeal of a global jihadi Islam that was in real decline
after [September 11, 2001]". Recruitment for the
al-Qaeda networks increased, while Iraq itself became a
"terrorist haven" for the first time. Suicide attacks
for the year 2003 reached the highest level in modern
times; Iraq suffered its first since the 13th century.
Substantial specialist opinion concluded that the war
also led to the proliferation of weapons of mass
destruction.
As the anniversary of the invasion
approached, New York's Grand Central Station was
patrolled by police with submachine-guns, a reaction to
the March 11 Madrid train bombings that killed 200
people in Europe's worst terrorist crime. A few days
later, the Spanish electorate voted out the government
that had gone to war despite overwhelming popular
opposition. Spaniards were condemned for appeasing
terrorism by voting for withdrawing troops from Iraq in
the absence of United Nations authorization - that is,
for taking a stand rather like that of 70% of Americans,
who called for the UN to take the leading role in Iraq.
Bush assured Americans that "the world is safer
today because, in Iraq, our coalition ended a regime
that cultivated ties to terror while it built weapons of
mass destruction". The president's handlers know that
every word is false, but they also know that lies can
become Truth, if repeated insistently enough.
There is broad agreement among specialists on
how to reduce the threat of terror - keeping here to the
sub-category that is doctrinally acceptable, their
terror against us - and also on how to incite terrorist
atrocities, which may become truly horrendous. The
consensus is well articulated by Jason Burke in his
study of the al-Qaeda phenomenon, the most detailed and
informed investigation of this loose array of radical
Islamists for whom Osama bin Laden is hardly more than a
symbol (a more dangerous one after he is killed,
perhaps, becoming a martyr who inspires others to join
his cause). The role of Washington's current incumbents,
in their Reaganite phase, in creating the radical
Islamist networks is well known. Less familiar is their
tolerance of Pakistan's slide toward radical Islamist
extremism and its development of nuclear weapons.
As Burke reviews, former president Bill
Clinton's 1998 bombings of Sudan and Afghanistan created
bin Laden as a symbol, forged close relations between
him and the Taliban, and led to a sharp increase in
support, recruitment, and financing for al-Qaeda, which
until then was virtually unknown. The next major
contribution to the growth of al-Qaeda and the
prominence of bin Laden was Bush's bombing of
Afghanistan after September 11, undertaken without
credible pretext as later quietly conceded. As a result,
bin Laden's message "spread among tens of millions of
people, particularly the young and angry, around the
world", Burke writes, reviewing the increase in global
terror and the creation of "a whole new cadre of
terrorists" enlisted in what they see as a "cosmic
struggle between good and evil", a vision shared by bin
Laden and Bush. As noted, the invasion of Iraq had the
same effect.
Citing many examples, Burke
concludes, "Every use of force is another small victory
for bin Laden," who "is winning", whether he lives or
dies. Burke's assessment is widely shared by many
analysts, including former heads of Israeli military
intelligence and the General Security Services.
There is also a broad consensus on what the
proper reaction to terrorism should be. It is
two-pronged: directed at the terrorists themselves and
at the reservoir of potential support. The appropriate
response to terrorist crimes is police work, which has
been successful worldwide. More important is the broad
constituency the terrorists - who see themselves as a
vanguard - seek to mobilize, including many who hate and
fear them but nevertheless see them as fighting for a
just cause. We can help the vanguard mobilize this
reservoir of support by violence, or can address the
"myriad grievances", many legitimate, that are "the root
causes of modern Islamic militancy". That can
significantly reduce the threat of terror, and should be
undertaken independently of this goal.
Violence
can succeed, as Americans know well from the conquest of
the national territory. But at terrible cost. It can
also provoke violence in response, and often does.
Inciting terror is not the only illustration. Others are
even more hazardous.
Last February, Russia
carried out its largest military exercises in two
decades, prominently exhibiting advanced WMD. Russian
generals and Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov announced
that they were responding to Washington's plans "to make
nuclear weapons an instrument of solving military
tasks", including its development of new low-yield
nuclear weapons, "an extremely dangerous tendency that
is undermining global and regional stability ...
lowering the threshold for actual use". Strategic
analyst Bruce Blair writes that Russia is well aware
that the new "bunker busters" are designed to target the
"high-level nuclear command bunkers" that control its
nuclear arsenal. Ivanov and Russian generals report that
in response to US escalation they are deploying "the
most advanced state-of-the-art missile in the world",
perhaps next to impossible to destroy, something that
"would be very alarming to the Pentagon", says former
assistant defense secretary Phil Coyle. US analysts
suspect that Russia may also be duplicating US
development of a hypersonic cruise vehicle that can
re-enter the atmosphere from space and launch
devastating attacks without warning, part of US plans to
reduce reliance on overseas bases or negotiated access
to air routes.
US analysts estimate that Russian
military expenditures have tripled during the Bush-Putin
years, in large measure a predicted reaction to the Bush
administration's militancy and aggressiveness. Russian
President Vladimir Putin and Ivanov cited the Bush
doctrine of "preemptive strike" - the "revolutionary"
new doctrine of the National Security Strategy - but
also "added a key detail, saying that military force can
be used if there is an attempt to limit Russia's access
to regions that are essential to its survival", thus
adapting for Russia the Clinton doctrine that the US is
entitled to resort to "unilateral use of military power"
to ensure "uninhibited access to key markets, energy
supplies, and strategic resources". The world "is a much
more insecure place" now that Russia has decided to
follow the US lead, said Fiona Hill of the Brookings
Institution, adding that other countries presumably
"will follow suit".
In the past, Russian
automated response systems have come within a few
minutes of launching a nuclear strike, barely aborted by
human intervention. By now the systems have
deteriorated. US systems, which are much more reliable,
are nevertheless extremely hazardous. They allow three
minutes for human judgment after computers warn of a
missile attack, as they frequently do. The Pentagon has
also found serious flaws in its computer security
systems that might allow terrorist hackers to seize
control and simulate a launch - "an accident waiting to
happen", Bruce Blair writes. The dangers are being
consciously escalated by the threat and use of violence.
Concern is not eased by the recent discovery
that US presidents have been "systematically
misinformed" about the effects of nuclear war. The level
of destruction has been "severely underestimated"
because of lack of systematic oversight of the
"insulated bureaucracies" that provide analyses of
"limited and 'winnable' nuclear war"; the resulting
"institutional myopia can be catastrophic", far more so
than the manipulation of intelligence on Iraq.
The Bush administration slated the initial
deployment of a missile defense system for this summer,
a move criticized as "completely political", employing
untested technology at great expense. A more appropriate
criticism is that the system might seem workable; in the
logic of nuclear war, what counts is perception. Both US
planners and potential targets regard missile defense as
a first-strike weapon, intended to provide more freedom
for aggression, including nuclear attack. And they know
how the US responded to Russia's deployment of a very
limited anti-ballistic-missile (ABM) system in 1968: by
targeting the system with nuclear weapons to ensure that
it would be instantly overwhelmed. Analysts warn that
current US plans will also provoke a Chinese reaction.
History and the logic of deterrence "remind us that
missile defense systems are potent drivers of offensive
nuclear planning", and the Bush initiative will again
raise the threat to Americans and to the world.
China's reaction may set off a ripple effect
through India, Pakistan, and beyond. In West Asia,
Washington is increasing the threat posed by Israel's
nuclear weapons and other WMD by providing Israel with
more than 100 of its most advanced jet bombers,
accompanied by prominent announcements that the bombers
can reach Iran and return and are an advanced version of
the US planes Israel used to destroy an Iraqi reactor in
1981. The Israeli press adds that the US is providing
the Israeli air force with "'special' weaponry". There
can be little doubt that Iranian and other intelligence
services are watching closely and perhaps giving a
worst-case analysis: that these may be nuclear weapons.
The leaks and dispatch of the aircraft may be intended
to rattle the Iranian leadership, perhaps to provoke
some action that can be used as a pretext for an attack.
Immediately after the National Security Strategy
was announced in September 2002, the US moved to
terminate negotiations on an enforceable bioweapons
treaty and to block international efforts to ban
biowarfare and the militarization of space. A year
later, at the UN General Assembly, the US voted alone
against implementation of the Comprehensive Test Ban
Treaty and alone with its new ally India against steps
toward the elimination of nuclear weapons. The US voted
alone against "observance of environmental norms" in
disarmament and arms-control agreements and alone with
Israel and Micronesia against steps to prevent nuclear
proliferation in the Middle East - the pretext for
invading Iraq. A resolution to prevent militarization of
space passed 174-0, with four abstentions: the US,
Israel, Micronesia, and the Marshall Islands. As
discussed earlier, a negative US vote or abstention
amounts to a double veto: the resolution is blocked and
is eliminated from reporting and history.
Bush
planners know as well as others that the resort to force
increases the threat of terror, and that their
militaristic and aggressive posture and actions provoke
reactions that increase the risk of catastrophe. They do
not desire these outcomes, but assign them low priority
in comparison to the international and domestic agendas
they make little attempt to conceal.
This
article is an edited version of the afterword in the
paperback edition of Noam Chomsky's Hegemony
or Survival, America's Quest for Global Dominance
(The American Empire Project, Metropolitan Books).
Chomsky is a professor of linguistics and philosophy at
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is the
author of numerous books on linguistics and on US
foreign policy. This article was posted at Tomdispatchby arrangement with
Metropolitan Books, an imprint of Henry Holt and
Company, LLC, and is reposted here with permission of
Tomdispatch. To access an e-book version of Hegemony
or Survival, click here.
(Copyright 2004
Aviva Chomsky, Diane Chomsky and Harry Chomsky.)
