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3 DISPATCHES FROM
AMERICA Is the world too big to
fail? By
Noam Chomsky
In Adam Smith's defense, it
should be added that he recognized what would
happen if Britain followed the rules of sound
economics, now called "neo-liberalism." He warned
that if British manufacturers, merchants, and
investors turned abroad, they might profit but
England would suffer. But he felt that they would
be guided by a home bias, so as if by an invisible
hand England would be spared the ravages of
economic rationality.
The passage is hard to miss.
It is the one occurrence of the famous phrase
"invisible hand" in The
Wealth of Nations. The other leading founder
of classical economics, David Ricardo, drew
similar conclusions, hoping that home bias would
lead men of property to "be satisfied with the low
rate of profits in their own country, rather than
seek a more advantageous employment for
their wealth in foreign
nations," feelings that, he added, "I should be
sorry to see weakened." Their predictions aside,
the instincts of the classical economists were
sound.
The
Iranian and Chinese 'threats' The democracy uprising in the
Arab world is sometimes compared to Eastern Europe
in 1989, but on dubious grounds. In 1989, the
democracy uprising was tolerated by the Russians,
and supported by western power in accord with
standard doctrine: it plainly conformed to
economic and strategic objectives, and was
therefore a noble achievement, greatly honored,
unlike the struggles at the same time "to defend
the people's fundamental human rights" in Central
America, in the words of the assassinated
Archbishop of El Salvador, one of the hundreds of
thousands of victims of the military forces armed
and trained by Washington.
There was no Mickhail
Gorbachev in the West throughout these horrendous
years, and there is none today. And Western power
remains hostile to democracy in the Arab world for
good reasons.
Grand Area doctrines continue
to apply to contemporary crises and
confrontations. In Western policy-making circles
and political commentary the Iranian threat is
considered to pose the greatest danger to world
order and hence must be the primary focus of US
foreign policy, with Europe trailing along
politely.
What exactly is the Iranian
threat? An authoritative answer is provided by the
Pentagon and US intelligence. Reporting on global
security last year, they make it clear that the
threat is not military. Iran's military spending
is "relatively low compared to the rest of the
region," they conclude. Its military doctrine is
strictly "defensive, designed to slow an invasion
and force a diplomatic solution to hostilities."
Iran has only "a limited
capability to project force beyond its borders".
With regard to the nuclear option, "Iran's nuclear
program and its willingness to keep open the
possibility of developing nuclear weapons is a
central part of its deterrent strategy." All
quotes.
The brutal clerical regime is
doubtless a threat to its own people, though it
hardly outranks US allies in that regard. But the
threat lies elsewhere, and is ominous indeed. One
element is Iran's potential deterrent capacity, an
illegitimate exercise of sovereignty that might
interfere with US freedom of action in the region.
It is glaringly obvious why Iran would seek a
deterrent capacity; a look at the military bases
and nuclear forces in the region suffices to
explain.
Seven years ago, Israeli
military historian Martin van Creveld wrote that
"The world has witnessed how the United States
attacked Iraq for, as it turned out, no reason at
all. Had the Iranians not tried to build nuclear
weapons, they would be crazy," particularly when
they are under constant threat of attack in
violation of the UN Charter. Whether they are
doing so remains an open question, but perhaps so.
But Iran's threat goes beyond
deterrence. It is also seeking to expand its
influence in neighboring countries, the Pentagon
and US intelligence emphasize, and in this way to
"destabilize" the region (in the technical terms
of foreign policy discourse). The US invasion and
military occupation of Iran's neighbors is
"stabilization." Iran's efforts to extend its
influence to them are "destabilization," hence
plainly illegitimate.
Such usage is routine. Thus
the prominent foreign policy analyst James Chace
was properly using the term "stability" in its
technical sense when he explained that in order to
achieve "stability" in Chile it was necessary to
"destabilize" the country (by overthrowing the
elected government of Salvador Allende and
installing the dictatorship of General Augusto
Pinochet). Other concerns about Iran are equally
interesting to explore, but perhaps this is enough
to reveal the guiding principles and their status
in imperial culture. As Franklin Delano
Roosevelt’s planners emphasized at the dawn of the
contemporary world system, the US cannot tolerate
"any exercise of sovereignty" that interferes with
its global designs.
The US and Europe are united
in punishing Iran for its threat to stability, but
it is useful to recall how isolated they are. The
nonaligned countries have vigorously supported
Iran's right to enrich uranium. In the region,
Arab public opinion even strongly favors Iranian
nuclear weapons.
The major regional power,
Turkey, voted against the latest US-initiated
sanctions motion in the Security Council, along
with Brazil, the most admired country of the
South. Their disobedience led to sharp censure,
not for the first time: Turkey had been bitterly
condemned in 2003 when the government followed the
will of 95% of the population and refused to
participate in the invasion of Iraq, thus
demonstrating its weak grasp of democracy,
Western-style.
After its Security Council
misdeed last year, Turkey was warned by Obama's
top diplomat on European affairs, Philip Gordon,
that it must "demonstrate its commitment to
partnership with the West". A scholar with the
Council on Foreign Relations asked, "How do we
keep the Turks in their lane?" - following orders
like good democrats. Brazil's Lula was admonished
in a New York Times headline that his effort with
Turkey to provide a solution to the uranium
enrichment issue outside of the framework of US
power was a "Spot on Brazilian Leader's Legacy."
In brief, do what we say, or else.
An
interesting sidelight, effectively suppressed, is
that the Iran-Turkey-Brazil deal was approved in
advance by Obama, presumably on the assumption
that it would fail, providing an ideological
weapon against Iran. When it succeeded, the
approval turned to censure, and Washington rammed
through a Security Council resolution so weak that
China readily signed - and is now chastised for
living up to the letter of the resolution but not
Washington's unilateral directives - in the
current issue of Foreign Affairs, for example.
While the US can tolerate
Turkish disobedience, though with dismay, China is
harder to ignore. The press warns that "China's
investors and traders are now filling a vacuum in
Iran as businesses from many other nations,
especially in Europe, pull out," and in
particular, is expanding its dominant role in
Iran's energy industries.
Washington is reacting with a
touch of desperation. The State Department warned
China that if it wants to be accepted in the
international community - a technical term
referring to the US and whoever happens to agree
with it - then it must not "skirt and evade
international responsibilities, [which] are
clear": namely, follow US orders. China is
unlikely to be impressed.
There is also much concern
about the growing Chinese military threat. A
recent Pentagon study warned that China's military
budget is approaching "one-fifth of what the
Pentagon spent to operate and carry out the wars
in Iraq and Afghanistan," a fraction of the US
military budget, of course. China's expansion of
military forces might "deny the ability of
American warships to operate in international
waters off its coast," the New York Times added.
Off the coast of China, that
is; it has yet to be proposed that the US should
eliminate military forces that deny the Caribbean
to Chinese warships. China's lack of understanding
of rules of international civility is illustrated
further by its objections to plans for the
advanced nuclear-powered aircraft carrier
George Washington to join
naval exercises a few miles off China's coast,
with alleged capacity to strike Beijing.
In contrast, the West
understands that such US operations are all
undertaken to defend stability and its own
security. The liberal New Republic expresses its
concern that "China sent ten warships through
international waters just off the Japanese island
of Okinawa." That is indeed a provocation - unlike
the fact, unmentioned, that Washington has
converted the island into a major military base in
defiance of vehement protests by the people of
Okinawa. That is not a provocation, on the
standard principle that we own the world.
Deep-seated imperial doctrine
aside, there is good reason for China's neighbors
to be concerned about its growing military and
commercial power. And though Arab opinion supports
an Iranian nuclear weapons program, we certainly
should not do so. The foreign policy literature is
full of proposals as to how to counter the threat.
One obvious way is rarely discussed: work to
establish a nuclear-weapons-free zone (NWFZ) in
the region.
The issue arose (again) at
the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) conference at
United Nations headquarters last May. Egypt, as
chair of the 118 nations of the Non-Aligned
Movement, called for negotiations on a Middle East
NWFZ, as had been agreed by the West, including
the US, at the 1995 review conference on the NPT.
International support is so
overwhelming that Obama formally agreed. It is a
fine idea, Washington informed the conference, but
not now. Furthermore, the US made clear that
Israel must be exempted: no proposal can call for
Israel's nuclear program to be placed under the
auspices of the International Atomic Energy Agency
or for the release of information about "Israeli
nuclear facilities and activities." So much for
this method of dealing with the Iranian nuclear
threat.
Privatizing the planet While Grand Area doctrine
still prevails, the capacity to implement it has
declined. The peak of US power was after World War
II, when it had literally half the world's wealth.
But that naturally declined, as other industrial
economies recovered from the devastation of the
war and decolonization took its agonizing course.
By the early 1970s, the US share of global wealth
had declined to about 25%, and the industrial
world had become tripolar: North America, Europe,
and East Asia (then Japan-based).
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