Hopes and Prospects: on Foreign Policy
Barack Obama:
$1.8B per year for mega-embassy in Iraq; same in Afghanistan
The immense city-within-a-city "embassy" in Baghdad not only remains, but its cost is also to rise under Obama to $1.8 billion a year, from an estimated $1.5 billion in Bush's last year. The Obama administration is also constructing mega-embassies in
Pakistan and Afghanistan that are completely without precedent. Throughout the Gulf region, billions are spent to develop "critical base & port facilities," along with military training & arms shipments expanding the US global system of militarization.
Source: Hopes and Prospects, by Noam Chomsky, p. 63
Jun 1, 2010
Barack Obama:
Hamas election void until they renounce violenc
Obama repeated the familiar reasons for ignoring the elected government led by Hamas: "To be a genuine party to peace," Obama declared, "the Quartet [US, EU, Russia, UN) has made it clear that Hamas must meet clear conditions: recognize
Israel's right to exist; renounce violence; and abide by past agreements."Also near-universal are the standard references to Hamas: a terrorist organization, dedicated to the destruction of Israel (or maybe all Jews). Hamas has called for a 2-state
settlement in the terms of international consensus: publicly and repeatedly. Israel and the US object that the Hamas proposals do not go far enough.
Perhaps so, but they surely go much farther toward the international consensus than the firm and unwavering US-Israeli rejectionist stance, reiterated obliquely by Obama in his State Department talk.
Source: Hopes and Prospects, by Noam Chomsky, p.254-255
Jun 1, 2010
Bill Clinton:
OpEd: 1994: Installed Aristide in Haiti subject to US rules
By 1994 Aristide had been "civilized", and Clinton sent US forces to restore the elected president to a few more months in office. But on strict conditions: that he accept a harsh neoliberal regime, pretty much the program of the US-backed candidate he
had defeated handily in 1990 election. Aristide's efforts to disband the army, which had been the bitter enemy of Haitians since its institution, were barred. Haiti was also barred from providing any protection for the economy.There is nothing
surprising about what followed: a 1995 USAID report observed that the "export-driven trade and investment policy [that Washington mandated will] relentlessly squeeze the domestic rice farmer," accelerating the flight to miserable slums that reached its
hideous denouement in the catastrophe caused by the January 2010 earthquake--a class-based catastrophe, like many others, striking primarily at the poor whose awful conditions of existence render them particularly vulnerable (the rich escaped lightly).
Source: Hopes and Prospects, by Noam Chomsky, p. 11-12
Jun 1, 2010
Bill Clinton:
Pledged to Gorbachev to not extend NATO eastward
There is now justified concern about Russian reactions to US aggressive militarism. That includes the extension of NATO to the East by Clinton in violation of pledges to
Mikhail Gorbachev, but particularly the vast expansion of offensive military capacity under Bush, and more recently, the plans to place "missile defense" installations in Eastern Europe. Putin is ridiculed for claiming that they are a threat to Russia.
But US strategic analysts recognize that he has a point. The programs, they argue, are designed in a way that Russian planners would have to regard as a threat to the
Russian deterrent, hence calling for more advanced and lethal offensive military capacity to neutralize them. A new arms race is feared.
Source: Hopes and Prospects, by Noam Chomsky, p.136-137
Jun 1, 2010
Donald Rumsfeld:
OpEd: New Europe takes orders from US; Old Europe disagrees
A 2003 escapade is one of the clearest examples on record of contempt for democracy: Donald Rumsfeld's distinction between "Old Europe" and "New Europe," taken up by many others. The criterion distinguishing the two categories was sharp and clear. "Old
Europe" consisted of the governments that followed the will of the overwhelming majority of their populations and refused to join the Bush-Blair invasion of Iraq. "New Europe" consisted of the governments that ignored an even larger majority of the
population and took their orders from Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas. Therefore "Old Europe" was bitterly condemned (including "freedom fries" in the Senate cafeteria), and "New Europe" was hailed as the hope for democracy. The favorite democrats of
New Europe were Italy's Berlusconi, honored with visit to the White House, and Spain's Aznar, who was even invited to the summit to join Bush & Blair in announcing the war--with the support of 2% of the Spanish population, polls showed.
Source: Hopes and Prospects, by Noam Chomsky, p. 43-44
Jun 1, 2010
Jimmy Carter:
Israel's 14 Road Map reservations eliminate its contents
Obama declared, "the Quartet [US, EU, Russia, UN) has made it clear that Hamas must meet clear conditions: recognize Israel's right to exist; renounce violence; and abide by past agreements." Unmentioned is the inconvenient fact that the US and
Israel firmly reject all three conditions for themselves. In international isolation, they bar a two-state settlement, thus rejecting Palestinian national rights. They of course do not renounce violence. And they reject the Quartet's central proposal,
the "Road Map." Israel formally accepted it, but with fourteen reservations that effectively eliminate its contents (tacitly backed by the US). It is the great merit of Jimmy
Carter's "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid" to have brought these facts to public attention for the first time--and in the mainstream, the only time, it appears. But even this was quickly effaced.
Source: Hopes and Prospects, by Noam Chomsky, p.254-255
Jun 1, 2010
Noam Chomsky:
Gap between rich North & poor South created by conquest
Today's gap between North and South--the rich developed societies and the rest of the world--was largely created by the global conquest. Scholarship and science are beginning to recognize a record that had been concealed by imperial arrogance.
They are discovering that at the time of the arrival of the Europeans, and long before, the Western hemisphere was home to some of the world's most advanced civilizations. In the poorest country of South America, archaeologists are coming to believe
that eastern Bolivia was the site of a wealthy, sophisticated, and complex society of perhaps a million people. In the Peruvian Andes, by 1941 the Inca had created the greatest empire in the world, greater in scale than the Chinese, Russian,
Ottoman, or other empires, far greater than any European state, and with remarkable artistic, agricultural, and other achievements.
Source: Hopes and Prospects, by Noam Chomsky, p. 4-5
Jun 1, 2010
Noam Chomsky:
Hamas has called for a two-state settlement
Obama says, "Hamas must meet clear conditions: recognize Israel's right to exist; renounce violence; and abide by past agreements." Unmentioned is the inconvenient fact that the US and Israel firmly reject all three conditions for themselves. In
international isolation, they bar a two-state settlement, thus rejecting Palestinian national rights. They of course do not renounce violence. And they reject the Quartet's central proposal, the "Road Map." Israel formally accepted it, but with fourteen
reservations that effectively eliminate its contents.Also near-universal are the standard references to Hamas: a terrorist organization, dedicated to the destruction of Israel (or maybe all Jews). Hamas has called for a 2-state settlement in the terms
of international consensus: publicly and repeatedly. Israel and the US object that the Hamas proposals do not go far enough. Perhaps so, but they go much farther toward the international consensus than the unwavering US-Israeli rejectionist stance.
Source: Hopes and Prospects, by Noam Chomsky, p.254-255
Jun 1, 2010
Richard Nixon:
1971: Control Latin America as model for rest of world
Control of Latin America was the earliest goal of US foreign policy, and remains a central one, partly for resources and markets, but also for broader ideological reasons. If the US could not control Latin America, it could not expect "to achieve a
successful order elsewhere in the world," Nixon's National Security Council concluded in 1971 while considering the paramount importance of destroying Chilean democracy. Analysts concluded that Allende "threatened American global interests by challenging
the whole ideological basis of American Cold War policy. It was the threat of a successful socialist state in Chile that could provide a model for other nations that caused concern and led to American opposition."The internal record makes it clear
that throughout the Cold War, a primary concern of US policy makers has been what Oxfam called "the threat of a good example," referring to Washington's dedication to destroying Nicaraguan democracy and independence in the 1980s.
Source: Hopes and Prospects, by Noam Chomsky, p. 37
Jun 1, 2010
Richard Nixon:
OpEd: Supported democracy when it fit strategic interests
The Nixon administration regarded control of Latin America as a necessary condition for establishing a "successful order elsewhere in the world," while devoting itself to barring a successful social democracy in Chile that could be a model for others.
In Nixon's own words, "Our main concern in Chile is the prospect that [Allende] can consolidate himself and the picture projected to the world will be his success. If we let the potential leaders in South American think they can move like
Chile and have it both ways, we will be in trouble. No impression should be permitted in Latin America that they can get away with this, that it's safe to go this way. All over the world it's too much the fashion to kick us around."
Even mainstream scholarship recognizes that Washington has supported democracy if and only if it contributes to strategic and economic interests, a policy that continues without change through all administrations, to the present.
Source: Hopes and Prospects, by Noam Chomsky, p.116
Jun 1, 2010
Page last updated: Jul 19, 2011