OT - Chomsky on "Imminent Crises"

Imminent Crises: Threats and Opportunities
by Noam Chomsky
Monthly Review
June 27, 2007

Regrettably, there are all too many candidates that qualify as
imminent and very serious crises. Several should be high on everyone's
agenda of concern, because they pose literal threats to human
survival: the increasing likelihood of a terminal nuclear war, and
environmental disaster, which may not be too far removed. However, I
would like to focus on narrower issues, those that are of greatest
concern in the West right now. I will be speaking primarily of the
United States, which I know best, and it is the most important case
because of its enormous power. But as far as I can ascertain, Europe
is not very different.

The area of greatest concern is the Middle East. There is nothing
novel about that. I often have to arrange talks years in advance. If I
am asked for a title, I suggest "The Current Crisis in the Middle
East." It has yet to fail. There's a good reason: the huge energy
resources of the region were recognized by Washington sixty years ago
as a "stupendous source of strategic power," the "strategically most
important area of the world," and "one of the greatest material prizes
in world history."1 Control over this stupendous prize has been a
primary goal of U.S. policy ever since, and threats to it have
naturally aroused enormous concern.

For years it was pretended that the threat was from the Russians, the
routine pretext for violence and subversion all over the world. In the
case of the Middle East, we do not have to consider this pretext,
since it was officially abandoned. When the Berlin Wall fell, the
first Bush administration released a new National Security Strategy,
explaining that everything would go as before but within a new
rhetorical framework. The massive military system is still necessary,
but now because of the "technological sophistication of third world
powers"-which at least comes closer to the truth-the primary threat,
worldwide, has been indigenous nationalism. The official document
explained further that the United States would maintain its
intervention forces aimed at the Middle East, where "the threat to our
interests" that required intervention "could not be laid at the
Kremlin's door," contrary to decades of fabrication.2 As is normal,
all of this passed without comment.

The most serious current problem in the minds of the population, by
far, is Iraq. And the easy winner in the competition for the country
that is the most feared is Iran, not because Iran really poses a
severe threat, but because of a drumbeat of government-media
propaganda. That is a familiar pattern. The most recent example is
Iraq. The invasion of Iraq was virtually announced in September 2002.
As we now know, the U.S.-British invasion was already underway in
secret. In that month, Washington initiated a huge propaganda
campaign, with lurid warnings by Condoleezza Rice and others that the
next message from Saddam Hussein would be a mushroom cloud in New York
City. Within a few weeks, the government-media propaganda barrage had
driven Americans completely off the international spectrum. Saddam may
have been despised almost everywhere, but it was only in the United
States that a majority of the population were terrified of what he
might do to them, tomorrow. Not surprisingly! , support for the war
correlated very closely with such fears. That has been achieved
before, in amazing ways during the Reagan years, and there is a long
and illuminating earlier history. But I will keep to the current
monster being crafted by the doctrinal system, after a few words about
Iraq.

There is a flood of commentary about Iraq, but very little reporting.
Journalists are mostly confined to fortified areas in Baghdad, or
embedded within the occupying army. That is not because they are
cowards or lazy, but because it is simply too dangerous to be anywhere
else. That has not been true in earlier wars. It is an astonishing
fact that the United States and Britain have had more trouble running
Iraq than the Nazis had in occupied Europe, or the Russians in their
East European satellites, where the countries were run by local
civilians and security forces, with the iron fist poised if anything
went wrong but usually in the background. In contrast, the United
States has been unable to establish an obedient client regime in Iraq,
under far easier conditions.

Putting aside doctrinal blinders, what should be done in Iraq? Before
answering, we should be clear about some basic principles. The major
principle is that an invader has no rights, only responsibilities. The
first responsibility is to pay reparations. The second responsibility
is to follow the will of the victims. There is actually a third
responsibility: to bring criminals to trial, but that obligation is so
remote from the imperial mentality of Western culture that I will put
it aside.

The responsibility to pay reparations to Iraqis goes far beyond the
crime of aggression and its terrible aftermath. The United States and
Britain have been torturing the population of Iraq for a long time. In
recent history, both governments strongly supported Saddam Hussein's
terrorist regime through the period of his worst crimes, and long
after the end of the war with Iran. Iran finally capitulated,
recognizing that it could not fight the United States, which was, by
then, openly participating in Saddam's aggression-something that
Iranians have surely not forgotten, even if Westerners have.
Dismissing history is always a convenient stance for those who hold
the clubs, but their victims usually prefer to pay attention to the
real world. After the Iran-Iraq war, Washington and London continued
to provide military equipment to their friend Saddam, including means
to develop weapons of mass destruction and delivery systems. Iraqi
nuclear engineers were even being brought to t! he United States for
instruction in developing nuclear weapons in 1989, long after Saddam's
worst atrocities and Iran's capitulation.

Immediately after the 1991 Gulf War, the United States and the United
Kingdom returned to their support for Saddam when they effectively
authorized him to use heavy military equipment to suppress a Shi'ite
uprising that might well have overthrown the tyrant. The reasons were
publicly explained. The New York Times reported that there was a
"strikingly unanimous view" among the United States and its allies,
Britain and Saudi Arabia, that "whatever the sins of the Iraqi leader,
he offered the West and the region a better hope for his country's
stability than did those who have suffered his repression"; the term
"stability" is a code word for "following orders."3 New York Times
chief diplomatic correspondent Thomas Friedman explained that "the
best of all worlds" for Washington would be an "iron-fisted military
junta" ruling Iraq just the way Saddam did. But lacking that option,
Washington had to settle for second-best: Saddam himself. An
unthinkable option-then and now-is that ! Iraqis should rule Iraq
independently of the United States.

Then followed the murderous sanctions regime imposed by the United
States and Britain, which killed hundreds of thousands of people,
devastated Iraqi civilian society, strengthened the tyrant, and forced
the population to rely on him for survival. The sanctions probably
saved Saddam from the fate of other vicious tyrants, some quite
comparable to him, who were overthrown from within despite strong
support from the United States and United Kingdom to the end of their
bloody rule: Ceausescu, Suharto, and quite a rogues gallery of others,
to which new names are being added regularly. Again, all of this is
boring ancient history for those who hold the clubs, but not for their
victims, or for people who prefer to understand the world. All of
those actions, and much more, call for reparations, on a massive
scale, and the responsibility extends to others as well. But the deep
moral-intellectual crisis of imperial culture prevents any thought of
such topics as these.

The second responsibility is to obey the will of the population.
British and U.S. polls provide sufficient evidence about that. The
most recent polls find that 87 percent of Iraqis want a "concrete
timeline for US withdrawal," up from 76 percent in 2005.4 If the
reports really mean Iraqis, as they say, that would imply that
virtually the entire population of Arab Iraq, where the U.S. and
British armies are deployed, wants a firm timetable for withdrawal. I
doubt that one would have found comparable figures in occupied Europe
under the Nazis, or Eastern Europe under Russian rule.

Bush-Blair and associates declare, however, that there can be no
timetable for withdrawal. That stand in part reflects the natural
hatred for democracy among the powerful, often accompanied by eloquent
calls for democracy. The calls for democracy moved to center stage
after the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, so a
new motive had to be invented for the invasion. The president
announced the doctrine to great acclaim in November 2003, at the
National Endowment for Democracy in Washington. He proclaimed that the
real reason for the invasion was not Saddam's weapons programs, as
Washington and London had insistently claimed, but rather Bush's
messianic mission to promote democracy in Iraq, the Middle East, and
elsewhere. The media and prominent scholars were deeply impressed,
relieved to discover that the "liberation of Iraq" is perhaps the
"most noble" war in history, as leading liberal commentators announced-
a sentiment echoed even by critics, who objected ! that the "noble
goal" may be beyond our means, and those to whom we are offering this
wonderful gift may be too backward to accept it. That conclusion was
confirmed a few days later by U.S. polls in Baghdad. Asked why the
United States invaded Iraq, some agreed with the new doctrine hailed
by Western intellectuals: 1 percent agreed that the goal was to
promote democracy. Another 5 percent said that the goal was to help
Iraqis.5 Most of the rest took for granted that the goals were the
obvious ones that are unmentionable in polite society-the strategic-
economic goals we readily attribute to enemies, as when Russia invaded
Afghanistan or Saddam invaded Kuwait, but are unmentionable when we
turn to ourselves.

But rejection of the popular will in Iraq goes far beyond the natural
fear of democracy on the part of the powerful. Simply consider the
policies that are likely to be pursued by an independent and more or
less democratic Iraq. Iraqis may have no love for Iran, but they would
doubtlessly prefer friendly relations with their powerful neighbor.
The Shi'ite majority already has ties to Iran and has been moving to
strengthen them. Furthermore, even limited sovereignty in Iraq has
encouraged efforts by the harshly repressed Shi'ite population across
the border in Saudi Arabia to gain basic rights and perhaps autonomy.
That is where most of Saudi Arabia's oil happens to be.

Such developments might lead to a loose Shi'ite alliance controlling
the world's major energy resources and independent of Washington, the
ultimate nightmare in Washington-except that it might get worse: the
alliance might strengthen its economic and possibly even military ties
with China. The United States can intimidate Europe: when Washington
shakes its fist, leading European business enterprises pull out of
Iran. But China has a three-thousand-year history of contempt for the
barbarians: they refuse to be intimidated.

That is the basic reason for Washington's strategic concerns with
regard to China: not that it is a military threat, but that it poses
the threat of independence. If that threat is unacceptable for small
countries like Cuba or Vietnam, it is certainly so for the heartland
of the most dynamic economic region in the world, the country that has
just surpassed Japan in possession of the world's major financial
reserves and is the world's fastest growing major economy. China's
economy is already about two-thirds the size of that of the United
States, by the correct measures, and if current growth rates persist,
it is likely to close that gap in about a decade-in absolute terms,
not per capita of course.

China is also the center of the Asian Energy Security Grid and the
Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which includes the Central Asian
countries, and just a few weeks ago, was joined by India, Iran, and
Pakistan as observers, soon probably members. India is undertaking
significant joint energy projects with China, and it might join the
Energy Security Grid. Iran may as well, if it comes to the conclusion
that Europe is so intimidated by the United States that it cannot act
independently. If Iran turns to the East, it will find willing
partners. A major conference on energy last September in Teheran
brought together government officials and scholars from Iran, China,
Pakistan, India, Russia, Egypt, Indonesia, Georgia, Venezuela, and
Germany, planning an extensive pipeline system for the entire region
and also more intensive development of energy resources. Bush's recent
trip to India, and his authorization of India's nuclear weapons
program, is part of the jockeying over how ! these major global forces
will crystallize. A sovereign and partially democratic Iraq could be
another contribution to developments that seriously threaten U.S.
global hegemony, so it is not at all surprising that Washington has
sought in every way to prevent such an outcome, joined by "the spear
carrier for the pax americana," as Blair's Britain is described by
Michael MccGwire in Britain's leading journal of international affairs.
6

If the United States were compelled to grant some degree of
sovereignty to Iraq, and any of these consequences would ensue,
Washington planners would be facing the collapse of one of their
highest foreign policy objectives since the Second World War, when the
United States replaced Britain as the world-dominant power: the need
to control "the strategically most important area of the world." What
has been central to planning is control, not access, an important
distinction. The United States followed the same policies long before
it relied on a drop of Middle East oil, and would continue to do so if
it relied on solar energy. Such control gives the United States "veto
power" over its industrial rivals, as explained in the early postwar
period by influential planners, and reiterated recently with regard to
Iraq: a successful conquest of Iraq would give the United States
"critical leverage" over its industrial rivals, Europe and Asia, as
pointed out by Zbigniew Brzezinski, an i! mportant figure in the
planning community. Vice President *** Cheney made the same point,
describing control over petroleum supplies as "tools of intimidation
and blackmail"-when used by others.7 He went on to urge the
dictatorships of Central Asia, Washington's models of democracy, to
agree to pipeline construction that ensures that the tools remain in
Washington's hands.

The thought is by no means original. At the dawn of the oil age almost
ninety years ago, Britain's first lord of the admiralty Walter Hume
Long explained that "if we secure the supplies of oil now available in
the world we can do what we like."8 Woodrow Wilson also understood
this crucial point. Wilson expelled the British from Venezuela, which
by 1928 had become the world's leading oil exporter, with U.S.
companies then placed in charge. To achieve this goal, Wilson and his
successors supported the vicious and corrupt dictator of Venezuela and
ensured that he would bar British concessions. Meanwhile the United
States continued to demand-and secure-U.S. oil rights in the Middle
East, where the British and French were in the lead.

We might note that these events illustrate the actual meaning of the
"Wilsonian idealism" admired by Western intellectual culture, and also
provide the real meaning of "free trade" and the "open door."
Sometimes that is even officially acknowledged. When the post-Second
World War global order was being shaped in Washington, a State
Department memorandum on U.S. petroleum policy called for preserving
absolute U.S. control of Western hemisphere resources "coupled with
insistence upon the Open Door principle of equal opportunity for
United States companies in new areas."9 That is a useful illustration
of "really existing free market doctrine": What we have, we keep,
closing the door to others; what we do not yet have, we take, under
the principle of the Open Door. All of this illustrates the one really
significant theory of international relations, the maxim of
Thucydides: the strong do as they can, and the weak suffer as they
must.

With regard to Iraq today, talk about exit strategies means very
little unless these realities are confronted. How Washington planners
will deal with these problems is far from clear. And they face similar
problems elsewhere. Intelligence projections for the new millennium
were that the United States would control Middle East oil as a matter
of course, but would itself rely on more stable Atlantic Basin
reserves: West African dictatorships' and the Western hemisphere's.
But Washington's postwar control of South America, from Venezuela to
Argentina, is seriously eroding. The two major instruments of control
have been violence and economic strangulation, but each weapon is
losing its efficacy. The latest attempt to sponsor a military coup was
in 2002, in Venezuela, but the United States had to back down when the
government it helped install was quickly overthrown by popular
resistance, and there was turmoil in Latin America, where democracy is
taken much more seriously than in! the West and overthrow of a
democratically elected government is no longer accepted quietly.
Economic controls are also eroding. South American countries are
paying off their debts to the IMF-basically an offshoot of the U.S.
Treasury department. More frightening yet to Washington, these
countries are being aided by Venezuela. The president of Argentina
announced that the country would "rid itself of the IMF." Rigorous
adherence to IMF rules had led to economic disaster, from which the
country recovered by radically violating the rules. Brazil too had rid
itself of the IMF, and Bolivia probably will as well, again aided by
Venezuela. U.S. economic controls are seriously weakening.

Washington's main concern is Venezuela, the leading oil producer in
the Western hemisphere. The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that
its reserves might be greater than Saudi Arabia's if the price of oil
stays high enough for exploitation of its expensive extra-heavy oil to
become profitable. Extreme U.S. hostility and subversion has
accelerated Venezuela's interest in diversifying exports and
investment, and China is more than willing to accept the opportunity,
as it is with other resource-rich Latin American exporters. The
largest gas reserves in South America are in Bolivia, which is now
following much the same path as Venezuela. Both countries pose a
problem for Washington in other respects. They have popularly elected
governments. Venezuela leads Latin America in support for the elected
government, increasing sharply in the past few years under Chávez. He
is bitterly hated in the United States because of his independence and
enormous popular support. Bolivia just had! a democratic election of a
kind next to inconceivable in the West. There were serious issues that
the population understood very well, and there was active
participation of the general population, who elected someone from
their own ranks, from the indigenous majority. Democracy is always
frightening to power centers, particularly when it goes too far beyond
mere form and involves actual substance.

Commentary on what is happening reveals the nature of the fears.
London's Financial Times warned that President Evo Morales of Bolivia
is becoming increasingly "authoritarian" and "undemocratic." This is a
serious concern to Western powers, who are dedicated to freedom and
democracy everywhere. The proof of his authoritarian stance and
departure from democratic principles is that he followed the will of
95 percent of the population and nationalized Bolivia's gas resources,
and is also gaining popularity by cutting public salaries and
eliminating corruption. Morales's policies have come to resemble the
frightening leader of Venezuela. As if the popularity of Chávez's
elected government was not proof enough that he is an anti-democratic
dictator, he is attempting to extend to Bolivia the same programs he
is instituting in Venezuela: helping "Bolivia's drive to stamp out
illiteracy and pay[ing] the wages of hundreds of Cuban doctors who
have been sent to work there" among the p! oor, to quote the Financial
Times' lament.10

The latest Bush administration's National Security Strategy, released
March 2006, describes China as the greatest long-term threat to U.S.
global dominance. The threat is not military, but economic. The
document warns that Chinese leaders are not only "expanding trade, but
acting as if they can somehow 'lock up' energy supplies around the
world or seek to direct markets rather than opening them up."11 In the
U.S.-China meetings in Washington a few weeks ago, President Bush
warned President Hu Jintao against trying to "lock up" global
supplies. Bush condemned China's reliance on oil from Sudan, Burma,
and Iran, accusing China of opposition to free trade and human rights-
unlike Washington, which imports only from pure democracies that
worship human rights, like Equatorial Guinea, one of the most vicious
African dictatorships; Colombia, which has by far the worst human
rights record in Latin America; Central Asian states; and other
paragons of virtue. No respectable person woul! d accuse Washington of
"locking up" global supplies when it pursues its traditional "open
door policy" and outright aggression to ensure that it dominates
global energy supplies, firmly holding "the tools of intimidation and
blackmail." It is interesting, perhaps, that none of this elicits
ridicule in the West, or even notice.

The lead story in the New York Times on the Bush-Hu meeting reported
that "China's appetite for oil also affects its stance on Iran....The
issue [of China's effort to 'lock up' global supplies] is likely to
come to a particular head over Iran," where China's state-owned oil
giant signed a $70 billion deal to develop Iran's huge Yadavaran oil
field.12 That's a serious matter, compounded by Chinese interference
even in Saudi Arabia, a U.S. client state since the British were
expelled during the Second World War. This relationship now threatened
by growing economic and even military ties between China and the
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, now China's largest trading partner in West
Asia and North Africa-perhaps further proof of China's lack of concern
for democracy and human rights. When President Hu visited Washington,
he was denied a state dinner, in a calculated insult. He cheerfully
reciprocated by going directly to Saudi Arabia, a serious slap in the
face to Washington that was! surely not misunderstood.

This is the barest sketch of the relevant global context over what to
do in Iraq. But these critical matters are scarcely mentioned in the
ongoing debate about the problem of greatest concern to Americans.
They are barred by a rigid doctrine. It is unacceptable to attribute
rational strategic-economic thinking to one's own state, which must be
guided by benign ideals of freedom, justice, peace, and other
wonderful things. That leads back again to a very severe crisis in
Western intellectual culture, not of course unique in history, but
with dangerous portent.

We can be confident that these matters, though excluded from public
discussion, engage the attention of planners. Governments typically
regard their populations as a major enemy, and keep them in ignorance
of what is happening to them and planned for them. Nevertheless, we
can speculate. One reasonable speculation is that Washington planners
may be seeking to inspire secessionist movements that the United
States can then "defend" against the home country. In Iran, the main
oil resources are in the Arab areas adjacent to the Gulf, Iran's
Khuzestan-and sure enough, there is now an Ahwazi liberation movement
of unknown origin, claiming unspecified rights of autonomy. Nearby,
Iraq and the gulf states provide a base for U.S. military
intervention.

The U.S. military presence in Latin America is increasing
substantially. In Venezuela, oil resources are concentrated in Zulia
province near Colombia, the one reliable U.S. land base in the region,
a province that is anti-Chávez and already has an autonomy movement,
again of unknown origins. In Bolivia, the gas resources are in richer
eastern areas dominated by elites of European descent that bitterly
oppose the government elected by the indigenous majority, and have
threatened to secede. Nearby Paraguay is another one of the few
remaining reliable land bases for the U.S. military. Total military
and police assistance now exceeds economic and social aid, a dramatic
reversal of the pattern during Cold War years. The U.S. military now
has more personnel in Latin America than most key civilian federal
agencies combined, again a sharp change from earlier years. The new
mission is to combat "radical populism"-the term that is regularly
used for independent nationalism that does n! ot obey orders. Military
training is being shifted from the State Department to the Pentagon,
freeing it from human rights and democracy conditionality under
congressional supervision-which was always weak, but had some effects
that constrained executive violence.

The United States is a global power, and its policies should not be
viewed in isolation, any more than those of the British Empire. Going
back half a century, the Eisenhower administration identified three
major global problems: Indonesia, North Africa, and the Middle East-
all oil producers, all Islamic. In all cases, the concern was
independent nationalism. The end of French rule in Algeria resolved
the North African problem. In Indonesia, the 1965 Suharto coup removed
the threat of independence with a huge massacre, which the CIA
compared to the crimes of Hitler, Stalin, and Mao. The "staggering
mass slaughter," as the New York Times described it, was greeted in
the West with unconcealed euphoria and relief.13 The military coup
destroyed the only mass-based political party, a party of the poor,
slaughtered huge numbers of landless peasants, and threw the country
open to Western exploitation of its rich resources, while the large
majority tries to survive in misery. Two yea! rs later, the major
problem in the Middle East was resolved with Israel's destruction of
the Nasser regime, hated by the United States and Britain, which
feared that secular nationalist forces might seek to direct the vast
energy resources of the region to internal development. A few years
earlier, U.S. intelligence had warned of popular feelings that oil is
a "national patrimony" exploited by the West by unjust arrangements
imposed by force. Israel's service to the United States, its Saudi
ally, and the energy corporations confirmed the judgment of U.S.
intelligence in 1958 that a "logical corollary" of opposition to Arab
nationalism is reliance on Israel as "the only strong pro-Western
power in the Middle East," apart from Turkey, which established a
close military alliance with Israel in 1958, within the U.S. strategic
framework.14

The U.S.-Israeli alliance, unique in world affairs, dates from
Israel's 1967 military conquests, reinforced in 1970 when Israel
barred possible Syrian intervention in Jordan to protect Palestinians
who were being slaughtered during Black September. Such intervention
by Syria was regarded in Washington as a threat to its ally Jordan
and, more important, to the oil-producers that were Washington's
clients. U.S. aid to Israel roughly quadrupled. The pattern is fairly
consistent since, extending to secondary Israeli services to U.S.
power outside the Middle East, particularly in Latin America and
southern Africa. The system of domination has worked quite well for
the people who matter. Energy corporation profits are breaking all
records. High-tech (including military) industry has lucrative ties
with Israel, as do the major financial institutions, and Israel serves
virtually as an offshore military base and provider of equipment and
training. One may argue that other policies wo! uld have been more
beneficial to the concentrations of domestic power that largely
determine policy, but they seem to find these arrangements quite
tolerable. If they did not, they could easily move to terminate them.
And in fact, when there are conflicts between U.S. and Israeli state
power, Israel naturally backs down; exports of military technology to
China are a recent example, when the Bush administration went out of
its way to humiliate Israel after it was initially reluctant to follow
the orders of what Israeli commentator Aluf Benn calls "the boss-man
called 'partner.'"

Let us turn next to Iran and its nuclear programs. Until 1979,
Washington strongly supported these programs. During those years, of
course, a brutal tyrant installed by the U.S.-U.K. military coup that
overthrew the Iranian parliamentary government ruled Iran. Today, the
standard claim is that Iran has no need for nuclear power, and
therefore must be pursuing a secret weapons program. Henry Kissinger
explained that "For a major oil producer such as Iran, nuclear energy
is a wasteful use of resources." As secretary of state thirty years
ago, Kissinger held that "introduction of nuclear power will both
provide for the growing needs of Iran's economy and free remaining oil
reserves for export or conversion to petrochemicals," and the United
States acted to assist the Shah's efforts. *** Cheney, Donald
Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz, the leading planners of the second Bush
administration, worked hard to provide the Shah with a "complete
'nuclear fuel cycle'-reactors powered by an! d regenerating fissile
materials on a self-sustaining basis. That is precisely the ability
the current administration is trying to prevent Iran from acquiring
today." U.S. universities were arranging to train Iranian nuclear
engineers, doubtless with Washington's approval, if not initiative;
including my own university, the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, for example, despite overwhelming student opposition.
Kissinger was asked about his reversal, and he responded with his
usual engaging frankness: "They were an allied country."15 So
therefore they had a genuine need for nuclear energy, pre-1979, but
have no such need today.

The Iranian nuclear programs, as far as is known, fall within its
rights under Article IV of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which
grants non-nuclear states the right to produce fuel for nuclear
energy. The Bush administration argues, however, that Article IV
should be strengthened, and I think that makes sense. When the NPT
came into force in 1970, there was a considerable gap between
producing fuel for energy and for nuclear weapons. But with
contemporary technology, the gap has been narrowed. However, any such
revision of Article IV would have to ensure unimpeded access for
nonmilitary use, in accord with the initial bargain. A reasonable
proposal was put forth by Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International
Atomic Energy Agency: that all production and processing of weapon-
usable material be under international control, with "assurance that
legitimate would-be users could get their supplies."16 That should be
the first step, he proposed, towards fully implementing th! e 1993 UN
resolution calling for a Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty (called
FISSBAN, for short), which bans production of fissile materials by
individual states. ElBaradei's proposal was dead in the water. The
U.S. political leadership, surely in its current stance, would never
agree to this delegation of sovereignty. To date, ElBaradei's proposal
has been accepted by only one state, to my knowledge: Iran, last
February. That suggests one way to resolve the current crisis-in fact,
a far more serious crisis: continued production of fissile materials
by individual states is likely to doom humanity to destruction.

Washington also strenuously opposes a verifiable FISSBAN treaty,
regarded by specialists as the "most fundamental nuclear arms control
proposal," according to Princeton arms control specialist Frank von
Hippel.17 Despite U.S. opposition, in November 2004, the UN
Disarmament Committee voted in favor of a verifiable FISSBAN. The vote
was 147 to 1, with 2 abstentions: Israel, which is reflexive, and
Britain, which is more interesting. British ambassador John Freeman
explained that Britain supported the treaty, but could not vote for
this version, because he said it "divides the international community"-
divided it 147 to 1.18 A later vote in the full General Assembly was
179 to 2, Israel and Britain again abstaining. The United States was
joined by Palau.

We gain some insight into the ranking of survival of the species among
the priorities of the leadership of the hegemonic power and its spear
carrier.

In 2004, the European Union (EU) and Iran reached an agreement on
nuclear issues: Iran agreed to temporarily suspend its legal
activities of uranium enrichment, and the EU agreed to provide Iran
with "firm commitments on security issues." As everyone understands,
the phrase "security issues" refers to the very credible U.S.-Israeli
threats and preparations to attack Iran. These threats, a serious
violation of the UN Charter, are no small matter for a country that
has been tortured for fifty years without a break by the global
superpower, which now occupies the countries on Iran's borders, not to
speak of the client state that is the regional superpower.

Iran lived up to its side of the bargain, but the EU, under U.S.
pressure, rejected its commitments. Iran finally abandoned the bargain
as well. The preferred version in the West is that Iran broke the
agreement, proving that it is a serious threat to world order.

In May 2003, Iran had offered to discuss the full range of security
matters with the United States, which refused, preferring to follow
the same course it did with North Korea. On taking office in January
2001, the Bush administration withdrew the "no hostile intent"
condition of earlier agreements and proceeded to issue serious
threats, while also abandoning promises to provide fuel oil and a
nuclear reactor. In response, North Korea returned to developing
nuclear weapons, the roots of another current crisis. All predictable,
and predicted.

There are ways to mitigate and probably end these crises. The first is
to call off the threats that are virtually urging Iran (and North
Korea) to develop nuclear weapons. One of Israel's leading military
historians, Martin van Creveld, wrote that if Iran is not developing
nuclear weapons, then they are "crazy," immediately after Washington
demonstrated that it will attack anyone it likes as long as they are
known to be defenseless.19 So the first step towards ending the crisis
would be to call off the threats that are likely to lead potential
targets to develop a deterrent-where nuclear weapons or terror are the
only viable options.

A second step would be to join with other efforts to reintegrate Iran
into the global economy. A third step would be to join the rest of the
world in accepting a verifiable FISSBAN treaty, and to join Iran in
accepting ElBaradei's proposal, or something similar-and I repeat that
the issue here extends far beyond Iran, and reaches the level of human
survival. A fourth step would be to live up to Article VI of the NPT,
which obligates the nuclear states to take "good faith" efforts to
eliminate nuclear weapons, a binding legal obligation, as the World
Court determined. None of the nuclear states have lived up to that
obligation, but the United States is far in the lead in violating it-
again, a very serious threat to human survival. Even steps in these
directions would mitigate the upcoming crisis with Iran. Above all, it
is important to heed the words of Mohamed ElBaradei: "There is no
military solution to this situation. It is inconceivable. The only
durable solution is a neg! otiated solution."20 And it is within
reach. Similar to the Iraq war: a war against Iran appears to be
opposed by the military and U.S. intelligence, but might well be
undertaken by the civilian planners of the Bush administration:
Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, and a few others, an unusually dangerous
collection.

There is wide agreement among prominent strategic analysts that the
threat of nuclear war is severe and increasing, and that the threat
can be eliminated by measures that are known and in fact legally
obligatory. If such measures are not taken, they warn that "a nuclear
exchange is ultimately inevitable," that we may be facing "an
appreciable risk of ultimate doom," an "Armageddon of our own
making."21 The threats are well understood, and they are being
consciously enhanced. The Iraq invasion is only the most blatant
example.

Clinton's military and intelligence planners had called for
"dominating the space dimension of military operations to protect U.S.
interests and investment," much in the way armies and navies did in
earlier years, but now with a sole hegemon, which must develop "space-
based strike weapons [enabling] the application of precision force
from, to, and through space." Such measures will be needed, they said,
because "globalization of the world economy" will lead to a "widening
economic divide" along with "deepening economic stagnation, political
instability, and cultural alienation," hence unrest and violence among
the "have-nots," much of it directed against the United States. The
United States must therefore be ready to plan for a "precision strike
from space [as a] counter to the worldwide proliferation of WMD" by
unruly elements.22 That is a likely consequence of the recommended
military programs, just as a "widening divide" is the anticipated
consequence of the specific vers! ion of international integration
that is misleadingly called "globalization" and "free trade" in the
doctrinal system.

A word should be added about these notions. Both are terms of
propaganda, not description. The term "globalization" is used for a
specific form of international economic integration, designed-not
surprisingly-in the interests of the designers: multinational
corporations and the few powerful states to which they are closely
linked. An opposing form of globalization is being pursued by groups
that are far more representative of the world's population, the mass
global justice movements, which originated in the South but now have
been joined by northern popular organizations and meet annually in the
World Social Forum, which has spawned many regional and local social
forums, concentrating on their own issues though within the same
overarching framework. The global justice movements are an entirely
new phenomenon, perhaps the seeds of the kind of international that
has been the hope of the workers movements and the left since their
modern origins. They are called "antiglobalizati! on" in the reigning
doctrinal systems, because they seek a form of globalization oriented
towards the interests of people, not concentrated economic power-and
unfortunately, they have often adopted this ridiculous terminology.

Official globalization is committed to so-called neoliberalism, also a
highly misleading term: the regime is not new, and it is not liberal.
Neoliberalism is essentially the policy imposed by force on the
colonies since the eighteenth century, while the currently wealthy
countries radically violated these rules, with extensive reliance on
state intervention in the economy and resort to measures that are now
banned in the international economic order. That was true of England
and the countries that followed its path of protectionism and state
intervention, including Japan, the one country of the South that
escaped colonization and the one country that industrialized. These
facts are widely recognized by economic historians.

A comparison of the United States and Egypt in the early nineteenth
century is one of many enlightening illustrations of the decisive role
of sovereignty and massive state intervention in economic development.
Having freed itself from British rule, the United States was able to
adopt British-style measures of state intervention, and developed.
Meanwhile British power was able to bar anything of the sort in Egypt,
joining with France to impose Lord Palmerston's doctrine that "No
ideas therefore of fairness towards Mehemet [Ali] ought to stand in
the way of such great and paramount interests" as barring competition
in the eastern Mediterranean.23 Palmerston expressed his "hate" for
the "ignorant barbarian" who dared to undertake economic development.
Historical memories resonate when, today, Britain and France, fronting
for the United States, demand that Iran suspend all activities related
to nuclear and missile programs, including research and development,
so that nuclear ene! rgy is barred and the country that is probably
under the greatest threat of any in the world has no deterrent to
attack-attack by the righteous, that is. We might also recall that
France and Britain played the crucial role in development of Israel's
nuclear arsenal. Imperial sensibilities are delicate indeed.

Had it enjoyed sovereignty, Egypt might have undergone an industrial
revolution in the nineteenth century. It shared many of the advantages
of the United States, except independence, which allowed the United
States to impose very high tariffs to bar superior British goods
(textiles, steel, and others). The United States in fact became the
world's leader in protectionism until the Second World War, when its
economy so overwhelmed anyone else's that "free competition" was
tolerable. After the war, massive reliance on the dynamic state sector
became a central component of the U.S. economy, even more than it had
been before, continuing right to the present. And the United States
remains committed to protectionism, when useful. The most extreme
protectionism was during the Reagan years-accompanied, as usual, by
eloquent odes to liberalism, for others. Reagan virtually doubled
protective barriers, and also turned to the usual device, the
Pentagon, to overcome management failures a! nd "reindustrialize
America," the slogan of the business press. Furthermore, high levels
of protectionism are built into the so-called "free trade agreements,"
designed to protect the powerful and privileged, in the traditional
manner.

The same was true of Britain's flirtation with "free trade" a century
earlier, when 150 years of protectionism and state intervention had
made Britain by far the world's most powerful economy, free trade
seemed an option, given that the playing field was "tilted" in the
right direction, to adapt the familiar metaphor. But the British still
hedged their bets. They continued to rely on protected markets, state
intervention, and also devices not considered by economic historians.
One such market was the world's most spectacular narcotrafficking
enterprise, designed to break into the China market, and also
producing profits that financed the Royal Navy, the administration of
conquered India, and the purchase of U.S. cotton-the fuel of the
industrial revolution. U.S. cotton production was also based on
radical state intervention: slavery, virtual extermination of the
native population, and military conquest-almost half of Mexico, to
mention one case relevant to current news. When! Britain could no
longer compete with Japan, it closed off the empire in 1932, followed
by other imperial powers, a crucial part of the background for the
Second World War. The truth about free trade and economic development
has only a limited resemblance to the doctrines professed.

Throughout modern history, democracy and development have had a common
enemy: the loss of sovereignty. In a world of states, it is true that
decline of sovereignty entails decline of hope for democracy, and
decline in ability to conduct social and economic policy. That in turn
harms development, a conclusion well confirmed by centuries of
economic history. The work of economic historian M. Shahid Alam is
particularly enlightening in this respect. In current terminology, the
imposed regimes are called neoliberal, so it is fair to say that the
common enemy of democracy and development is neoliberalism. With
regard to development, one can debate causality, because the factors
in economic growth are so poorly understood. But correlations are
reasonably clear. The countries that have most rigorously observed
neoliberal principles, as in Latin America and elsewhere, have
experienced a sharp deterioration of macroeconomic indicators as
compared with earlier years. Those that have i! gnored the principles,
as in East Asia, have enjoyed rapid growth. That neoliberalism harms
democracy is understandable. Virtually every feature of the neoliberal
package, from privatization to freeing financial flows, undermines
democracy for clear and well-known reasons.

The crises we face are real and imminent, and in each case means are
available to overcome them. The first step is understanding, then
organization and appropriate action. This is the path that has often
been followed in the past, bringing about a much better world and
leaving a legacy of comparative freedom and privilege, for some at
least, which can be the basis for moving on. Failure to do so is
almost certain to lead to grim consequences, even the end of biology's
only experiment with higher intelligence.

.