Dominance and Its Dilemmas

7/31/2019 Dominance and Its Dilemmas

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Dominance and its Dilemmas*by Noam Chomsky; October 10, 2003

By The past year has been a momentous one in world affairs. In the normalrhythm, the pattern was set in September, a month marked by severalimportant and closely related events. The most powerful state in historyannounced a new National Security Strategy asserting that it will maintainglobal hegemony permanently: any challenge will be blocked by force, thedimension in which the US reigns supreme. At the same time, the wardrums began to beat to mobilize the population for an invasion of Iraq, whichwould be "the first test [of the doctrine], not the last," the New York Timesobserved after the invasion, "the petri dish in which this experiment in pre-emptive policy grew." And the campaign opened for the mid-term

congressional elections, which would determine whether the administrationwould be able to carry forward its radical international and domestic agenda.

The new "imperial grand strategy," as it was aptly termed at once by JohnIkenberry, presents the US as "a revisionist state seeking to parlay itsmomentary advantages into a world order in which it runs the show," a"unipolar world" in which "no state or coalition could ever challenge" it as"global leader, protector, and enforcer. These policies are fraught withdanger even for the US itself, he warned, joining many others in the foreignpolicy elite.

What is to be "protected" is US power and the interests it represents, not theworld, which vigorously opposed the conception. Within a few months, pollsrevealed that fear of the United States had reached remarkable heights,along with distrust of the political leadership, or worse. As for the test case,an international Gallup poll in December, barely noted in the US, foundvirtually no support for Washington's announced plans for a war carried out"unilaterally by America and its allies": in effect, the US-UK "coalition."

The basic principles of the imperial grand strategy trace back to the early

days of World War II, and have been reiterated frequently since. Evenbefore the US entered the war, planners and analysts concluded that in thepostwar world the US would seek "to hold unquestioned power," acting toensure the "limitation of any exercise of sovereignty" by states that mightinterfere with its global designs. They outlined "an integrated policy toachieve military and economic supremacy for the United States" in a "Grand

Area," to include at a minimum the Western Hemisphere, the former British


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empire, and the Far East, later extended to as much of Eurasia as possiblewhen it became clear that Germany would be defeated.

Twenty years later, elder statesman Dean Acheson instructed the AmericanSociety of International Law that no "legal issue" arises when the US

responds to a challenge to its "power, position, and prestige." He wasreferring specifically to Washington's post-Bay of Pigs economic warfareagainst Cuba, but was surely aware of Kennedy's terrorist campaign aimedat "regime change," a significant factor in bringing the world close to nuclearwar only a few months earlier, and resumed immediately after the Cubanmissile crisis was resolved.

A similar doctrine was invoked by the Reagan administration when itrejected World Court jurisdiction over its attack against Nicaragua. StateDepartment Legal Adviser Abraham Sofaer explained that most of the world

cannot "be counted on to share our view" and "often opposes the UnitedStates on important international questions." Accordingly, we must "reserveto ourselves the power to determine" which matters fall "essentially withinthe domestic jurisdiction of the United States" -- in this case, the actions thatthe Court condemned as the "unlawful use of force" against Nicaragua; inlay terms, international terrorism.

Their successors continued to make it clear that the US reserved the right toact "unilaterally when necessary," including "unilateral use of military power"to defend such vital interests as "ensuring uninhibited access to key

markets, energy supplies and strategic resources."

Even this small sample illustrates the narrowness of the planning spectrum.Nevertheless, the alarm bells sounded in September 2002 were justified.

Acheson and Sofaer were describing policy guidelines, and within elitecircles. Other cases may be regarded as worldly-wise reiterations of themaxim of Thucydides that "large nations do what they wish, while smallnations accept what they must." In contrast, Cheney-Rumsfeld-Powell andtheir associates are officially declaring an even more extreme policy. Theyintend to be heard, and took action at once to put the world on notice that

they mean what they say. That is a significant difference.

The imperial grand strategy is based on the assumption that the US cangain "full spectrum dominance" by military programs that dwarf those of anypotential coalition, and have useful side effects. One is to socialize the costsand risks of the private economy of the future, a traditional contribution ofmilitary spending and the basis of much of the "new economy." Another is tocontribute to a fiscal train wreck that will, it is presumed, "create powerful


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pressures to cut federal spending, and thus, perhaps, enable theAdministration to accomplish its goal of rolling back the New Deal," adescription of the Reagan program that is now being extended to far moreambitious plans.

As the grand strategy was announced on September 17, the administration"abandoned an international effort to strengthen the Biological WeaponsConvention against germ warfare," advising allies that further discussionswould have to be delayed for four years. A month later, the UN Committeeon Disarmament adopted a resolution that called for stronger measures toprevent militarization of space, recognizing this to be "a grave danger forinternational peace and security," and another that reaffirmed "the 1925Geneva Protocol prohibiting the use of poisonous gases and bacteriologicalmethods of warfare." Both passed unanimously, with two abstentions: theUS and Israel. US abstention amounts to a veto: typically, a double veto,

banning the events from reporting and history.

A few weeks later, the Space Command released plans to go beyond US"control" of space for military purposes to "ownership," which is to bepermanent, in accord with the Security Strategy. Ownership of space is "keyto our nation's military effectiveness," permitting "instant engagementanywhere in the world A viable prompt global strike capability, whethernuclear or non-nuclear, will allow the US to rapidly strike high-payoff,difficult-to-defeat targets from stand-off ranges and produce the desiredeffect [and] to provide warfighting commanders the ability to rapidly deny,

delay, deceive, disrupt, destroy, exploit and neutralize targets inhours/minutes rather than weeks/days even when US and allied forces havea limited forward presence," thus reducing the need for overseas bases thatregularly arouse local antagonism.

Similar plans had been outlined in a May 2002 Pentagon planningdocument, partially leaked, which called for a strategy of "forwarddeterrence" in which missiles launched from space platforms would be ableto carry out almost instant "unwarned attacks." Military analyst William Arkincomments that "no target on the planet or in space would be immune to

American attack. The US could strike without warning whenever andwherever a threat was perceived, and it would be protected by missiledefenses." Hypersonic drones would monitor and disrupt targets.Surveillance systems are to provide the ability "to track, record and analyzethe movement of every vehicle in a foreign city." The world is to be left atmercy of US attack at will, without warning or credible pretext. The planshave no remote historical parallel. Even more fanciful ones are underdevelopment.


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These moves reflect the disdain of the administration for international lawand institutions, or arms control measures, dismissed with barely a word inthe National Security Strategy; and its commitment to an extremist versionof long-standing doctrine.

In accord with these principles, Washington informed the UN that it can be"relevant" by endorsing Washington's plans for invading Iraq, or it can be adebating society. The US has the "sovereign right to take military action,"Colin Powell informed the January 2003 Davos meeting of the WorldEconomic Forum, which also strenuously opposed Washington's war plans."When we feel strongly about something we will lead," Powell informedthem, even if no one is following us.

Bush and Blair underscored their contempt for international law and

institutions at their Azores Summit on the eve of the invasion. They issuedan ultimatum - not to Iraq, but to the Security Council: capitulate, or we willinvade without your meaningless seal of approval. And we will do sowhether or not Saddam Hussein and his family leave the country. Thecrucial principle is that the US must effectively rule Iraq.

Since the mid-1940s, Washington has regarded the Gulf as "a stupendoussource of strategic power, and one of the greatest material prizes in worldhistory" - in Eisenhower's words, the "most strategically important area ofthe world" because of its "strategic position and resources." Control over the

region and its resources remains a policy imperative. After taking over acore oil producer, and presumably acquiring its first reliable military bases atthe heart of the world's major energy-producing system, Washington willdoubtless be happy to establish an "Arab faade," to borrow the term of theBritish during their day in the sun. Formal democracy will be fine, but only ifit is of the submissive kind tolerated in Washington's "backyard," at least ifhistory and current practice are any guide.

To fail in this endeavor would take real talent. Even under far less propitiouscircumstances, military occupations have commonly been successful. It

would be hard not to improve on a decade of murderous sanctions thatvirtually destroyed a society that was, furthermore, in the hands of a vicioustyrant who ranked with others supported by the current incumbents inWashington: Romania's Ceausescu, to mention only one of an impressiverogues gallery. Resistance in Iraq would have no meaningful outsidesupport, unlike Nazi-occupied Europe or Eastern Europe under the Russianyoke, to take recent examples of unusually brutal states that neverthelessassembled an ample array of collaborators and achieved substantial


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success within their domains.

The grand strategy authorizes Washington to carry out "preventive war":Preventive, not pre-emptive. Whatever the justifications for pre-emptive warmay sometimes be, they do not hold for preventive war, particularly as that

concept is interpreted by its current enthusiasts: the use of military force toeliminate an invented or imagined threat, so that even the term "preventive"is too charitable. Preventive war is, very simply, the "supreme crime"condemned at Nuremberg.

That is widely understood. As the US invaded Iraq, Arthur Schlesinger wrotethat Bush's grand strategy is "alarmingly similar to the policy that imperialJapan employed at Pearl Harbor, on a date which, as an earlier Americanpresident said it would, lives in infamy." FDR was right, he added, "but todayit is we Americans who live in infamy." It is no surprise that "the global wave

of sympathy that engulfed the United States after 9/11 has given way to aglobal wave of hatred of American arrogance and militarism," and the beliefthat Bush is "a greater threat to peace than Saddam Hussein."

For the political leadership, mostly recycled from more reactionary sectors ofthe Reagan-Bush I administrations, "the global wave of hatred" is not aparticular problem. They want to be feared, not loved. They understand aswell as their establishment critics that their actions increase the risk ofproliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and terror. But that toois not a major problem. Higher in the scale of priorities are the goals of

establishing global hegemony and implementing their domestic agenda:dismantling the progressive achievements that have been won by popularstruggle over the past century, and institutionalizing these radical changesso that recovering them will be no easy task.

It is not enough for a hegemonic power to declare an official policy. It mustestablish it as a "new norm of international law" by exemplary action.Distinguished commentators may then explain that law is a flexible livinginstrument, so that the new norm is now available as a guide to action. It isunderstood that only those with the guns can establish "norms" and modify

international law.

The selected target must meet several conditions. It must be defenseless,important enough to be worth the trouble, and an imminent threat to oursurvival and ultimate evil. Iraq qualified on all counts. The first two conditionsare obvious. For the third, it suffices to repeat the orations of Bush, Blair,and their colleagues: the dictator "is assembling the world's most dangerousweapons [in order to] dominate, intimidate or attack"; and he "has already


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used them on whole villages leaving thousands of his own citizens dead,blind or transfigured.If this is not evil then evil has no meaning."

President Bush's eloquent denunciation surely rings true. And those whocontributed to enhancing evil should certainly not enjoy impunity: among

them, the speaker of these lofty words and his current associates, and thosewho joined them in the years when they were supporting the man of ultimateevil long after he had committed these terrible crimes and won the war withIran, with decisive US help. We must continue to support him because of ourduty to help US exporters, the Bush I administration explained. It isimpressive to see how easy it is for political leaders, while recounting themonster's worst crimes, to suppress the crucial words: "with our help,because we don't care about such matters." Support shifted to denunciationas soon as their friend committed his first authentic crime: disobeying (orperhaps misunderstanding) orders by invading Kuwait. Punishment was

severe -- for his subjects. The tyrant escaped unscathed, and his grip on thetortured population was further strengthened by the sanctions regime thenimposed by his former allies.

Also easy to suppress are the reasons why Washington returned to supportfor Saddam immediately after the Gulf war as he crushed rebellions thatmight have overthrown him. The chief diplomatic correspondent of the NewYork Times explained that "the best of all worlds" for Washington would be"an iron-fisted Iraqi junta without Saddam Hussein," but since that goalseems unattainable, we must be satisfied with second best. The rebels

failed because Washington and its allies held that "whatever the sins of theIraqi leader, he offered the West and the region a better hope for hiscountry's stability than did those who have suffered his repression." All ofthis is suppressed in the commentary on the mass graves of the victims ofSaddam's US-authorized paroxysm of terror, crimes that are now offered as

justification for the war on "moral grounds." It was all known in 1991, butignored for reasons of state: successful rebellion would have left Iraq in thehands of Iraqis.

Within the US, a reluctant domestic population had to be whipped to a

proper mood of war fever, another traditional problem.. From earlySeptember 2002, grim warnings were issued about the threat Saddamposed to the United States and his links to al-Qaeda, with broad hints thathe was involved in the 9-11 attacks. Many of the charges "dangled in front of[the media] failed the laugh test," the editor of the Bulletin of AtomicScientists commented, "but the more ridiculous [they were,] the more themedia strove to make whole-hearted swallowing of them a test ofpatriotism."


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As often in the past, the propaganda assault had at least short-term effects.Within weeks, a majority of Americans came to regard Saddam Hussein asan imminent threat to the US. Soon almost half believed that Iraq wasbehind the 9/11 terror. Support for the war correlated with these beliefs. The

propaganda campaign proved just enough to give the administration a baremajority in the mid-term elections, as voters put aside their immediateconcerns and huddled under the umbrella of power in fear of the demonicenemy.

The brilliant success of "public diplomacy" was revealed when the President"provided a powerful Reaganesque finale to a six-week war" on the deck ofthe aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln on May 1. The reference, presumably, isto Reagan's proud declaration that America was "standing tall" afterconquering the nutmeg capital of the world in 1983, preventing the Russians

from using it to bomb the US. Reagan's mimic was free to declare -- withoutconcern for skeptical comment at home - that he had won a "victory in a waron terror [by having] removed an ally of Al Qaeda." It is immaterial that nocredible evidence was provided for the alleged link between SaddamHussein and his bitter enemy Osama bin Laden and that the charge wasdismissed by competent observers. Also immaterial is the only knownconnection between the victory and terror: the invasion appears to havebeen a "huge setback in the `war on terror'," by sharply increasing al-Qaedarecruitment, as US official concede.

More astute observers recognized that Bush's carefully-staged AbrahamLincoln extravaganza "marks the beginning of his 2004 re-electioncampaign," which the White House hopes "will be built as much as possiblearound national-security themes." The electoral campaign will focus on "thebattle of Iraq, not the war," chief Republican political strategist Karl Roveexplained" : the "war" must continue, if only to control the population athome. Before the 2002 elections, he had instructed Party activists to stresssecurity issues, diverting attention from unpopular Republican domesticpolicies. All of this is second-nature to the recycled Reaganites now in office.That is how they held on to political power during their first tenure in office,

regularly pushing the panic button to evade public opposition to the policiesthat left Reagan the most unpopular living President by 1992, rankingalongside Nixon.

Despite its narrow successes, the intensive propaganda campaign left thepublic unswayed in more fundamental respects. Most continue to prefer UNrather than US leadership in international crises, and by 2-1, prefer that theUN, rather than the United States, should direct reconstruction in Iraq.


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When the occupying army failed to discover WMD, the administration'sstance shifted from "absolute certainty" that Iraq possessed WMD to theposition that the accusations were "justified by the discovery of equipmentthat potentially could be used to produce weapons." Senior officials

suggested a "refinement" in the concept of preventive war that entitles theUS to attack "a country that has deadly weapons in mass quantities." Therevision "suggests instead that the administration will act against a hostileregime that has nothing more than the intent and ability to develop [WMD]."The bars for resort to force are significantly lowered. This modification of thedoctrine of "preventive war" may prove to be the most significantconsequence of the collapse of the declared argument for the invasion.

Perhaps the most spectacular propaganda achievement was the lauding ofthe president's "vision" to bring democracy to the Middle East in the midst of

a display of hatred and contempt for democracy for which no precedentcomes to mind. One illustration was the distinction between Old and NewEurope, the former reviled, the latter hailed for its courage. The criterion wassharp: Old Europe consists of governments that took the same position asthe vast majority of their populations; the heroes of New Europe followedorders from Crawford Texas, disregarding an even larger majority, in mostcases. Political commentators ranted about disobedient Old Europe and itspsychic maladies, while Congress descended to low comedy.

At the liberal end of the spectrum, Richard Holbrooke stressed "the very

important point" that the population of the eight original members of NewEurope is larger than that of Old Europe, which proves that France andGermany are "isolated." So it does, if we reject the radical left heresy thatthe public might have some role in a democracy. Thomas Friedman urgedthat France be removed from the permanent members of the SecurityCouncil, because it is "in kindergarten," and "does not play well with others."It follows that the population of New Europe must still be in nursery school,

judging by polls.

Turkey was a particularly instructive case. The government resisted heavy

US pressure to prove its "democratic credentials" by overruling 95% of itspopulation and following orders. Commentators were infuriated by thislesson in democracy, so much so that some even reported Turkey's crimesagainst the Kurds in the 1990s, previously a taboo topic because of thecrucial US role -- though that was still carefully concealed in thelamentations.

The crucial point was expressed by Paul Wolfowitz, who condemned the


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Turkish military because they "did not play the strong leadership role that wewould have expected" and did not intervene to prevent the government fromrespecting near-unanimous public opinion. Turkey must therefore step upand say "We made a mistakeLet's figure out how we can be as helpful aspossible to the Americans." Wolfowitz's stand is particularly instructive

because he is portrayed as the leading figure in the crusade to democratizethe Middle East.

Anger at Old Europe has much deeper roots than contempt for democracy.The US has always regarded European unification with some ambivalence,because Europe might become an independent force in world affairs. Thussenior diplomat David Bruce was a leading advocate for Europeanunification in the Kennedy years, urging Washington to "treat a unitingEurope as an equal partner," -- but following America's lead. He saw"dangers" if Europe "struck off on its own, seeking to play a role independent

of the United States." In his "Year of Europe" address 30 years ago, HenryKissinger advised Europeans to keep to their "regional responsibilities"within the "overall framework of order" managed by the United States.Europe must not pursue its own independent course, based on its Franco-German industrial and financial heartland.

In the tripolar world that was taking shape at that time, these concernsextend to Asia as well. Northeast Asia is now the world's most dynamiceconomic region, accounting for almost 30% of global GDP, far more thanthe US, and holding about half of global foreign exchange reserves. It is a

potentially integrated region, with advanced industrial economies and ampleresources. All of this raises the threat that it too might flirt with challengingthe overall framework of order, which the US is to manage permanently, byforce if necessary, Washington has declared.

Violence is a powerful instrument of control, as history demonstrates. Butthe dilemmas of dominance are not slight.

*A briefer version appeared in Le Monde diplomatique, Aug. 2003.

Dominance and Its Dilemmas

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