|
December 3, 2001
www.hinduonnet.com/fline/fl1824/nc.htm
September 11th and Its Aftermath: Where is the World Heading?
Noam Chomsky
Public Lecture at the Music Academy, Chennai (Madras), India: November 10,
2001
Presented by Frontline magazine and the Media Development Foundation and
supported by 22 representative organizations
----------------------------------------------------------------------
(As he takes his position at the lectern in an overflowing auditorium, Noam
Chomsky is greeted in traditional South Indian style, with a ponnadai, a
brocade shawl, to audience applause.)
Oh, what's going to make it stay on? [Told he is free to take it off]: It's
going to fall in one minute, so I might as well take it off [audience
laughter]. Thank you.
A few years ago, one of the great figures of contemporary biology, Ernst
Mayr of Harvard published some reflections on the search for
extra-terrestrial intelligence. His conclusion was that the likelihood of
success was effectively zero. His reasoning had to do with the adaptive
value of what we call higher intelligence, meaning the particular human form
of intellectual organisation. Mayr estimates the number of species since the
origin of life at about 50 billion, only one of which, he writes, achieved
the kind of intelligence needed to establish a civilisation. It did so very
recently, perhaps a hundred thousand years ago in a small breeding group of
which we are all survivors. And he speculates that this form of intellectual
organisation may not be favoured by selection, and points out that life on
earth refutes the claim that "it's better to be smart than stupid," at least
judging by biological success, which is great for beetles and bacteria but
not so good as you move higher up the level of cognitive organisation. And
he also makes the rather sombre observation that the average life expectancy
of a species is about a hundred thousand years.
We are entering a period of human life that may provide an answer to the
question of whether it's better to be smart than stupid. The most hopeful
prospect is that the question will not be answered. If it receives a
definite answer, that answer can only be that humans were a kind of
biological error, using their allotted hundred thousand years to destroy
themselves and, in the process, much else. The species has certainly
developed the capacity to do just that, and an extra-terrestrial observer,
if one could exist, might conclude that they have demonstrated that capacity
throughout their history, dramatically in the past several hundred years,
with an assault on the environment that sustains life, on the diversity of
more complex organisms, and with cold and calculated savagery, on each other
as well.
September 11th and the Aftermath are a case in point. The shocking
atrocities of September 11th are widely regarded as a historic event and
that, I think, is most definitely true. But we should think clearly about
exactly why it's true. These crimes had perhaps the most devastating instant
human toll on record, outside of war. But the word ``instant'' should not be
overlooked. It's unfortunate but true that the crime is far from unusual in
the annals of violence that falls short of war. The aftermath of September
11th is only one of innumerable illustrations of that.
Although the scale of the catastrophe that has already taken place in
Afghanistan can only be guessed, and we can hardly do more than speculate
about what may follow, we do know the projections on which policy decisions
are based. And from these we can gain some insight into the question of
where the world is heading. The answer, unfortunately, is that it's heading
along paths that are well travelled, though there certainly are changes. The
crimes of September 11th are indeed a historic turning point -- but not
because of the scale, rather because of the choice of target.
For the United States, this is the first time since the British burnt down
Washington, in 1814, that the national territory has been under attack, or
for that matter even under threat. And I don't have to review what's
happened in those two centuries. The number of victims is huge. Now, for the
first time, the guns have been pointed in the opposite direction, and that's
a dramatic change.
The same is true, even more dramatically of Europe. Europe has suffered
murderous destruction, but that's Europeans slaughtering one another.
Meanwhile, Europeans conquered much of the world -- not very politely. With
rare and limited exceptions, they were not under attack by their foreign
victims, so it is not surprising that Europe should be utterly shocked by
the terrorist crimes of September 11th. And while September 11th is indeed a
dramatic change in world affairs, the aftermath represents no change at all,
and therefore passes with very little notice.
All of this raises questions that should be considered with some care -- if
we hope to avert still further tragedies. And lurking not very far in the
shadows is the question I already mentioned. Is the species on the verge of
demonstrating that higher intelligence is simply a grotesque biological
error?
Some of these questions have to do with immediate events, some with more
lasting and fundamental issues. Among the questions that come to mind are
these: First of all and most critically important, what's happening right
before our eyes? Secondly, a bit more general, what is the "new war on
terrorism"? Thirdly, what about the tendencies that are already underway?
There are several that I'd like to mention at least. One is the rapid
increase in the means of mass destruction. Second is the threat to the
environment that sustains human life. And third is the shaping of
international society by the world's dominant power centres, state and
private, what's misleadingly called "globalisation." And throughout we
should ask quite seriously, I think, to what extent ominous tendencies that
are all too easy to perceive reflect choices that are natural and, in fact,
even rational within existing institutional and ideological structures. To
the extent that they do, that's the greatest danger of all.
Let's begin, briefly at least, with the first and most immediate question:
What's happening before our eyes and what do we learn from it about where
the world is heading under the leadership of its most powerful forces?
Even before September 11th, much of the population of Afghanistan was
relying on international food-aid for survival. Current estimates by the
United Nations and others in a position to know are not seriously
challenged. The estimates are that the number at risk since September 11th,
as a direct consequence of the threat of bombing and the attack itself has
risen by about two-and-a-half million, by 50 per cent, to approximately
seven-and-a-half million. Pleas to stop the bombing to allow delivery of
desperately needed food have been rebuffed virtually without comment. These
have come from high U.N. officials, from charitable agencies, and others.
The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) had already warned, even
before the bombing, that over seven million people would face starvation if
military action were initiated. After the bombing began, it advised that the
threat of a humanitarian catastrophe in the short term was very grave, and
furthermore that the bombing has disrupted the planting of 80 per cent of
the country's grain supplies, so that the effects next year will be even
more severe.
What the effects will be, we will never know. Starvation is not something
that kills people instantly. People eat roots and leaves and they drag on
for a while. And the effects of starvation may be the death of children born
from malnourished mothers a year or two from now, and all sorts of
consequences. Furthermore, nobody's going to look because the West is not
interested in such things and others don't have the resources. There are
plenty of examples of that. So in August 1998, Clinton bombed the Sudan,
destroyed half of its pharmaceutical supplies and the factory that produced
them. The consequences there are unknown. The few attempts to estimate the
toll, the death toll, are in the neighbourhood of tens of thousands of
people -- by the German Embassy in Sudan, by a few independent
investigators, who have looked. Actually nobody really looked carefully
because nobody cares! It's not important, it's normal, it's ordinary for a
couple of bombs to have the effect of leaving tens of thousands of corpses
in a poor African country.
Something comparable, though probably on a considerably greater scale, is
unfolding right in front of us at this moment. What the consequences will be
we do not know and probably never will know in any detail. But what we know
is that these are the expectations on which Western civilisation is relying
as it lays its plans. And only those who are entirely ignorant of modern
history will be surprised by the course of events, or by the justifications
that are provided by the educated classes. These are important topics that I
'll reluctantly put aside for lack of time.
I might say that the combination of sadistic cruelty and starry-eyed
self-adulation is captured… well, to give one example, captured accurately
enough by the American press just about a hundred years ago during the noble
campaign to ``uplift and christianise" the Philippines, as the President
described it. And they succeeded in uplifting about half-a-million Filipinos
within the next few years by slaughtering them, along with horrifying war
crimes carried out by old Indian fighters who were killing the `Niggers', as
they put it. That finally aroused some disquiet at home and the press
explained that it takes patience to overcome evil, that it will be a long
war, and that we will have to go on "slaughtering the natives in English
fashion [until] the misguided creatures" who resist us will at least come to
"respect our arms" and later will come to understand that we wish them
nothing but "liberty [and] happiness." As in Afghanistan today, and all too
many other places for hundreds of years.
Well, it's much too brief, but let me put that terrifying issue aside and
turn to the second question. What is the "new war on terrorism"? The goal of
the civilised world has been announced very clearly in high places. We must
"eradicate the evil scourge of terrorism," a plague spread by "depraved
opponents of civilisation itself" in a "return to barbarism in the modern
age,'' and so on. Surely a noble enterprise!
To place the enterprise in proper perspective, we should recognise that the
Crusade is not new, contrary to what's being said. In fact, the phrases just
quoted are from President Ronald Reagan and his Secretary of State, George
Schultz, twenty years ago. They came to office at that time – Reagan, and
shortly after, Schultz -- proclaiming that the struggle against
international terrorism would be the core of U.S. foreign policy. And they
responded to the plague by organising campaigns of international terrorism
of unprecedented scale and violence, even leading to a condemnation by the
World Court of the United States for what the Court called "the unlawful use
of force," meaning international terrorism. This was followed by a U.N.
Security Council Resolution calling on all states to observe international
law, which the United States vetoed. It also voted alone, with one or two
client states, against successive similar U.N. General Assembly Resolutions.
So the ``New War on Terrorism'' is, in fact, led by the only state in the
world that has been condemned by the International Court of Justice for
international terrorism and has vetoed a resolution calling on states to
observe international law, which is perhaps appropriate.
The World Court order to terminate the crime of international terrorism and
to pay substantial reparations was dismissed with contempt across the
spectrum. The New York Times informed the public that the Court was a
"hostile forum" and therefore we need pay no attention to it. Washington
reacted at once to the Court's orders by escalating the economic and the
terrorist wars. It also issued official orders to the mercenary army
attacking from Honduras to attack "soft targets" -- those are the official
orders: Attack ``soft targets,'' undefended civilian targets like health
clinics, agricultural cooperatives and so on -- and to avoid combat, as the
army could do, thanks to total U. S. control of the skies and the
sophisticated communications equipment that was provided to the terrorist
forces attacking from foreign bases.
These orders aroused a little discussion. Not much, and they were considered
legitimate, but only with qualifications. Only if pragmatic criteria were
satisfied. So one prominent commentator, Michael Kinsley, who's regarded as
the spokesperson of the Left in mainstream discussion (he happened to be
writing for The Wall Street Journal this time), argued that we should not
simply dismiss State Department justifications for terrorist attacks on
"soft targets.'' He wrote that a "sensible policy" must "meet the test of
cost-benefit analysis." That is, an analysis of "the amount of blood and
misery that will be poured in, and the likelihood that democracy will emerge
at the other end."
"Democracy" means what Western elites decide is democracy. And that
interpretation was illustrated quite clearly in the region at that time. It'
s taken for granted that Western elites have the right to conduct the
analysis and pursue the project if it passes their tests.
And pass their tests, it did. When Nicaragua, the target, finally succumbed
to superpower assault, commentators across the spectrum of respectable
opinion lauded the success of the methods adopted to "wreck the economy and
prosecute a long and deadly proxy war until the exhausted natives overthrow
the unwanted government themselves," with a cost to us that is "minimal,"
leaving the victims with "wrecked bridges, sabotaged power stations, and
ruined farms'' -- and tens of thousands of corpses, which are not
mentioned -- and thus providing the U. S. candidate with "a winning issue":
ending "the impoverishment of the people of Nicaragua.'' That happens to be
Time magazine, but it was pretty characteristic. We are "United in Joy" at
this outcome," The New York Times proclaimed, proud of the``Victory for U.S.
Fair Play," as a Times headline read.
We are now "united in joy" once again, just a few days ago on Nov. 6, as the
U. S. candidate won the Nicaraguan election after very stern warnings by
Washington of the consequences if the Nicaraguan people did not understand
their responsibilities. The Washington Post, the other national newspaper,
explained the victory cheerfully The U. S. candidate "focused much of his
campaign on reminding people of the economic and military difficulties of
the Sandinista era," referring to the U. S. terrorist war and economic
strangulation that destroyed the country.
Meanwhile, a leering George Bush peers at us from television, instructing us
that the "one universal law" is that all variants of terror and murder are
"evil." Unless, of course, we're the agents, in which case terror and murder
lead us to a "noble phase'' of our foreign policy with a "saintly glow," so
the The New York Times, the newspaper of record, informs us.
There's nothing particularly new about this. This goes back hundreds of
years and you can find examples among the hegemonic powers consistently.
Prevailing Western attitudes are revealed with great clarity by the reaction
to the appointment of the new U.N. Ambassador to lead today's "New War
against Terrorism,'' John Negroponte. Negroponte's record includes his
service as Pro-Consul in Honduras in the 1980s, where he was the local
supervisor of the international terrorist war for which his government was
condemned by the World Court and the Security Council -- irrelevantly of
course in a world that's governed by the rule of force. There was no
detectable reaction to that either in the United States or in Europe.
Another of Negroponte's condemned colleagues, Donald Rumsfeld, was just
here. He was here for a few hours, which gave him enough time to declare
that "`We' Crush Terror." That was the headline for an enthusiastic
front-page article in the national press here a few days ago. I think even
Jonathan Swift would be speechless at all of this [audience laughter].
I mentioned the case of Nicaragua not because it's the most extreme example
of international terrorism, unfortunately far from it, but because it's
uncontroversial, given the judgments of the highest international
authorities. Uncontroversial that is, among people who have a minimal
commitment to human rights and international law. One can estimate the size
of that category by determining how often these elementary matters have been
mentioned in the period since September 11th and from that (don't bother
carrying out an extensive enquiry, you'll find approximately zero) and from
that exercise alone, you can draw some grim conclusions about what lies
ahead.
During the first war on terrorism, the Reagan years, U. S.-sponsored state
terrorism in Central America left hundreds of thousands of tortured and
mutilated corpses, millions of maimed and orphaned, four countries in ruins.
Also in the same years, the Reagan years, Western-backed South African
depredations killed about a million-and-a-half people and caused sixty
billion dollars of damage in neighboring countries—massive international
terrorism backed by the United States and Britain and others. I don't have
to speak of West and South-East Asia, South America, or much else.
It's a serious analytical error proceeding to describe terrorism as a weapon
of the weak, as is often done. It's simply not the case, radically not the
case.
There's a great deal more to say about terrorism – the terrorism of the weak
against the powerful and the unmentionable but far more extreme terrorism of
the powerful against the weak. That both pose severe threats is hardly in
doubt. The threats are enhanced by the fact that the policies are considered
rational within the frameworks in which they are pursued. And there's reason
for that. A major historian, Charles Tilly, who studied the history of these
issues in Europe particularly, observed quite accurately that over the last
millennium "war has been the dominant activity of European states." And for
good reason: "The central tragic fact is simple: coercion works; those who
apply substantial force to their fellows get compliance and, from that
compliance, draw the multiple advantages of money, goods, deference, access
to pleasures denied to less powerful people." It's a truism understood all
too well by most of the people of the world, even if its significance has
not penetrated the heights of intellectual enlightenment.
Well, let me turn to the third category of questions, long-term tendencies
that are underway and that will persist without the essential change, though
there's a change there too. They're being escalated as state and private
power exploit the window of opportunity that is provided by the fear and
anguish of the population after Sept. 11 and naturally use that opportunity
to ram through harsh and regressive measures that would otherwise arouse
resistance. As usual, one participant in class war pursues its path with
unrelenting intensity. It's their victims who are enjoined to be subdued and
acquiescent in the interest of patriotism. The range of measures being
implemented in this fashion is far ranging. I'll mention only a few.
The most important of them is the instant escalation of the policies that
pose the greatest immediate threat to survival, namely, expanding the means
of mass destruction. For the powerful, nuclear weapons are the weapon of
choice. The U. S. Strategic Command, the highest military authority,
describes nuclear weapons as the core of the arsenal, because "unlike
chemical or biological weapons, the extreme destruction from a nuclear
explosion is immediate, with few if any palliatives to reduce its effect.''
Furthermore, "nuclear weapons always cast a shadow over any crisis or
conflict.'' This study advises further that planners should not "portray
ourselves as too fully rational and cool-headed." "That the United States
may become irrational and vindictive if its vital interests are attacked
should be part of the national persona that we project.'' It's "beneficial"
for our strategic posture if "some elements appear to be potentially `out of
control'.''
The United States is unusual, I think unique, in the access that it allows
to high-level planning documents and I'd be rather surprised if those of
other countries were fundamentally different. The important study that I've
just been quoting from is called ``Essentials of Post-Cold War Deterrence,"
a Clinton era document. It's been available for years but it's unknown, it's
known only to readers of dissident literature that's scrupulously
marginalised, although I presume intelligence services of other countries
read it and draw the appropriate conclusions.
For the future, we also have to face the fact that small nuclear weapons can
be smuggled into any country with relative ease and remember they are
small – a 15-pound plutonium bomb can be carried across a border in a
suitcase. There's a recent technical study that concludes that "a
well-planned operation to smuggle weapons of mass destruction into the
United States would have at least a 90 per cent probability of success, much
higher than ICBM (Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile) delivery even in the
absence of [National Missile Defence]."
These dangers, not just to the United States, are enhanced by the most
immediate threat that was identified by a high-level U.S. Department of
Energy task force, namely, "forty thousand nuclear weapons in the former
Soviet Union, poorly controlled and poorly stored.'' One of the first acts
of the incoming Bush Administration was to cut back a small programme to
assist Russia in safeguarding and dismantling these weapons and providing
alternative employment for nuclear scientists. That decision increased the
risks of accidental launch and leakage of what are called ``loose nukes,''
followed by nuclear scientists who have no other way to employ their skills.
Current plans for ballistic missile defence are expected to enhance the
threats further. U. S. intelligence predicts that any deployment will impel
China to develop and deploy new nuclear-armed missiles. They predict it will
expand its nuclear arsenal by a factor of ten, probably with multiple
warheads, MIRV (Multiple Independently Targetable Re-entry Vehicles), which
will "prompt India and Pakistan to respond with their own build-ups," with a
likely ripple effect throughout the Middle East. These same analyses,
intelligence analyses and others, also conclude that Russia's "only rational
response would be to maintain, and strengthen, the existing Russian nuclear
force."
The Bush administration announced on September 1st of this year that "it has
no objections to [China's] plans to build up its small fleet of nuclear
missiles" – that's a sharp shift in official policy -- in the hope of
gaining Chinese acquiescence to the planned dismantling of the core arms
control agreements. Chinese resumption of nuclear tests is also being
quietly endorsed. On the same day that this was announced, the national
press also reported that the Bush Administration will impose sanctions on
China for allowing the transfer to Pakistan of "missile parts and technology
that are essentially for weapons that can carry nuclear warheads." All
quoting from The New York Times. You can figure out what all that means
without further comment.
Extension of the arms race to space has been a core programme for quite a
few years. `Arms race' is a misleading term for it. The United States, for
now at least, is competing alone in this race, although there are others who
appear to be eager to join the race to mutual destruction. Rightly or
wrongly, that's how India's stand is being interpreted in the United States.
That received great applause from the more hawkish and jingoist U. S.
strategic analysts. Writing after the Foreign Minister's visit to the United
States a few months ago, Lawrence Kaplan wrote in the liberal New Republic
that when President Bush unveiled his plans to expand these programmes, "the
rest of the world carped that the plan would provoke a new arms race, but
India took a mere six hours to declare its support,'' while Foreign Minister
[Jaswant] Singh boasted that Delhi and Washington are "endeavouring to work
out together a totally new security regime, which is for the entire globe.''
Whether that's the right interpretation or not, you can determine, but that's the interpretation.
Kaplan went on to quote Administration hawks who recognised that Pakistan is
"not an ally anymore," but rather a "rogue state," unlike India, which will
now be admitted into the club that includes the United States, Britain,
Taiwan and Israel. It's true this was three months ago. And since then all
of us have observed a small lesson in Axiom One of international affairs:
States are not moral agents. Their solemn pledges mean exactly zero. They
serve domestic power interests. And they do as they please, unless they are
constrained externally or by their own citizens, the choice that lies in
their hands at least in the more free and democratic societies.
All of these programmes increase the danger of destruction for the United
States as for others. But that's nothing new. It's very common to pursue
programmes with the conscious knowledge that they increase the danger of
destruction for the participants, the advocates. The history of the arms
race during the Cold War provides many examples and there's ample precedent
going back far in history. Furthermore, all these choices make sense within
the prevailing value system.
Both of these topics bear quite directly on the assessment of the biological
success of higher intelligence. Let's look at a couple of cases. Fifty years
ago, there was only one major threat to U. S. security, at that time only
potential: ICBMs, which did not yet then exist but were being developed. It
was quite likely that the Soviet Union would have accepted a Treaty banning
development of these weapons, knowing it was far behind. There is a standard
history of the arms race by McGeorge Bundy, the National Security Adviser
for the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations. He had access to internal
documents. He reported that he could find no record of any interest in
pursuing the possibility of eliminating the sole potential threat to U.S.
security.
Russian archives, quite a lot of them, have been released recently and these
bear on this question. They strongly reinforce the assessments by high-level
U.S. analysts that after Stalin's death, Khrushchev, when he took over,
called for mutual reduction of offensive military forces and, when these
initiatives were ignored by the Eisenhower Administration, he implemented
them unilaterally over the objection of his own military command. Kennedy's
planners, when they came in forty years ago, doubtless shared Eisenhower's
understanding that, in his words, "a major war would destroy the Northern
hemisphere." They also knew, we now know, of Khrushchev's unilateral steps
to reduce Soviet offensive forces radically and they also knew that the
United States was far ahead by any meaningful measure. Nevertheless, they
chose to reject Khrushchev's plea for reciprocity, preferring to carry out a
massive conventional and nuclear force build-up, thus driving the last nail
into the coffin of "Khrushchev's agenda of restraining the Soviet military."
I'm quoting historian Matthew Evangelista, in a monograph reviewing the U.S.
and Soviet archival records, published by the main history project on this
topic.
Without continuing, there's not much novelty in the Clinton-Bush
preferences.
To comprehend the logic of these programmes and why mutual destruction seems
an entirely rational policy to pursue, it's necessary to recall a doctrinal
truism. It's conventional for attack to be called "defence." And this case
is no exception. Ballistic missile defence is only a small component of much
more far-reaching programmes for militarisation of space. The goal is to
achieve what is called Full Spectrum Dominance, that is, a monopoly of the
use of space for offensive military purposes. These plans have been
available in public documents of the U.S. Space Command and other government
agencies for some years and the projects outlined have been under
development. They were expanded in the first months of the Bush
Administration and again sharply expanded after September 11th in a crude
exploitation of the fear and horror that was engendered by these crimes.
These plans are disguised as ballistic missile defence. But that's only a
small component of what's under development and even that small component is
an offensive weapon.
That's understood by such potential adversaries as Russia and China and also
by close allies. China's top arms control official simply reflected common
understanding when he observed that "Once the United States believes it has
both a strong spear and a strong shield, it could lead them to conclude that
nobody can harm the United States and they can harm anyone they like
anywhere in the world." China's position is shared by high-level strategic
analysts in virtually the same words. The Rand Corporation is the major,
mostly military research agency. Rand studied the topic, and concluded that
ballistic missile defence "is not simply a shield but rather an enabler of
U.S. action'' – virtually the same words as China. Canada's military
planners advised their Government that the goal of ballistic missile defence
is "arguably more in order to preserve U.S.-NATO freedom of action than
because the U.S. really fears North Korean or Iranian threats." Quoting
another leading strategic analyst, Andrew [J.] Bacevich: "Ballistic missile
defence "will facilitate the more effective application of U.S. military
power abroad.'' He happens to be writing in the conservative journal,
National Interest. He says: ``By insulating the homeland from reprisal –
albeit in a limited way -- missile defence will underwrite the capacity and
willingness of the United States to `shape' the environment elsewhere.'' He
cites approvingly the conclusions of Lawrence Kaplan, who happens to be
writing at the other end of the spectrum. He says "missile defence isn't
really meant to protect America. It's a tool for global dominance," for
"hegemony." For this reason, both of them enthusiastically proclaim,
"missile defence" is a wonderful contribution to justice and freedom.
It's understood that missile defence, even if it's technically feasible, has
to rely on satellite communication, and destroying satellites is far easier
than shooting down missiles. That's one reason why the United States must
seek Full Spectrum Dominance, such overwhelming control of space that even
the poor man's weapons will not be available to an adversary. And that
requires offensive space-based capacities. That includes immensively
destructive weapons, nuclear-powered, in space that can be launched with
instant computer-controlled reaction. That greatly increases the danger of
vast slaughter and devastation if only because of what are called in the
trade ``normal accidents,'' that is, the unpredictable accidents to which
all complex systems are subject.
The logic of militarisation of space is much broader however. And it's
explained. The U.S. Space Command, the major agency in charge, has been
quite explicit about this. It put out an important brochure, in the Clinton
years, in 1997, called ``Vision for 2020.'' In it, it announced the primary
goal quite prominently on the front cover, in big letters: ``Dominating the
Space Dimension of Military Operations to Protect U.S. Interests and
Investment.'' This is presented as the next phase of the historic task of
military forces. They say that armies were needed during the westward
expansion of the continental United States, of course in `self-defence'
against the indigenous population that was being exterminated and expelled.
Nations also built navies, the Space Command continues "to protect and
enhance their commercial interests." The next logical step is space forces
to protect "U.S. National Interests [military and commercial] and
Investments."
However, they say the United States' Space Forces will be unlike Navies
protecting sea commerce in earlier years because this time there will be a
sole hegemon. The British Navy could be countered by Germany, with
consequences that we need not discuss. But the U.S. somehow will remain
immune except to the narrowly circumscribed category of terrorism that is
permitted to enter the canon, the terrorism that "they'' carry out against
"us,'' whoever "we" happen to be.
The need for total dominance, they argue, is going to increase as a result
of the "globalisation of the economy." The reason is that globalisation is
expected to bring about "a widening between `haves' and `have-nots'," an
assessment shared by U.S. intelligence and academic analysts. I'll come back
to that. Planners are concerned that the widening divide may lead to unrest
among the have-nots and the U.S. must be ready to control that by "using
space systems and planning for precision strike from space [as a counter] to
the worldwide proliferation of weapons of mass destruction" -- a predictable
consequence of the recommended programmes, as I just mentioned, just as the
widening divide is an anticipated consequence of the preferred form of
globalisation. That happens to be in conflict with the economic theories
that are professed, but it's in accord with reality.
Well, again there's more to say about that, but I have my eye on the clock.
Throughout history it has been recognised that such steps are dangerous. I
gave a few examples, but there are many more. By now the danger has reached
the level of a threat to human survival. But there's a good reason to pursue
it nevertheless. It's deeply rooted in existing institutions. The basic
principle is that hegemony is more important than survival. That's not new,
plenty of examples through history. The principle is amply illustrated in
the last half century. What's new is the scale of the consequences of
pursuing this principle.
Let's turn to another apparently inexorable tendency -- the destruction of
the environment that sustains human life. The Bush Administration has been
widely criticised for undermining the Kyoto Treaty. The grounds that they
presented are that to conform to the Treaty would harm the U.S. economy.
Those criticisms are rather surprising because the decisions are entirely
rational within the framework of existing ideology. We're instructed daily
to be firm believers in neo-classical markets in which isolated individuals
are rational wealth maximisers. The market responds perfectly to their
votes, which are expressed in currency inputs. The value of a person's
interests is measured the same way. In particular, the interests of those
with no votes, no dollars, those interests are valued at zero. Future
generations, for example, who don't have dollar inputs in the market.
So it's therefore entirely rational to destroy the possibility for decent
survival for our grandchildren, if by doing so we can maximise the
particular form of self-interest that's hailed as the highest value,
reinforced by vast industries that are devoted to implanting and reinforcing
them. The threats to survival are currently being enhanced by dedicated
efforts to weaken the institutional structures that have been developed to
mitigate the harsh consequences of market fundamentalism and, even more
important, to undermine the culture of sympathy and solidarity that sustains
these institutions. Well, that's another prescription for disaster, perhaps
in the not very distant future -- but again it's rational within a lunatic
system of doctrines and institutions.
Let me finally turn to the last of the questions that I mentioned -- the
process that's called "globalisation." But first let's be clear about the
notion. If we use the term neutrally, globalisation just means international
integration, welcome or not depending on the human consequences. In Western
doctrinal systems, which prevail everywhere as a result of Western power,
the term has a somewhat different and narrower meaning. It refers to a
specific form of international integration that has been pursued with
particular intensity in the last quarter century. It's designed primarily in
the interest of private concentrations of power, and the interests of
everyone else are incidental. With that terminology in place, the great mass
of people around the world who object to these programmes can be labelled
``anti-globalisation,'' as they always are. The force of ideology and power
is such that they even accept that ridiculous designation. They can then be
derided as ``primitivists'' who want to return to the ``Stone Age,'' to harm
the poor, and other terms of abuse with which we are familiar.
It's the way you'd expect a dedicated propaganda system to work, but it's a
little surprising as it's so powerful that even its victims accept it. They
shouldn't. No sane person is opposed to globalisation. The question is what
form it takes.
The specific form of international integration that's being pursued is
called ``neo-liberal,'' but that too is highly misleading. The policies are
not ``new'' and they are by no means ``liberal.'' That should be
particularly obvious here. The history of England and India for two
centuries illustrates very graphically how liberalism can be shaped into an
instrument of power and destruction. And the current version keeps that
tradition, maintains the traditional double-edged doctrine of free trade and
liberalism -- fine for you so that I can demolish you, but I'm going to
insist on the protection of the powerful Nanny State and other devices to
ensure that I'm not subject to market discipline, except when the playing
field is what is called ``level,'' that means tilted so sharply in my favour
that I'm confident that I can win. That's a good part of the history of
India for a couple of hundred of years.
The fact that the new versions simply adapt the traditional ones to current
circumstances shouldn't actually come as a surprise. It's exactly what we
would expect simply by a look at the designers – the richest and most
powerful states, the international financial institutions that follow their
directives, and their array of megacorporations tending towards oligopoly in
most sectors of the economy and heavily reliant on the state sector to
socialise risk and cost and to maintain the dynamism of the economy, often
under a military cover.
These power concentrations often modestly call themselves the
``international community'' but perhaps a more appropriate term is one that's used by the business press. Last January, at the annual Davos Conference,
they were described by the London Financial Times as `‘The Masters of the
Universe.'' Since the Masters profess to be admirers of Adam Smith, we might
expect them to abide by his description of their behaviour, although be only
called them the ``Masters of Mankind.''After all, this was before the Space
Age. Smith was referring specifically to what he called "the principal
architects of policy" of his day -- the "merchants and manufacturers" of
England who made sure that their own interests are "most peculiarly attended
to," however "grievous" the impact on others, including the people of
England. I'm sure you know he condemned with particular vehemence the crimes
of England in India in his day. ``The principal architects,'' he wrote,
adopt the "vile maxim of the masters of mankind: All for ourselves, and
nothing for anyone else.'' And that persists.
Over time, in developments that surely would have appalled the founders of
classical liberalism, corporate management has been granted the rights of
immortal persons by radical judicial activism and it's been granted rights
that go far beyond those of mere persons in recent international economic
agreements. So for example, General Motors can demand "national treatment"
in Mexico, but a Mexican of flesh and blood will not fare too well if he
were to demand such treatment after crossing the border to Texas, assuming
that he made made it alive (many don't).
The rights of these private tyrannies, which is what they are, are being
extended in current trade agreements, which allow private power
concentrations to attack government regulations concerning health,
environmental protection, workers' rights and so on -- on the grounds that
these are "tantamount to expropriation" because they threaten future
profits. In a further assault on classical liberal principles, these
enormous systems of unaccountable private power assume the role of
administering markets. That includes intra-firm transfers (transfers across
borders within a particular corporate entity), outsourcing, strategic
alliances, and a whole range of other devices to evade market discipline and
that, in fact, constitute the majority of what is mislabelled ``trade.''
When you hear that trade is going up, the fact of the matter is that in
classical terms it's probably going down!
These policies and their human consequences have been matters of great
concern outside the ranks of the Masters of the Universe. There have been
large-scale popular protests in the South against the new international
economic regime for many years. They're harder to ignore when the rich
countries join in, as they have in the past few years. In the United States,
despite near-unanimous articulate support for free trade agreements, or as
The Wall Street Journal calls them more honestly, ``free investment
agreements,'' the population has remained stubbornly opposed. That's why
NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, had to be imposed
effectively in secret ten years ago. And to this day, the official position
of the labour movement has not been permitted expression in the free press,
or even the very similar critique and alternative proposals by Congress' own
research bureau, the Office of Technology Assessment. It's extremely
important to keep the public from knowing that its opposition to these
Treaties is well grounded in very respectable analysis.
One might ask why public opposition to globalisation, what's called
globalisation, has been so high for many years. That seems strange in an era
when globalisation has led to unprecedented prosperity, so we're constantly
told. And that's supposedly particularly true in the United States with its
"fairy-tale economy." Throughout the 1990s, the United States enjoyed ``the
greatest economic boom in America's history -- and the world's.'' Quoting
Anthony Lewis in The New York Times last March, repeating the standard
refrain from the left end, the critical end of the admissible spectrum. It
is of course conceded that everything isn't perfect, there are a few flaws,
some have been left behind in the economic miracle, and since we're
good-hearted people, we have to do something about that. These ``flaws''
reflect a profound and troubling dilemma. The rapid growth and great
prosperity brought by globalisation has a concomitant: growing inequality,
because there are some who lack the skills to enjoy these wondrous gifts and
opportunities.
That picture is so conventional that it may be hard to realise that apart
from the growing inequality, it is totally false. There is just no truth to
it and it's known to be false. Per capita economic growth in the so-called
roaring 1990s in the United States was about the same as Europe, much lower
than in the first twenty-five post-War years -- before what's called
globalisation. So we can ask how the conventional picture can be so
radically different from uncontroversial facts, and they are
uncontroversial. Well, the answer is very simple. For a small sector of the
society, the Nineties really were a grand economic boom. And that sector
happened to include the people who tell everyone else the wonderful news. It
's only the world that's different. There's a counterpart in India, which I
don't have to talk about, it's familiar.
Suppose we take a quick look at the record over a longer stretch.
International economic integration, what's called globalisation in a
technical sense, increased steadily up until the First World War, levelled
or reduced between the wars, picked up again after the Second World War. It'
s now reaching roughly the levels of a century ago by gross measures. The
fine structure is quite different. By some measures, the period before World
War I had a higher degree of international integration. That had to do
particularly with movement of people, what Adam Smith called ``the free
circulation of labour,'' which was the foundation of free trade. That
reached its peak before World War I, it's much lower now. By other measures,
globalisation is greater now, most dramatically the flow of short-time
speculative capital, which is far beyond any precedent. These differences
reflect the central features of the contemporary version of globalisation.
To an extent even beyond the norm, capital has priority – people are
incidental.
There is a more technical measure of globalisation. That's convergence to a
global market, which means a single price and wage everywhere. That
certainly hasn't happened, in fact the opposite has happened. With regard to
incomes, inequality is soaring through the globalisation period -- within
countries and across countries. And that's expected to continue.
The U.S. intelligence community, with participation of specialists from
academic professions and the private sector, recently released an important
report on their expectations for the next fifteen years. They have several
scenarios. The most optimistic is that "globalisation" will proceed on
course: "its evolution will be rocky, marked by chronic financial volatility
and a widening economic divide.'' That means less convergence, less
globalisation in the technical sense but more globalisation in the
doctrinally preferred sense. And financial volatility of course means slower
growth and more crisis.
Well, that gives a good sense of where the world is heading at least if the
Masters of the Universe can proceed without too much disruption by the
rabble. I've already noted that military planners are adopting the same
projections and they explain forthrightly that the overwhelming resources of
violence, which are to be space-based in the new era, will be required to
keep the growing numbers of have-nots under control.
It's too late to give details but if you look at the post-War period, the
period since the Second World War, it has actually undergone two phases.
There was a period up to the early 1970s when the Bretton Woods arrangements
were in place with capital controls and regulated currencies. That was a
period of very substantial and equitable economic growth. It's commonly
called "the golden age" of capitalism. That changed in the last twenty-five
years, with the breakdown of the Bretton Woods system. Financial markets
were liberalized, constraints on capital flow were eliminated, and
currencies were deregulated. That has been associated with a marked
deterioration in standard measures of the economy -- the rate of growth of
the economy, of productivity, of investment, in fact even growth of trade.
Even with all the misleading definitions of trade, its growth has declined
during the globalisation period, these last twenty-five years. There have
been much higher interest rates, which harm the economy, increasing
financial volatility, and other harmful consequences.
So let's return to that profound and troubling dilemma that we're supposed
to be worried about. The rapid growth and great prosperity brought by
so-called globalisation has also brought global inequality because some lack
the skills to use the opportunities. There is no dilemma: the rapid growth
and prosperity are simply a myth, except for a very small sector.
One can debate the economic consequences of liberalisation of capital, but
one consequence is very clear: it undermines democracy. That was understood
very well by the framers of the Bretton Woods agreement after World War II –
the U.S. and Britain. One reason, explicit reason, why those arrangements
were founded on regulation of capital was in order to allow governments to
carry out social democratic programmes, which had enormous popular support,
in the United States as well. Free capital movement yields what's called a
``Virtual Parliament,'' which has "veto power" over government decisions,
sharply restricting democratic options. I'm quoting from technical papers on
the financial system now: With free movement of capital, governments face a
"dual constituency" – voters and speculators. Speculators "conduct
moment-by-moment referendums on government policies," and if they don't like
them, they "veto" them by attacking the country's currency or removing its
capital. Even in rich countries, the private constituency prevails. That's
understood to be a very striking difference, maybe the most significant
difference, between the current phase of globalisation and the period before
World War I, which it partly resembles.
That point is, as I say, understood. I'll simply quote from a standard
history of the contemporary international monetary system, by Barry
Eichengreen. Before World War I, he points out, government policy had not
yet been "politicised by universal male suffrage and the rise of trade
unionism and parliamentary labour parties.'' Therefore, the severe costs of
financial rectitude that were imposed by the ``Virtual Parliament'' could be
transferred to the general population. It's what's called structural
adjustment these days for the poor countries. But that luxury was no longer
available in the more democratic Bretton Woods era. Therefore, "limits on
capital mobility substituted for limits of democracy as a source of
insulation from market pressures."
Now, he [Eichengreen] doesn't carry the argument further but it's entirely
natural that the dismantling of the post-War economic order should be
accompanied by a sharp attack on substantive democracy, as it has been,
primarily in the United States and Britain, the greatest enthusiasts; and of
course in the ``Third World,'' which has no choices or at least believes it
has no choices. That's not so obvious.
The attack on democracy is perhaps the most significant feature of the
globalisation period, often called the ``Leaden Age'' in comparison with the
``Golden Age'' that preceded it just by straight economic measures.
Other components of the neo-liberal programme lead to the same ends.
Socio-economic decisions are increasingly shifted to unaccountable
concentrations of power, an essential feature of the neo-liberal reforms.
There is a substantial extension of this attack on democracy. It's now being
negotiated without public discussion in Geneva on the General Agreement for
Trade and Services, the GATS negotiations, and it's coming up in Doha right
now. The term ``services'' refers to just about anything that might fall
within the arena of democratic choice. So health, education, welfare, social
security, communications, water, other resources -- anything involving that
is ``services.'' Now there's no meaningful sense in which transferring
services to private hands is ``trade.'' But then the term trade has been so
deprived of meaning that I suppose it might as well be extended to this
travesty as well. It's a covert term for handing it over to private power.
This term, ``trade in services,'' is, in fact, a euphemism for programmes
that are designed to undermine popular sovereignty and reduce the arena of
democratic choice by transferring decisions over the most important aspects
of life from the public arena to unaccountable private tyrannies. The huge
public protests in Quebec last April at the Summit of the Americas were in
part directed at the attempt to impose these GATS principles in secret as
part of the newly-planned Free Trade Area of the Americas. And they remained
secret: the secret was guarded by the self-censorship of the free press.
These protests brought together a very broad constituency, unprecedented in
fact, including the powerful labour unions and social democratic parties of
South America, their counterparts in the North, and a great many others --
all strongly opposed to what's planned by trade ministers and corporate
executives behind doors that are kept tight shut, and for good reasons.
There's no time now to run though the details, but they are highly
instructive. In the United States, there has indeed been a transition from a
Golden Age to a Leaden Age. For a large part of the population, incomes have
stagnated or declined – that's probably 70 per cent of the population --
during these twenty years of "a fairy-tale economy." The picture gets a lot
worse if you move away from the standard measures and look at the actual
costs, but again there's no time for that.
Furthermore, the rules of the game as they're formulated in the World Trade
Organisation are likely to extend these effects. Anyone familiar with
economic history can see exactly what's going on. The rules of the World
Trade Organisation specifically bar the measures that were used by every
rich country – England, the United States, Japan and the rest -- to reach
the current state of development. They also provide unprecedented levels of
protectionism for the rich, including a patent regime that bars innovation
and growth in novel ways and allows corporations to amass huge profits by
monopolistic pricing of products that are often developed with substantial
public contribution.
If the United States, let's say two hundred years ago, had been forced to
accept this regime, New England, where I live, would now be pursuing its
comparative advantage in exporting fish. It certainly wouldn't be producing
textiles, which survived only by exorbitant tariffs to keep out superior
British products, the same with steel and other industries, and that goes up
to the present, including the extremely protectionist Reagan years. The
relation of England to India is pretty much the same until India had finally
been de-industrialised effectively by the combination of forced liberalism
for the defeated and high levels of protection and a powerful state for the
winners. And that runs across the world.
Just take a look at the societies that have developed -- Europe, England and
its offshoots, the United States, Japan, a couple of countries in the
Japanese periphery. They're the developed countries and they happen to be
almost exactly the countries that were able to resist European
colonialisation and forced liberalism. The correlation is very striking and
well known to economic historians, I should say.
I don't want to suggest that the prospects are uniformly bleak. We don't
have to prove that the species is a biological error. There have been very
promising developments in the past several decades. One of them is the
evolution of a human rights culture among the general population, a tendency
that has accelerated very quickly from the 1960s when all the ferment of
those years had a substantial civilising effect in many domains. One
significant feature has been greatly heightened concern for civil and human
rights, including rights of minorities, rights of women, and rights of
future generations. That's the driving force of the environmental movement
that's become a significant force in the past several decades. The human
development movement that was initiated by Amartya Sen and Mahbub ul-Haq
particularly, and to which the Lakdawala lectures I gave are dedicated, is
one manifestation of that.
Over the course of modern history, there have been very important gains in
human rights and democratic control at least some sectors of life. These
have very rarely been the gift of enlightened leaders. They have typically
been imposed on states and other power centres by popular struggle. An
optimist might hold, perhaps realistically, that history reveals deepening
of appreciation for human rights and a broadening of their range, not
without sharp reversals, but the tendency is nevertheless real. And these
issues are very much alive today. The harmful effects of the corporate
globalisation project have led to mass popular protest and activism in the
South for several decades now, joined by major sectors of the rich
industrial societies in the past few years, with alliances that have been
taking shape at the grassroots level. These are impressive developments.
They have a lot of opportunity and promise and they have had effects in the
rhetoric, and sometimes policy changes, in the international financial
institutions, the corporate world, and commentary generally. There has been
at least a restraining influence on state violence though nothing like the
human rights revolution in state practice that's proudly proclaimed by
intellectual opinion in the West. These developments could prove very
important if the momentum can be sustained in ways that deepen the bonds of
sympathy and solidarity and interaction that have been developing. And I
think it's fair to say that the future of our endangered species may be
determined in no small measure by how these popular forces evolve [prolonged
audience applause] .
|
