[R-G] Chomsky: Cold War II

[Anthony Fenton]

Cold War II




	
	
		
		
			by
		Noam Chomsky 
		
		
	
	
	
	
	
	
	August 27, 2007







	

	  These
are exciting days in Washington, as the government directs its energies
to the demanding task of “containing Iran” in what Washington Post
correspondent Robin Wright, joining others, calls “Cold War II.”[1]    During Cold War I, the task was to contain two awesome forces.  The
lesser and more moderate force was “an implacable enemy whose avowed
objective is world domination by whatever means and at whatever cost.”
Hence “if the United States is to survive,” it will have to adopt a
“repugnant philosophy” and reject “acceptable norms of human conduct”
and the “long-standing American concepts of `fair play’” that had been
exhibited with such searing clarity in the conquest of the national
territory, the Philippines, Haiti and other beneficiaries of “the idealistic new world bent on ending inhumanity,” as the newspaper of record describes our noble mission.[2]
The judgments about the nature of the super-Hitler and the necessary
response are those of General Jimmy Doolittle, in a critical assessment
of the CIA commissioned by President Eisenhower in 1954.  They
are quite consistent with those of the Truman administration liberals,
the “wise men” who were “present at the creation,” notoriously in NSC
68 but in fact quite consistently.     In
the face of the Kremlin’s unbridled aggression in every corner of the
world, it is perhaps understandable that the US resisted in defense of
human values with a savage display of torture, terror, subversion and
violence while doing “everything in its power to alter or abolish any
regime not openly allied with America,” as Tim Weiner summarizes the
doctrine of the Eisenhower administration in his recent history of the
CIA.[3]  And
just as the Truman liberals easily matched their successors in fevered
rhetoric about the implacable enemy and its campaign to rule the world,
so did John F. Kennedy, who bitterly condemned the “monolithic and
ruthless conspiracy,” and dismissed the proposal of its leader
(Khrushchev) for sharp mutual cuts in offensive weaponry, then reacted
to his unilateral implementation of these proposals with a huge
military build-up.  The Kennedy brothers also
quickly surpassed Eisenhower in violence and terror, as they “unleashed
covert action with an unprecedented intensity” (Wiener), doubling
Eisenhower’s annual record of major CIA covert operations, with
horrendous consequences worldwide, even a close brush with terminal
nuclear war.[4]     But at least it was possible to deal with Russia, unlike the fiercer enemy, China.  The more thoughtful scholars recognized that Russia was poised uneasily between civilization and barbarism.  As
Henry Kissinger later explained in his academic essays, only the West
has undergone the Newtonian revolution and is therefore “deeply
committed to the notion that the real world is external to the
observer,” while the rest still believe “that the real world is almost
completely internal to the observer,” the “basic division” that is “the deepest problem of the contemporary international order.” But Russia,
unlike third word peasants who think that rain and sun are inside their
heads, was perhaps coming to the realization that the world is not just
a dream, Kissinger felt.     Not so the still more savage and bloodthirsty enemy, China,
which for liberal Democrat intellectuals at various times rampaged as a
“a Slavic Manchukuo,” a blind puppet of its Kremlin master, or a
monster utterly unconstrained as it pursued its crazed campaign to
crush the world in its tentacles, or whatever else circumstances
demanded.  The remarkable tale of doctrinal
fanaticism from the 1940s to the ‘70s, which makes contemporary
rhetoric seem rather moderate, is reviewed by James Peck in his highly
revealing study of the national security culture, Washington’s China.     In
later years, there were attempts to mimic the valiant deeds of the
defenders of virtue from the two villainous global conquerors and their
loyal slaves – for example, when the Gipper strapped on his cowboy
boots and declared a National Emergency because Nicaraguan hordes were
only two days from Harlingen Texas, though as he courageously informed
the press, despite the tremendous odds “I
refuse to give up. I remember a man named Winston Churchill who said,
`Never give in. Never, never, never.’ So we won't.” With consequences
that need not be reviewed.     Even with the best of efforts, however, the attempts never were able to recapture the glorious days of Cold War I.  But
now, at last, those heights might be within reach, as another
implacable enemy bent on world conquest has arisen, which we must
contain before it destroys us all: Iran.     Perhaps
it's a lift to the spirits to be able to recover those heady Cold War
days when at least there was a legitimate force to contain, however
dubious the pretexts and disgraceful the means.  But
it is instructive to take a closer look at the contours of Cold War II
as they are being designed by “the former Kremlinologists now running U.S. foreign policy, such as Rice and Gates” (Wright).     The task of containment is to establish “a bulwark against Iran’s growing influence in the Middle East,” Mark Mazzetti and Helene Cooper explain in the New York Times (July 31).  To contain Iran’s influence we must surround Iran with US and NATO ground forces, along with massive naval deployments in the Persian Gulf and of course incomparable air power and weapons of mass destruction.  And
we must provide a huge flow of arms to what Condoleezza Rice calls “the
forces of moderation and reform” in the region, the brutal tyrannies of
Egypt and Saudi Arabia and, with particular munificence, Israel, by now virtually an adjunct of the militarized high-tech US economy.  All to contain Iran’s influence.  A daunting challenge indeed.     And daunting it is.  In Iraq, Iranian support is welcomed by much of the majority Shi’ite population.  In
an August visit to Teheran, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki met
with the supreme leader Ali Khamenei, President Ahmadinejad and other
senior officials, and thanked Tehran for its “positive and
constructive” role in improving security in Iraq, eliciting a sharp
reprimand from President Bush, who “declares Teheran a regional peril
and asserts the Iraqi leader must understand,” to quote the headline of
the Los Angeles Times report on al-Maliki’s intellectual deficiencies.  A
few days before, also greatly to Bush’s discomfiture, Afghan President
Hamid Karzai, Washington’s favorite, described Iran as “a helper and a
solution” in his country.[5]  Similar problems abound beyond Iran’s immediate neighbors.  In Lebanon, according to polls, most Lebanese see Iranian-backed Hezbollah “as a legitimate force defending their country from Israel,” Wright reports.  And in Palestine, Iranian-backed Hamas won a free election, eliciting savage punishment of the Palestinian population by the US and Israel for the crime of voting “the wrong way,” another episode in “democracy promotion.”     But no matter.  The
aim of US militancy and the arms flow to the moderates is to counter
“what everyone in the region believes is a flexing of muscles by a more
aggressive Iran,” according to an unnamed senior U.S. government
official – “everyone” being the technical term used to refer to
Washington and its more loyal clients.[6]  Iran's aggression consists in its being welcomed by many within the region, and allegedly supporting resistance to the US occupation of neighboring Iraq.     It’s
likely, though little discussed, that a prime concern about Iran’s
influence is to the East, where in mid-August “Russia and China today
host Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at a summit of a Central
Asian security club designed to counter U.S. influence in the region,”
the business press reports.[7] The “security club” is the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which has been slowly taking shape in recent years.  Its membership includes not only the two giants Russia and China, but also the energy-rich Central Asian states Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan.  Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan was a guest of honor at the August meeting. “In another unwelcome development for the Americans, Turkmenistan's
President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov also accepted an invitation to
attend the summit,” another step its improvement of relations with Russia, particularly in energy, reversing a long-standing policy of isolation from Russia.  “Russia
in May secured a deal to build a new pipeline to import more gas from
Turkmenistan, bolstering its dominant hold on supplies to Europe and
heading off a competing U.S.-backed plan that would bypass Russian
territory.”[8]     Along with Iran, there are three other official observer states: India, Pakistan and Mongolia. Washington’s request for similar status was denied.  In 2005 the SCO called for a timetable for termination of any US military presence in Central Asia.  The participants at the August meeting flew to the Urals to attend the first joint US-China military exercises on Russian soil.     Association of Iran with the SCO extends its inroads into the Middle East, where China has been increasing trade and other relations with the jewel in the crown, Saudi Arabia.  There is an oppressed Shi’ite population in Saudi Arabia that is also susceptible to Iran’s influence – and happens to sit on most of Saudi oil.  About 40% of Middle East oil is reported to be heading East, not West.[9] As the flow Eastward increases, US
control declines over this lever of world domination, a “stupendous
source of strategic power,” as the State Department described Saudi oil
60 years ago.     In Cold War I, the Kremlin had imposed an iron curtain and built the Berlin Wall to contain Western influence.  In
Cold War II, Wright reports, the former Kremlinologists framing policy
are imposing a “green curtain” to bar Iranian influence.   In
short, government-media doctrine is that the Iranian threat is rather
similar to the Western threat that the Kremlin sought to contain, and
the US is eagerly taking on the Kremlin’s role in the thrilling “new Cold War.”     All of this is presented without noticeable concern.  Nevertheless, the recognition that the US
government is modeling itself on Stalin and his successors in the new
Cold War must be arousing at least some flickers of embarrassment.  Perhaps that is how we can explain the ferocious Washington Post editorial announcing that Iran has escalated its aggressiveness to a Hot War: “the Revolutionary Guard, a radical state within Iran's Islamic state, is waging war against the United States
and trying to kill as many American soldiers as possible.” The US must
therefore “fight back,” the editors thunder, finding quite
“puzzling...the murmurs of disapproval from European diplomats and
others who say they favor using diplomacy and economic pressure, rather
than military action, to rein in Iran,” even in the face of its
outright aggression.  The evidence that Iran is waging war against the US is now conclusive.  After
all, it comes from an administration that has never deceived the
American people, even improving on the famous stellar honesty of its
predecessors.     Suppose
that for once Washington’s charges happen to be true, and Iran really
is providing Shi’ite militias with roadside bombs that kill American
forces, perhaps even making use of the some of the advanced weaponry
lavishly provided to the Revolutionary Guard by Ronald Reagan in order
to fund the illegal war against Nicaragua, under the pretext of arms
for hostages (the number of hostages tripled during these endeavors).[10]  If the charges are true, then Iran
could properly be charged with a minuscule fraction of the iniquity of
the Reagan administration, which provided Stinger missiles and other
high-tech military aid to the “insurgents” seeking to disrupt Soviet
efforts to bring stability and justice to Afghanistan, as they saw it.  Perhaps Iran
is even guilty of some of the crimes of the Roosevelt administration,
which assisted terrorist partisans attacking peaceful and sovereign Vichy France in 1940-41, and had thus declared war on Germany even before Pearl Harbor.     One can pursue these questions further.  The CIA station chief in Pakistan
in 1981, Howard Hart, reports that “I was the first chief of station
ever sent abroad with this wonderful order: `Go kill Soviet soldiers’.  Imagine! I loved it.” Of course “the mission was not to liberate Afghanistan,” Tim Wiener writes in his history of the CIA, repeating the obvious.  But “it was a noble goal,” he writes.  Killing Russians with no concern for the fate of Afghans is a “noble goal.” But support for resistance to a US invasion and occupation would be a vile act and declaration of war.     Without irony, the Bush administration and the media charge that Iran is “meddling” in Iraq,
otherwise presumably free from foreign interference. The evidence is
partly technical. Do the serial numbers on the Improvised Explosive
Devices really trace back to Iran? If so, does the leadership of Iran know about the IEDs, or only the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.  Settling
the debate, the White House plans to brand the Revolutionary Guard as a
“specially designated global terrorist” force, an unprecedented action
against a national military branch, authorizing Washington
to undertake a wide range of punitive actions. Watching in disbelief,
much of the world asks whether the US military, invading and occupying
Iran’s neighbors, might better merit this charge -- or its Israeli
client, now about to receive a huge increase in military aid to
commemorate 40 years of harsh occupation and illegal settlement, and
its fifth invasion of Lebanon a year ago.     It
is instructive that Washington’s propaganda framework is reflexively
accepted, apparently without notice, in US and other Western commentary
and reporting, apart from the marginal fringe of what is called ‘the
loony left.” What is considered “criticism” is skepticism as to whether
all of Washington’s charges about Iranian aggression in Iraq are true.  It might be an interesting research project to see how closely the propaganda of Russia, Nazi Germany, and other aggressors and occupiers matched the standards of today’s liberal press and commentators..     The comparisons are of course unfair.  Unlike German and Russian occupiers, American forces are in Iraq by right, on the principle, too obvious even to enunciate, that the US owns the world.  Therefore, as a matter of elementary logic, the US cannot invade and occupy another country.  The US can only defend and liberate others.  No other category exists.  Predecessors,
including the most monstrous, have commonly sworn by the same
principle, but again there is an obvious difference: they were Wrong,
and we are Right.  QED.     Another
comparison comes to mind, which is studiously ignored when we are
sternly admonished of the ominous consequences that might follow
withdrawal of US troops from Iraq.  The preferred analogy is Indochina, highlighted in a shameful speech by the President on August 22.  That
analogy can perhaps pass muster among those who have succeeded in
effacing from their minds the record of US actions in Indochina,
including the destruction of much of Vietnam and the murderous bombing of Laos and Cambodia as the US began its withdrawal from the wreckage of South Vietnam.  In
Cambodia, the bombing was in accord with Kissinger’s genocidal orders:
“anything that flies on anything that moves” – actions that drove “an
enraged populace into the arms of an insurgency [the Khmer Rouge] that
had enjoyed relatively little support before the Kissinger-Nixon
bombing was inaugurated,” as Cambodia specialists Owen Taylor and Ben
Kiernan observe in a highly important study that passed virtually
without notice, in which they reveal that the bombing was five times
the incredible level reported earlier, greater than all allied bombing
in World War II.  Completely suppressing all
relevant facts, it is then possible for the President and many
commentators to present Khmer Rouge crimes as a justification for
continuing to devastate Iraq.     But
although the grotesque Indochina analogy receives much attention, the
obvious analogy is ignored: the Russian withdrawal from Afghanistan,
which, as Soviet
analysts predicted, led to shocking violence and destruction as the
country was taken over by Reagan's favorites, who amused themselves by
such acts as throwing acid in the faces of women in Kabul they regarded
as too liberated, and then virtually destroyed the city and much else,
creating such havoc and terror that the population actually welcomed
the Taliban.  That analogy could indeed be invoked without utter absurdity by advocates of  “staying the course,” but evidently it is best forgotten.     Under
the heading “Secretary Rice’s Mideast mission: contain Iran,” the press
reports Rice’s warning that Iran is “the single most important
single-country challenge to...US interests in the Middle East.” That is
a reasonable judgment.  Given the long-standing principle that Washington must do “everything in its power to alter or abolish any regime not openly allied with America,” Iran does pose a unique challenge, and it is natural that the task of containing Iranian influence should be a high priority.     As elsewhere, Bush administration rhetoric is relatively mild in this case.  For
the Kennedy administration, “Latin America was the most dangerous area
in the world” when there was a threat that the progressive Cheddi Jagan
might win a free election in British Guiana, overturned by CIA
shenanigans that handed the country over to the thuggish racist Forbes
Burnham.[11]
A few years earlier, Iraq was “the most dangerous place in the world”
(CIA director Allen Dulles) after General Abdel Karim Qassim broke the
Anglo-American condominium over Middle East oil, overthrowing the
pro-US monarchy, which had been heavily infiltrated by the CIA.[12]  A
primary concern was that Qassim might join Nasser, then the supreme
Middle East devil, in using the incomparable energy resources of the Middle East for the domestic.  The issue for Washington was not so much access as control.  At the time and for many years after, Washington was purposely exhausting domestic oil resources in the interests of “national security,” meaning security for the profits of Texas oil men, like the failed entrepreneur who now sits in the Oval Office.  But
as high-level planner George Kennan had explained well before, we
cannot relax our guard when there is any interference with “protection
of our resources” (which accidentally happen to be somewhere else).     Unquestionably,
Iran's government merits harsh condemnation, though it has not engaged
in worldwide terror, subversion, and aggression, following the US model
– which extends to today’s Iran as well, if ABC news is correct in
reporting that the US is supporting Pakistan-based Jundullah, which is
carrying out terrorist acts inside Iran.[13]  The sole act of aggression attributed to Iran is the conquest of two small islands in the Gulf – under Washington’s close ally the Shah.  In addition to internal repression – heightened, as Iranian dissidents regularly protest, by US militancy -- the prospect that Iran might develop nuclear weapons also is deeply troubling.  Though Iran has every right to develop nuclear energy, no one – including the majority of Iranians – wants it to have nuclear weapons.  That would add to the threat to survival posed much more seriously by its near neighbors Pakistan, India, and Israel, all nuclear armed with the blessing of the US, which most of the world regards as the leading threat to world peace, for evident reasons.     Iran rejects US control of the Middle East,
challenging fundamental policy doctrine, but it hardly poses a military
threat. On the contrary, it has been the victim of outside powers for
years: in recent memory, when the US and Britain overthrew its
parliamentary government and installed a brutal tyrant in 1953, and
when the US supported Saddam Hussein’s murderous invasion, slaughtering
hundreds of thousands of Iranians, many with chemical weapons, without
the “international community” lifting a finger – something that
Iranians do not forget as easily as the perpetrators.  And then under severe sanctions as a punishment for disobedience.     Israel regards Iran
as a threat. Israel seeks to dominate the region with no interference,
and Iran might be some slight counterbalance, while also supporting
domestic forces that do not bend to Israel’s will. It may, however, be
useful to bear in mind that Hamas has accepted the international
consensus on a two-state settlement on the international border, and
Hezbollah, along with Iran, has made clear that it would accept any outcome approved by Palestinians, leaving the US and Israel isolated in their traditional rejectionism.[14]      But Iran is hardly a military threat to Israel. And whatever threat there might be could be overcome if the US
would accept the view of the great majority of its own citizens and of
Iranians and permit the Middle East to become a nuclear-weapons free
zone, including Iran and Israel, and US forces deployed there.  One may also recall that UN Security Council Resolution 687 of 3 April 1991, to which Washington appeals when convenient, calls for “establishing in the Middle East a zone free from weapons of mass destruction and all missiles for their delivery.”     It is widely recognized that use of military force in Iran
would risk blowing up the entire region, with untold consequences
beyond. We know from polls that in the surrounding countries, where the
Iranian government is hardly popular -- Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan -- nevertheless large majorities prefer even a nuclear-armed Iran to any form of military action against it.     The rhetoric about Iran has escalated to the point where both political parties and practically the whole US
press accept it as legitimate and, in fact, honorable, that “all
options are on the table,” to quote Hillary Clinton and everybody else,
possibly even nuclear weapons. “All options on the table” means that Washington threatens war.      The UN Charter outlaws “the threat or use of force.” The United States,
which has chosen to become an outlaw state, disregards international
laws and norms. We're allowed to threaten anybody we want -- and to
attack anyone we choose.     Washington's feverish new Cold War "containment" policy has spread to Europe. Washington intends to install a “missile defense system” in the Czech Republic and Poland, marketed to Europe
as a shield against Iranian missiles. Even if Iran had nuclear weapons
and long-range missiles, the chances of its using them to attack Europe
are perhaps on a par with the chances of Europe's being hit by an
asteroid, so perhaps Europe would do as well to invest in an asteroid
defense system. Furthermore, if Iran were to indicate the slightest intention of aiming a missile at Europe or Israel, the country would be vaporized.     Of course, Russian planners are gravely upset by the shield proposal.  We can imagine how the US would respond if a Russian anti-missile system were erected in Canada.  The Russians have good reason to regard an anti-missile system as part of a first-strike weapon against them.  It
is generally understood that such a system could never block a first
strike, but it could conceivably impede a retaliatory strike. On all
sides, “missile defense” is therefore understood to be a first-strike
weapon, eliminating a deterrent to attack.  And a small initial installation in Eastern Europe could easily be a base for later expansion.  Even more obviously, the only military function of such a system with regard to Iran, the declared aim, would be to bar an Iranian deterrent to US or Israel aggression.      Not surprisingly, in reaction to the “missile defense” plans, Russia
has resorted to its own dangerous gestures, including the recent
decision to renew long-range patrols by nuclear-capable bombers after a
15-year hiatus, in one recent case near the US military base on Guam.  These
actions reflect Russia’s anger “over what it has called American and
NATO aggressiveness, including plans for a missile-defense system in
the Czech Republic and Poland, analysts said” (Andrew Kramer, NYT).[15]     The shield ratchets the threat of war a few notches higher, in the Middle East
and elsewhere, with incalculable consequences, and the potential for a
terminal nuclear war. The immediate fear is that by accident or design,
Washington's war planners or their Israeli surrogate might decide to
escalate their Cold War II into a hot one – in this case a real hot war.                 
  [1] Wright, WP, July 29 07    [2] Correspondent Michael Wines, NYT, June 13, 1999.  Doolittle report, Tim Weiner, Legacy of Ashes: the History of the CIA, Doubleday 2007    [3] Ibid., 77.    [4] Ibid., 180.    [5] Paul Richter, LAT, Aug. 10, 2007.  Karzai, CNN, Aug. 5, 2007.    [6] Robin Wright, “U.S. Plans New Arms Sales to Gulf Allies,” WP, July 28, 2007.    [7] Henry Meyer, Bloomberg, Aug. 16, 2007.    [8] Ibid.    [9] Hiro    [10] Weiner    [11] Schmitz, Weiner.    [12] Weiner.  Failed States.    [13] Brian Ross and Christopher Isham, “ABC News Exclusive: The Secret War Against Iran,” April 3, 2007; Ross and Richard Esposito, ABC, “Bush Authorizes New Covert Action Against Iran,” May 22, 2007.    [14] On Iran, see Gilbert Achcar, Noam Chomsky, and Stephen Shalom, Perilous Power (Paradigm, 2007), and Ervand Abrahamian, in David Barsamian, ed., Targeting Iran (City Lights, 2007).  On
Hamas, among many similar statements see the article by Hamas’s most
militant leader, Khalid Mish'al, "Our unity can now pave the way for
peace and justice," Guardian, February 13, 2007.  Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has repeatedly taken the same position.  See among others Irene Gendzier, Assaf Kfoury, and Fawwaz Traboulsi, eds., Inside Lebanon (Monthly Review, 2007).    [15] Kramer, “Recalling Cold War, Russia Resumes Long-Range Sorties,” Aug. 18,  2007.