{"id":215312,"date":"2022-06-20T12:00:37","date_gmt":"2022-06-20T11:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=215312"},"modified":"2022-06-17T05:16:38","modified_gmt":"2022-06-17T04:16:38","slug":"welcome-to-a-science-fiction-planet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2022\/06\/welcome-to-a-science-fiction-planet\/","title":{"rendered":"Welcome to a Science-Fiction Planet"},"content":{"rendered":"
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16 Jun 2022 – How George Orwell’s Doublethink Became the Way of the World – The remarkable 93-year-old Noam Chomsky put the Ukraine War in the largest and most devastating context possible in an interview with Alternative Radio\u2019s David Barsamian.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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Featured image: George Orwell\u2019s 1984 by Dandelion Salad is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 \/ Flickr<\/p><\/div>\n

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David Barsamian: Let\u2019s head into the most obvious nightmare of this moment, the war in Ukraine and its effects globally. But first a little background. Let\u2019s start with President George H.W. Bush\u2019s assurance to then-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would not move \u201cone inch to the east\u201d \u2014 and that pledge has been verified. My question to you is, why didn\u2019t Gorbachev get that in writing?<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Noam Chomsky:<\/em><\/strong> He accepted a gentleman\u2019s agreement, which is not that uncommon in diplomacy. Shake-of-the-hand. Furthermore, having it on paper would have made no difference whatsoever. Treaties that are on paper are torn up all the time. What matters is good faith. And in fact, H.W. Bush, the first Bush, did honor the agreement explicitly. He even moved toward instituting a partnership in peace, which would accommodate the countries of Eurasia. NATO wouldn\u2019t be disbanded but would be marginalized. Countries like Tajikistan, for example, could join without formally being part of NATO. And Gorbachev approved of that. It would have been a step toward creating what he called a common European home with no military alliances.<\/p>\n

Clinton in his first couple of years also adhered to it. What the specialists say is that by about 1994, Clinton started to, as they put it, talk from both sides of his mouth. To the Russians he was saying: Yes, we\u2019re going to adhere to the agreement. To the Polish community in the United States and other ethnic minorities, he was saying: Don\u2019t worry, we\u2019ll incorporate you within NATO. By about 1996-97, Clinton said this pretty explicitly to his friend Russian President Boris Yeltsin, whom he had helped win the 1996 election. He told Yeltsin: Don\u2019t push too hard on this NATO business. We\u2019re going to expand but I need it because of the ethnic vote in the United States.<\/p>\n

In 1997, Clinton invited the so-called Visegrad countries \u2014 Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania \u2014 to join NATO. The Russians didn\u2019t like it but didn\u2019t make much of a fuss. Then the Baltic nations joined, again the same thing. In 2008, the second Bush, who was quite different from the first, invited Georgia and Ukraine into NATO. Every U.S. diplomat understood very well that Georgia and Ukraine were red lines for Russia. They\u2019ll tolerate the expansion elsewhere, but these are in their geostrategic heartland and they\u2019re not going to tolerate expansion there. To continue with the story, the Maidan uprising took place in 2014, expelling the pro-Russian president and Ukraine moved toward the West.<\/p>\n

From 2014, the U.S. and NATO began to pour arms into Ukraine \u2014 advanced weapons, military training, joint military exercises, moves to integrate Ukraine into the NATO military command. There\u2019s no secret about this. It was quite open. Recently, the Secretary General of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, bragged about it. He said: This is what we were doing since 2014. Well, of course, this is very consciously, highly provocative. They knew that they were encroaching on what every Russian leader regarded as an intolerable move. France and Germany vetoed it in 2008, but under U.S. pressure, it was kept on the agenda. And NATO, meaning the United States, moved to accelerate the de facto integration of Ukraine into the NATO military command.<\/p>\n

In 2019, Volodymyr Zelensky was elected with an overwhelming majority \u2014 I think about 70% of the vote \u2014 on a peace platform, a plan to implement peace with Eastern Ukraine and Russia, to settle the problem. He began to move forward on it and, in fact, tried to go to the Donbas, the Russian-oriented eastern region, to implement what\u2019s called the Minsk II agreement. It would have meant a kind of federalization of Ukraine with a degree of autonomy for the Donbas, which is what they wanted. Something like Switzerland or Belgium. He was blocked by right-wing militias which threatened to murder him if he persisted with his effort.<\/p>\n

Well, he\u2019s a courageous man. He could have gone forward if he had had any backing from the United States. The U.S. refused. No backing, nothing, which meant he was left to hang out to dry and had to back off. The U.S. was intent on this policy of integrating Ukraine step by step into the NATO military command. That accelerated further when President Biden was elected. In September 2021, you could read it on the White House website. It wasn\u2019t reported but, of course, the Russians knew it. Biden announced a program, a joint statement to accelerate the process of military training, military exercises, more weapons as part of what his administration called an \u201cenhanced program\u201d of preparation for NATO membership.<\/p>\n

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David Barsamian with Noam Chomsky at his MIT Office.
Alternative Radio<\/p><\/div>\n

It accelerated further in November. This was all before the invasion. Secretary of State Antony Blinken signed what was called a charter, which essentially formalized and extended this arrangement. A spokesman for the State Department conceded that before the invasion, the U.S. refused to discuss any Russian security concerns. All of this is part of the background.<\/p>\n

On February 24th, Putin invaded, a criminal invasion. These serious provocations provide no justification for it. If Putin had been a statesman, what he would have done is something quite different. He would have gone back to French President Emmanuel Macron, grasped his tentative proposals, and moved to try to reach an accommodation with Europe, to take steps toward a European common home.<\/p>\n

The U.S., of course, has always been opposed to that. This goes way back in Cold War history to French President De Gaulle\u2019s initiatives to establish an independent Europe. In his phrase \u201cfrom the Atlantic to the Urals,\u201d integrating Russia with the West, which was a very natural accommodation for trade reasons and, obviously, security reasons as well. So, had there been any statesmen within Putin\u2019s narrow circle, they would have grasped Macron\u2019s initiatives and experimented to see whether, in fact, they could integrate with Europe and avert the crisis. Instead, what he chose was a policy which, from the Russian point of view, was total imbecility. Apart from the criminality of the invasion, he chose a policy that drove Europe deep into the pocket of the United States. In fact, it is even inducing Sweden and Finland to join NATO \u2014 the worst possible outcome from the Russian point of view, quite apart from the criminality of the invasion, and the very serious losses that Russia is suffering because of that.<\/p>\n

So, criminality and stupidity on the Kremlin side, severe provocation on the U.S. side. That\u2019s the background that has led to this. Can we try to bring this horror to an end? Or should we try to perpetuate it? Those are the choices.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s only one way to bring it to an end. That\u2019s diplomacy. Now, diplomacy, by definition, means both sides accept it. They don\u2019t like it, but they accept it as the least bad option. It would offer Putin some kind of escape hatch. That\u2019s one possibility. The other is just to drag it out and see how much everybody will suffer, how many Ukrainians will die, how much Russia will suffer, how many millions of people will starve to death in Asia and Africa, how much we\u2019ll proceed toward heating the environment to the point where there will be no possibility for a livable human existence. Those are the options. Well, with near 100% unanimity, the United States and most of Europe want to pick the no-diplomacy option. It\u2019s explicit. We have to keep going to hurt Russia.<\/p>\n

You can read columns in the New York Times<\/em>, the London Financial Times<\/em>, all over Europe. A common refrain is: we\u2019ve got to make sure that Russia suffers. It doesn\u2019t matter what happens to Ukraine or anyone else. Of course, this gamble assumes that if Putin is pushed to the limit, with no escape, forced to admit defeat, he\u2019ll accept that and not use the weapons he has to devastate Ukraine.<\/p>\n

There are a lot of things that Russia hasn\u2019t done. Western analysts are rather surprised by it. Namely, they\u2019ve not attacked the supply lines from Poland that are pouring weapons into Ukraine. They certainly could do it. That would very soon bring them into direct confrontation with NATO, meaning the U.S. Where it goes from there, you can guess. Anyone who\u2019s ever looked at war games knows where it\u2019ll go \u2014 up the escalatory ladder toward terminal nuclear war.<\/p>\n

So, those are the games we\u2019re playing with the lives of Ukrainians, Asians, and Africans, the future of civilization, in order to weaken Russia, to make sure that they suffer enough. Well, if you want to play that game, be honest about it. There\u2019s no moral basis for it. In fact, it\u2019s morally horrendous. And the people who are standing on a high horse about how we\u2019re upholding principle are moral imbeciles when you think about what\u2019s involved.<\/p>\n

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George Orwell\u2019s 1984 by Dandelion Salad<\/p><\/div>\n

Barsamian: In the media, and among the political class in the United States, and probably in Europe, there\u2019s much moral outrage about Russian barbarity, war crimes, and atrocities. No doubt they are occurring as they do in every war. Don\u2019t you find that moral outrage a bit selective though?<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Chomsky:<\/em><\/strong> The moral outrage is quite in place. There should be moral outrage. But you go to the Global South, they just can\u2019t believe what they\u2019re seeing. They condemn the war, of course. It\u2019s a deplorable crime of aggression. Then they look at the West and say: What are you guys talking about? This is what you do to us all the time.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s kind of astonishing to see the difference in commentary. So, you read the New York Times<\/em> and their big thinker, Thomas Friedman. He wrote a column a couple of weeks ago in which he just threw up his hands in despair. He said: What can we do? How can we live in a world that has a war criminal? We\u2019ve never experienced this since Hitler. There\u2019s a war criminal in Russia. We\u2019re at a loss as to how to act. We\u2019ve never imagined the idea that there could be a war criminal anywhere.<\/p>\n

When people in the Global South hear this, they don\u2019t know whether to crack up in laughter or ridicule. We have war criminals walking all over Washington. Actually, we know how to deal with our war criminals. In fact, it happened on the twentieth anniversary of the invasion of Afghanistan. Remember, this was an entirely unprovoked invasion, strongly opposed by world opinion. There was an interview with the perpetrator, George W. Bush, who then went on to invade Iraq, a major war criminal, in the style section of the Washington Post<\/em> \u2014 an interview with, as they described it, this lovable goofy grandpa who was playing with his grandchildren, making jokes, showing off the portraits he painted of famous people he\u2019d met. Just a beautiful, friendly environment.<\/p>\n

So, we know how to deal with war criminals. Thomas Friedman is wrong. We deal with them very well.<\/p>\n

Or take probably the major war criminal of the modern period, Henry Kissinger. We deal with him not only politely, but with great admiration. This is the man after all who transmitted the order to the Air Force, saying that there should be massive bombing of Cambodia \u2014 \u201canything that flies on anything that moves\u201d was his phrase. I don\u2019t know of a comparable example in the archival record of a call for mass genocide. And it was implemented with very intensive bombing of Cambodia. We don\u2019t know much about it because we don\u2019t investigate our own crimes. But Taylor Owen and Ben Kiernan, serious historians of Cambodia, have described it. Then there\u2019s our role in overthrowing Salvador Allende\u2019s government in Chile and instituting a vicious dictatorship there, and on and on. So, we do know how to deal with our war criminals.<\/p>\n

Still, Thomas Friedman can\u2019t imagine that there\u2019s anything like Ukraine. Nor was there any commentary on what he wrote, which means it was regarded as quite reasonable. You can hardly use the word selectivity. It\u2019s beyond astonishing. So, yes, the moral outrage is perfectly in place. It\u2019s good that Americans are finally beginning to show some outrage about major war crimes committed by someone else.<\/p>\n

Barsamian: I\u2019ve got a little puzzle for you. It\u2019s in two parts. Russia\u2019s military is inept and incompetent. Its soldiers have very low morale and are poorly led. Its economy ranks with Italy\u2019s and Spain\u2019s. That\u2019s one part. The other part is Russia is a military colossus that threatens to overwhelm us. So, we need more weapons. Let\u2019s expand NATO. How do you reconcile those two contradictory thoughts?<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Chomsky:<\/em> <\/strong>Those two thoughts are standard in the entire West. I just had a long interview in Sweden about their plans to join NATO. I pointed out that Swedish leaders have two contradictory ideas, the two you mentioned. One, gloating over the fact that Russia has proven itself to be a paper tiger that can\u2019t conquer cities a couple of miles from its border defended by a mostly citizens\u2019 army. So, they\u2019re completely militarily incompetent. The other thought is: they\u2019re poised to conquer the West and destroy us.<\/p>\n

George Orwell had a name for that. He called it doublethink, the capacity to have two contradictory ideas in your mind and believe both of them. Orwell mistakenly thought that was something you could only have in the ultra-totalitarian state he was satirizing in 1984.<\/em> He was wrong. You can have it in free democratic societies. We\u2019re seeing a dramatic example of it right now. Incidentally, this is not the first time.<\/p>\n

Such doublethink is, for instance, characteristic of Cold War thinking. You go way back to the major Cold War document of those years, NSC-68 in 1950. Look at it carefully and it showed that Europe alone, quite apart from the United States, was militarily on a par with Russia. But of course, we still had to have a huge rearmament program to counter the Kremlin design for world conquest.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s one document and it was a conscious approach. Dean Acheson, one of the authors, later said that it\u2019s necessary to be \u201cclearer than truth,\u201d his phrase, in order to bludgeon the mass mind of government. We want to drive through this huge military budget, so we have to be \u201cclearer than truth\u201d by concocting a slave state that\u2019s about to conquer the world. Such thinking runs right through the Cold War. I could give you many other examples, but we\u2019re seeing it again now quite dramatically. And the way you put it is exactly correct: these two ideas are consuming the West.<\/p>\n

Barsamian: It\u2019s also interesting that diplomat George Kennan foresaw the danger of NATO moving its borders east in a very prescient op-ed he wrote that appeared in <\/em>The New York Times in 1997.<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Chomsky:<\/em><\/strong> Kennan had also been opposed to NSC-68. In fact, he had been the director of the State Department Policy Planning Staff. He was kicked out and replaced by Paul Nitze. He was regarded as too soft for such a hard world. He was a hawk, radically anticommunist, pretty brutal himself with regard to U.S. positions, but he realized that military confrontation with Russia made no sense.<\/p>\n

Russia, he thought, would ultimately collapse from internal contradictions, which turned out to be correct. But he was considered a dove all the way through. In 1952, he was in favor of the unification of Germany outside the NATO military alliance. That was actually Soviet ruler Joseph Stalin\u2019s proposal as well. Kennan was ambassador to the Soviet Union and a Russia specialist.<\/p>\n

Stalin\u2019s initiative. Kennan\u2019s proposal.\u00a0 Some Europeans supported it. It would have ended the Cold War. It would have meant a neutralized Germany, non-militarized and not part of any military bloc. It was almost totally ignored in Washington.<\/p>\n

There was one foreign policy specialist, a respected one, James Warburg, who wrote a book about it. It\u2019s worth reading. It\u2019s called Germany: Key to Peace<\/em>. In it, he urged that this idea be taken seriously. He was disregarded, ignored, ridiculed. I mentioned it a couple of times and was ridiculed as a lunatic, too. How could you believe Stalin? Well, the archives came out. Turns out he was apparently serious. You now read the leading Cold War historians, people like Melvin Leffler, and they recognize that there was a real opportunity for a peaceful settlement at the time, which was dismissed in favor of militarization, of a huge expansion of the military budget.<\/p>\n

Now, let\u2019s go to the Kennedy administration. When John Kennedy came into office, Nikita Khrushchev, leading Russia at the time, made a very important offer to carry out large-scale mutual reductions in offensive military weapons, which would have meant a sharp relaxation of tensions. The United States was far ahead militarily then. Khrushchev wanted to move toward economic development in Russia and understood that this was impossible in the context of a military confrontation with a far richer adversary. So, he first made that offer to President Dwight Eisenhower, who paid no attention. It was then offered to Kennedy and his administration responded with the largest peacetime buildup of military force in history \u2014 even though they knew that the United States was already far ahead.<\/p>\n

The U.S. concocted a \u201cmissile gap.\u201d Russia was about to overwhelm us with its advantage in missiles. Well, when the missile gap was exposed, it turned out to be in favor of the U.S. Russia had maybe four missiles exposed on an airbase somewhere.<\/p>\n

You can go on and on like this. The security of the population is simply not a concern for policymakers. Security for the privileged, the rich, the corporate sector, arms manufacturers, yes, but not the rest of us. This doublethink is constant, sometimes conscious, sometimes not. It\u2019s just what Orwell described, hyper-totalitarianism in a free society.<\/p>\n

Barsamian: In an article in <\/em>Truthout, you quote Eisenhower\u2019s 1953 \u201cCross of Iron\u201d speech. What did you find of interest there?<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Chomsky:<\/strong> <\/em>You should read it and you\u2019ll see why it\u2019s interesting. It\u2019s the best speech he ever made. This was 1953 when he was just taking office. Basically, what he pointed out was that militarization was a tremendous attack on our own society. He \u2014 or whoever wrote the speech \u2014 put it pretty eloquently. One jet plane means this many fewer schools and hospitals. Every time we\u2019re building up our military budget, we\u2019re attacking ourselves.<\/p>\n

He spelled it out in some detail, calling for a decline in the military budget. He had a pretty awful record himself, but in this respect he was right on target. And those words should be emblazoned in everyone\u2019s memory. Recently, in fact, Biden proposed a huge military budget. Congress expanded it even beyond his wishes, which represents a major attack on our society, exactly as Eisenhower explained so many years ago.<\/p>\n

The excuse: the claim that we have to defend ourselves from this paper tiger, so militarily incompetent it can\u2019t move a couple of miles beyond its border without collapse. So, with a monstrous military budget, we have to severely harm ourselves and endanger the world, wasting enormous resources that will be necessary if we\u2019re going to deal with the severe existential crises we face. Meanwhile, we pour taxpayer funds into the pockets of the fossil-fuel producers so that they can continue to destroy the world as quickly as possible. That\u2019s what we\u2019re witnessing with the vast expansion of both fossil-fuel production and military expenditures. There are people who are happy about this. Go to the executive offices of Lockheed Martin, ExxonMobil, they\u2019re ecstatic. It\u2019s a bonanza for them. They\u2019re even being given credit for it. Now, they\u2019re being lauded for saving civilization by destroying the possibility for life on Earth. Forget the Global South. If you imagine some extraterrestrials, if they existed, they\u2019d think we were all totally insane. And they\u2019d be right.<\/p>\n

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Copyright 2022 Noam Chomsky and David Barsamian<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n