World Order And Its Rules [Variations On Some Themes].pdf

Cardiff University

World Order and Its Rules: Variations on Some ThemesAuthor(s): Noam ChomskySource: Journal of Law and Society, Vol. 20, No. 2 (Summer, 1993), pp. 145-165Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of Cardiff UniversityStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1410165Accessed: 23/10/2008 23:31

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available athttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unlessyou have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and youmay use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.

Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained athttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=black.

Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printedpage of such transmission.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. We work with thescholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform thatpromotes the discovery and use of these resources. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

Cardiff University and Blackwell Publishing are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extendaccess to Journal of Law and Society.

http://www.jstor.org

JOURNAL OF LAW AND SOCIETY VOLUME 20, NUMBER 2, SUMMER 1993 0263-323X

World Order and its Rules: Variations on Some Themes

NOAM CHOMSKY*

There are several far-reaching theses about contemporary history that are widely proclaimed in the rich industrial societies of the West. I would like to consider three major ones.

The most general thesis is that history is converging towards an ideal of liberal democracy and classical markets. Second, we have just emerged from a cosmic struggle in which these ideals have been vindicated. Third, in the New World Order that is coming into view, the rule of law will at last prevail, under the leadership of the United States of America, the long-time leader of the crusade for freedom, justice, and international law, with Britain always standing sturdily by her side. The Anglo-Saxon powers are now able to enforce the principles of the United Nations Charter to which they have so long been dedicated, in particular, the principle that the threat or use of force cannot be tolerated in international affairs, the founding principle of world order. The response to Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait, made possible by the defeat of the obstructionist Russians, opens the new age of promise.

Reality is a bit different. In the real world, democracy and free markets are considered by the rich and powerful to be a threat, a danger to be overcome. The Cold War was real enough, but'should be understood in rather different terms. As for the rule of law, it requires some audacity to take its guardian to be a state that was condemned by the International Court of Justice for its 'unlawful use of force' against Nicaragua; that opened the post-Cold War era, immediately after the fall of the Berlin wall, by invading Panama to install a client regime, vetoing two United Nations Security Council resolutions that condemned its actions (helped by the United Kingdom, to be sure), and disregarding the United Nations General Assembly resolution that denounced the invasion as a 'flagrant violation of international law and of the independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of states' and called for the

* Institute Professor of Linguistics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 18 Vassar Street, 20D-219, Cambridge, Mass. 02139, United States of America

This paper was given as the Journal of Law and Society Public Lecture in Cardiff on 18 March 1993. A two-hour videotape of the lecture and discussion is available from: Video Workshop, Chapter Arts Centre, Market Street, Canton, Cardiff. (?15 inc. p.&p. within the E.C. and ?18 elsewhere Sterling only) cheques should be made payable to Video Workshop.

145

? Basil Blackwell Ltd. 1993. 108 Cowley Road. Oxford OX4 IJF, UK and 238 Main Street. Cambridge, MA 02142, USA

withdrawal of the 'US armed invasion forces from Panama'; a state that, furthermore, reacted to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait shortly after in fear that Saddam Hussein would mimic what the United States of America had just accomplished in Panama, with roughly the same number of civilian casualties. Not to speak of a few other examples that come to mind that do not quite accord with the uplifting rhetoric.

Of that, there is no dearth. A highly-regarded academic study of the Gulf War by Lawrence Freedman and Efraim Karsh opens by quoting, with appreciation, President George Bush's oration of 29 January 1991, in which he declaimed that:

What is at stake is more than one small country: it is a big idea: a new world order - where diverse nations are drawn together in common cause, to achieve the universal aspirations of mankind: peace and security, freedom and the rule of law.'

'There seems little doubt', the authors write, 'that Bush was influenced most of all by the need to uphold the principle of non-aggression and the analogy with the failure of appeasement in the 1930s.' The Gulf war was fought 'over the rule of law in international relations', clearly violated in this 'remarkably transparent crisis', 'a textbook case of aggression ... against a small, hapless neighbor' which broke 'an elemental rule of international order'. Bush was a 'crusader ... for the cause of international norms of decency'.

Saddam's invasion of Kuwait was thus radically unlike the crusader's invasion of Panama a few months earlier - or to keep to the terms Freedman and Karsh prefer, 'the hunt for Noriega', 'the Noriega experience [which] warned against chasing Saddam Hussein himself around Baghdad'. Similarly, it cannot be compared with Israel's attack on Lebanon (with far greater civilian casualties than Kuwait-Panama), which the stern defender of the principle of non-aggression loyally supported. Or a host of other cases.

To clarify the distinctions further, recall that Israel's invasion of Lebanon was undertaken to 'undermine the position of the moderates within [the Palestine Liberation Organization's] ranks' and thus to block 'the PLO "peace offensive"' and 'to halt [the PLO's] rise to political respectability' (Israeli strategic analyst Avner Yaniv, confirmed by high intelligence, military, and political authority), so that it should be called 'the war to safeguard the occupation of the West Bank', having been motivated by Begin's 'fear of the momentum of the peace process' (General (retired) Yehoshaphat Harkabi, a noted Israeli Arabist and military/political analyst). Israel's aggression followed a year of military attacks on Lebanon with many civilian casualties in a vain effort to elicit a response from the Palestine Liberation Organization that could serve as a pretext for the planned invasion (what Freedman and Karsh call a 'prolonged lull' in violence, perhaps because only Lebanese and Palestinians were killed). The Reagan-Bush Administration vetoed a Security Council resolution condemning Israel for ignoring the council's demand that it withdraw from Lebanon, and another calling for simultaneous withdrawal of Israeli and Palestinian armed forces from Beirut, then just coming under devastating Israeli bombardment of civilian targets. The latter veto was

146

() Basil Blackwell Ltd. 1993

justified on the grounds that the resolution 'was a transparent attempt to preserve the PLO as a viable political force', plainly unacceptable, given the goals of the US-backed aggression.2

Elsewhere, Professor Freedman finds 'unsettling' the failure of a study of

policy to recognize aggression 'as a crime against which it is always important to take a stand'. The world system cannot survive such a 'defeatist' stance, any more than governments can easily 'ignore sustained challenges to the rule of law at home'. We must be committed to 'the enforcement of law' against transgressors, always ready to punish the war crime of aggression, in accord with deeply-held US-UK principles.3

Such high-minded thoughts are not, of course, confined to academic studies. The chief diplomatic correspondent of the New York Times, Thomas Friedman, writes that the principle guiding President Bush in the Gulf war 'was that unless international boundaries between sovereign nation states are respected [as in Panama, Lebanon, Nicaragua, Grenada], the alternative is chaos'. But the basic issue, he explains, is far deeper: 'America's victory in the cold war was... a victory for a set of political and economic principles: democracy and the free market.' At last, the Third World is coming to understand that 'the free market is the wave of the future - a future for which America is both the gatekeeper and the model.'4

Though Third World opinion is typically more attributed than sampled, we may note in passing that it seems less than euphoric about 'the wave of the future'. Shortly before the Bush Administration adopted the phrase 'New World Order' to cloak its Gulf enterprise with proper grandeur, the South Commission - consisting of leading Third World economists, government planners, religious leaders, and others - had used the term rather differently in an important document reviewing the miserable state of the traditional Western domains, calling - with no great hope - for a 'new world order' that will respond to 'the South's plea for justice, equity, and democracy in the global society'. The Latin American bishops are also backward students. In December 1992, they held their fourth general conference in Santo Domingo, attended by the Pope. The agenda was carefully controlled by the Vatican, for fear that the bishops might pursue the path begun at the historic conferences of Medellin and Puebla in which they adopted 'the preferential option for the poor', setting off a murderous terrorist war directed by Reagan and Bush to destroy this heresy, which threatened to help poor people take some control over their lives and address the brutal heritage of domination and exploitation. Nevertheless, the bishops warned against 'the predominant neo- liberal policy' of Bush's New World Order, which has sometimes caused democratic life to deteriorate and condemned the vast majority to even greater misery, and called for 'promoting the social participation of the state [as] an urgently important line of pastoral work'. The terrible poverty of the region 'did not come about by itself, the Bolivian conference of bishops added, 'but is the product of the current free market system, which lacks any controls, and the economic adjustments that are part of neo-liberal policies that do not take into account the social dimension.' Note that Bolivia is the scene of an

147

(; Basil Blackwell Ltd. 1993

'economic miracle' much lauded by the West, including those enriching themselves from the coca exports on which it rests.5

It is the vision of the powerful, however, that resounds in the doctrinal system. George Bush's New World Order, not that of the South Commission or the bishops who speak for the poor, is the 'wave of the future' that is so inspiring to those who hold the reins.

As for the United Nations, the near-universal doctrine is that it underwent 'a wondrous sea change' in August 1990, silencing 'most of its detractors' and freeing President Bush to create a 'new world order to resolve conflicts by multilateral diplomacy and collective security' (editorial, New York Times). A critique of administration policy in the New York Review by George Ball opens:

With the end of the cold war and the onset of the Gulf crisis, the United States can now test the validity of the Wilsonian concept of collective security - a test which an automatic Soviet veto in the Security Council has precluded for the past forty years.

Here is the BBC version: 'Time and again during the Cold War, the Kremlin used its veto to protect its interests from the threat of UN intervention. As long as the answer was 'Nyet', council debates remained adversarial', but at last 'the Soviet attitude is quite different' and they are willing to co-operate with the Anglo-American defenders of the rule of law (BBC correspondent Mark Urban). Examples abound.6

Scholarship chimed in with impressive facts and figures to back up the story. Oxford Professor Adam Roberts, an academic specialist on the United Nations, wrote:

For much of its forty-five years' existence, the Security Council has been unable to take action on certain important issues because of East-West hostility. By the end of 1989, the Soviet Union had vetoed 114 resolutions, the US 67, Britain 30, France 18, and China three. With the ending of the Cold War, the opportunities for UN action are greater

- the leading obstructionist having dropped out of the game. A picture alongside his article shows a smiling George Bush 'praising the UN resolution on the use of force against Iraq', so the caption reads, referring to the agreement of the Security Council to wash its hands of the matter and leave it to US-UK power, in gross violation of the charter but in recognition that the explicit procedures laid down there cannot be followed in the face of US intransigence.7

These examples are drawn from the period when doctrinal managers were working overtime to whip up war fever. But the message continues to be driven home with impressive uniformity. To take one of many examples, the New York Times Week in Review ran a major article in January 1993 on the New World Order under the heading 'More Than Ever, UN Policing is an American Show'. The author, Craig Whitney, opens with the historical background; for 'most of its history', the Soviet Union:

... opposed the United States in the Security Council and in almost all cases blocked the United Nations from meaningful action. In those instances where the United Nations was

148

? Basil Blackwell Ltd. 1993

able to act, from Korea to the Persian Gulf, it always did so with the strong political backing and the military muscle of the United States

- now at last able to act freely. A few days before, Canada's leading journal informed 'Mr Hussein and those like him' that 'the new determination to establish the rule of law in the world is real, and will be enforced'. A front-page story a day earlier cited an Amnesty International report that in Haiti, 'Lawlessness pervades. Human-rights abuse is part of most Haitians' daily lives' since the violent overthrow of the democratically-elected government; in poor districts 'residents are nostalgic for the Duvalier days', and a Western diplomat adds that 'It's worse than the darkest days of the Duvalier regime, an international embarrassment that compels us to act' - namely, by ensuring the welfare of the killers under a tacit agreement among Western elites that the troublesome priest and the grassroots movement that swept him into office must be suppressed, power remaining in the hands of those whom the New York Times calls 'civil society', meaning the Western-oriented kleptocracy.8

To maintain the desired conclusions on the three basic theses, it is necessary to take a few liberties with the historical and contemporary record. Let me begin with the rules of world order, turning then to the Cold War, and finally to the broader questions of democracy and free markets and the world order taking shape.

On the United Nations, the standard version is entirely accurate for its first few years; that is when the bulk of Professor Roberts's imposing record of Soviet vetoes was compiled. In those years, US power was so extraordinary that it could use the United Nations as an instrument of its foreign policy, directed against the Soviet Union and other enemies. In the 1950s, the situation began to change as other powers recovered from wartime devastation and decolonization broadened United Nations membership, leading to what came to be called 'the tyranny of the majority'. Turning to the more relevant recent past, since 1970 there have been eighty-eight vetoes, eighty by the West, with the United States of America well in the lead with sixty-two, the United Kingdom second, France far behind in third place, and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics fourth, generally voting with the majority. In the UN General Assembly, US isolation was even more striking. Issues on which the United States of America blocked UN action include calls to observe international law and to reverse aggression, human rights, disarmament, international terrorism, Middle East and Central American diplomacy, and so on; a close look shows that most had little if anything to do with the Cold War, a fact sometimes conceded in recent government documents. The undermining of the United Nations by the United States of America would have been even more dramatic were it not for the fact that its enormous power kept major issues from the agenda. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was bitterly censured, but the United Nations was never willing to be destroyed by addressing the US attack against South Vietnam, then all of Indochina - to mention events that occurred only in history, though not in its sanitized Western version.

149

? Basil Blackwell Ltd. 1993

By the 1980s, the isolation of the United States of America was so extreme that the New York Times was impelled to run a major article enquiring plaintively why the world is out of step: what psychological or other defects could be causing this strange behaviour? The Reagan Administration sought to paralyze the United Nations by withholding dues and driving it to the verge of bankruptcy, virtually destroying UNESCO because of its Third World orientation and undermining UN human rights activities because they were annoying such friends as Argentinian and Salvadoran torturers; Britain helped out with whitewashes of state terror in Argentina and Guatemala. Furthermore, this contempt for the United Nations continued right through the Gulf War.9

Some of the statements quoted earlier approach accuracy, though they require a gloss. Roberts is correct to say that 'with the ending of the Cold War, the opportunities for UN action are greater' - namely, as an instrument of US power, now that the United Nations is sufficiently subdued. The collapse of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics added another near-automatic vote for the United States of America in the Security Council. It also eliminated the space for a limited degree of independence in the Third World. Third World opposition was further neutralized by the catastrophe of capitalism in the 1980s, which devastated most of the traditional colonial domains, apart from the Japanese-influenced zone, where the state is powerful enough not only to control labour but even capital, and was thus able to provide some defence against the ravages of Western-imposed market ideology.?1 And Whitney is right to say that when the United Nations could act, 'it always did so with the strong political backing and the military muscle of the United States' - for the simple reason that the United States of America would permit the United Nations to act only in accord with its will. When the United Nations refused to see the light, it was simply dismissed, like the World Court, as a 'hostile forum' and therefore irrelevant, as proven by its condemnation of US terrorism in Nicaragua (New York Times, with the endorsement of enlightened opinion rather generally, including noted scholars of international law and advocates of world order)."

More generally, the United Nations had, naturally, been able to act only with the approval of the 'great powers', the United States of America having the decisive voice, given the power relations. There are no rational grounds to expect any significant changes, except that Washington is now able to act more freely than before, a fact that has aroused fear and dismay throughout much of the South. Not surprisingly, the record of the United States of America since the fall of the Berlin wall is essentially as before, pretexts aside. Panama is a revealing example, once again ruled by a tiny elite of European bankers and businessmen, with the drug racket reaching new heights along with poverty and profits, and Washington well aware by the beginning of 1991 'that removing the mantle of United States protection would quickly result in a civilian or military overthrow of [US-imposed President] Endara and his supporters'.12

150

( Basil Blackwell Ltd. 1993

It was a similar outcome that Washington feared when Iraq invaded Kuwait. According to the account by investigative reporter Bob Woodward of the Washington Post, President Bush's concern was that the Saudis would 'bug out at the last minute and accept a puppet regime in Kuwait' after Iraqi withdrawal. His advisers feared that Iraq would withdraw, leaving behind 'lots of Iraqi special forces in civilian clothes', though probably not armed forces as the United States of America did in Panama, while taking the two uninhabited mudflats assigned to Kuwait in the British imperial settlement to block Iraq's access to the sea (US General Norman Schwartzkopf); US Chief- of-Staff General Colin Powell warned that the status quo would be changed under Iraqi influence, even after withdrawal. Freedman and Karsh, who seek to present the US-UK effort in the most favourable possible light, conclude that:

Saddam apparently intended neither officially to annex the tiny emirate nor to maintain a permanent military presence there. Instead, he sought to establish hegemony over Kuwait, ensuring its complete financial, political and strategic subservience to his wishes

- much as intended by the United States of America in Panama and Israel in Lebanon (and achieved, in the former case). Saddam's scheme 'turned sour', they continue, because of the international reaction; to translate into doctrinally unacceptable truth, because the United States of America and Britain, for once, did not block the reaction that is standard in the case of such 'textbook cases of aggression'. There could be no international reaction when the United States of America favoured or conducted the aggression. The authors evidently do not realize that these conclusions completely undercut the central argument of their book, demonstrating that the 'cynics' they berate for failing to perceive the nobility of the US-UK leadership were exactly right.13

Fear of a peaceful settlement persisted throughout. An Iraqi proposal for complete withdrawal from Kuwait on 2 January 1991, termed 'a serious pre- negotiation position' by a US State Department Middle East expert, was rejected out of hand by the US-UK leadership and virtually suppressed by the media (as in earlier cases, one journal, New York's Newsday, reported the facts accurately; suppression seems to have been total in Britain). Bush's response was: 'There can be no reward for aggression. Nor will there be any negotiation. Principle cannot be compromised.' Diplomacy is not an option. The statement, which would have shocked a literate teenager, passed without comment in respectable circles. As the 15 January deadline approached, the White House became increasingly fearful of what it called the 'nightmare scenario': an Iraqi withdrawal and diplomatic settlement. Efforts by Iraq, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and other states to enable Iraq to withdraw in February 1991 were distorted by the government and media and brusquely dismissed. The intellectual community largely kept its loyal silence.'4

The utter hypocrisy of the posturing about the Gulf War is underscored further by events of February 1991. As bombs were raining down on Iraq and

151

(C Basil Blackwell Ltd. 1993

George Bush proudly proclaimed that 'What we say goes', the government of Lebanon renewed its plea that Israel honour UN Security Council resolution 425 of March 1978 calling on it to withdraw immediately from southern Lebanon.'5 The plea was ignored as usual while the US client terrorizes the occupied region and bombs elsewhere at will, and the rest of Lebanon was taken over by Bush's new friend Hafez el-Assad, a clone of Saddam Hussein; all illustrating that 'What we say goes.' In the same month, a treaty between Australia and Indonesia came into force, opening the door for joint robbery of the oil resources of occupied East Timor, 'a creative development of international law', the Australian government declared, while noting the 'unhappy circumstances surrounding Indonesia's acquisition' of the former Portuguese territory. These words are an oblique reference to Indonesia's invasion and annexation of East Timor with a civilian toll of perhaps 200,000 killed, carried out with critical military and diplomatic support from the United States of America. Rejecting a challenge to the treaty brought to the World Court by Portugal, generally recognized as the responsible authority, Australian Foreign Minister Gareth Evans explained that 'There is no binding legal obligation not to recognize the acquisition of territory that was acquired by force', adding that 'the world is a pretty unfair place, littered with examples of acquisition by force.' Prime Minister Bob Hawke meanwhile declared that 'big countries cannot invade small neighbours and get away with it' (referring to Iraq and Kuwait), proclaiming that in the 'new order' established by the virtuous Anglo-Americans, 'would-be aggressors will think twice before invading smaller neighbours' because 'all nations should know that the rule of law must prevail over the rule of force in international relations' - excluding those nations whose aggression and massacres yield profit for Australia, and others whose crimes are authorized by the masters.

The international oil companies greeted this 'creative development' with enthusiasm, flocking to profit from the equivalent of a hypothetical Iraqi- Libyan treaty to exploit the oil of occupied Kuwait. None of this elicited any notice or report. And when Britain proceeded with vigorous moves to become Indonesia's leading arms supplier, gaining what profit it could from the greatest slaughter relative to the population since the Holocaust, British intellectuals, with the rarest of exceptions, somehow could not muster the inspiring rhetoric about the noble ideals and high principles manifested by their leaders when Iraq invaded Kuwait, with a fraction of the atrocities.16

There is no space here to review properly this shameful and cowardly display, which gives no little insight into the emerging world order.

Let us turn to the Cold War. It ended in deceit, and began the same way. George Kennan, one of the leading architects of the post-World War II world, is also a respected diplomatic historian. In his scholarly study of Soviet- American relations, he traces the origins of the Cold War to the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly in January 1918, which created the breach with the West with 'an element of finality'. British Ambassador to Russia Sir George Buchanan was 'deeply shocked', Kennan writes, and advocated armed intervention to punish the crime. That followed, and was taken quite

152

? Basil Blackwell Ltd. 1993

seriously; Britain, for example, used poison gas in 1919, no small matter shortly after World War I. UK Secretary of State Winston Churchill minuted that he 'shd. v. much like the Bolsheviks to have it, if we can afford the disclosure' of this weapon, which he also strongly advocated for use against Kurds and other 'uncivilized tribes', noting that it should 'spread a lively terror'. The idealistic Woodrow Wilson was particularly distraught by the dispersal of the Constituent Assembly, Kennan explains, reflecting the 'strong attachment to constitutionality' of the American public, deeply offended by the sight of a government with no mandate beyond 'the bayonets of the Red Guard'.17

A few months later, Wilson's army dissolved the National Assembly in occupied Haiti 'by genuinely Marine Corps methods', in the words of US marine commander Major Smedley Butler. The reason was its refusal to ratify a constitution imposed by the invaders that gave US corporations the right to buy up Haiti's lands. A marine-run plebiscite remedied the problem: under Washington's guns, the US-designed constitution was ratified by a 99.9% majority, with five per cent of the population participating. Wilson's 'strong attachment to constitutionality' was unmoved by the sight of a government with no mandate beyond 'the bayonets of the Marine occupiers'; nor Kennan's. Quite the contrary. To this day the events figure in the amusing reconstructions entitled 'history' as an illustration of US 'humanitarian intervention', and its difficulties (for us). Thus 'Haiti's tragic history should be a cautionary tale for those now eagerly pursuing Operation Restore Hope in Somalia', Robert Kaplan warns, recalling the difficulties we face as we seek 'to heal the body politic of a land that lacks the basis of a modern political culture'.18

Gone from 'history' along with this episode is the restoration of virtual slavery, US marine massacres and terror, the dismantling of the constitutional system, the establishment of a state terrorist force (the US National Guard) that has kept its iron grip on the population ever since, and the takeover of Haiti by US corporations, much as in the neighbouring Dominican Republic, where Wilson's invading armies were only a shade less destructive.

Accordingly, Wilson is revered as a great moral teacher and the apostle of self-determination and freedom, and we may now consider returning to the heady days of Wilsonian idealism. The Bolsheviks, in contrast, had so violated our high ideals that they had to be overthrown by force.

Following the same high principles, the United States of America enthusiastically welcomed the 'fine young revolution' carried out by Benito Mussolini in Italy in 1922, as the American Ambassador described the destruction of Parliament and the labour movement, and the vicious rule of the Blackshirts. Well into the 1930s, Mussolini was that 'admirable Italian gentleman', in the words of the man who (falsely) took credit for the constitution imposed upon Haiti, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The business community was also impressed. 'The wops are unwopping themselves' Fortune magazine commented elegantly in a special 1934 issue devoted to the miracle. Fascist atrocities were acceptable because they blocked

153

? Basil Blackwell Ltd. 1993

the threat of a second Russia, the US State Department explained. Hitler was

supported as a 'moderate' for the same reason. In 1937, the US State Department saw Fascism as compatible with the economic interests of the United States of America, and also the natural reaction of'the rich and middle classes, in self-defence' when the 'dissatisfied masses, with the example of the Russian revolution before them, swing to the Left'. Fascism therefore 'must succeed or the masses, this time reinforced by the disillusioned middle classes, will again turn to the left'. US diplomat William Bullitt (Kennan's mentor) 'believed that only Nazi Germany could stay the advance of Soviet Bolshevism into Europe', Daniel Yergin observes - not, of course, by conquest. The US business world again agreed. Major US corporations were

heavily involved in German war production, sometimes enriching themselves by joining in the plunder of Jewish assets under Hitler's Aryanization programme. 'US investment in Germany accelerated rapidly after Hitler came to power', Christopher Simpson writes, increasing 'by some 48.5 per cent between 1929 and 1940, while declining sharply everywhere else in continental Europe' and barely holding steady in Britain.'9

As the record makes clear, the reasons for the Cold War from 1917-18 had little to do with Soviet crimes, or the Soviet military threat.

The basic reasons lie elsewhere. In no small measure, the Cold War can be understood as a phase of the 'North-South confrontation' (more simply, Europe's conquest of the world), so unusual in scale that it took on a life of its own, but grounded in the familiar logic, which is spelled out lucidly in high- level planning documents and other internal sources. First, independent nationalism ('ultranationalism', 'economic nationalism', 'radical nationalism') is unacceptable, whatever its political hue; the Third World must remain in its service role, providing cheap labour, resources, markets, opportunities for investment and (lately) export of pollution, and other amenities. Second, development that appears successful in terms that might be meaningful for poor people elsewhere is a still more heinous crime; the culprit is then a 'virus' that may spread 'infection' elsewhere, a 'rotten apple' that might spoil the barrel, like Arbenz's Guatemala, Allende's Chile, Sandinista Nicaragua, and a host of others.

Eastern Europe was the original 'Third World', diverging from the West along a faultline running through Germany even before the Columbian era, the West beginning to develop, the East becoming its service area. By the early twentieth century, much of the region was a quasi-colonial dependency of the West. The Bolshevik takeover was immediately recognized to be 'ultra- nationalist', hence unacceptable. Furthermore, it was a 'virus', with substantial appeal elsewhere in the Third World.

The Western invasion of the Soviet Union was therefore justified in defence against 'the Revolution's challenge ... to the very survival of the capitalist order', the leading diplomatic historian John Lewis Gaddis comments today, reiterating the basic theme of US diplomacy of the 1920s: 'the fundamental obstacle' to recognition of the Soviet Union, the chief of the Eastern European Division of the US State Department held, 'is the world revolutionary aims

154

( Basil Blackwell Ltd. 1993

and practices of the rulers of that country'.20 These 'practices', of course, did not involve literal aggression; rather, unacceptable internal changes that

might, furthermore, encourage others to pursue the same path, which is tantamount to aggression.

The Kremlin conspiracy to take over the world was therefore established, to be invoked in later years as other ultranationalists and viruses arose. Since they challenged Western domination (hence 'the very survival of the capitalist order'), Washington, as the guardian of world order, was evidently justified in eliminating them in self-defence, after assigning them to the category 'Soviet expansion'. The essential logic was explained by one of the leading doves of the Kennedy Administration, Director of US State Department Intelligence Roger Hilsman, who wrote approvingly of the US Central Intelligence Agency's overthrow of the governments of Iran (Mossadegh) and Guatemala (Arbenz); if the Communists remain 'antagonistic' and use subversion, he explained, then we have a right 'to protect and defend ourselves' - by overthrowing a conservative parliamentary regime or a reformist democratic capitalist government and imposing a murderous terror state.

The reasoning can be traced back to England's first colonial conquest, when Edward I explained in 1282 that 'it would be more fitting and suitable at this time to burden himself and the inhabitants of his kingdom with the cost of wholly overthrowing the malice of the Welsh rather than to face in the future, as in the present, the afflictions of the conflict which they have caused.' The malice of their servants has always afflicted the righteous, requiring stern measures in self-defence.21

The Bolshevik virus, it was recognized, reached to the home countries themselves. The Bolsheviks sought to make the 'ignorant and incapable mass of humanity dominant in the earth', Woodrow Wilson's Secretary of State Robert Lansing warned. They were appealing 'to the proletariat of all countries, to the ignorant and mentally deficient, who by their numbers are urged to become masters ... a very real danger in view of the process of social unrest throughout the world'. Wilson was particularly concerned that 'the American negro [soldiers] returning from abroad' might be infected by soldiers' and workers' councils in Germany. A commission on industrial unrest established by Lloyd George in 1917 found that 'hostility to Capitalism has become part of the political creed of the majority' of the miners in Wales. 'There was no place outside of Russia where the [February] Revolution has caused greater joy than ... Merthyr Tydfil', a Welsh miners' journal wrote, impressed particularly by the councils of workers and soldiers established by the Bolsheviks before their takeover of power (and later destroyed, at the first opportunity). Like Wilson and Lansing, Lloyd George's commission took a 'grave view as to the situation that is likely to develop immediately after' the war.22

The home front, therefore, also had to be defended from 'the Revolution's challenge' and the afflictions it caused the rulers. Wilson's Red Scare successfully undermined democratic politics, unions, freedom of the press, and independent thought, safeguarding business interests and their control

155

() Basil Blackwell Ltd. 1993

over state power. The 'defence' was mounted throughout the capitalist world, taking a variety of forms as already noted, but always justified, including Fascism. The story was re-enacted after World War II, all in defence of freedom and democracy.

As Kennan, Gaddis, and other serious historians recognize, the Cold War began in 1917-8, not 1945. Pre-World War II, no one regarded the Bolsheviks as a military threat, though the virus had to be contained and if possible exterminated in self-defence, much the same policies adopted as World War II came to an end. By then, the 'rotten apple' had grown to include Eastern Europe, undermining Western access to traditional resources. Its ability 'to spoil the barrel' had also increased. In July 1945, a major study by the US State and War Departments warned of 'a rising tide all over the world wherein the common man aspires to higher and wider horizons'. We cannot be sure, they warned, that Russia 'has not flirted with the thought' of associating with these dangerous currents; Russia 'has not yet proven that she is entirely without expansionist ambitions' of this kind. We must, therefore, take no chances. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics must be ringed with military bases and not even granted a share in control of its only access to warm water (the Dardanelles). These plans might seem 'illogical', planners feared, but dismissed the objection as superficial: it was a 'logical illogicality', given the purity of Anglo-American motives and the challenge posed to the West by the aspirations of the common man and the danger that the Kremlin might foster them.

The Communists are able to 'appeal directly to the masses', President Eisenhower complained. His Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, deplored the Communist 'ability to get control of mass movements', 'something we have no capacity to duplicate'. 'The poor people are the ones they appeal to and they have always wanted to plunder the rich' - the great problem of world history. Somehow, we found it hard to peddle our line, that the rich should plunder the poor, a public relations problem that has never been overcome.23

As Eisenhower put the matter ruefully when he sent the US marines to Beirut in July 1958, 'the problem is that we have a campaign of hatred against us, not by the governments but by the people'.24 The US marine landing was in response to a coup in Iraq that broke the Anglo-American monopoly over Middle East oil and caused consternation in London and Washington, leading to a British decision 'ruthlessly to intervene' if the nationalist rot spread to Kuwait by any means, endorsed by the United States of America, which took the same stance towards the vastly richer regions it controlled. The problem that troubled Eisenhower arose again in 1990-91. From Morocco to Indonesia, popular opposition to the US-UK war ranged from substantial to overwhelming; in Arab states with any kind of 'democratic opening' it could scarcely be contained, though the harsher dictatorships in the allied coalition (Syria, Saudi Arabia) could keep the lid on. The hostility of the US-UK leadership to democracy in the Arab world (as elsewhere, when it cannot be controlled) is quite understandable.

It is also recognized on all sides. When Bush stood silently by as Saddam

156

? Basil Blackwell Ltd. 1993

Hussein crushed the popular rebellions in Iraq in March 1991, a leading figure in the Iraqi democratic opposition, London-based banker Ahmad Chalabi, observed that the United States of America was 'waiting for Saddam to butcher the insurgents in the hope that he can be overthrown later by a suitable officer', an attitude rooted in the US policy of 'supporting dictatorships to maintain stability'. His judgement was confirmed by the US State Department: Washington's goal, as reported by New York Times chief diplomatic correspondent Thomas Friedman, is to encourage 'an iron-fisted Iraqi junta without Saddam Hussein', a return to the happy days when Saddam's 'iron fist... held Iraq together, much to the satisfaction of the American allies Turkey and Saudi Arabia', not to speak of the boss in Washington. This would be 'the best of all worlds' for Washington, Friedman wrote - and 'the worst of all possible worlds' for the Iraqi people, whose tragedy is 'awesome' (Chalabi).

As the Cold War was resumed after the war-time lapse, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics posed a new concern beyond its 'ultranationalism', the 'rotten apple' effect, and its expansion over other parts of Europe's traditional Third World in the East. It had also become a major military force. While planners never expected an unprovoked Soviet attack, they were concerned that the Soviet Union might react to the reconstruction of its traditional enemies, Germany and Japan, a severe security threat, Western analysts recognized, greatly enhanced within the framework of a hostile US-run military alliance. Furthermore, the power of the Soviet Union was now a deterrent to the exercise of force by the United States of America and its allies; and for its own cynical reasons, the Soviet Union often lent support to targets of US attack and subversion, thus interfering with 'stability'. Its very existence as a major power provided a certain space for non-alignment and limited independence in the Third World. Lesser 'rotten apples' posed no such dangers.

It should be stressed that Stalin's awesome crimes were of no concern to the Truman Administration. Truman himself liked and admired Stalin and felt that he could deal with him as long as the United States of America got its way eighty-five per cent of the time. What went on within Russia was none of his concern, Truman commented privately, and Stalin's demise would be a 'real catastrophe'. Eisenhower and other leading figures agreed. As with a host of lesser murderers and torturers, the unacceptable crime is disobedience; the same is true of priests who preach 'the preferential option for the poor', secular nationalists in the Arab world, Islamic fundamentalists, democratic socialists, or independent elements of any variety.

With the Cold War over, we can expect much of Eastern Europe to return to its traditional service role, reverting to the Third World model of two-tiered societies, with islands of immense privilege in a sea of misery and despair. The islands now include much of the old nomenklatura, favoured by Western investors because they know the ropes.

As elsewhere in the Third World, the West insists on free-market reforms that will restore the traditional relations of exploitation and domination by

157

? Basil Blackwell Ltd. 1993

Western investors. A political figure who accepts these demands is a 'democrat', in the standard Orwellian formula. Boris Yeltsin favours capitalist reforms. Therefore he is a 'democrat' when he seeks to rule by decree, overriding the Constitutional Court, while his opponents who call for constitutional processes are 'anti-democratic'. When John Major instructs Yeltsin that 'what you are seeking to achieve' is 'effective democratic government', which is 'what we support', the meaning is clear to the initiated; and Yeltsin's press secretary reveals that he, too, understands the rules of the game when he explains 'that the support for Mr Yeltsin from western political leaders demonstrated that the president's actions were "legally valid" '.

In Russia, the constitution with its repeated revisions, the Constitutional Court established in 1991 at Yeltsin's initiative, and the Parliament elected in 1990 (consisting mostly of Yeltsin supporters) are considered an impediment to rapid capitalist reforms. They are therefore declared invalid, on the grounds that they are relics of the Communist past. History has been kind enough to set up something like a 'controlled experiment' to test that claim. Consider El Salvador, where free-market enthusiast President Cristiani may be criticized but remains a 'democrat', the triumphal vindication of US policy and the hope for the future, though he rejects the demands of the United Nations and the stipulations of the peace treaty, claiming that they would violate the constitution and the decisions of the scandalous court system that the United Nations demands be disbanded, relics of the US-run terrorist state that slaughtered tens of thousands of civilians.25

The capacity to evade the obvious - even to tolerate near contradiction - is a crucial condition for respectability.

The population in Eastern Europe is overwhelmingly opposed to the rapid capitalist reforms advocated by the West's official democrat (whose public popularity dropped from sixty per cent to thirty-six per cent in the past year and a half, despite rapidly increasing support for a 'strong leader'). A European Community poll conducted in February 1993 found that most Russians, Belarussians, and Ukrainians oppose the move to a free market and feel that 'life was better under the old Communist system'; 'Russians are also hankering after the old political system' (Financial Times). A Gallup poll of ten East bloc countries at the same time found that sixty-three per cent opposed 'democracy', an increase of ten per cent since 1991. 'Generally, the more recent the overthrow of Communism in a country, the greater was the enthusiasm for change' (Associated Press) - that is, before the effects set in. Another 1993 US poll (Times Mirror Center) found that Russians favour a 'strong leader' over a 'democratic form of government' by fifty-one per cent to thirty-one per cent, 'almost an exact reversal' of the results in May 1991; 'less than a third of the respondents picked capitalism as the future model for Russian society, down from forty per cent seventeen months ago.' 'Surveys in nearly all countries show a swing back towards socialist values, with seventy per cent of the population saying the state should provide a place of work, as well as a national health service, housing, education, and other services' (Economist).26 But elites throughout the Third World naturally favour the

158

? Basil Blackwell Ltd. 1993

'reforms', from which they benefit, and the West, which holds the power, insists upon them. Accordingly, they will be rammed through in the name of 'democracy', properly understood.

The restoration of this vast region to its Third World service role offers new weapons against the population at home, as the business press has been quick to point out. General Motors is planning to close two dozen plants in the United States of America and Canada, but it has become the largest employer in Mexico, taking advantage of the 'economic miracle' that has driven wages down by sixty per cent in the past decade, to much applause. Now Eastern Europe beckons as well. General Motors opened a $690 million assembly plant in East Germany, where workers are willing to 'work longer hours than their pampered colleagues in western Germany' at forty per cent of the wage and with few benefits, the Financial Times cheerily explains. The region offers new opportunities for corporations to reduce costs thanks to 'rising unemployment and pauperization of large sections of the industrial working class' as capitalist reforms progress. Poland is even better than East Germany, with wages ten per cent of those demanded by the pampered West German workers, kept that way 'thanks largely to the Polish government's tougher policy on labour disputes', the Financial Times reports under the heading 'Green shoots in Communism's ruins'. Poland is not quite Mexico yet in terms of state repression of labour, but is advancing, it is hoped. Solidarity, the darling of the West when struggling against the enemy, is now just another enemy itself, like labour at home.27

The lessons for West European workers are explained by Business Week. Europe must 'hammer away at high wages and corporate taxes, short working hours, labor immobility, and luxurious social programs'. It must learn the lesson of Britain, which finally 'is doing something well', the Economist announces approvingly, with 'trade unions shackled by law and subdued', 'unemployment high', and the Maastricht social chapter rejected so that employers are protected 'from over-regulation and under-flexibility of labour'. American workers must absorb the same lessons.28

The basic goals were lucidly described by the Chief Executive Officer of United Technologies, Harry Gray, in 1983: we need 'a worldwide business environment that's unfettered by government interference', such as 'packaging and labelling requirements' and 'inspection procedures' to protect consumers. Profit for investors is the supreme human value, to which all else must be subordinated. The meaning of Gray's injunction was spelled out when the World Health Organization voted 118 to one to condemn Nestle's aggressive marketing of its infant formula in the Third World. The Reagan Administration, which was well aware of the health risks, cast the sole negative vote, the United States of America as usual leading the way in the struggle for 'democracy'.29

Gray does not, of course, object to 'government interference' of the kind that permits his corporation, an offshoot of the Pentagon system, to survive. Neo-liberal rhetoric is to be selectively employed as a weapon against the poor; the wealthy and powerful will continue to rely on state power.

159

((> Basil Blackwell Ltd. 1993

It is in this context that the 'trade agreements' (the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT), the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and so on) are to be understood. The shift of production to high- repression, low-wage areas will continue independently of these agreements, as will the attack on environmental and health standards by similar means. But, as explained by Eastman Kodak chairman Kay Whitmore, NAFTA may 'lock in the opening of Mexico's economy so that it can't return to its protectionist ways'. It should enable Mexico 'to solidify its remarkable economic reforms', the Director of Economic Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, Michael Aho, comments, referring to the 'economic miracle' for the rich that has devastated the poor majority. The 'attraction' of NAFTA for many Mexican government technocrats, the business press reports, is 'precisely that it would tie the hands of the current and future governments' with regard to economic policy. It may fend off the danger noted by a Latin America Strategy Development Workshop at the Pentagon in September 1990, which found current relations with the Mexican dictatorship to be 'extraordinarily positive', untroubled by stolen elections, death squads, endemic torture, scandalous treatment of workers and peasants, and so on. They did, however, see one cloud on the horizon: 'a "democracy opening" in Mexico could test the special relationship by bringing into office a government more interested in challenging the US on economic and nationalist grounds'. As always, the basic threat is functioning democracy.30

One can understand why democracy is so feared, not only in the Third World, but at home as well, where the reigning doctrine has always been that the people are 'ignorant and meddlesome outsiders' who must be 'put in their place'. Their role in a democracy is to be mere 'spectators', not 'participants in action', selecting this or that representative of private power to lead them (elections), then returning to their personal concerns. The quotes are from Walter Lippmann, representing the progressive fringe of opinion. At the reactionary end, we have the Reaganites, who reject even the spectator role: hence the appeal of clandestine terror operations designed to leave the domestic population ignorant, along with censorship and other measures to ensure that a powerful and interventionist state will not be troubled by the rabble, devices brought to new peaks by Reaganite statist reactionaries masquerading as conservatives.31

Agreements of the NAFTA-GATT variety represent a move towards the reactionary end of the narrow anti-democratic spectrum. The NAFTA is an executive agreement, reached on 12 August 1992, just in time to become a major issue in the presidential campaign. It was mentioned, but barely. The Trade Act of 1974 established a Labor Advisory Committee, based in the unions, which must advise the executive branch on any trade agreement. The committee was informed that its report was due on 9 September 1992. The text of this intricate treaty was provided to it one day before. Furthermore, the committee notes, 'the Administration refused to permit any outside advice on the development of this document and refused to make a draft available for comment.' The situation in Canada and Mexico was similar. The facts are not

160

c Basil Blackwell Ltd. 1993

even reported. In such ways, we approach the long-sought ideal: formal democratic procedures that are devoid of meaning, as citizens not only do not intrude into the public arena, but scarcely have an idea of the policies that will shape their lives. And, it is hoped, will not even know that they do not know, though the proliferation of grassroots organizations that has expanded since the 1960s allowed an escape from doctrinal control in this case, leading to overwhelming public opposition to NAFTA in its present form and pressures that the Clinton Administration may not be able entirely to resist.32

Structures of governance tend to coalesce around domestic power - in the last few centuries, economic power. The process continues. In the Financial Times, BBC World Service economics correspondent James Morgan describes the 'de facto world government' that is taking shape: the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, G7, GATT, and other structures designed to serve the interests of transnational corporations, banks, and investment firms in a 'new imperial age'.33 One valuable feature of these institutions is their immunity from popular influence, even awareness. They operate in secret, creating a world subordinated to the needs of investors, with the public 'put in its place', the threat of democracy removed.

One consequence of the globalization of the economy is the rise of new governing institutions to serve the interests of transnational economic power. Another consequence is the spread of the two-tiered Third World social model to the industrial world. The United States of America, again, is taking the lead; though uniquely privileged economically, strategically, and politically, it is also unusual in the power and class-consciousness of the business sector, which has been able to resist the social contract that popular struggle has achieved elsewhere. A walk through any American city gives human form to the statistics on malnutrition, infant mortality, poverty, and other elements of what the business press calls the 'Paradox of '92: Weak Economy, Strong Profits'.34

As a geographical entity, the country may decline. The corporations are playing a different game. Increasingly, production can be shifted to low-wage areas, and directed to privileged sectors in the global economy. Large parts of the population thus become superfluous for production and perhaps even as a market, unlike the days when Henry Ford realized that he could not sell cars unless his workers had a decent wage in a more national economy.

GATT, NAFTA, and the like are called 'free trade' agreements. That is a misdescription. First, the term 'trade' hardly applies to a system in which some forty per cent of US 'trade' is intra-firm, centrally managed by the same highly visible hands that control planning, production, and investment.35 The world system does not remotely resemble a classical market. Furthermore, the agreements go far beyond trade. One leading feature is the demand for liberalization of finance and services, which means allowing international banks to displace domestic rivals so that no country can carry out the kind of national economic planning that enabled the rich countries to develop, always behind high protectionist walls and with extensive state intervention to protect the masters from destructive market effects. Needless to say, Adam Smith's

161

c Basil Blackwell Ltd. 1993

principle that 'free circulation of labour' is one of the cornerstones of free trade is honoured by the champions of neo-liberalism as fully as his conclusion that the population will be devastated by market forces 'unless government takes pains to prevent' this outcome, as must be assured in 'every improved and civilized society'.36

Finally, the rich powers remain opposed to free trade as they virtually always have been, except when they feel they can prevail in competition. The World Bank reports that protectionist measures of the industrial countries reduce national income in the South by about twice the amount of official aid, itself largely export-promotion, most of it directed to richer sectors (less needy, but better consumers). In the past decade, twenty of twenty-four countries belonging to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) have increased protectionism, Reaganites often leading the way in the crusade against economic liberalism. These practices, along with the programmes dictated by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, have helped double the gap between rich and poor countries since 1960. In Latin America, the real minimum wage declined sharply from 1985 to 1992 as neo-liberal 'structural adjustment' programmes were imposed, while the number of poor rose almost fifty per cent between 1986 and 1990 - 'economic miracles', in technical terminology, because real gross domestic product (GDP) rose (in parallel with external debt) while the wealthy and foreign investors were enriched. In Africa, the impact was even more severe for the general population; a study by the International Monetary Fund conceded that from 1973 to 1988, 'the growth rate is significantly reduced in IMF programme countries relative to the change in non-programme countries', putting aside the consequences for the poor majority. Resource transfers from South to North amount to 'a much understated $418 billion' from 1982 to 1990, Susan George observes, the equivalent in today's dollars of some 'six Marshall Plans for the rich through debt service alone', while commercial banks were protected by transfer of their bad debts to the public sector - apart from Japan, the only OECD country, it seems, that accepts the capitalist principle that the taxpayer has no responsibility to pay for the mistakes of commercial banks.37 As in the case of the savings and loan institutions, and advanced industry generally, 'free market capitalism' is to be risk-free for the masters, as fully as can be achieved.

The current trade agreements reflect this hostility to the neoliberal doctrines that ate imposed on the poor, to ensure that they will be more efficiently plundered. One primary US objective is increased protection for 'intellectual property', including software, patents for seeds and drugs, and so on. The US International Trade Commission estimates that US companies stand to gain $61 billion a year from the Third World if US protectionist demands are satisfied at GATT (as they are in NAFTA), a cost to the South that will dwarf the huge debt service flow. Such measures are designed to ensure that US- based corporations control the technology of the future, including biotechnology, which, it is hoped, will allow protected private enterprise to control health and agriculture, and the means of life generally, locking the

162

(, Basil Blackwell Ltd. 1993

poor majority into dependence and hopelessness. The same measures are

being employed to undermine Canada's annoyingly efficient health services- a 'rotten apple', right next door - by restricting the production of generic drugs, thus sharply raising costs to the Canadian health services and increasing profits to state-subsidized US corporations. The NAFTA also includes intricate 'rules of origin' requirements designed to keep foreign competitors out; 200 pages are devoted to measures to ensure a high percentage of value added in North America. The agreements impose a mixture of liberalization and protection, going far beyond trade, designed to keep wealth and power firmly in the hands of the masters of the 'new imperial age'.38

Neither at home nor abroad does the real world bear much resemblance to the dreamy fantasies now fashionable about History converging to an ideal of democracy and free markets that are the ultimate realization of Freedom.

The rules of world order remain as they have always been: the rule of law for the weak, the rule of force for the strong; neoliberalism for the weak, state power and intervention for the strong. Within the culture of respectability, the traditional tasks remain: to reshape past and current history in the interests of power, to exalt the high principles to which we and our leaders are dedicated, and to file away the unfortunate flaws in the record as misguided good intentions, harsh choices inflicted on us by some evil enemy, or the other categories familiar to the properly educated. For those who are unwilling to accept this role, the traditional tasks also remain: to challenge and unmask illegitimate authority, and to work with others to undermine it and to extend the scope of freedom and justice.

Both tendencies exist, as they almost always have. Which prevails will determine whether there will be a world in which a decent person would want to live.

NOTES AND REFERENCES

1 L. Freedman and E. Karsch, The Gulf Conflict 1990-1991: Diplomacy and War in the New World Order (1992). The authors praise 'the scope and originality of our analysis', which uses 'evidence from all available sources', contrasting their achievement with mere journalism. In reality, they omit basic sources on major issues or ignore these entirely (for example, pre-war diplomatic interactions, which, furthermore, they misrepresent in their scanty comments, as in their treatment of Israel's invasion of Lebanon and Middle East diplomacy; the views of Iraqi democrats and the population of the region generally; the illuminating record of US and British documents). For a sample of crucial material they avoid, see my Deterring Democracy (1991; updated edition 1992) 'Afterword'; H. Mowlana, G. Gerbner, and H. Schiller, Triumph of the Image (1992). For a serious general study, see D. Hiro, Desert Shield to Desert Storm (1992).

2 Freedman and Karsh, op. cit., n. 1, pp. 212, 413, 440, xxixf., 435, 73. A. Yaniv, Dilemmas of Security(1987) 66ff., 100ff., 143,301f.; also 52f. Y. Harkabi, Israel's Fateful Hour(1988) 100f. Veto, B. Nossiter, New York Times 27 June 1982. See further S. V. Mallison and W. T. Mallison, Armed Conflict in Lebanon (1985) 94, 104; T. Mallison and S. Mallison, The Palestine Problem in International Law and World Order (1986) 477-79. On interpretation of the invasion by Israeli scholars, journalists, and political/military leaders, see my Fateful

163

( Basil Blackwell Ltd. 1993

Triangle (1983) ch. 4.6.1; Pirates and Emperors (1986) ch. 2. 3 L. Freedman, review of R. Tucker and D. Hendrickson, 'The Imperial Temptation' in

International Affairs January 1993. 4 New York Times Week in Review 2 June 1992. 5 South Commission, The Challenge to the South (1990) 216ff., 71f., 287. P. Corda, Excelsior

(Mexico) 4 December 1992. F. Montes (Society of Jesuits), of the Chilean Delegation (Mensaje December 1992); Christmas message of Bolivian Bishops' Conference; both in LADOC (Latin American Documentation), Lima, March/April 1993; I. Linden, director, Catholic Institute of International Relations, 'Reflections on Santo Domingo' The Month January 1993. On the Bolivian 'economic miracle', see my Year 501 (1993) ch. 3.4.

6 Chomsky, op. cit., n. 1, ch. 6. 7 The Independent (London) 3 December 1990. 8 C. Whitney, New York Times 17 January 1993; editorial, Globe and Mail (Toronto) 14

January 1993; A. Picard, Globe and Mail 13 January 1993. On the Washington-New York Times version, see my article in Lies of Our Times (New York) February 1993.

9 For details, see Chomsky, op. cit., n. 1, ch. 6.5; Necessary Illusions, ch. 4 and App. IV.4; my essay in C. Peters (ed.), Collateral Damage (1992). Also W. Preston, E. Herman, and H. Schiller, Hope and Folly (1989); I. Guest, Behind the Disappearances (1990). On official concession in 1990 that in the Middle East our problems 'could not be laid at the Kremlin's door', contrary to what had always been claimed, see Chomsky, op. cit., n. 1, p. 29.

10 See Chomsky, op. cit., n. 1, ch. 7, and op. cit., n. 5. Also Challenge to the South, one of many expressions of Third World dismay over the events and prospects.

11 See Necessary Illusions, 82. 12 Latin America specialist S. Ropp, 'Things Fall Apart: Panama after Noriega' in Current

History March 1993. Washington was, in fact, aware much earlier, though not the public, given media discipline. See Chomsky, op. cit., n. 1, ch. 5 and op. cit., n. 5, pp. 84-5, on the aftermath.

13 B. Woodward, The Commanders (1991) 251-2. Freedman and Karsh, op. cit., n. 1, pp. 67f. 14 See Chomsky, op. cit., n. 1, ch. 6; Hiro, op. cit., n. 2, pp.295,439; see my article in Peters, op.

cit., n. 9. 15 New York Times 19 February 1991. 16 Alan Griffiths, Minister for Resources, Government of Australia, (official letter dated 2

February 1993). For Evans, Hawke, and the sordid record generally, see Chomsky, op. cit., n. 5, ch. 5, and sources cited.

17 G. Kennan, Russia Leaves the War (1956) 352-63. A. Thomas, Effects of Chemical Warfare: A selective review and bibliography of British state papers (1985) 33f.

18 New Republic 28 December 1992. On the events, see H. Schmidt, The United States Occupation of Haiti, 1915-1934 (1971). On US-Haiti relations for the past 200 years, see Chomsky, op. cit., n. 5, ch. 8.

19 Chomsky, op. cit., n. 1, ch. 1.4. C. Simpson, The Splendid Blond Beast (1993) ch. 5. D. Yergin, Shattered Peace (1977) 24-26.

20 J. L. Gaddis, The Long Peace (1987) 10. R. Kelley, cited by Yergin, op. cit., n. 19, p. 20. 21 R. Hilsman, To Move a Nation (1967) 85f. J. Davies, A History of Wales (1993) 160. 22 Chomsky, op. cit., n. 1, p. 364, and sources cited; Necessary Illusions, App. 11.2, on Wilson's

Red Scare. Davies, op. cit., n. 21, p. 518. 23 See Chomsky, op. cit., n. 5, chs. 2.1, 3.2, for sources where not cited here, and general

background. On the Gulf War, see Chomsky, op. cit., n. 1, ch. 6, 'Afterword'. 24 D. Little, Middle East J., Winter 1990. 25 J. Lloyd, Financial Times 23 March 1993; Reuters, 'Salvador leader refuses UN report'

Boston Globe 23 March 1993. 26 A. Brumberg, New York Times 22 March 1993; A. Hill, Financial Times 25 February 1993;

Associated Press, Boston Globe 25 February 1993; Times Mirror, New York Times news service, 26 January 1993; Economist 13 March 1993.

27 A. Fisher, Financial Times 20 May 1992; A. Robinson, Financial Times 20 October 1992. Compare with Chomsky, op. cit., n. 5, ch. 2.5. for further discussion.

164

Basil Blackwell Ltd. 1993

28 Business Week 15 February 1993; Economist 27 February 1993. 29 W. McGaughey, A US-Mexico Free-Trade Agreement (1992) 16; Guest, op. cit., n. 9, pp. 530,

535. 30 McGauhey, op. cit., n. 29, p. 25; M. Aho, International Affairs January 1993; Financial Times

23 March 1993; Minutes of the Pentagon Latin-America Strategy Workshop, 26/27 September 1990, p. 3.

31 Compare Chomsky, op. cit., n. 1, ch. 12, on the doctrine since seventeenth-century England. 32 Preliminary Report, Labor Advisory Committee on the North American Free Trade

Agreement, submitted to the President and Congress, 16 September 1992. For further details, see my articles in Z magazine February 1993 and Nation 29 March 1993. Of the sixty per cent of the population who have an opinion, two-thirds oppose the current NAFTA agreement; B. Davis, Wall Street J. 23 December 1992.

33 Weekend Financial Times 25/26 April 1992. 34 Headline, F. Norris, New York Times 30 August 1992, business section. 35 P. Cowhey and J. Aronson, Foreign Affairs, America and the World 1992/93. 36 See Chomsky, op. cit., n. 5, here and below, for further discussion and sources. See also S.

George, The Debt Boomerang (1992). 37 Ibid., xvf., ch. 3. For Latin America, see UN Commission on Latin America, Report on the

Americas (NACLA) February 1993; Excelsior (Mexico) 21 November 1992. For Africa, see M. Barratt Brown and P. Tiffen (1992); International Monetary Fund, 12.

38 J. Lexchi, 'Pharmaceuticals, Patents, and Politics: Canada and Bill C-22' (1993) 23 Int. J. of Health Services; D. Bueckert, T. Wills, Montreal Gazette 3 December 1992; L. Diebel, Toronto Star 6 December 1992. For rules of origin, see Aho, op. cit., n. 3.

165

(C Basil Blackwell Ltd. 1993