On Power and Ideology: The Managua Lectures

by Noam Chomsky

George Kennan’s lucid presentation of U.S. foreign policy goals did not emerge from a vacuum. It reflected a broader geopolitical analysis that had been developed by elite groups during the war. Study groups of the Council on Foreign Relations (a major channel for business influence on foreign policy) and the State Department formulated the concept of what they called the “Grand Area,” a region that should be subordinated to the needs of the American economy and that was to include at a minimum the Western Hemisphere, the Far East, and the former British empire. It was to be expanded to a global system to the extent possible, surely including Western Europe and the incomparable energy reserves of the Middle East, then passing into American hands. This documentary record of high-level planning is also excluded from sanitized history. These guiding geopolitical conceptions explain a good deal of what has been happening in the world; if they are not understood, what takes place will appear to be a series of random errors, confusions and inconsistencies, traceable to the failings of a political leadership that is, in fact, succeeding brilliantly in its assigned tasks, despite the occasional failures that are inevitable in a complex world.