Who Rules the World? Reframings

by Noam Chomsky

The pattern of praise and punishment is a familiar one throughout history: those who line up in the service of the state are typically praised by the general intellectual community, and those who refuse to line up in service of the state are punished.

The casual choice of the name is reminiscent of the ease with which we name our murder weapons after victims of our crimes: Apache, Blackhawk, Cheyenne. How would we have reacted if the Luftwaffe had called its fighter planes “Jew” and “Gypsy”?

intellectuals are typically privileged; privilege yields opportunity, and opportunity confers responsibilities. An individual then has choices.

The more vulgar apologists for U.S. and Israeli crimes solemnly explain that, while Arabs purposely kill civilians, the U.S. and Israel, being democratic societies, do not intend to do so. Their killings are just accidental ones, hence not at the level of moral depravity of their adversaries.

Historical amnesia is a dangerous phenomenon not only because it undermines moral and intellectual integrity but also because it lays the groundwork for crimes that still lie ahead.

While wealth and power have narrowly concentrated, for most of the population real incomes have stagnated and people have been getting by with increased work hours, debt, and asset inflation, regularly destroyed by the financial crises that began as the regulatory apparatus was dismantled starting in the 1980s.

Systemic risk in the financial system can be remedied by the taxpayer, but no one will come to the rescue if the environment is destroyed.

Worse, some are true believers; take for example the new head of a subcommittee on the environment who explained that global warming cannot be a problem because God promised Noah that there will not be another flood.

As long as the general population is passive, apathetic, and diverted to consumerism or hatred of the vulnerable, then the powerful can do as they please, and those who survive will be left to contemplate the outcome.

The costs of the Bush-Obama wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are now estimated to run as high as $4.4 trillion—a major victory for Osama bin Laden, whose announced goal was to bankrupt America by drawing it into a trap.

the words of business leaders themselves, the task is to direct people to “the superficial things” of life, like “fashionable consumption.” That way people can be atomized, separated from one another, seeking personal gain alone, diverted from dangerous efforts to think for themselves and challenge authority.

One of many manifestations of this urge has been the sharp rise in college tuition—not on economic grounds, as is easily shown. The device does, however, trap and control young people through debt, often for the rest of their lives, thus contributing to more effective indoctrination.

We should not forget Adam Smith’s perspicuous observation that the “masters of mankind”—in his day, the merchants and manufacturers of England—never cease to pursue their “vile maxim”: “All for ourselves, and nothing for other people.”

There was a quid pro quo: President Bush and Secretary of State James Baker agreed that NATO would not expand “one inch to the East,” meaning into East Germany. Instantly, they expanded NATO to East Germany. Gorbachev was naturally outraged, but when he complained, he was instructed by Washington that this had only been a verbal promise, a gentleman’s agreement, hence without force.5 If he was naïve enough to accept the word of American leaders, it was his problem.

The elimination of economic nationalism for others stood in sharp conflict with the Latin American stand of that moment, which State Department officials described as “the philosophy of the New Nationalism [that] embraces policies designed to bring about a broader distribution of wealth and to raise the standard of living of the masses.”7 As U.S. policy analysts added, “Latin Americans are convinced that the first beneficiaries of the development of a country’s resources should be the people of that country.”8 That, of course, will not do. Washington understands that the “first beneficiaries” should be U.S. investors, while Latin America fulfills its service function. It should not, as both the Truman and Eisenhower administrations would make clear, undergo “excessive industrial development” that might infringe on U.S. interests. Thus Brazil could produce low-quality steel that U.S. corporations did not want to bother with, but it would be “excessive” were it to compete with U.S. firms.

Literally not a day has passed since 1953 when the United States has not been torturing the people of Iran.

Guatemala remains one of the world’s worst horror chambers; to this day, Mayans are fleeing from the effects of near-genocidal government military campaigns in the highlands backed by President Ronald Reagan and his top officials. As the country director of Oxfam, a Guatemalan doctor, reported in 2014, “There is a dramatic deterioration of the political, social and economic context. Attacks against [human rights] defenders have increased 300 percent during the last year. There is a clear evidence of a very well organized strategy by the private sector and Army, both have captured the government in order to keep the status quo and to impose the extraction economical model, pushing away dramatically Indigenous peoples from their own land, due to the mining industry, African Palm and sugar cane plantations. In addition the social movement defending their land and rights has been criminalized, many leaders are in jail and many others have been killed.” 10 Nothing is known about this in the United States, and the very obvious cause of it remains suppressed.

In the 1950s, President Eisenhower and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles explained quite clearly the dilemma that the United States faced. They complained that the Communists had an unfair advantage: they were able to “appeal directly to the masses” and “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.”11 That causes problems. The U...

As Schlesinger explained, what was threatening in an independent Cuba was “the Castro idea of taking matters into one’s own hands.” It was an idea that unfortunately appealed to the mass of the population in Latin America, where “the distribution of land and other forms of national wealth greatly favors the propertied classes, and the poor and underprivileged, stimulated by the example of the Cuban revolution, are now demanding opportunities for a decent living.”12 Again, Washington’s usual dilemma. As the CIA explained, “The extensive influence of ‘Castroism’ is not a function of Cuban power … Castro’s shadow looms large because social and economic conditions throughout Latin America invite opposition to ruling authority and encourage agitation for radical change,” for which his Cuba provided a model.13 Kennedy feared that Russian aid might make Cuba a “showcase” for development, giving the Soviets the upper hand throughout Latin America.

The State Department Policy Planning Staff warned that “the primary danger we face in Castro is … in the impact the very existence of his regime has upon the leftist movement in many Latin American countries. … The simple fact is that Castro represents a successful defiance of the United States, a negation of our whole hemispheric policy of almost a century and a half”—that is, since the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, when the United States declared its intention of dominating the hemisphere.15 The immediate goal at the time of the doctrine was to conquer Cuba, but that could not be achieved because of the power of the British enemy. Still, that grand strategist John Quincy Adams, the intellectual father of the Monroe Doctrine and Manifest Destiny, informed his colleagues that over time Cuba would fall into our hands by “the laws of political gravitation,” as an apple falls from the tree.16 In brief, U.S. power would increase and Britain’s would decline.

In 1898, Adams’s prognosis was realized: the United States invaded Cuba in the guise of liberating it. In fact, it prevented the island’s liberation from Spain and turned it into a “virtual colony,” to quote historians Ernest May and Philip Zelikow.17 Cuba remained a virtual U.S. colony until January 1959, when it gained independence. Since that time it has been subjected to major U.S. terrorist wars, primarily during the Kennedy years, and economic strangulation—and not because of the Russians.

It is worth remembering that the United States, like England before it, has tended to support radical fundamentalist Islam in opposition to secular nationalism, which has until recently been perceived as posing more of a threat of independence and contagion.

scholar and government adviser Samuel Huntington. In his words: “The architects of power in the United States must create a force that can be felt but not seen. Power remains strong when it remains in the dark; exposed to the sunlight it begins to evaporate.”

There are many problems that must be addressed, but two are overwhelming in their significance: environmental destruction and nuclear war. For the first time in history, we face the possibility of destroying the prospects for decent existence—and not in the distant future. For this reason alone, it is imperative to sweep away the ideological clouds and face honestly and realistically the question of how policy decisions are made, and what we can do to alter them before it is too late.

When the United States invades Iraq, virtually destroying it and inciting sectarian conflicts that are tearing the country and now the whole region apart, that counts as “stabilization” in official and hence media rhetoric. When Iran supports militias resisting the aggression, that is “destabilization.” And there could hardly be a more heinous crime than killing American soldiers attacking one’s home.

It is important to bear in mind that the Republicans long ago abandoned the pretense of functioning as a normal parliamentary party. They have, as respected conservative political commentator Norman Ornstein of the right-wing American Enterprise Institute observed, become a “radical insurgency” that scarcely seeks to participate in normal congressional politics.6 Since the days of President Ronald Reagan, the party leadership has plunged so far into the pockets of the very rich and the corporate sector that they can attract votes only by mobilizing parts of the population that have not previously been an organized political force. Among them are extremist evangelical Christians, now probably a majority of Republican voters; remnants of the former slaveholding states; nativists who are terrified that “they” are taking our white, Christian, Anglo-Saxon country away from us; and others who turn the Republican primaries into spectacles remote from the mainstream of modern society—though not from the mainstream of the most powerful country in world history.

Both parties have moved to the right during the neoliberal period of the past generation. Mainstream Democrats are now pretty much what used to be called “moderate Republicans.” Meanwhile, the Republican Party has largely drifted off the spectrum, becoming what respected conservative political analyst Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein call a “radical insurgency” that has virtually abandoned normal parliamentary politics. With the rightward drift, the Republican Party’s dedication to wealth and privilege has become so extreme that its actual policies could not attract voters, so it has had to seek a new popular base, mobilized on other grounds: evangelical Christians who await the Second Coming,6 nativists who fear that “they” are taking our country away from us, unreconstructed racists,7 people with real grievances who gravely mistake their causes,8 and others like them who are easy prey to demagogues and can readily become a radical insurgency.

Returning to the opening question, “Who rules the world?” we might also want to pose another question: “What principles and values rule the world?” That question should be foremost in the minds of the citizens of the rich and powerful states, who enjoy an unusual legacy of freedom, privilege, and opportunity thanks to the struggles of those who came before them, and who now face fateful choices as to how to respond to challenges of great human import.

To mention only one (quite unfortunate) illustration, one of the difficulties in arousing American concern about global warming is that some 40 percent of the country’s population believes that Jesus Christ will probably or definitely return to Earth by 2050, so they do not see the very severe threats of climate disaster in future decades as a problem. A similar percentage believes that our planet was created just a few thousand years ago.10