Hegemony or Survival by Noam Chomsky

Author:Noam Chomsky
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
Published: 2003-02-27T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 7

Cauldron of Animosities

Let us return to Michael Krepon’s belief that the final days of 2002 might be “the most dangerous time since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis.” His primary concern was the “unstable nuclear-proliferation belt stretching from Pyongyang to Baghdad,” including “Iran, Iraq, North Korea, and the Indian subcontinent.”1 Similar concerns, widely held, were heightened by Bush administration initiatives of 2002–3 that were seriously increasing international tensions and threats.

There is a far more fearsome nuclear power nearby, rarely featured in public discussion in the US because it is an appendage of US power. That convention is not observed within the unstable belt itself, or even within the US Strategic Command (STRATCOM), which is responsible for the nuclear arsenal. General Lee Butler, commander in chief of STRATCOM in 1992–94, observed that “it is dangerous in the extreme that in the cauldron of animosities that we call the Middle East, one nation has armed itself, ostensibly, with stockpiles of nuclear weapons, perhaps numbering in the hundreds, and that inspires other nations to do so.” Israel’s WMD are of concern to the world’s second leading nuclear power as well.2

Similar concerns were expressed, more obliquely, in Security Council Resolution 687, which was selectively invoked by the Bush and Blair administrations in their efforts to provide a quasi-legal basis for their invasion of Iraq. Neither that nor any other resolution grants such authorization, but 687 did call for elimination of Iraqi WMD and delivery systems—as a step toward “the goal of establishing in the Middle East a zone free from weapons of mass destruction and all missiles for their delivery” (Article 14). US intelligence and other sources assume that Israel has several hundred nuclear weapons and has been developing chemical and biological weapons.

Article 14 is commonly ignored in US commentary, but not elsewhere. Iraq, for example, called on the Security Council to apply Article 14. Its motives do not obviate the importance of the issue. General Butler’s concerns are not trivial. Undoubtedly, Israeli military power will continue to “inspire other nations” to develop WMD, including quite possibly even Iraq, if it is granted a modicum of independence.

The issue addressed by Article 14 had arisen before, on the eve of the first Gulf war. After invading Kuwait in August 1990, Iraq made a number of proposals for withdrawal within the context of a broader regional settlement. These were leaked to the press by US government officials who found them “serious” and “negotiable.” How serious they were we cannot judge: the US “immediately dismissed” them, according to the only journalist in the country who reported the matter carefully, Knut Royce of Newsday. It is of some interest that in the final polls before the bombing, two thirds of the American public favored a conference on the Israel-Arab conflict if it would lead to Iraqi withdrawal.3 Doubtless those figures would have been higher if the public had known that Iraq had just made a similar proposal, dismissed by Washington. A devastating war and even more destructive aftermath

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