On Power and Ideology by Chomsky Noam

Author:Chomsky, Noam
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Tags: History, Politics
ISBN: 978-1-60846-441-8
Publisher: Haymarket Books
Published: 2015-07-07T16:00:00+00:00

* See Piero Gleijeses, The Dominican Crisis (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1978) Appendix I, for an assessment of the evidence.

Lecture 4

National Security Policy

So far, I have been discussing various aspects of U.S. foreign policy, its plans and principles and their execution in practice. In this lecture, I would like to turn to a different though related matter: national security policy, the arms race, and the threat of nuclear war.

The first point that must be stressed, though it should be obvious, is that the situation is quite serious. There is a danger of terminal nuclear war. How great this danger is, no one can say with any precision. But the probability of catastrophe is surely well beyond what any rational person should accept with equanimity.

The use of nuclear weapons has been considered numerous times in the past, and in some of these cases, the steps that were taken carried substantial risk. A Brookings Institution study by Barry Blechman and Stephen Kaplan, based on recently released records of the Strategic Air Command, documents 19 cases between 1946 and 1973 when the U.S. deployed strategic nuclear weapons or placed them on alert, ready for use. The frequency of these occasions indicates that the national leadership has always regarded the use of nuclear weapons as a live policy option. There have been other cases when the use of such weapons was considered and even threatened, or when international tensions brought the superpowers close to a confrontation that might have led to their use. As for tactical nuclear weapons, we may usefully recall the discussion by General Nathan Twining, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under President Eisenhower. Writing in the mid-1960s, he explained that these weapons, “if employed once or twice on the right targets, at the right time, would in my judgment, stop current aggression, and stop future subversion and limited wars before they start” (his emphasis). By “current aggression,” he was plainly referring to the “internal aggression” of the Vietnamese against the American invaders and their client armies. He gave several examples to illustrate what he meant by “subversion”: Cuba, the Congo, and Vietnam, three countries where subversion had indeed been rife, including attempts to assassinate the political leadership (as occurred in the Congo and Vietnam)—namely, subversion by the United States. The idea that it would be appropriate to use nuclear weapons “to stop future subversion” is noteworthy, and departs from the norm (at least what is publicly expressed), though General Twining’s concept of “subversion” and “aggression” is quite standard. Recall that under the Orwellian principles of Western logic, it is a matter of definition, not of fact, that the United States is never the agent of subversion or aggression; hence by simple logic, enemies of the United States must be guilty of subversion and aggression in their own countries if they act in ways displeasing to the Master and come into conflict with his designs.

One might, incidentally, imagine the reaction in the West if some top Soviet military commander, or Moammar Qaddafi or Khomeini, were to issue such pronouncements about the use of nuclear weapons.

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