Someone was kind enough to fwd this to Janice. Her attempt to post it to
a list failed because the document was (a) not text-formatted and
therefore-and as a result - (b) was many times too big to meet the size
limits imposed on posting to some lists.
So I've reformatted it and divided it into 3 parts.
Cheers
MichaelP
PS: I did this on the evening of the IraK attack. Unlike most media orgs
in the US, PACIFICA broadcast a special in which various critics (of the
bombing) took part. Chomsky (live) got 30 minutes. If you have the
facilities, it's worth checking if the PACIFICA folk have created o
RealAudio file of that broadcast
========================
This is the complete text of a speech given by Professor Noam Chomsky at
the Opera House, Wellington, New Zealand, 10 November 1998. Professor
Chomsky visited New Zealand as a guest of the NZ Peace Foundation.
[Part 1 of 3]
WHOSE WORLD ORDER? CONFLICTING VISIONS
There are occasional moments in human affairs when power relations make
possible the establishment of socio-political arrangements that are
far-reaching enough to merit the term 'world order'. That's not
necessarily a term with positive connotations, as history amply reveals.
One of the most dramatic and easily timed of those moments was well over
50 years ago in the aftermath of the most devastating single catastrophe
in human history, which was right in the heartland of Western
civilisation. At the end of the war the United States had an overwhelming
share of power and wealth, and quite naturally dominant forces within the
state-corporate nexus planned to use that power to organise the world in
accordance with their own perceived interests. Nothing new about that.
There were, of course, conflicting visions, both at home and abroad, and
they had to be contained and that was done with varying degrees of
success. Nevertheless the basic conflicts persist and the reason they
persist is simple enough. They are about fundamental values, about
freedom, justice, human rights, and in a world of great inequality and
enormous concentrations of power, the real world in other words, those
values quite commonly constitute a major arena of conflict between centers
of power and most of the rest. A good deal of history revolves around
these conflicts, and the latter part of the 20th century is no exception.
At the onset of the current era, a bit over a half century ago, the
framers of the new world order faced these challenges everywhere. At home
in the United States, what had to be contained, or if possible rolled
back, were the very strong commitments of a large majority of the
population to more or less social democratic ideals, that the business
world quite rightly perceived as a grave threat to its traditional
dominance of society. The 'hazard facing industrialists in the rising
political power of the masses', as the National Association of
Manufacturers phrased the danger. And similar problems arose throughout
the industrial world. They were enhanced elsewhere by the prestige of the
anti-fascist resistance which often had a radical democratic thrust and by
the discrediting of the traditional conservative order which had been
linked to the fascist systems. Reinstating that traditional order and its
essentials was a primary task of the early post-war years. It was achieved
to a considerable extent, often in pretty ugly ways.
As in the United States that project has taken new forms in the last
quarter century or so under the guise of Neo-Liberalism or economic
rationalism or free market doctrines, a notion that's permeated with a
large element of fraud and hypocrisy. In what has been called the Third
World, there were similar problems. They were compounded by pressures to
overturn the imperial systems and the legacy that they have left of
dependency and subordination.
We know a lot about the United States, by comparative standards a very
open society. There's a very rich documentary record of declassified
documents that reveal quite clearly the internal planning. Although the
basic issues are essentially the same everywhere, you see them in starkest
clarity in Latin America. The reason for that is quite simple. In Latin
America the United States faced virtually no challenge apart from the
domestic population, which did pose a serious threat, and it was
recognised.
If you go back to State Department and other high level documents in the
mid 1940s there is great concern over what was called the "philosophy of
the new nationalism that is spreading all over Latin America, which
embraces policies designed to bring about a broader distribution of wealth
and to raise the standard of living of the masses on the principle that
"the first beneficiaries of the development of a country's resources
should be the people of that country". That's what's called "radical
nationalism" or "economic nationalism" in official state papers.
Well of course that's unacceptable. It's taken for granted that the first
beneficiaries of a country's resources should be US investors, their
counterparts elsewhere and the local associates who do the management of
these affairs in particular regions. As one of the leading planners,
George Kennan, said, we have to "protect our resources", which by accident
happened to be in somebody else's territory but they're ours and they
can't be the first beneficiaries, that's clear. There was a hemispheric
conference called by the United States in Mexico in February 1945 where
these issues were thrashed out, and power won as it usually does.
The United States imposed what was called a Charter for the Americas, an
economic charter for the Americas, which called for an end to economic
nationalism in all its forms. There followed a cruel and bloody history
for half a century, still going on, and throughout it these were central
themes. They are very much alive today, now often in the framework of
globalisation of a very specific form that's no historical necessity but a
specific form that's crafted primarily in the interests of transnational
corporations and financial institutions and the powerful states that
support and back them and implement their interests.
The most critical part of the Third World a half a century was, and still
remains in fact, the Middle East. The reasons are straightforward, that's
the locus of the world's major energy supplies and will be for the
perceivable future. Here it's of particular importance that the first
beneficiaries are not the people of the region because of the enormous
significance of controlling the world's energy. The resources have to be
under effective US control and accessible on terms that the US leadership
considers appropriate. And crucially the huge profits that are generated
have to flow primarily to the United States, secondarily to Britain, to
the British 'junior partner', to take the terminology that was used rather
ruefully by the British Foreign Office in the mid-1940s, recognising the
new realities of the world. So the US and the junior partner have to
control those resources and benefit from them primarily. These are
recycled in a variety of ways by local managers who have to be dependent
on the global rulers. Back in the days of British dominance they were
called the 'Arab facade' in secret British documents. Britainwould
exercise actual rule and the Arab facade which is still there has to be
weak and dependent and subordinate to the real rulers rather as in the
days of British domination. It's rather striking how profound are the
similarities that remain with all the changes. In this case the major
change is the shift of who pulls the strings.
Back before the Second World War the United States was a very marginal
player in world affairs despite the scale of its economy. After the Second
World War it became the dominant force, Britain was reduced to junior
partner, others were marginalised more.
Well, it's natural that these arrangements have engendered continual
conflict. The internal documents warn of the threat of radical nationalism
or some equivalent that threatens US dominance. For the public it's put in
different terms. It's called international terrorism or a 'clash of
civilisations' or some other fancy phrase. That is just the old fashioned
radical nationalism. The effort by beleaguered people to overcome the
principle that they never seem to understand that the first beneficiaries
of a country's resources are not them but somebody else. Hard to get
through the heads of backward peoples.
These conflicts are very likely to become more virulent and ominous in the
coming years at least if the rather general consensus of geologists is
anywhere near correct. The broad consensus is captured rather well in the
headline of a major article a few weeks ago in the journal Science of the
main scientific professional society. The title is "The Next World Crisis
Looms Large - and Perhaps Close" and it points out, as knowledgeable
specialists in the field have been doing, that the current phase of an oil
glut and unusual low prices is temporary. The rate of discovery of oil has
been declining since the mid 1960s, despite highly improved technology in
the drilling and so on.
The Gulf region has regained the share of energy production that it had
back in the early 70s and they expect it to increase. That's where the
major known reserves are by a large margin and world consumption is
approaching the 50% level of total exploitable known capacity. That's
expected to happen within maybe a decade or two, or even less, and it's
accelerating very fast. So almost half of the oil that's been used in
human history has ben used since the early 1970s and that rate of use is
going up.
All of that spells crisis so unless there's some technological fix that
nobody can dream of at the moment, the concern over who runs the Middle
East is going to be even more crucial than it has been in the past. And it
has been regarded as crucial. If you go back to the mid 1940s the State
Department and the political leadership described the Middle East as "a
stupendous source of strategic power" and "the greatest material prize in
all history", and that continues to be the case more than ever. So we can
rather confidently look forward to (that's not exactly the right phrase)
some very ugly events in that region.
Let's turn to something different - the institutional framework that was
designed for world order 50 years ago, a few comments about how it's fared
and where it stands today, what we can expect in the foreseeable future.
The institutional framework has three prongs: there was an international
political order, a human rights order and an international economic order.
Those are the three basic elements. The international political order is
the United Nations, it's articulated in the UN charter. The human rights
order was expressed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, December
1948, 50th anniversary's coming up in a couple of weeks. The international
economic order is called the Bretton Woods system.It was designed by the
United States and the junior partner in 1944. Those are the three
fundamental elements. I want to talk mostly about the third but a few
words first about the first two.
The UN Charter, the international political order, has one essential
principle, everything else is kind of a footnote. The essential principle
is that the threat or use of force is barred in international affairs.
That's illegal and ruled by the World Court as illegal. There are very
narrow exceptions. In fact, two exceptions. One exception is if force or
the threat of force is specifically authorised by the Security Council
after it determines that peaceful means have failed.
Case two is the famous Article 51 of the Charter which permits self
defence against 'armed attack' until the Security Council acts. So that
means, for example, if Cuban armies invade the United States, the United
States is supposed to notify the Security Council and it's allowed to
defend itself until the Security Council takes appropriate steps. That is
the only exception.
Actually that example may be, I'm not sure, hypothetical. The Cuban
military threat was downgraded by the Pentagon a couple of months ago.
That elicited great anger in Congress and the White House flat out
rejected it. The White House stated that Cuba still poses a national
security threat to the United States. It invoked that threat when the US
rejected World Trade Organisation jurisdiction when the European Union
brought to the World Trade Organisation a complaint about gross US
violations of trade agreements and international law in the case of the
Cuban trade embargo. That had already been condemned by just about every
relevant international body, even the quite compliant Organisation of
American States. But the US claims the national security exception because
of the threat to US national security posed by Cuba, so whether it's a
hypothetical threat or not, I don't know.
These are the sole exceptions to the barrier against the threat or use of
force. Well there's obviously no enforcement mechanism apart from the
great powers, decisively the United States, but the great powers reject
the principle completely. The United States in particular is a little
unusual in that it rejects the principles not only in practise but also in
doctrine. That's an innovation of the past 15 or 20 years.
With regard to the practice in the last half century, there's no need to
review it. The bombing of the pharmaceutical plant in Sudan a few months
ago is a recent illustration that's trivial in the historical context,
although I think it's fair to guess that if some terrorists destroyed half
of US medical supplies and fertiliser production it might be taken a
little bit more seriously than this one was. The official doctrine by now
reveals straightout utter contempt for the principles of world order that
are, of course, loudly proclaimed when they serve some power interest, to
beat up some enemy.
Since the Reagan years the United States has officially justified its acts
of violence on the grounds that Article 51 authorises 'self defence
against future attack'. That was the official justification for the
bombing of Libya in 1986, a straight terrorist attack. In the case of the
invasion of Panama, with hundreds if not thousands of fatalities, the
United States claimed that Article 51 permits the United States to 'defend
its interests'.
Under the Clinton administration, the pretexts are even more outlandish.
UN Ambassador Albright, now Secretary of State, put the matter pretty
frankly when she was admonishing the Security Council when it was refusing
to go along with US policies towards Iraq. She said the United States will
act Rmultilaterally when we can, and unilaterally when we mustS,
unconstrained by solemn treaty obligations. The World Court, the
foundations of world order or anything else are irrelevant.
That's been the case all along, not just for the United States. It's been
demonstrated in action in shocking ways, no need to review. It's now a
principle. What that means is that the international political order is
officially dead, not just dead in practise. The United Nations is fine as
long as it serves United States interests. Otherwise, get lost.
In fact the US war with the United Nations for the last 30 years has been
highly disruptive. It's way in the lead in vetoing Security Council
resolutions, followed by the junior partner, with everybody else far
behind, since the 1960s. That's not even worth reporting in the United
States and the facts are basically unknown and constantly denied easily
since they're not reported. It's hard to find them even in scholarly
literature. Anyhow, that's the international political order.
What about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights? We're coming up to
the 50th anniversary and it's pretty safe to guess that in the coming
weeks we'll be regaled with condemnations of human rights violations that
are sometimes horrendous. Everyone writes of violations of somebody else,
particularly official enemies. Those charges sometimes will be reasonably
accurate but they'll be very partial because we can also be confident that
a vastly more important topic will be ignored, namely the human rights
violations, often horrendous atrocities, that are chargeable to our own
account. These are vastly more important for quite elementary moral
reasons, namely we can act to mitigate them or to terminate them, so by
the most elementary moral standards they would be more important even if
they were less than the atrocities of others.
The comparative treatment of enemy atrocities and our own atrocities-
that's a very instructive story which again I'll have to put aside
somewhat glibly. There's a lot of material in print about it if you're
interested. Edward Herman, Professor of Finance at the University of
Pennsylvania, he and I have published a lot of extensive documentation
including several books jointly. Unfortunately there's no similar analysis
of Stalinist propaganda, I wish there were. I assume it was pretty much a
mirror image of ours, that is, atrocities committed by official enemies
are horrible, terrible things. You're permitted to lie about them and be
very eloquent in denouncing them, but your own you have to deny. At least
I assume that Stalinist propaganda, if investigated, would turn out to be
a mirror image of ours which has been investigated. Although it would be
interesting to discover if they actually sank to the level of moral
cowardice that is easily demonstrated in Western doctrine. That's actually
a good research topic for some aspiring graduate student looking for a
thesis, but incidentally not aspiring to get a job in a respectable
university. Anyway, that comparison has not been undertaken.
We gain a certain insight into these matters, though more obliquely, by
looking at a doctrine that's well known to international lawyers, it's
called the Hull formula. It's credited to Cordell Hull, Secretary of State
of the Roosevelt administration. This formula defines what's called the
'international minimum standard of civilisation'. Now that standard
doesn't involve genocide or torture or other marginal issues, rather it's
concerned with 'the right to adequate, effective, and prompt compensation'
for expropriated property where full compensation is to be at 'fair
market' value as determined by the former owners. That's the international
minimum standard of civilisation. Human rights, genocide and so on are
somewhere else.
That formula is an interesting one. It applies in quite intricate ways,
you have to be well educated to understand it all. It's the basis of the
US economic embargo and terrorist wars against Cuba for the last 40 years.
These are carried out because of Cuba's failure to meet the minimum
standard of civilisation, that is it's failure to offer what Washington
unilaterally decided was fair compensation for nationalised property. So
there the whole formula applies.
On the other hand it does not apply to US investors and the US government
who stole the Cuban properties at the turn of the century when, you will
remember, Cuba was under US military occupation and was forced to consent
to the robbery at gunpoint essentially. Nor does it hold for the US
government and private powers who stole Spanish and British possessions in
Cuba and the Philippines, for example. One case was the Spanish-owned
railway company. After the bloody conquest of the Philippines, which
killed hundreds of thousands of Filipinos, the United States threw out the
Spanish concession because it Rhad been inspired by Spanish imperialistic
motivesS, unlike the US possessions which Cuba nationalised.
The formula also doesn't apply to the founding of the United States which
was based on expropriation of British possessions and also the possessions
of British supporters who are about as numerous as the rebels in the Civil
War, the great world war of the time, now known as the American
Revolution. New York State alone made close to $4 million by taking the
property of loyalists. That was a huge sum in those days, of course.
You must have a rather a subtle mind to comprehend all of this and to
understand what really counts as 'the international minimum standard of
civilisation'. It's against that kind of background, of which this is an
illustration, that you can assess accurately the significance of the
Universal Declaration in the real world. Again, there's lots more to say
about that, but let me turn to the third pillar of world order, the
Bretton Woods system.
Actually that''s all over the front pages right now and the reason is
quite simple. There's a serious fear of global economic meltdown which
might affect the privileged sectors of the world, not just the usual
victims. As long as it's just them, it's not on the front pages. But now
it's getting serious.
The Bretton Woods system has two essential principles. First one was an
attempt to liberalise trade, to try, if possible, to bring international
economic interactions up to the level where they were, say, before WWI. In
fact what's today called globalisation is by gross measures like trade
relative to gross national product, financial flows relative to growth in
the world economy, it's actually less in many respects than it was before
WWI, so it's not a radically new phenomenon.
It had declined a lot in the inter-war period and the first principle of
Bretton Woods was to try to liberalise trade, to bring it up to what it
had been, although circumstances were now quite different. The second
principle of Bretton Woods, closely related to the first, was that capital
flow was to be regulated and exchange rates were to be fixed; so
liberalised trade and regulated flow of capital. Those are the two
principles of Bretton Woods. If you bother to look, they're still written
in the IMF rules. There's now an effort to change them but they're still
in the rules so the IMF, for example, is permitted to withhold credits to
cover capital flight, which is about all it does in the last 25 years, but
that's contrary to its charter. As I say, there's now an effort to try and
change the charter. That's the Bretton Woods system.
There is a good reason for the second principle, the regulation of capital
flow and the fixing of the exchange rates. The reasons were in part
theoretical. There was a fairly broad consensus among economists that
freeing up capital flow allowing for capital flight and short term
speculative flows and exchange rate fluctuations, that those processes
would tend to undermine trade and investment. So they were incompatible
with the first principle. That's a theory. Like most economic theory it is
not very solid, but it was plausible and widely assumed, and recent
experience of the past 25 years is quite consistent with that assumption.
It's approximately what's happened.
The second reason for the regulation of capital flow and fixing of
exchange rates was not a theory, it was a truism. It was clearly
understood that the free flow of capital undermines democracy and
undermines the welfare states which were far too popular in the 1940s to
be simply abandoned or ignored, and the reasons for that are completely
straightforward and uncontroversial.
I'll just paraphrase the framers of Bretton Woods. The paraphrase: capital
controls (that is, prevention of free movement of capital) allowed
governments to carry out monetary and tax policies in an effort to sustain
employment, to maintain incomes, to institute and expand social programs
without fear of capital flight that would terminate those efforts. If
there is free flow of capital, that is no control, that leads to what some
international economists have called a 'virtual Senate' of financial
capital which can impose social policies on governments and their
populations simply by the threat of capital flight.
Capital flight leads to higher interest rates, economic slowdown, budget
cuts for health and education and so on, recession, maybe collapse, in
fact exactly what the IMF prescriptions are for the poorer countries
today, that's a clear and immediate consequence of the threat of capital
flight. So that popular decisions or governmental decisions, which are
popular to the extent that the government's democratic, those can simply
be barred by the virtual senate simply by saying that if governments carry
out irrational policies which are aimed to help people rather than
profits, capital will travel elsewhere, and that's the end of the
policies. So that undermines democracy, undermines the welfare state, for
completely straightforward reasons.
All of this was articulated quite explicitly at the time by the US and
British negotiators Harry Dexter White for the United States and John
Maynard Keynes for Britain. That's very important to keep in mind when you
look at the current period, as the elementary principles are still
operating.
[end first part]
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