| http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/asiapacific/eastasiatoday/chomsky.shtml
16.05.01 Noam Chomsky: Why American aggression in Asia makes it a rogue superpower The United States is promoting its planned National Missile Defence system around the world, with the justification that a shield needs to be built against possible attack by so-called rogue states. Washington points to North Korea, Iran and Iraq as potential adversaries. China, too, looms large in the Pentagon’s list of dangerous states. In his new book, Rogue States, the renowned linguistic philosopher and critic of American foreign policy, Professor Noam Chomsky argues that the United States is the biggest rogue state of them all. Indeed, he labels the US a rogue superpower. Christopher Gunness asked him to justify that argument in the light of American involvement in East Asia. Noam Chomsky: In the case of Vietnam, the United States launched a war of aggression forty years ago that practically destroyed Indochina. It was one of the major atrocities of the twentieth century. In the case of Indonesia and East Timor, it was in some ways worse you might say, or different at least. In 1958 the Eisenhower administration supported a military rebellion to try to break up Indonesia and strip off the outer islands, which is where most of the resources are. But because the nationalist government was too independent, that didn't work, so after that the US supported the military against the civilian government, and in 1965 there was a military coup which lead to a huge massacre of hundreds of thousands, maybe even more. The CIA compared it to the massacres of Hitler, Stalin and Mao—it was greeted with total euphoria in the United States and in Britain, too. Most of the people killed were landless peasants. It destroyed the only political party in the country. It opened the country to Western exploitation. After that it became the darling of the West and the leader, Suharto, was called ‘our kind of guy’ by (an official in the) Bill Clinton (administration). He remained ‘our kind of guy’ while he carried out horrible oppression and torture inside the country. He invaded East Timor, if you want to use the word genocide, that’s real genocide, not like Kosovo. That was done with the authorisation, support, arms and diplomatic support of the United States. As soon as the killings reached genocidal levels in 1978, Britain came in and became the main arms supplier. That continued right through to September 1999. The US continued to support, as did Britain, the Indonesian invaders, as they practically wiped out the country in early September 1999. That’s Indonesia. Christopher Gunness: Are you saying that if America and the West had not supported Jakarta, East Timor would have been independent sooner and hundreds and thousands of people would not have been killed? Noam Chomsky: We can go to an authoritative source on that. The US Ambassador to the United Nations, Daniel Moynihan, he was ambassador in 1975 when Indonesia invaded. The invasion was of course immediately condemned by the UN Security Council, which called on Indonesia to withdraw. In his memoirs, three years later, Moynihan describes what happens. This is in 1978. He said ‘ the State Department wanted things to turn out as they did’, that is they wanted the Indonesian invasion to be successful,‘it was my responsibility to render the United Nations utterly ineffective in anything it might do and I carried this out with considerable success’, supporting the invasion. He then points out that in the next few weeks about sixty thousand people were killed, he says that that’s approximately the proportion that the Nazis killed in Eastern Europe, and then he says that apparently it succeeded because it disappeared from the press after that. Well it’s true that it disappeared from the press, but it went on to become a slaughter in which about a third of the population was wiped out in the next few years. Could it have been prevented in 1975? Of course it could have. The US was providing 80 percent of the arms, those were under a treaty that required them to be used only for self defence, as Moynihan points out the state department wanted it to turn out this way and he blocked any UN action that might have prevented it. Of course they could have been independent in 1975. Christopher Gunness: Finally, you say that America is the world’s rogue superstate. What about China, do you think China is emerging as a rogue superpower? Noam Chomsky: I think it is emerging as a power and to the extent that it will be a power it will be like other powers in history, namely a dangerous and threatening power. That’s what states are like. Take a look at European history, how did Europe conquer the world? Was that because they were nice guys? |
