Chomsky on world ownership
By
Michael Shank Read Spanish Version
This
interview first appeared in Foreign Policy in Focus.
The famous critic lays out the emerging alternatives to the
U.S.-dominated international financial institutions of the last
century.
Noam
Chomsky is a noted linguist, author, and foreign policy expert. On
January 15, Michael Shank interviewed him on the latest developments
in U.S. policy toward regional challenges to U.S. power.
Michael
Shank:
In December 2007, seven South American countries officially launched
the Bank of the South in response to growing opposition to the World
Bank, the International Monetary Fund and other International
Financial Institutions. How important is this shift and will it spur
other responses in the developing world? Will it at some point
completely undermine the reach of the World Bank and the IMF?
Noam
Chomsky:
I think it’s very important, especially because, contrary to the
impression often held here, the biggest country Brazil is supporting
it. The U.S. propaganda, western propaganda, is trying to establish a
divide between the good left and the bad left. The good left, like
Lula in Brazil, are governments they would’ve overthrown by force 40
years ago. But now that’s their hope, one of their saviors. But the
divide is pretty artificial. Sure, they’re different. Lula isn’t
Chavez. But they get along very well, they cooperate. And they are
cooperating on the Bank of the South.
The
Bank of the South could turn out to be a viable institution. There
are plenty of problems in the region. But one of the striking things
that’s been happening in South America for quite a few years now is
that they are beginning to overcome for the first time, since the
Spanish invasion, the conflicts among the countries and the
separation of the countries. It was a very disintegrated continent.
If you look at transportation systems they don’t have much to do with
each other. They’re mostly oriented toward the imperial power that
was dominant. So you send out resources, you send out capital, the
rich tiny elite have their chateaus on the Riviera, and that sort of
thing. But they have not much to do with each other.
There
was also a huge internal divide between a rich, mostly white,
Europeanized elite and a massive population. For the first time, both
of those kinds of disintegration, internal to the countries and among
the countries, are being confronted at least. You can’t say they’re
overcome but they’re being confronted. The Bank of the South is one
example.
Actually
what’s happening in Bolivia is a striking example. The mostly white,
Europeanized elite, which is a minority, happens to be sitting on
most of the hydrocarbon reserves. And for the first time Bolivia is
becoming democratic. So it’s therefore bitterly hated by the West,
which despises democracy, because it’s much too dangerous. But when
the indigenous majority actually took political power for the first
time, in a very democratic election of the kind we can’t imagine
here, the reaction in the West was quite hostile. I recall, for
example, an article — I think it was the Financial Times —
condemning Morales as moving towards dictatorship because he was
calling for nationalization of oil. They omitted to mention, with the
support of about 90% of the population. But that’s tyranny. Tyranny
means you don’t do what the United States says. Just like moderation
means that you’re like Saudi Arabia and you do what we say.
There
are now moves toward autonomy in the elite-dominated sectors in
Bolivia, maybe secession, which will probably be backed by the United
States to try and undercut the development of a democratic system in
which the majority, which happens to be indigenous, will play their
proper role, namely, cultural rights, control over resources,
political and economic policy, and so on. That’s happening elsewhere
but strikingly in Bolivia.
The
Bank of the South is a step towards integration of the countries.
Could it weaken the IFIs, yes it can, in fact they’re being weakened
already. The IMF has been mostly thrown out of South America.
Argentina quite explicitly said, "Okay, we’re ridding ourselves
of the IMF." And for pretty good reasons. They had been the
poster child of the IMF. They had followed its policies rigorously
and it led to terrible economic collapse. They did pull out of the
collapse, namely by flatly rejecting the advice of the IMF. And it
succeeded. They were able to pay off their debts, restructure their
debts and pay them off with the help of Venezuela which picked up a
substantial part of the debt. Brazil in its own way paid off its debt
and rid itself of the IMF. Bolivia is moving in the same direction.
The
IMF is in trouble now because it is losing its reserves. It was
functioning on debt collection and if countries either restructured
their debt or refused to pay it, they’re in trouble. Incidentally the
countries could legitimately refuse to pay much of the debt, because,
in my opinion at least, it was illegal in the first place. For
example, if I lend you money, and I know you’re a bad risk, so I get
high interest payments, and then you tell me at one point, sorry I
can’t pay anymore, I can’t call on my neighbors to force you to pay
me. Or I can’t call on your neighbors to pay it off. But that’s the
way the IMF works. You lend money to a dictatorship and an elite, the
population has nothing to do with it, you get very high interest
because it’s obviously risky, they say they can’t pay it off, you say
okay your neighbors will pay for it. It’s called structural
adjustment. And my neighbors will pay me off. That’s the IMF as a
creditors’ cartel. You get higher taxes from the north.
The
World Bank is not the same institution, but there’s the same kind of
conflicts and confrontations going on. In Bolivia, one of the major
background events that led to the uprising of the majority indigenous
population to finally take political power was an effort by the World
Bank to privatize water. Take an economics course, they’ll tell you
that you ought to pay the market price and so on. True value, yes,
very nice, except that means poor people, which is most of the
population, can’t drink. Well that’s called an externality; don’t
worry about things like that.
What
the population did — and it was a big conflict, mostly in Cochabamba
— peasants just forced the international water companies, Bechtel
and others, just to pull out. It was supported by a solidarity
movement here, it was quite interesting. But the World Bank had to
pull out of that project and there are others like it. On the other
hand, some of the things they do are constructive. It’s not a totally
destructive institution. But that’s weakening too.
The
same thing is happening in Asia. Take the Asian Development Bank. At
the time of the Asian financial crisis, in 1997-98, Japan wanted to
work through the Asian Development Bank to create a substantial
reserve which would enable countries to survive the debt crisis
instead of selling off their assets to the West. The United States
just blocked it. But they can’t do that anymore. The reserves in the
Asian countries are just too high. In fact the United States survives
on funding from Japan and China, which subsidizes the high
consumption-high borrowing economy here. I don’t think the United
States at this point could tell the Asian Development Bank, "I’m
sorry you can’t do this." That’s somewhat parallel to the Bank
of the South. Similar things are now happening in the Middle East,
with sovereign funds and so on.
Shank:
With these institutions springing up in the developing world as
alternatives to the IMF and the World Bank, what similar initiatives
will emerge in the developing world regarding currencies?
Chomsky:
It’s already happening. Kuwait has already made a limited move toward
a basket of currencies. The United Arab Emirates and Dubai are moving
toward their own partial development funds. Saudi Arabia, that’s the
big important one, if they join in it’ll become a major independent
center of funding, lending, purchasing, and so on. It’s already
happening. Investment in the rich countries and to some extent in the
region, particularly North Africa. Separate development funds. It’s a
limited move; they don’t want to anger the United States.
Of
course they rely on the United States in many ways, the elites.
China, in particular, relies on the U.S. market. They don’t want to
undermine it. The same with Japan. So they’re willing to buy treasury
bonds instead of more profitable investments in order to sustain the
U.S. economy, which is their market. But it’s a very fragile
situation. They very well may turn elsewhere and they’re beginning
to. I don’t think anyone knows what would happen if the reserve-rich
countries were to turn to profitable investment rather than
supporting the U.S. high-consumption, high-debt economy.
Shank:
The West resists countries nationalizing their oil supplies and their
gas supplies but that trend continues regardless. Where is this
headed? Do you see all oil- and-gas rich countries getting together
and establishing an alternative market?
Chomsky:
They tried with OPEC, which to some extent does it. But they have to
face the fact that the West will not allow it to happen. If you go
back to 1974, that was the first move toward oil independence by the
oil-rich countries. Just read what American journalists and
commentators were writing. They were saying they have no right to the
oil. The more moderate writers were saying the oil should be
internationalized for the benefit of the world. American agricultural
wealth shouldn’t be internationalized for the benefit of the world,
but the oil of Saudi Arabia should be because they’re not following
what we tell them to do anymore.
The
more extreme people, I guess it was Irving Kristol, said
insignificant nations like insignificant people sometimes gain
illusions about their own significance. So therefore the age of
gunboat diplomacy is never over, we’ll just take it from them by
force. Robert Tucker, a serious international relations specialist
who is considered pretty moderate, said it’s just a scandal that
we’re letting them get away with running their own resources. Why are
we sitting here, we’ve got the military force to take them. Go back
to somebody like George Kennan, who’s considered a great humanist.
When he was in the planning sector, in the late 1940s and early
1950s, he said harsh measures may be necessary for "protection
of our resources" – which happen to be in some other country.
That’s just an accident of geography. They’re our resources and we
have to protect them by harsh measures, including police states and
so on.
Take
Bill Clinton. He had a doctrine too, every president has a doctrine.
He was less brazen about it than Bush, didn’t get criticized a lot,
but his doctrine was more extreme than the Bush doctrine if taken
literally. The official Clinton doctrine presented to Congress was
that the United States has the unilateral right to use military force
to protect markets and resources. The Bush doctrine said we’ve got to
have a pretext, like we’ve got to claim they’re a threat. Clinton
doctrine didn’t even go that far, we don’t need any pretext. With
markets and resources, we have a right to make sure that we control
them, which is logical on the principle that we own the world anyway
so of course we have that right.
You’re
going to have to look far in the political spectrum to find any
deviation from this. So if the oil-rich countries were to try to
really take independent control of the resources, there would be a
very harsh reaction. The United States, by now, has a military
system; more is spent on the military system than the rest of the
world put together. There’s a reason for that. That’s not to defend
the borders.
Shank:
Do you think India will swing towards Russia and China as it
positions itself in its allegiances or will it continue to cozy up
with the U.S. post-nuclear agreement?
Chomsky:
It’s going in both directions. Part of the purpose of the nuclear
agreement from the U.S. point of view was to try to encourage them to
move into the U.S. orbit. But the Indians are playing a double game.
They’re improving relations with China too. Trade relations, other
relations, joint investment are improving. They haven’t been accepted
as members but they’re official observers in the Shanghai Cooperation
Organization (SCO), which is mainly China-based but is a big
developing organization that could be a counter to NATO. It includes
the Central Asian states. It includes Russia with its huge resources,
and China, a big growing economy. Observers include India, Pakistan
and, crucially, Iran which is accepted as an observer and may join.
But it excludes the United States.
The
United States wanted to join as an observer. It was rejected. The SCO
has officially declared that U.S. forces should leave the Middle
East. And it’s part of a move toward developing what’s called an
Asian Energy Security grid and other steps that will integrate that
region and allow it to move toward independence from imperial
control, Western control. South Korea has not yet joined but it might
– another major industrial power. Japan is so far accepting its role
as a U.S. client, but that’s not graven in stone either.
So
there are these centrifugal developments taking place all over the
world.
