Who Rules the World? (43 page)
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Authors: Noam Chomsky
21. “THE IRANIAN THREAT”: WHO IS THE GRAVEST DANGER TO WORLD PEACE?
1
. Kelsey Davenport, “The P5+1 and Iran Nuclear Deal Alert, August 11,” Arms Control Association, 11 August 2015,
http://www.armscontrol.org/blog/ArmsControlNow/08-11-2015/The-P5-plus-1-and-Iran-Nuclear-Deal-Alert-August-11
.
2
. Scott Clement and Peyton M. Craighill, “Poll: Clear Majority Supports Nuclear Deal with Iran,”
Washington Post
, 30 March 2015; Laura Meckler and Kristina Peterson, “U.S. Public Split on Iran Nuclear Deal—WSJ/NBC Poll,” Washington Wire, 3 August 2015,
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2015/08/03/american-public-split-on-iran-nuclear-deal-wsjnbc-poll/
.
3
. Philip Weiss, “Cruz Says Iran Could Set Off Electro Magnetic Pulse over East Coast, Killing 10s of Millions,”
Mondoweiss
, 29 July 2015.
4
. Simon Maloy, “Scott Walker’s Deranged Hawkishness: He’s Ready to Bomb Iran During His Inauguration Speech,”
Salon
, 20 July 2015.
5
. Amy Davidson, “Broken,”
New Yorker
, 3 August 2015; “Former Top Brass to Netanyahu: Accept Iran Accord as ‘Done Deal,’”
Ha’aretz
, 3 August 2015.
6
. Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein, “Finding the Common Good in an Era of Dysfunctional Governance,”
Daedalus
142, no. 2 (Spring 2013).
7
. Helene Cooper and Gardiner Harris, “Top General Gives ‘Pragmatic’ View of Iran Nuclear Deal,”
New York Times
, 29 July 2015.
8
. Dennis Ross, “How to Make Iran Keep Its Word,”
Politico
, 29 July 2015.
9
. Dennis Ross, “Iran Will Cheat. Then What?”
Time
, 15 July 2015; “Former Obama Adviser: Send B-52 Bombers to Irsael,”
Ha’aretz
, 17 July 2015.10
. Javad Zarif, “Iran Has Signed a Historic Nuclear Deal—Now It’s Israel’s Turn,” op-ed,
Guardian
(London), 31 July 2015.11
. Jayantha Dhanapala and Sergio Duarte, “Is There a Future for the NPT?”
Arms Control Today
, July/August 2015.12
. WIN/Gallup, “Optimism Is Back in the World,” 30 December 2013,
http://www.wingia.com/web/files/services/33/file/33.pdf?1439575556
.13
. Anthony H. Cordesman, “Military Spending and Arms Sales in the Gulf,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, 28 April 2015,
http://csis.org/files/publication/150428_military_spending.pdf
.14
. Department of Defense, Unclassified Report on Military Power of Iran, April 2010,
http://www.politico.com/static/PPM145_link_042010.html
.15
. SIPRI Military Expenditure Database,
http://www.sipri.org/research/armaments/milex/milex_database
; Trita Parsi and Tyler Cullis, “The Myth of the Iranian Military Giant,”
Foreign Policy
, 10 July 2015.16
. Parsi and Cullis, “The Myth of the Iranian Military Giant.”17
. Cordesman, “Military Spending and Arms Sales in the Gulf,” 4.18
. Seyed Hossein Mousavian and Shahir Shahidsaless,
Iran and the United States: An Insider’s View on the Failed Past and the Road to Peace
(New York: Bloomsbury, 2014), 214–19.19
. William A. Dorman and Mansour Farhang,
The U.S. Press and Iran: Foreign Policy and the Journalism of Deference
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988).20
. Pervez Hoodbhoy and Zia Mian, “Changing Nuclear Thinking in Pakistan,” Asia Pacfic Leadership Network for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament and Centre for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament, Policy Brief No. 9, February 2014,
http://www.princeton.edu/sgs/faculty-staff/zia-mian/Hoodbhoy-Mian-Changing-Nuclear-Thinking.pdf
.21
. Haroon Siddique, “Bush: Iran ‘the World’s Leading Supporter of Terrorism,”
Guardian
(London), 28 August 2007.22
. Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank, “The Iraq Effect: War Has Increased Terrorism Sevenfold Worldwide,”
Mother Jones
, 1 March 2007.23
. Somini Sengupta, “U.N. Moves to Lift Iran Sanctions After Nuclear Deal, Setting Up a Clash in Congress,”
New York Times
, 20 July 2015.24
. Helene Cooper, “U.S. Defense Secretary Visits Israel to Soothe Ally After Iran Nuclear Deal,”
New York Times
, 20 July 2015.25
. Anne Barnard, “120 Degrees and No Relief? ISIS Takes Back Seat for Iraqis,”
New York Times
, 1 August 2015.26
. WIN/Gallup, “Happiness Is on the Rise,” 30 December 2014,
http://www.wingia.com/web/files/richeditor/filemanager/EOY_release_2014_-_FINAL.pdf
.27
. James Chace, “How ‘Moral’ Can We Get?”
New York Times Magazine
, 22 May 1977.28
. Leon Wieseltier, “The Iran Deal and the Rut of History,”
Atlantic
, 27 July 2015.29
. Shane Harris and Matthew M. Aid, “Exclusive: CIA Files Prove America Helped Saddam as He Gassed Iran,”
Foreign Policy
, 26 August 2013.30
. See Alex Boraine, “Justice in Iraq: Let the UN Put Saddam on Trial,”
New York Times
, 21 April 2003.31
. Gary Milhollin, “Building Saddam Hussein’s Bomb,”
New York Times Magazine
, 8 March 1992.32
. Robert Litwak, “Iran’s Nuclear Chess: Calculating America’s Moves,” Wilson Center report, 18 July 2014, 29,
https://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/irans-nuclear-chess-calculating-americas-moves
.33
. For example, David E. Sanger, “Obama Order Sped Up Wave of Cyberattacks Against Iran,”
New York Times
, 1 June 2012; Farnaz Fassihi and Jay Solomon, “Scientist Killing Stokes U.S.-Iran Tensions,”
Wall Street Journal
, 12 January 2012; Dan Raviv, “US Pushing Israel to Stop Assassinating Iranian Nuclear Scientists,”
CBSNews.com
,
1 March 2014.34
. “Contemporary Practices of the United States,”
American Journal of International Law
109, no. 1 (January 2015).35
. Charlie Savage, “Bush Asserts Authority to Bypass Defense Act,”
Boston Globe
, 30 January 2008.36
. Elaine Sciolino, “Iran’s Nuclear Goals Lie in Half-Built Plant,”
New York Times
, 19 May 1995.37
. Mousavian and Shahidsaless,
Iran and the United States
, 178.38
. CIA report (declassified by NSA and published on NSA archive), “Special National Intelligence Estimate 4-1-74: Prospects for Further Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons,” 23 August 1974,
http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB240/snie.pdf
.39
. Roham Alvandi,
Nixon, Kissinger, and the Shah: The United States and Iran in the Cold War
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014); Mousavian and Shahidsaless,
Iran and the United States
, 178.40
. Farah Stockman, “Iran’s Nuclear Vision Initially Glimpsed at Institute,”
Boston Globe
, 13 March 2007.41
. Dafna Linzer, “Past Arguments Don’t Square with Current Iran Policy,”
Washington Post
, 27 March 2005.42
. Samuel P. Huntington, “The Lonely Superpower,”
Foreign Affairs
78, no. 2 (March/April 1999).43
. Robert Jervis, “Weapons Without Purpose? Nuclear Strategy in the Post–Cold War Era,” review of
The Price of Dominance: The New Weapons of Mass Destruction and Their Challenge to American Leadership
, by Jan Lodal,
Foreign Affairs
80, no. 4 (July/August 2001).44
. Bill Clinton, “A National Security for a New Century,” National Security Strategy Archive, 1 December 1999,
http://nssarchive.us/national-security-strategy-2000-2/
.
22. THE DOOMSDAY CLOCK
1
. “2015: It Is Three Minutes to Midnight,”
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
,
http://thebulletin.org/clock/2015
.
2
. “In Greenland, Another Major Glacier Comes Undone,” Jet Propulsion Lab, California Institute of Technology, 12 November 2015,
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4771
.
3
. Hannah Osborne, “COP21 Paris Climate Deal: Laurent Fabius Announces Draft Agreement to Limit Global Warming to 2C,”
International Business Times
, 12 December 2015.
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/cop21-paris-climate-deal-laurent-fabius-announces-draft-agreement-limit-global-warming-2c-1533045
.
4
. Coral Davenport, “Paris Deal Would Herald an Important First Step on Climate Change,”
New York Times
, 29 November 2015.
5
. Coral Davenport, “Nations Approve Landmark Climate Accord in Paris,”
New York Times
, 12 December 2015.
6
. Evangelicals heavily dominate the first Republican primary, in Iowa. Polls there show that of likely Republican voters, “nearly six in 10 say climate change is a hoax. More than half want mass deportations of illegal immigrants. Six in 10 would abolish the Internal Revenue Service” (thereby providing a huge gift to the superrich and corporate sector). Trip Gabriel, “Ted Cruz Surges Past Donald Trump to Lead in Iowa Poll,”
New York Times
, 12 December 2015.
7
. Sociologists Rory McVeigh and David Cunningham found that a significant predictor of current Republican voting patterns in the South is the prior existence of a strong chapter of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1960s. Bill Schaller, “Ku Klux Klan’s Lasting Legacy on the U.S. Political System,”
Brandeis Now
, 4 December 2014.
https://www.brandeis.edu/now/2014/december/cunningham-kkk-impact.html
.
8
. Shawn Donnan and Sam Fleming, “America’s Middle-Class Meltdown: Fifth of US Adults Live in or near to Poverty,”
Financial Times
(London), 11 December 2015.
9
. Sewell Chan and Melissa Eddy, “Republicans Make Presence Felt at Climate Talks by Ignoring Them,”
New York Times
, 10 December 2015; David M. Herszenhorn, “Votes in Congress Move to Undercut Climate Pledge,”
New York Times
, 1 December 2015; Samantha Page, “America’s Scientists to House Science Committee: Go Away,”
ClimateProgress
, 25 November 2015.10
. Giovanni Russonello, “Two-Thirds of Americans Want U.S. to Join Climate Change Pact,”
New York Times
, 30 November 2015.11
. Melvin Goodman, “The ‘War Scare’ in the Kremlin, Revisited: Is History Repeating Itself?”
Counterpunch
, 27 October 2015.12
. Aaron Tovish, “The Okinawa Missiles of October,” op-ed,
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
, 25 October 2015.13
. David Hoffman, “Shattered Shield: Cold-War Doctrines Refuse to Die,”
Washington Post
, 15 March 1998.14
. Seth Baum, “Nuclear War, the Black Swan We Can Never See,”
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
, 21 November 2014.15
. Eric Schlosser,
Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety
(New York: Penguin, 2013).16
. Fiona S. Cunningham and M. Taylor Fravel, “Assuring Assured Retaliation: China’s Nuclear Posture and U.S.-China Strategic Stability,”
International Security
, Fall 2015.17
. After the uprising that established the pro-Western Ukrainian government, its parliament voted “303 to 8, to rescind a policy of ‘nonalignment’ and to instead pursue closer military and strategic ties with the West … tak[ing] steps toward joining NATO.” David M. Herszenhorn, “Ukraine Vote Takes Nation a Step Closer to NATO,”
New York Times
, 23 December 2014.18
. Jonathan Steele, review of
Frontline Ukraine: Crisis in the Borderlands
, by Richard Sakwa,
Guardian
(London), 19 February 2015.19
. Lauren McCauley, “In Wake of Turkey Provocation, Putin Orders Anti-aircraft Missiles to Syria,” Common Dreams, 25 November 2015.20
. Michael Birnbaum, “U.S. Military Vehicles Paraded 300 Yards from the Russian Border,” WorldViews, 24 February 2015,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2015/02/24/u-s-military-vehicles-paraded-300-yards-from-the-russian-border/
.21
. Ian Kearns, “Avoiding War in Europe: The Risks From NATO-Russian Close Military Encounters,”
Arms Control Today
, November 2015.
23. MASTERS OF MANKIND
1
. See among others Marc Weisbrot,
Failed
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2015); David Kotz,
The Rise and Fall of Neoliberal Capitalism
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015); Mark Blyth,
Austerity: History of a Dangerous Idea
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2013).
2
. Alison Smale and Andrew Higgins, “Election Results in Spain Cap a Bitter Year for Leaders in Europe,”
New York Times
, 23 December 2015, paraphrasing François Lafond, head of EuropaNova. On the Spanish elections, and their background in the disaster of neoliberal austerity policies, see Marc Weisbrot, Al Jazeera America, 23 December 2015,
http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2015/12/spain-votes-no-to-failed-economic-policies.html
.
3
. This is a prominent theme of Walter Lippmann’s progressive essays on democracy.
4
. John Shy,
A People Numerous and Armed
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1976), 146.
5
. William Polk,
Violent Politics: A History of Insurgency, Terrorism and Guerrilla War from the American Revolution to Iraq
(New York: HarperCollins, 2007). An outstanding Middle East scholar and general historian, Polk also draws from direct experience on the ground and at the highest level of U.S. government policy planning.
6
. Patrick Tyler, “A New Power in the Streets,”
New York Times
, 17 February 2003.
7
. Bernard B. Fall,
Last Reflections on a War
(New York: Doubleday, 1967).
8
. Gideon Rachman, “Preserving American Power After Obama,”
National Interest
, January/February 2016.
9
. Jeremy Page and Gordon Lubold, “U.S. Bomber Flies over Waters Claimed by China,”
Wall Street Journal
, 18 December 2015.10
. Tim Craig and Simon Denver, “From the Mountains to the Sea: A Chinese Vision, a Pakistani Corridor,”
Washington Post
, 23 October 2015; “China Adds Pakistan’s Gwadar to ‘String of Pearls,’”
http://store.businessmonitor.com/article/475258
. More generally, Alfred McCoy, “Washington’s Great Game and Why It’s Failing,”
Tomdispatch
, 7 June 2015,
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176007/tomgram%3A_alfred_mccoy%2C_washington%27s_great_game_and_why_it%27s_failing
.11
. Jane Perlez, “Xi Hosts 56 Nations at Founding of Asian Infrastructure Bank,”
New York Times
, June 19, 2015.12
. Richard Sakwa,
Frontline Ukraine: Crisis in the Borderlands
(New York: I. B. Tauris, 2015), 55.13
. Ibid., 46.14
. Ibid., 26.15
. On these matters, the definitive scholarly study today is Mary Elise Sarotte,
1989: The Struggle to Create Post–Cold War Europe
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011).16
. See Noam Chomsky,
Hopes and Prospects
(Chicago: Haymarket, 2010), 185–86.17
. Sakwa,
Frontline Ukraine
, 4, 52.18
. John J. Mearsheimer, “Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s Fault: The Liberal Delusions That Provoked Putin,”
Foreign Affairs
93, no. 5 (September/October 2014); Sakwa,
Frontline Ukraine
, 234–35.19
. Polk,
Violent Politics
, 191.20
. Richard A. Clarke,
Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror
(New York: Free Press, 2004). For discussion, see international law scholar Francis A. Boyle, “From 2001 Until Today: The Afghanistan War Was and Is Illegal,” 9 January 2016,
http://www.larsschall.com/2016/01/09/from-2001-until-today-the-afghanistan-war-was-and-is-illegal/
. For further review and sources, see Noam Chomsky,
Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance
(New York: Henry Holt, 2003), chap. 8.21
. See H. C. van Sponeck,
A Different Kind of War: The UN Sanctions Regime in Iraq
(New York: Berghahn, 2006). A crucially important study, barely mentioned in the United States and UK. Technically, the sanctions were administered by the UN, but they are correctly described as U.S.-UK sanctions, primarily Clinton’s crime.22
. Brian Katulis, Siwar al-Assad, and William Morris, “One Year Later: Assessing the Coalition Campaign against ISIS,”
Middle East Policy
22, no. 4 (Winter 2015).23
. Timo Kivimäki, “First Do No Harm: Do Air Raids Protect Civilians?,”
Middle East Journal
22, no. 4 (Winter 2015). See also Chomsky,
Hopes and Prospects
, 241.24
. Alan Kuperman, “Obama’s Libya Debacle,”
Foreign Affairs
94, no. 2 (March/April 2015); Alex de Waal, “African Roles in the Libyan Conflict of 2011,”
International Affairs
89, no. 2 (2013): 365–79.25
. Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank, “The Iraq Effect: War Has Increased Terrorism Sevenfold Worldwide,”
Mother Jones
, 1 March 2007.26
. Physicians for Social Responsibility, “Body Count: Casualty Figures After 10 Years of the ‘War on Terror,’ Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan,” March 2015,
http://www.psr.org/assets/pdfs/body-count.pdf
.27
. Kivimäki, “First Do No Harm.”28
. Andrew Cockburn,
Kill Chain: The Rise of the High-Tech Assassins
(New York: Henry Holt, 2015); Bruce Hoffman, “ISIS Is Here: Return of the Jihadi,”
National Interest
, January/February 2016.29
. Polk,
Violent Politics
, 33–34.30
. Scott Atran, “ISIS Is a Revolution,”
Aeon
, 15 December 2015,
https://aeon.co/essays/why-isis-has-the-potential-to-be-a-world-altering-revolution
; Hoffman, “ISIS Is Here.”31
. Thomas Friedman speaking on
Charlie Rose
, PBS, 29 May 2003,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwFaSpca_3Q
; Dan Murphy, “Thomas Friedman, Iraq War Booster,”
Christian Science Monitor
, 18 March 2013.32
. Atran, “ISIS Is a Revolution.”33
. William R. Polk, “Falling into the ISIS Trap,”
Consortiumnews
, 17 November 2015,
https://consortiumnews.com/2015/11/17/falling-into-the-isis-trap/
.34
. Ayse Tekdal Fildis, “The Troubles in Syria: Spawned by French Divide and Rule,”
Middle East Policy
18, no. 4 (Winter 2011), cited by Anne Joyce, editorial,
Middle East Policy
22, no. 4 (Winter 2015).35
. On the sordid history of U.S. immigration policy, see Aviva Chomsky,
Undocumented: How Immigration Became Illegal
(Boston: Beacon Press, 2014).