February 5, 2014
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As the year 2013 drew to an end, the BBC reported on the results of
the WIN/Gallup International poll on the question: “Which country do
you think is the greatest threat to peace in the world today?”
The United States was the champion by a substantial margin, winning three times the votes of second-place Pakistan.
By contrast, the debate in American scholarly and media circles is
about whether Iran can be contained, and whether the huge NSA
surveillance system is needed to protect U.S. security.
In view of the poll, it would seem that there are more pertinent
questions: Can the United States be contained and other nations secured
in the face of the U.S. threat?
In some parts of the world the United States ranks even higher as a
perceived menace to world peace, notably in the Middle East, where
overwhelming majorities regard the U.S. and its close ally Israel as the
major threats they face, not the U.S.-Israeli favorite: Iran.
Few Latin Americans are likely to question the judgment of Cuban
nationalist hero José Martí, who wrote in 1894 that “The further they
draw away from the United States, the freer and more prosperous the
[Latin] American people will be.”
Martí’s judgment has been confirmed in recent years, once again by
an analysis of poverty by the U.N. Economic Commission for Latin
American and the Caribbean, released last month.
The U.N. report shows that far-reaching reforms have sharply
reduced poverty in Brazil, Uruguay, Venezuela and some other countries
where U.S. influence is slight, but that it remains abysmal in others -
namely, those that have long been under U.S. domination, like Guatemala
and Honduras. Even in relatively wealthy Mexico, under the umbrella of
the North American Free Trade Agreement, poverty is severe, with 1
million added to the numbers of the poor in 2013.
Sometimes the reasons for the world’s concerns are obliquely
recognized in the United States, as when former CIA director Michael
Hayden, discussing Obama’s drone murder campaign, conceded that “Right
now, there isn’t a government on the planet that agrees with our legal
rationale for these operations, except for Afghanistan and maybe
Israel.”
A normal country would be concerned by how it is viewed in the
world. Certainly that would be true of a country committed to “a decent
respect to the opinions of mankind,” to quote the Founding Fathers. But
the United States is far from a normal country. It has had the most
powerful economy in the world for a century, and has had no real
challenge to its global hegemony since World War II, despite some
decline, partly self-administered.
The U.S., conscious of “soft power,” undertakes major campaigns of
“public diplomacy” (aka propaganda) to create a favorable image,
sometimes accompanied by worthwhile policies that are welcomed. But when
the world persists in believing that the United States is by far the
greatest threat to peace, the American press scarcely reports the fact.
The ability to ignore unwanted facts is one of the prerogatives of
unchallenged power. Closely related is the right to radically revise
history.
A current example can be seen in the laments about the escalating
Sunni-Shiite conflict that is tearing apart the Middle East,
particularly in Iraq and Syria. The prevailing theme of U.S. commentary
is that this strife is a terrible consequence of the withdrawal of
American force from the region - a lesson in the dangers of
“isolationism.”
The opposite is more nearly correct. The roots of the conflict
within Islam are many and varied, but it cannot be seriously denied that
the split was significantly exacerbated by the American- and
British-led invasion of Iraq. And it cannot be too often repeated that
aggression was defined at the Nuremberg Trials as “the supreme
international crime,” differing from others in that it encompasses all
the evil that follows, including the current catastrophe.
A remarkable illustration of this rapid inversion of history is the
American reaction to the current atrocities in Fallujah. The dominant
theme is the pain about the sacrifices, in vain, of the American
soldiers who fought and died to liberate Fallujah. A look at the news
reports of the U.S. assaults on Fallujah in 2004 quickly reveals that
these were among the most vicious and disgraceful war crimes of the
aggression.
The death of Nelson Mandela provides another occasion for
reflection on the remarkable impact of what has been called “historical
engineering”: reshaping the facts of history to serve the needs of
power.
When Mandela at last obtained his freedom, he declared that “During
all my years in prison, Cuba was an inspiration and Fidel Castro a
tower of strength. . [Cuban victories] destroyed the myth of the
invincibility of the white oppressor [and] inspired the fighting masses
of South Africa . a turning point for the liberation of our continent -
and of my people - from the scourge of apartheid. . What other country
can point to a record of greater selflessness than Cuba has displayed in
its relations to Africa?”
Today the names of Cubans who died defending Angola from
U.S.-backed South African aggression, defying American demands that they
leave the country, are inscribed on the “Wall of Names” in Pretoria’s
Freedom Park. And the thousands of Cuban aid workers who sustained
Angola, largely at Cuban expense, are also not forgotten.
The U.S.-approved version is quite different. From the first days
after South Africa agreed to withdraw from illegally occupied Namibia in
1988, paving the way for the end of apartheid, the outcome was hailed
by The Wall Street Journal as a “splendid achievement” of American
diplomacy, “one of the most significant foreign policy achievements of
the Reagan administration.”
The reasons why Mandela and South Africans perceive a radically
different picture are spelled out in Piero Gleijeses’ masterful
scholarly inquiry “Visions of Freedom: Havana, Washington, Pretoria, and
the Struggle for Southern Africa, 1976-1991.”
As Gleijeses convincingly demonstrates, South Africa’s aggression
and terrorism in Angola and its occupation of Namibia were ended by
“Cuban military might” accompanied by “fierce black resistance” within
South Africa and the courage of Namibian guerrillas. The Namibian
liberation forces easily won fair elections as soon as these were
possible. Similarly, in elections in Angola, the Cuban-backed government
prevailed - while the United States continued to support vicious
opposition terrorists there even after South Africa was compelled to
back away.
To the end, the Reaganites remained virtually alone in their strong
support for the apartheid regime and its murderous depredations in
neighboring countries. Though these shameful episodes may be wiped out
of internal U.S. history, others are likely to understand Mandela’s
words.
In these and all too many other cases, supreme power does provide
protection against reality - to a point.
(Noam Chomsky's most recent
book is "Power Systems: Conversations on Global Democratic Uprisings and
the New Challenges to U.S. Empire. Interviews with David Barsamian."
Chomsky is emeritus professor of linguistics and philosophy at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass.) To purchase
this article, please visit
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and contact your local New York Times Syndicate sales representative.
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Keywords:Opinion, world, U.S. news, Middle East, Africa, Latin America,
Pakistan, Cuba, Brazil, Argentina, Guatemala, Mexico, Honduras, Reagan
Noam Chomsky is a professor of linguistics and philosophy at MIT.
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