🚀 go-pugleaf

Will the Lion (our animal instincts) or the Monkey (our intelligence)
win? seems to be the pressing question posed in this long but
interesting article...

THE LAW OF THE JUNGLE

(This is part of a series of POLITICALLY CORRECT stories for little
children, who otherwise may not be ready to live in the Jungle.)

Once upon a time, in the deep jungle, lived a Lion and a Monkey... One
day the Monkey, tired of the Lion always getting the lion share,
demanded his right to get more... The Lion, yawning and stretching,
said: You would have to have paws and sharp teeth... Then the Monkey,
who was very clever, devised a plan: He would go to the costume store,
and look like a lion...

When the Lion saw him, noticing that the new lion wasn't a match for
him, and fearing competion, killed him on the spot... And that's how the
Law of the Jungle was re-established one more time...


September 11th and Its Aftermath: Where is the World Heading?

Noam Chomsky

Public Lecture at the Music Academy, Chennai (Madras), India: November
10, 2001

Presented by Frontline magazine and the Media Development Foundation and
supported by 22 representative organizations

(As he takes his position at the lectern in an overflowing auditorium,
Noam Chomsky is greeted in traditional South Indian style, with a
ponnadai, a brocade shawl, to audience applause.)

Oh, what's going to make it stay on? [Told he is free to take it off]:
It's going to fall in one minute, so I might as well take it off
[audience laughter]. Thank you.
A few years ago, one of the great figures of contemporary biology, Ernst
Mayr of Harvard published some reflections on the search for
extra-terrestrial intelligence. His conclusion was that the likelihood
of success was effectively zero. His reasoning had to do with the
adaptive value of what we call higher intelligence, meaning the
particular human form of intellectual organisation. Mayr estimates the
number of species since the origin of life at about 50 billion, only one
of which, he writes, achieved the kind of intelligence needed to
establish a civilisation. It did so very recently, perhaps a hundred
thousand years ago in a small breeding group of which we are all
survivors. And he speculates that this form of intellectual organisation
may not be favoured by selection, and points out that life on earth
refutes the claim that "it's better to be smart than stupid," at least
judging by biological success, which is great for beetles and bacteria
but not so good as you move higher up the level of cognitive
organisation. And he also makes the rather sombre observation that the
average life expectancy of a species is about a hundred thousand years.
We are entering a period of human life that may provide an answer to the
question of whether it's better to be smart than stupid. The most
hopeful prospect is that the question will not be answered. If it
receives a definite answer, that answer can only be that humans were a
kind of biological error, using their allotted hundred thousand years to
destroy themselves and, in the process, much else. The species has
certainly developed the capacity to do just that, and an
extra-terrestrial observer, if one could exist, might conclude that they
have demonstrated that capacity throughout their history, dramatically
in the past several hundred years, with an assault on the environment
that sustains life, on the diversity of more complex organisms, and with
cold and calculated savagery, on each other as well. September 11th and
the Aftermath are a case in point. The shocking atrocities of September
11th are widely regarded as a historic event and that, I think, is most
definitely true. But we should think clearly about exactly why it's
true. These crimes had perhaps the most devastating instant human toll
on record, outside of war. But the word ``instant´´ should not be
overlooked. It´s unfortunate but true that the crime is far from
unusual in the annals of violence that falls short of war. The aftermath
of September 11th is only one of innumerable illustrations of that.
Although the scale of the catastrophe that has already taken place in
Afghanistan can only be guessed, and we can hardly do more than
speculate about what may follow, we do know the projections on which
policy decisions are based. And from these we can gain some insight into
the question of where the world is heading. The answer, unfortunately,
is that it's heading along paths that are well travelled, though there
certainly are changes. The crimes of September 11th are indeed a
historic turning point -- but not because of the scale, rather because
of the choice of target.
For the United States, this is the first time since the British burnt
down Washington, in 1814, that the national territory has been under
attack, or for that matter even under threat. And I don't have to review
what's happened in those two centuries. The number of victims is huge.
Now, for the first time, the guns have been pointed in the opposite
direction, and that's a dramatic change.
The same is true, even more dramatically of Europe. Europe has suffered
murderous destruction, but that's Europeans slaughtering one another.
Meanwhile, Europeans conquered much of the world -- not very politely.
With rare and limited exceptions, they were not under attack by their
foreign victims, so it is not surprising that Europe should be utterly
shocked by the terrorist crimes of September 11th. And while September
11th is indeed a dramatic change in world affairs, the aftermath
represents no change at all, and therefore passes with very little
notice.
All of this raises questions that should be considered with some care --
if we hope to avert still further tragedies. And lurking not very far in
the shadows is the question I already mentioned. Is the species on the
verge of demonstrating that higher intelligence is simply a grotesque
biological error?
Some of these questions have to do with immediate events, some with more
lasting and fundamental issues. Among the questions that come to mind
are these: First of all and most critically important, what's happening
right before our eyes? Secondly, a bit more general, what is the "new
war on terrorism"? Thirdly, what about the tendencies that are already
underway?
There are several that I'd like to mention at least. One is the rapid
increase in the means of mass destruction. Second is the threat to the
environment that sustains human life. And third is the shaping of
international society by the world's dominant power centres, state and
private, what's misleadingly called "globalisation." And throughout we
should ask quite seriously, I think, to what extent ominous tendencies
that are all too easy to perceive reflect choices that are natural and,
in fact, even rational within existing institutional and ideological
structures. To the extent that they do, that's the greatest danger of
all.
Let's begin, briefly at least, with the first and most immediate
question: What's happening before our eyes and what do we learn from it
about where the world is heading under the leadership of its most
powerful forces?
Even before September 11th, much of the population of Afghanistan was
relying on international food-aid for survival. Current estimates by the
United Nations and others in a position to know are not seriously
challenged. The estimates are that the number at risk since September
11th, as a direct consequence of the threat of bombing and the attack
itself has risen by about two-and-a-half million, by 50 per cent, to
approximately seven-and-a-half million. Pleas to stop the bombing to
allow delivery of desperately needed food have been rebuffed virtually
without comment. These have come from high U.N. officials, from
charitable agencies, and others.
The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) had already warned,
even before the bombing, that over seven million people would face
starvation if military action were initiated. After the bombing began,
it advised that the threat of a humanitarian catastrophe in the short
term was very grave, and furthermore that the bombing has disrupted the
planting of 80 per cent of the country's grain supplies, so that the
effects next year will be even more severe. What the effects will be, we
will never know. Starvation is not something that kills people
instantly. People eat roots and leaves and they drag on for a while. And
the effects of starvation may be the death of children born from
malnourished mothers a year or two from now, and all sorts of
consequences. Furthermore, nobody's going to look because the West is
not interested in such things and others don't have the resources. There
are plenty of examples of that. So in August 1998, Clinton bombed the
Sudan, destroyed half of its pharmaceutical supplies and the factory
that produced them. The consequences there are unknown. The few attempts
to estimate the toll, the death toll, are in the neighbourhood of tens
of thousands of people -- by the German Embassy in Sudan, by a few
independent investigators, who have looked. Actually nobody really
looked carefully because nobody cares! It's not important, it's normal,
it's ordinary for a couple of bombs to have the effect of leaving tens
of thousands of corpses in a poor African country. Something comparable,
though probably on a considerably greater scale, is unfolding right in
front of us at this moment. What the consequences will be we do not know
and probably never will know in any detail. But what we know is that
these are the expectations on which Western civilisation is relying as
it lays its plans. And only those who are entirely ignorant of modern
history will be surprised by the course of events, or by the
justifications that are provided by the educated classes. These are
important topics that I'll reluctantly put aside for lack of time.
I might say that the combination of sadistic cruelty and starry-eyed
self-adulation is captured… well, to give one example, captured
accurately enough by the American press just about a hundred years ago
during the noble campaign to ``uplift and christianise" the Philippines,
as the President described it. And they succeeded in uplifting about
half-a-million Filipinos within the next few years by slaughtering them,
along with horrifying war crimes carried out by old Indian fighters who
were killing the `Niggers´, as they put it. That finally aroused some
disquiet at home and the press explained that it takes patience to
overcome evil, that it will be a long war, and that we will have to go
on "slaughtering the natives in English fashion [until] the misguided
creatures" who resist us will at least come to "respect our arms" and
later will come to understand that we wish them nothing but "liberty
[and] happiness." As in Afghanistan today, and all too many other places
for hundreds of years.
Well, it's much too brief, but let me put that terrifying issue aside
and turn to the second question. What is the "new war on terrorism"? The
goal of the civilised world has been announced very clearly in high
places. We must "eradicate the evil scourge of terrorism," a plague
spread by "depraved opponents of civilisation itself" in a "return to
barbarism in the modern age,'' and so on. Surely a noble enterprise! To
place the enterprise in proper perspective, we should recognise that the
Crusade is not new, contrary to what's being said. In fact, the phrases
just quoted are from President Ronald Reagan and his Secretary of State,
George Schultz, twenty years ago. They came to office at that time –
Reagan, and shortly after, Schultz -- proclaiming that the struggle
against international terrorism would be the core of U.S. foreign
policy. And they responded to the plague by organising campaigns of
international terrorism of unprecedented scale and violence, even
leading to a condemnation by the World Court of the United States for
what the Court called "the unlawful use of force," meaning international
terrorism. This was followed by a U.N. Security Council Resolution
calling on all states to observe international law, which the United
States vetoed. It also voted alone, with one or two client states,
against successive similar U.N. General Assembly Resolutions. So the
``New War on Terrorism´´ is, in fact, led by the only state in the
world that has been condemned by the International Court of Justice for
international terrorism and has vetoed a resolution calling on states to
observe international law, which is perhaps appropriate. The World Court
order to terminate the crime of international terrorism and to pay
substantial reparations was dismissed with contempt across the spectrum.
The New York Times informed the public that the Court was a "hostile
forum" and therefore we need pay no attention to it. Washington reacted
at once to the Court´s orders by escalating the economic and the
terrorist wars. It also issued official orders to the mercenary army
attacking from Honduras to attack "soft targets" -- those are the
official orders: Attack ``soft targets,´´ undefended civilian
targets like health clinics, agricultural cooperatives and so on -- and
to avoid combat, as the army could do, thanks to total U. S. control of
the skies and the sophisticated communications equipment that was
provided to the terrorist forces attacking from foreign bases. These
orders aroused a little discussion. Not much, and they were considered
legitimate, but only with qualifications. Only if pragmatic criteria
were satisfied. So one prominent commentator, Michael Kinsley, who´s
regarded as the spokesperson of the Left in mainstream discussion (he
happened to be writing for The Wall Street Journal this time), argued
that we should not simply dismiss State Department justifications for
terrorist attacks on "soft targets.´´ He wrote that a "sensible
policy" must "meet the test of cost-benefit analysis." That is, an
analysis of "the amount of blood and misery that will be poured in, and
the likelihood that democracy will emerge at the other end." "Democracy"
means what Western elites decide is democracy. And that interpretation
was illustrated quite clearly in the region at that time. It´s taken
for granted that Western elites have the right to conduct the analysis
and pursue the project if it passes their tests. And pass their tests,
it did. When Nicaragua, the target, finally succumbed to superpower
assault, commentators across the spectrum of respectable opinion lauded
the success of the methods adopted to "wreck the economy and prosecute a
long and deadly proxy war until the exhausted natives overthrow the
unwanted government themselves," with a cost to us that is "minimal,"
leaving the victims with "wrecked bridges, sabotaged power stations, and
ruined farms´´ -- and tens of thousands of corpses, which are not
mentioned -- and thus providing the U. S. candidate with "a winning
issue": ending "the impoverishment of the people of Nicaragua.´´
That happens to be Time magazine, but it was pretty characteristic. We
are "United in Joy" at this outcome," The New York Times proclaimed,
proud of the``Victory for U.S. Fair Play," as a Times headline read.
We are now "united in joy" once again, just a few days ago on Nov. 6, as
the U. S. candidate won the Nicaraguan election after very stern
warnings by Washington of the consequences if the Nicaraguan people did
not understand their responsibilities. The Washington Post, the other
national newspaper, explained the victory cheerfully The U. S. candidate
"focused much of his campaign on reminding people of the economic and
military difficulties of the Sandinista era," referring to the U. S.
terrorist war and economic strangulation that destroyed the country.
Meanwhile, a leering George Bush peers at us from television,
instructing us that the "one universal law" is that all variants of
terror and murder are "evil." Unless, of course, we're the agents, in
which case terror and murder lead us to a "noble phase'' of our foreign
policy with a "saintly glow," so the The New York Times, the newspaper
of record, informs us.
There's nothing particularly new about this. This goes back hundreds of
years and you can find examples among the hegemonic powers consistently.
Prevailing Western attitudes are revealed with great clarity by the
reaction to the appointment of the new U.N. Ambassador to lead today's
"New War against Terrorism,'' John Negroponte. Negroponte's record
includes his service as Pro-Consul in Honduras in the 1980s, where he
was the local supervisor of the international terrorist war for which
his government was condemned by the World Court and the Security Council
-- irrelevantly of course in a world that's governed by the rule of
force. There was no detectable reaction to that either in the United
States or in Europe. Another of Negroponte's condemned colleagues,
Donald Rumsfeld, was just here. He was here for a few hours, which gave
him enough time to declare that "`We´ Crush Terror." That was the
headline for an enthusiastic front-page article in the national press
here a few days ago. I think even Jonathan Swift would be speechless at
all of this [audience laughter].
I mentioned the case of Nicaragua not because it's the most extreme
example of international terrorism, unfortunately far from it, but
because it's uncontroversial, given the judgments of the highest
international authorities. Uncontroversial that is, among people who
have a minimal commitment to human rights and international law. One can
estimate the size of that category by determining how often these
elementary matters have been mentioned in the period since September
11th and from that (don't bother carrying out an extensive enquiry,
you'll find approximately zero) and from that exercise alone, you can
draw some grim conclusions about what lies ahead. During the first war
on terrorism, the Reagan years, U. S.-sponsored state terrorism in
Central America left hundreds of thousands of tortured and mutilated
corpses, millions of maimed and orphaned, four countries in ruins. Also
in the same years, the Reagan years, Western-backed South African
depredations killed about a million-and-a-half people and caused sixty
billion dollars of damage in neighboring countries—massive
international terrorism backed by the United States and Britain and
others. I don't have to speak of West and South-East Asia, South
America, or much else. It's a serious analytical error proceeding to
describe terrorism as a weapon of the weak, as is often done. It's
simply not the case, radically not the case.
There's a great deal more to say about terrorism – the terrorism of
the weak against the powerful and the unmentionable but far more extreme
terrorism of the powerful against the weak. That both pose severe
threats is hardly in doubt. The threats are enhanced by the fact that
the policies are considered rational within the frameworks in which they
are pursued. And there's reason for that. A major historian, Charles
Tilly, who studied the history of these issues in Europe particularly,
observed quite accurately that over the last millennium "war has been
the dominant activity of European states." And for good reason: "The
central tragic fact is simple: coercion works; those who apply
substantial force to their fellows get compliance and, from that
compliance, draw the multiple advantages of money, goods, deference,
access to pleasures denied to less powerful people." It's a truism
understood all too well by most of the people of the world, even if its
significance has not penetrated the heights of intellectual
enlightenment.
Well, let me turn to the third category of questions, long-term
tendencies that are underway and that will persist without the essential
change, though there's a change there too. They're being escalated as
state and private power exploit the window of opportunity that is
provided by the fear and anguish of the population after Sept. 11 and
naturally use that opportunity to ram through harsh and regressive
measures that would otherwise arouse resistance. As usual, one
participant in class war pursues its path with unrelenting intensity.
It's their victims who are enjoined to be subdued and acquiescent in the
interest of patriotism. The range of measures being implemented in this
fashion is far ranging. I'll mention only a few. The most important of
them is the instant escalation of the policies that pose the greatest
immediate threat to survival, namely, expanding the means of mass
destruction. For the powerful, nuclear weapons are the weapon of choice.
The U. S. Strategic Command, the highest military authority, describes
nuclear weapons as the core of the arsenal, because "unlike chemical or
biological weapons, the extreme destruction from a nuclear explosion is
immediate, with few if any palliatives to reduce its effect.''
Furthermore, "nuclear weapons always cast a shadow over any crisis or
conflict.'' This study advises further that planners should not "portray
ourselves as too fully rational and cool-headed." "That the United
States may become irrational and vindictive if its vital interests are
attacked should be part of the national persona that we project.'' It's
"beneficial" for our strategic posture if "some elements appear to be
potentially `out of control´.´´ The United States is unusual, I
think unique, in the access that it allows to high-level planning
documents and I´d be rather surprised if those of other countries were
fundamentally different. The important study that I´ve just been
quoting from is called ``Essentials of Post-Cold War Deterrence," a
Clinton era document. It´s been available for years but it´s
unknown, it´s known only to readers of dissident literature that´s
scrupulously marginalised, although I presume intelligence services of
other countries read it and draw the appropriate conclusions.
For the future, we also have to face the fact that small nuclear weapons
can be smuggled into any country with relative ease and remember they
are small – a 15-pound plutonium bomb can be carried across a border
in a suitcase. There's a recent technical study that concludes that "a
well-planned operation to smuggle weapons of mass destruction into the
United States would have at least a 90 per cent probability of success,
much higher than ICBM (Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile) delivery
even in the absence of [National Missile Defence]." These dangers, not
just to the United States, are enhanced by the most immediate threat
that was identified by a high-level U.S. Department of Energy task
force, namely, "forty thousand nuclear weapons in the former Soviet
Union, poorly controlled and poorly stored.'' One of the first acts of
the incoming Bush Administration was to cut back a small programme to
assist Russia in safeguarding and dismantling these weapons and
providing alternative employment for nuclear scientists. That decision
increased the risks of accidental launch and leakage of what are called
``loose nukes,´´ followed by nuclear scientists who have no other
way to employ their skills.
Current plans for ballistic missile defence are expected to enhance the
threats further. U. S. intelligence predicts that any deployment will
impel China to develop and deploy new nuclear-armed missiles. They
predict it will expand its nuclear arsenal by a factor of ten, probably
with multiple warheads, MIRV (Multiple Independently Targetable Re-entry
Vehicles), which will "prompt India and Pakistan to respond with their
own build-ups," with a likely ripple effect throughout the Middle East.
These same analyses, intelligence analyses and others, also conclude
that Russia's "only rational response would be to maintain, and
strengthen, the existing Russian nuclear force." The Bush administration
announced on September 1st of this year that "it has no objections to
[China's] plans to build up its small fleet of nuclear missiles" –
that's a sharp shift in official policy -- in the hope of gaining
Chinese acquiescence to the planned dismantling of the core arms control
agreements. Chinese resumption of nuclear tests is also being quietly
endorsed. On the same day that this was announced, the national press
also reported that the Bush Administration will impose sanctions on
China for allowing the transfer to Pakistan of "missile parts and
technology that are essentially for weapons that can carry nuclear
warheads." All quoting from The New York Times. You can figure out what
all that means without further comment. Extension of the arms race to
space has been a core programme for quite a few years. `Arms race´ is
a misleading term for it. The United States, for now at least, is
competing alone in this race, although there are others who appear to be
eager to join the race to mutual destruction. Rightly or wrongly,
that´s how India´s stand is being interpreted in the United States.
That received great applause from the more hawkish and jingoist U. S.
strategic analysts. Writing after the Foreign Minister´s visit to the
United States a few months ago, Lawrence Kaplan wrote in the liberal New
Republic that when President Bush unveiled his plans to expand these
programmes, "the rest of the world carped that the plan would provoke a
new arms race, but India took a mere six hours to declare its
support,´´ while Foreign Minister [Jaswant] Singh boasted that Delhi
and Washington are "endeavouring to work out together a totally new
security regime, which is for the entire globe.´´ Whether that´s
the right interpretation or not, you can determine, but that´s the
interpretation.
Kaplan went on to quote Administration hawks who recognised that
Pakistan is "not an ally anymore," but rather a "rogue state," unlike
India, which will now be admitted into the club that includes the United
States, Britain, Taiwan and Israel. It's true this was three months ago.
And since then all of us have observed a small lesson in Axiom One of
international affairs: States are not moral agents. Their solemn pledges
mean exactly zero. They serve domestic power interests. And they do as
they please, unless they are constrained externally or by their own
citizens, the choice that lies in their hands at least in the more free
and democratic societies.
All of these programmes increase the danger of destruction for the
United States as for others. But that's nothing new. It's very common to
pursue programmes with the conscious knowledge that they increase the
danger of destruction for the participants, the advocates. The history
of the arms race during the Cold War provides many examples and there's
ample precedent going back far in history. Furthermore, all these
choices make sense within the prevailing value system. Both of these
topics bear quite directly on the assessment of the biological success
of higher intelligence. Let's look at a couple of cases. Fifty years
ago, there was only one major threat to U. S. security, at that time
only potential: ICBMs, which did not yet then exist but were being
developed. It was quite likely that the Soviet Union would have accepted
a Treaty banning development of these weapons, knowing it was far
behind. There is a standard history of the arms race by McGeorge Bundy,
the National Security Adviser for the Kennedy and Johnson
Administrations. He had access to internal documents. He reported that
he could find no record of any interest in pursuing the possibility of
eliminating the sole potential threat to U.S. security. Russian
archives, quite a lot of them, have been released recently and these
bear on this question. They strongly reinforce the assessments by
high-level U.S. analysts that after Stalin's death, Khrushchev, when he
took over, called for mutual reduction of offensive military forces and,
when these initiatives were ignored by the Eisenhower Administration, he
implemented them unilaterally over the objection of his own military
command. Kennedy's planners, when they came in forty years ago,
doubtless shared Eisenhower's understanding that, in his words, "a major
war would destroy the Northern hemisphere." They also knew, we now know,
of Khrushchev's unilateral steps to reduce Soviet offensive forces
radically and they also knew that the United States was far ahead by any
meaningful measure. Nevertheless, they chose to reject Khrushchev's plea
for reciprocity, preferring to carry out a massive conventional and
nuclear force build-up, thus driving the last nail into the coffin of
"Khrushchev's agenda of restraining the Soviet military." I'm quoting
historian Matthew Evangelista, in a monograph reviewing the U.S. and
Soviet archival records, published by the main history project on this
topic.
Without continuing, there's not much novelty in the Clinton-Bush
preferences.
To comprehend the logic of these programmes and why mutual destruction
seems an entirely rational policy to pursue, it's necessary to recall a
doctrinal truism. It's conventional for attack to be called "defence."
And this case is no exception. Ballistic missile defence is only a small
component of much more far-reaching programmes for militarisation of
space. The goal is to achieve what is called Full Spectrum Dominance,
that is, a monopoly of the use of space for offensive military purposes.
These plans have been available in public documents of the U.S. Space
Command and other government agencies for some years and the projects
outlined have been under development. They were expanded in the first
months of the Bush Administration and again sharply expanded after
September 11th in a crude exploitation of the fear and horror that was
engendered by these crimes. These plans are disguised as ballistic
missile defence. But that's only a small component of what's under
development and even that small component is an offensive weapon. That's
understood by such potential adversaries as Russia and China and also by
close allies. China's top arms control official simply reflected common
understanding when he observed that "Once the United States believes it
has both a strong spear and a strong shield, it could lead them to
conclude that nobody can harm the United States and they can harm anyone
they like anywhere in the world." China's position is shared by
high-level strategic analysts in virtually the same words. The Rand
Corporation is the major, mostly military research agency. Rand studied
the topic, and concluded that ballistic missile defence "is not simply a
shield but rather an enabler of U.S. action'' – virtually the same
words as China. Canada's military planners advised their Government that
the goal of ballistic missile defence is "arguably more in order to
preserve U.S.-NATO freedom of action than because the U.S. really fears
North Korean or Iranian threats." Quoting another leading strategic
analyst, Andrew [J.] Bacevich: "Ballistic missile defence "will
facilitate the more effective application of U.S. military power
abroad.'' He happens to be writing in the conservative journal, National
Interest. He says: ``By insulating the homeland from reprisal – albeit
in a limited way -- missile defence will underwrite the capacity and
willingness of the United States to `shape´ the environment
elsewhere.´´ He cites approvingly the conclusions of Lawrence
Kaplan, who happens to be writing at the other end of the spectrum. He
says "missile defence isn´t really meant to protect America. It´s a
tool for global dominance," for "hegemony." For this reason, both of
them enthusiastically proclaim, "missile defence" is a wonderful
contribution to justice and freedom.
It's understood that missile defence, even if it's technically feasible,
has to rely on satellite communication, and destroying satellites is far
easier than shooting down missiles. That's one reason why the United
States must seek Full Spectrum Dominance, such overwhelming control of
space that even the poor man's weapons will not be available to an
adversary. And that requires offensive space-based capacities. That
includes immensively destructive weapons, nuclear-powered, in space that
can be launched with instant computer-controlled reaction. That greatly
increases the danger of vast slaughter and devastation if only because
of what are called in the trade ``normal accidents,´´ that is, the
unpredictable accidents to which all complex systems are subject. The
logic of militarisation of space is much broader however. And it´s
explained. The U.S. Space Command, the major agency in charge, has been
quite explicit about this. It put out an important brochure, in the
Clinton years, in 1997, called ``Vision for 2020.´´ In it, it
announced the primary goal quite prominently on the front cover, in big
letters: ``Dominating the Space Dimension of Military Operations to
Protect U.S. Interests and Investment.´´ This is presented as the
next phase of the historic task of military forces. They say that armies
were needed during the westward expansion of the continental United
States, of course in `self-defence´ against the indigenous population
that was being exterminated and expelled. Nations also built navies, the
Space Command continues "to protect and enhance their commercial
interests." The next logical step is space forces to protect "U.S.
National Interests [military and commercial] and Investments." However,
they say the United States´ Space Forces will be unlike Navies
protecting sea commerce in earlier years because this time there will be
a sole hegemon. The British Navy could be countered by Germany, with
consequences that we need not discuss. But the U.S. somehow will remain
immune except to the narrowly circumscribed category of terrorism that
is permitted to enter the canon, the terrorism that "they´´ carry
out against "us,´´ whoever "we" happen to be.
The need for total dominance, they argue, is going to increase as a
result of the "globalisation of the economy." The reason is that
globalisation is expected to bring about "a widening between `haves´
and `have-nots´," an assessment shared by U.S. intelligence and
academic analysts. I´ll come back to that. Planners are concerned that
the widening divide may lead to unrest among the have-nots and the U.S.
must be ready to control that by "using space systems and planning for
precision strike from space [as a counter] to the worldwide
proliferation of weapons of mass destruction" -- a predictable
consequence of the recommended programmes, as I just mentioned, just as
the widening divide is an anticipated consequence of the preferred form
of globalisation. That happens to be in conflict with the economic
theories that are professed, but it´s in accord with reality. Well,
again there´s more to say about that, but I have my eye on the clock.
Throughout history it has been recognised that such steps are dangerous.
I gave a few examples, but there are many more. By now the danger has
reached the level of a threat to human survival. But there´s a good
reason to pursue it nevertheless. It´s deeply rooted in existing
institutions. The basic principle is that hegemony is more important
than survival. That´s not new, plenty of examples through history. The
principle is amply illustrated in the last half century. What´s new is
the scale of the consequences of pursuing this principle. Let´s turn
to another apparently inexorable tendency -- the destruction of the
environment that sustains human life. The Bush Administration has been
widely criticised for undermining the Kyoto Treaty. The grounds that
they presented are that to conform to the Treaty would harm the U.S.
economy. Those criticisms are rather surprising because the decisions
are entirely rational within the framework of existing ideology. We´re
instructed daily to be firm believers in neo-classical markets in which
isolated individuals are rational wealth maximisers. The market responds
perfectly to their votes, which are expressed in currency inputs. The
value of a person´s interests is measured the same way. In particular,
the interests of those with no votes, no dollars, those interests are
valued at zero. Future generations, for example, who don´t have dollar
inputs in the market.
So it's therefore entirely rational to destroy the possibility for
decent survival for our grandchildren, if by doing so we can maximise
the particular form of self-interest that's hailed as the highest value,
reinforced by vast industries that are devoted to implanting and
reinforcing them. The threats to survival are currently being enhanced
by dedicated efforts to weaken the institutional structures that have
been developed to mitigate the harsh consequences of market
fundamentalism and, even more important, to undermine the culture of
sympathy and solidarity that sustains these institutions. Well, that's
another prescription for disaster, perhaps in the not very distant
future -- but again it's rational within a lunatic system of doctrines
and institutions.
Let me finally turn to the last of the questions that I mentioned -- the
process that's called "globalisation." But first let's be clear about
the notion. If we use the term neutrally, globalisation just means
international integration, welcome or not depending on the human
consequences. In Western doctrinal systems, which prevail everywhere as
a result of Western power, the term has a somewhat different and
narrower meaning. It refers to a specific form of international
integration that has been pursued with particular intensity in the last
quarter century. It's designed primarily in the interest of private
concentrations of power, and the interests of everyone else are
incidental. With that terminology in place, the great mass of people
around the world who object to these programmes can be labelled
``anti-globalisation,´´ as they always are. The force of ideology
and power is such that they even accept that ridiculous designation.
They can then be derided as ``primitivists´´ who want to return to
the ``Stone Age,´´ to harm the poor, and other terms of abuse with
which we are familiar.
It's the way you'd expect a dedicated propaganda system to work, but
it's a little surprising as it's so powerful that even its victims
accept it. They shouldn't. No sane person is opposed to globalisation.
The question is what form it takes.
The specific form of international integration that's being pursued is
called ``neo-liberal,´´ but that too is highly misleading. The
policies are not ``new´´ and they are by no means ``liberal.´´
That should be particularly obvious here. The history of England and
India for two centuries illustrates very graphically how liberalism can
be shaped into an instrument of power and destruction. And the current
version keeps that tradition, maintains the traditional double-edged
doctrine of free trade and liberalism -- fine for you so that I can
demolish you, but I´m going to insist on the protection of the
powerful Nanny State and other devices to ensure that I´m not subject
to market discipline, except when the playing field is what is called
``level,´´ that means tilted so sharply in my favour that I´m
confident that I can win. That´s a good part of the history of India
for a couple of hundred of years. The fact that the new versions simply
adapt the traditional ones to current circumstances shouldn´t actually
come as a surprise. It´s exactly what we would expect simply by a look
at the designers – the richest and most powerful states, the
international financial institutions that follow their directives, and
their array of megacorporations tending towards oligopoly in most
sectors of the economy and heavily reliant on the state sector to
socialise risk and cost and to maintain the dynamism of the economy,
often under a military cover.
These power concentrations often modestly call themselves the
``international community´´ but perhaps a more appropriate term is
one that´s used by the business press. Last January, at the annual
Davos Conference, they were described by the London Financial Times as
`´The Masters of the Universe.´´ Since the Masters profess to be
admirers of Adam Smith, we might expect them to abide by his description
of their behaviour, although be only called them the ``Masters of
Mankind.´´After all, this was before the Space Age. Smith was
referring specifically to what he called "the principal architects of
policy" of his day -- the "merchants and manufacturers" of England who
made sure that their own interests are "most peculiarly attended to,"
however "grievous" the impact on others, including the people of
England. I´m sure you know he condemned with particular vehemence the
crimes of England in India in his day. ``The principal architects,´´
he wrote, adopt the "vile maxim of the masters of mankind: All for
ourselves, and nothing for anyone else.´´ And that persists.
Over time, in developments that surely would have appalled the founders
of classical liberalism, corporate management has been granted the
rights of immortal persons by radical judicial activism and it's been
granted rights that go far beyond those of mere persons in recent
international economic agreements. So for example, General Motors can
demand "national treatment" in Mexico, but a Mexican of flesh and blood
will not fare too well if he were to demand such treatment after
crossing the border to Texas, assuming that he made made it alive (many
don't).
The rights of these private tyrannies, which is what they are, are being
extended in current trade agreements, which allow private power
concentrations to attack government regulations concerning health,
environmental protection, workers' rights and so on -- on the grounds
that these are "tantamount to expropriation" because they threaten
future profits. In a further assault on classical liberal principles,
these enormous systems of unaccountable private power assume the role of
administering markets. That includes intra-firm transfers (transfers
across borders within a particular corporate entity), outsourcing,
strategic alliances, and a whole range of other devices to evade market
discipline and that, in fact, constitute the majority of what is
mislabelled ``trade.´´ When you hear that trade is going up, the
fact of the matter is that in classical terms it´s probably going
down! These policies and their human consequences have been matters of
great concern outside the ranks of the Masters of the Universe. There
have been large-scale popular protests in the South against the new
international economic regime for many years. They´re harder to ignore
when the rich countries join in, as they have in the past few years. In
the United States, despite near-unanimous articulate support for free
trade agreements, or as The Wall Street Journal calls them more
honestly, ``free investment agreements,´´ the population has
remained stubbornly opposed. That´s why NAFTA, the North American Free
Trade Agreement, had to be imposed effectively in secret ten years ago.
And to this day, the official position of the labour movement has not
been permitted expression in the free press, or even the very similar
critique and alternative proposals by Congress´ own research bureau,
the Office of Technology Assessment. It´s extremely important to keep
the public from knowing that its opposition to these Treaties is well
grounded in very respectable analysis.
One might ask why public opposition to globalisation, what's called
globalisation, has been so high for many years. That seems strange in an
era when globalisation has led to unprecedented prosperity, so we're
constantly told. And that's supposedly particularly true in the United
States with its "fairy-tale economy." Throughout the 1990s, the United
States enjoyed ``the greatest economic boom in America´s history --
and the world´s.´´ Quoting Anthony Lewis in The New York Times
last March, repeating the standard refrain from the left end, the
critical end of the admissible spectrum. It is of course conceded that
everything isn´t perfect, there are a few flaws, some have been left
behind in the economic miracle, and since we´re good-hearted people,
we have to do something about that. These ``flaws´´ reflect a
profound and troubling dilemma. The rapid growth and great prosperity
brought by globalisation has a concomitant: growing inequality, because
there are some who lack the skills to enjoy these wondrous gifts and
opportunities. That picture is so conventional that it may be hard to
realise that apart from the growing inequality, it is totally false.
There is just no truth to it and it´s known to be false. Per capita
economic growth in the so-called roaring 1990s in the United States was
about the same as Europe, much lower than in the first twenty-five
post-War years -- before what´s called globalisation. So we can ask
how the conventional picture can be so radically different from
uncontroversial facts, and they are uncontroversial. Well, the answer is
very simple. For a small sector of the society, the Nineties really were
a grand economic boom. And that sector happened to include the people
who tell everyone else the wonderful news. It´s only the world
that´s different. There´s a counterpart in India, which I don´t
have to talk about, it´s familiar. Suppose we take a quick look at the
record over a longer stretch. International economic integration,
what´s called globalisation in a technical sense, increased steadily
up until the First World War, levelled or reduced between the wars,
picked up again after the Second World War. It´s now reaching roughly
the levels of a century ago by gross measures. The fine structure is
quite different. By some measures, the period before World War I had a
higher degree of international integration. That had to do particularly
with movement of people, what Adam Smith called ``the free circulation
of labour,´´ which was the foundation of free trade. That reached
its peak before World War I, it´s much lower now. By other measures,
globalisation is greater now, most dramatically the flow of short-time
speculative capital, which is far beyond any precedent. These
differences reflect the central features of the contemporary version of
globalisation. To an extent even beyond the norm, capital has priority
– people are incidental. There is a more technical measure of
globalisation. That´s convergence to a global market, which means a
single price and wage everywhere. That certainly hasn´t happened, in
fact the opposite has happened. With regard to incomes, inequality is
soaring through the globalisation period -- within countries and across
countries. And that´s expected to continue.
The U.S. intelligence community, with participation of specialists from
academic professions and the private sector, recently released an
important report on their expectations for the next fifteen years. They
have several scenarios. The most optimistic is that "globalisation" will
proceed on course: "its evolution will be rocky, marked by chronic
financial volatility and a widening economic divide.'' That means less
convergence, less globalisation in the technical sense but more
globalisation in the doctrinally preferred sense. And financial
volatility of course means slower growth and more crisis. Well, that
gives a good sense of where the world is heading at least if the Masters
of the Universe can proceed without too much disruption by the rabble.
I've already noted that military planners are adopting the same
projections and they explain forthrightly that the overwhelming
resources of violence, which are to be space-based in the new era, will
be required to keep the growing numbers of have-nots under control. It's
too late to give details but if you look at the post-War period, the
period since the Second World War, it has actually undergone two phases.
There was a period up to the early 1970s when the Bretton Woods
arrangements were in place with capital controls and regulated
currencies. That was a period of very substantial and equitable economic
growth. It's commonly called "the golden age" of capitalism. That
changed in the last twenty-five years, with the breakdown of the Bretton
Woods system. Financial markets were liberalized, constraints on capital
flow were eliminated, and currencies were deregulated. That has been
associated with a marked deterioration in standard measures of the
economy -- the rate of growth of the economy, of productivity, of
investment, in fact even growth of trade. Even with all the misleading
definitions of trade, its growth has declined during the globalisation
period, these last twenty-five years. There have been much higher
interest rates, which harm the economy, increasing financial volatility,
and other harmful consequences.
So let's return to that profound and troubling dilemma that we're
supposed to be worried about. The rapid growth and great prosperity
brought by so-called globalisation has also brought global inequality
because some lack the skills to use the opportunities. There is no
dilemma: the rapid growth and prosperity are simply a myth, except for a
very small sector.
One can debate the economic consequences of liberalisation of capital,
but one consequence is very clear: it undermines democracy. That was
understood very well by the framers of the Bretton Woods agreement after
World War II – the U.S. and Britain. One reason, explicit reason, why
those arrangements were founded on regulation of capital was in order to
allow governments to carry out social democratic programmes, which had
enormous popular support, in the United States as well. Free capital
movement yields what's called a ``Virtual Parliament,´´ which has
"veto power" over government decisions, sharply restricting democratic
options. I´m quoting from technical papers on the financial system
now: With free movement of capital, governments face a "dual
constituency" – voters and speculators. Speculators "conduct
moment-by-moment referendums on government policies," and if they
don´t like them, they "veto" them by attacking the country´s
currency or removing its capital. Even in rich countries, the private
constituency prevails. That´s understood to be a very striking
difference, maybe the most significant difference, between the current
phase of globalisation and the period before World War I, which it
partly resembles. That point is, as I say, understood. I´ll simply
quote from a standard history of the contemporary international monetary
system, by Barry Eichengreen. Before World War I, he points out,
government policy had not yet been "politicised by universal male
suffrage and the rise of trade unionism and parliamentary labour
parties.´´ Therefore, the severe costs of financial rectitude that
were imposed by the ``Virtual Parliament´´ could be transferred to
the general population. It´s what´s called structural adjustment
these days for the poor countries. But that luxury was no longer
available in the more democratic Bretton Woods era. Therefore, "limits
on capital mobility substituted for limits of democracy as a source of
insulation from market pressures." Now, he [Eichengreen] doesn´t carry
the argument further but it´s entirely natural that the dismantling of
the post-War economic order should be accompanied by a sharp attack on
substantive democracy, as it has been, primarily in the United States
and Britain, the greatest enthusiasts; and of course in the ``Third
World,´´ which has no choices or at least believes it has no
choices. That´s not so obvious. The attack on democracy is perhaps the
most significant feature of the globalisation period, often called the
``Leaden Age´´ in comparison with the ``Golden Age´´ that
preceded it just by straight economic measures. Other components of the
neo-liberal programme lead to the same ends. Socio-economic decisions
are increasingly shifted to unaccountable concentrations of power, an
essential feature of the neo-liberal reforms.
There is a substantial extension of this attack on democracy. It's now
being negotiated without public discussion in Geneva on the General
Agreement for Trade and Services, the GATS negotiations, and it's coming
up in Doha right now. The term ``services´´ refers to just about
anything that might fall within the arena of democratic choice. So
health, education, welfare, social security, communications, water,
other resources -- anything involving that is ``services.´´ Now
there´s no meaningful sense in which transferring services to private
hands is ``trade.´´ But then the term trade has been so deprived of
meaning that I suppose it might as well be extended to this travesty as
well. It´s a covert term for handing it over to private power. This
term, ``trade in services,´´ is, in fact, a euphemism for programmes
that are designed to undermine popular sovereignty and reduce the arena
of democratic choice by transferring decisions over the most important
aspects of life from the public arena to unaccountable private
tyrannies. The huge public protests in Quebec last April at the Summit
of the Americas were in part directed at the attempt to impose these
GATS principles in secret as part of the newly-planned Free Trade Area
of the Americas. And they remained secret: the secret was guarded by the
self-censorship of the free press. These protests brought together a
very broad constituency, unprecedented in fact, including the powerful
labour unions and social democratic parties of South America, their
counterparts in the North, and a great many others -- all strongly
opposed to what´s planned by trade ministers and corporate executives
behind doors that are kept tight shut, and for good reasons. There´s
no time now to run though the details, but they are highly instructive.
In the United States, there has indeed been a transition from a Golden
Age to a Leaden Age. For a large part of the population, incomes have
stagnated or declined – that´s probably 70 per cent of the
population -- during these twenty years of "a fairy-tale economy." The
picture gets a lot worse if you move away from the standard measures and
look at the actual costs, but again there´s no time for that.
Furthermore, the rules of the game as they´re formulated in the World
Trade Organisation are likely to extend these effects. Anyone familiar
with economic history can see exactly what´s going on. The rules of
the World Trade Organisation specifically bar the measures that were
used by every rich country – England, the United States, Japan and the
rest -- to reach the current state of development. They also provide
unprecedented levels of protectionism for the rich, including a patent
regime that bars innovation and growth in novel ways and allows
corporations to amass huge profits by monopolistic pricing of products
that are often developed with substantial public contribution. If the
United States, let´s say two hundred years ago, had been forced to
accept this regime, New England, where I live, would now be pursuing its
comparative advantage in exporting fish. It certainly wouldn´t be
producing textiles, which survived only by exorbitant tariffs to keep
out superior British products, the same with steel and other industries,
and that goes up to the present, including the extremely protectionist
Reagan years. The relation of England to India is pretty much the same
until India had finally been de-industrialised effectively by the
combination of forced liberalism for the defeated and high levels of
protection and a powerful state for the winners. And that runs across
the world.
Just take a look at the societies that have developed -- Europe, England
and its offshoots, the United States, Japan, a couple of countries in
the Japanese periphery. They're the developed countries and they happen
to be almost exactly the countries that were able to resist European
colonialisation and forced liberalism. The correlation is very striking
and well known to economic historians, I should say. I don't want to
suggest that the prospects are uniformly bleak. We don't have to prove
that the species is a biological error. There have been very promising
developments in the past several decades. One of them is the evolution
of a human rights culture among the general population, a tendency that
has accelerated very quickly from the 1960s when all the ferment of
those years had a substantial civilising effect in many domains. One
significant feature has been greatly heightened concern for civil and
human rights, including rights of minorities, rights of women, and
rights of future generations. That's the driving force of the
environmental movement that's become a significant force in the past
several decades. The human development movement that was initiated by
Amartya Sen and Mahbub ul-Haq particularly, and to which the Lakdawala
lectures I gave are dedicated, is one manifestation of that. Over the
course of modern history, there have been very important gains in human
rights and democratic control at least some sectors of life. These have
very rarely been the gift of enlightened leaders. They have typically
been imposed on states and other power centres by popular struggle. An
optimist might hold, perhaps realistically, that history reveals
deepening of appreciation for human rights and a broadening of their
range, not without sharp reversals, but the tendency is nevertheless
real. And these issues are very much alive today. The harmful effects of
the corporate globalisation project have led to mass popular protest and
activism in the South for several decades now, joined by major sectors
of the rich industrial societies in the past few years, with alliances
that have been taking shape at the grassroots level. These are
impressive developments. They have a lot of opportunity and promise and
they have had effects in the rhetoric, and sometimes policy changes, in
the international financial institutions, the corporate world, and
commentary generally. There has been at least a restraining influence on
state violence though nothing like the human rights revolution in state
practice that's proudly proclaimed by intellectual opinion in the West.
These developments could prove very important if the momentum can be
sustained in ways that deepen the bonds of sympathy and solidarity and
interaction that have been developing. And I think it's fair to say that
the future of our endangered species may be determined in no small
measure by how these popular forces evolve [prolonged audience
applause].

"What worries me is not the violence of the few, but the indifference of
the many"

"Lo que a mi me preocupa no es la violencia de unos pocos, sino la
indiferencia de los muchos"

M.L. King Jr.

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