Customer Reviews

Deterring Democracy

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Unlike the reviewer Mr. Gartman, I do not see Chomsky's ideas as poorly researched or un-deductive. Quite the opposite: most of his sources come directly from the mainstream media in the US and are quite illuminating to US foreign policy. Chomsky is also one of the more empirical thinkers I've read before, which also means one must think a lot about his ideas before accepting or rejecting them. His assertions are based upon a very wide world view, one that cannot be easily condensed into a simply International Politics book. Like Mr. Gartman, I would interject that the US does not act to limit the freedoms of the people in other countries out of malice, but out of it's own concern and interest. This is, Mr. Gartman, what Chomsky is arguing. I do disagree with you as to the extent that elites play in the execution of US concern and interest, however. It is plain to see in the fact that, although the US is a democracy (although not in law-- we are technically a republic), that democracy only extends insofar as everyone has a meaningful way of affecting policy and interacting in that democracy. We all know how much say we have in our democracy: we get to vote once a year, and for Presidential elections, once every four years. The rest of the time it is up to certain interests to affect those policy makers to have their will done. That is not democracy. That is what Chomsky argues.

Like another reader, I think the history _can_ speak for itself: the US has acted like a belligerent thug in the past, regardless of what reason and for who's interests, and in a humanistic world view, that is wrong. Most people, if made known of that truth, would also condemn US belligerence. Others, such as Mr. Gartman, may choose to re-write that history or deny it.

Like a lot of people, I came across this particular work of Chomsky's before any of the rest, perhaps because it was the first in a long time that was brought out by a major publishing corporation (Vintage UK, a division of Random House) and not by a smaller, more radical press. (Sobering to remember that his first major political work, "American Power and the New Mandarins", was published in the UK by Penguin.) It changed the way I think about the world.

It's significant that critics of Chomsky's political writings have very little means at their disposal with which to criticise him. They can claim that he quoted one source out of context (even if this were true - one source out of the hundreds cited in the whole book? Chomsky didn't make up NSC 68, it's in the archives for anyone to read...); they can claim that he's a bolshevik who should go back to Russia (in spite of his lifelong denunciations of the Soviet regime, and his deep-rooted mistrust of state power in general - in fact, Chomsky has often said that the reason he hasn't denounced the crimes of the Soviet regime more often is because he didn't need to, practically everybody else did); they can claim that he denied the Khmer Rouge atrocities (he never has, in fact he has compared it in scale to the activities of Indonesia in East Timor - however, plenty of people have pretended that he's denied KR atrocities, especially in the French press - see his "Language and Politics" for the details) or that he's a Holocaust denier (which he isn't; he defended the right of a Holocaust denier to free speech, while publicly disassociating himself from the man's opinions, on the grounds that if you don't give your enemies the right to free speech then "free speech" is meaningless). The fact is, most people who have a problem with Chomsky base their criticisms on what other critics of him have said, and never bother to actually read his work.

This is a pity, as Chomsky is not so much a theorist of politics as a sort of higher journalist. His method is to present us with facts - documents, statements, commentary - and invite us to draw conclusions based upon them. He is far from being a "conspiracy theorist"; he shows us that there is no conspiracy, that it's going on right under our noses, in the pages of our newspapers, on our TV news bulletins, albeit tarted up and edited to seem like it's something else. So that the invasions of Panama and Grenada are, in some way, of a higher moral order than the invasion of Kuwait - the first are "defending the national interest", the second is "violating the rights of a sovereign country". The actions were much the same in terms of human consequences, i.e. invading a country and killing civilians, but our justifications (when we bother to provide any) are assumed, without explanation, to be impeccable, whereas our enemies' actions must ipso facto be the work of Satan.

The recent events in New York and Washington are tragic and appalling. No less tragic and appalling were the thousands of deaths in El Salvador caused by US-trained death squads, or the suffering caused to innocents by sanctions against Iraq (which Saddam Hussein, a vicious despot and former trusted US client, is able to exploit by whipping up anti-US sentiment). It all gets a little bit clearer when you start separating people from states. States make policies, people suffer from them. Chomsky's humane anarchism increasingly seems like the only possible solution to the violence that threatens to worsen the divides that our governments and others have already created in the world.

It must be said that his literary style, while dry, factual and effective enough, is tough to read in large doses - although maybe it's the terrible nature of his subject matter that's exhausting. But that misses the point. These are books to use as resources, not as cheerful afternoon reading. They are tools, not fun reads. His published interviews are generally easier to get through, and he even displays a vein of sarcastic wit that's absent from his books. But what an example he remains, to anyone concerned with the crimes that are done in our name. He can't have a hell of a long time left on the planet, and when he goes, he will be sorely missed. But he has inspired many others to follow his example, and for this alone, anyone interested in the _true_ meaning of freedom and democracy must be grateful.

I picked up this book because I was quite ashamed at the American political scene at home and quite mystified with its actions abroad. I was angry that our government and the business community seemed to be drifting farther and farther from popular control, and how politicians were condescending, insincere, and corrupt. I wondered if America really was the savior of the world I had been taught to believe it to be, or whether it was all a hoax. I remembered from my childhood how the toughest guys always bullied the weaker individuals, and I was extremely skeptical that the United States could have such power and always use it benevolently. The book proved to be an incredible read, right from the first page. Chomsky did not begin with the assumption that America has acted benevolently in the past, or that it ever meant to. Instead, he started with the facts, and constructed them into a global picture that should irk anybody with a conscience. The US IS a thug and a murderer, an untrustworthy goon, as far as international affairs are concerned. Even now, George W. Bush, the Republican candidate for the presidency, says he will "cancel," or VIOLATE, the treaty the United States signed with Russia that forbids both countries from building missile defense systems. Anybody concerned with the truth would do well to read this book.

In a better world Chomsky's political analysis would be superfluous: facts about US aggression, subversion, terrorism, support for tyranny, profiteering and deception would - along with US successes - be uncontroversial parts of intellectual and historical currency; exhaustive exposures of media hypocrisy and the forensic refutation of familiar liberal pieties would be no more than a casual pastime. In a word, if people in the intellectual community were more honest and judicious about certain topics, then Chomsky could at least be dismissed or ignored for legitimate reasons. Unfortunately for the social sciences, Chomsky's political work, with its glorious, bloody-minded disregard for the principled, equable modesty of humanist scholarship and relentless, caustic irony, most certainly is necessary. Whether or not the reader is put off by the discursive style, heavy use of quotations, disturbing conclusions or the eventual familiarity of most of the arguments, it is hard to read "Deterring Democracy" without a mounting sense of moral indignation.

I include his detractors in this category, though obviously for different reasons. I also doubt whether many of them have the stomach or patience to persevere to the end. Most attempts to criticise Chomsky have been thoroughly dishonest, trivial or just plain ludicrous. If Chomsky is to be disregarded, then it must be for good reasons and on his territory; not because of pathetic, hackneyed slander, innuendo or abuse.

All Chomsky's political books have one aim: To show to the world, and to American's in particular, that America's foreign policy is imperial in design. This book is his best. Chapter by chapter he shows how the Cold War was essentially the creation of the USA to cloak its own global ambitions: - to become the first truly world power. He shows how "communist" revolutions were usually nationalist in flavour, including Cuba and Vietnam; how America wants unlimited access to cheap primary markets in the Third World; how America's victims are usually left-leaning politicians, civil-right activists, trade unionists, and peasants, -in other words, people who might harm US investments; and how America prefers democracy - except where democracy may threaten American business interest. When American business interests are threatened by democracy, socialists are pushed out of office and replaced with right-of-centre coalitions, coupled with CIA covert operations to undermine popular organisations such as trade unions.

Noam Chomsky says this: "Democratic forms can be tolerated, even admired, if only for propaganda purposes. But this stance can be adopted only when the distribution of effective power ensures that meaningful participation of the 'popular classes' has been barred. When they organise and threaten the control of the political system by the business-land-owning elite and the military, strong measures must by taken, with tactical variations depending on the ranking of the target population on the scale of importance. At the lowest level, in the Third World, virtually no holds are barred."

This book is uncompromising and Chomsky is relentless in his argument and presentation of facts. Once you get to the end, you will be find it difficult to refute what Chomsky says. If you have never questioned America's foreign policy before-then you are in for a radical shake-up of the intellect. For those of us who care about the world, believe in the self-determination of nations, and want to cut through the pious cant of governments, this is the place to start.

If there was one book that changed my perspective on the world, this is it. For years, I believed the US was a well-intentioned but negligent country on the world scene, but far superior to the Soviet Union. Chomsky meticulously dismantled that traditional liberal myth, and many others, by comparing them to the demonstrated behavior of the US. Why, for instance, was it acceptable for the United States to invade Panama on the flimsiest of pretexts in 1990, but barbaric for Iraq to do the same to Kuwait? Chomsky rigorously leads the reader through a multitude of analyses, until, towards the end of the book, the terrible conclusion of what kind of country the United States really is finally comes into full view. However, this book is not an easy read. Readers will have to deal not only with the rude shock of some of their most cherished national myths tumbling down before their very eyes, but also with Chomsky's writing, which tends to be a grammatical nightmare. Despite that, I consider this book a must-read to grasp how our society truly works.

Chomsky argues that, contrary to some critics who charge the American elite with hypocrisy for their use of the rhetoric of democracy, the Establishment is perfectly consistent. It's just that their conception of democracy is control of the economy by the few (with no popular accountability) and control of the polity by this same group (with popular accountability limited to infrequent elections and few actual differences between the viable candidates). This sort of democracy reigns at home and is exported abroad -- unless oligarchy cannot deal with popular resistance, in which case a terror state of some variety is in order.

This argument is bolstered by considerable documentation, as Chomsky uses the words of apologists for the elite to reveal their true values. A significant corollary to Chomsky's view of elite democracy is that the system of indoctrination any aspiring leader must pass through cultivates a hatred for true democracy and censors -- as well as any totalitarian state -- the bloody proof that American foreign policy has little to do with "democracy and freedom".

Chomsky's arguments are reductionist but broadly correct. He rarely lends nuance to his explication, largely ignoring how elite ideology allows our leaders to live with themselves even as they enforce a murderous system of inequality and oppression. He prefers to follow the trail -- no matter how shrouded in pieties -- of what actually produces imperialism, namely the desire for domination and capitalism's insatiable need to exploit. We cannot ask for much more until full documentary evidence is available 40 or 50 years after the fact.

The book reads like a compilation of articles and is somewhat hurt by its failure to develop a clear thesis. However, the information within is a gold mine. It's useful to read Chomsky's views of the war against Iraq and the invasion of Panama now, 10 years after the mainstream narrative insists that both were well-advised and of little cost (the dead Iraqis and Panamanos are long forgotten, if ever acknowledged in the first place). The first chapter, which provides a summation of the cold war, is particularly powerful in exposing the broad consistency of American foreign policy and ideology and in laying out the unifying themes of recent history. The book is highly polemical, but its conclusions should be confronted by all Americans.

Having just read this book and Chomsky's "World Orders, Old and New", I have to say that I have started doubting all the "facts" I read in the history books, given by our government. This doubt of mine is based on two things. First, how much our state (Japan) has made use of and is making use of "the population control" to turn the public opinion in its favour, when it decides to do something externally. This point matters to me, because I need to reconsider whether all the historical facts I have gained and my prejudices derived from them should be thrown into dustbin as a collection of propaganda. Secondly, as a citizen of the country, which is in the middle of the US sphere of influence, I cannot help wondering what the US really wanted at some specific points of world history. Why the US has continued to prise open our most closed market in the world since 1853? Why didn't the US hesitate to use atomic bobms against us in 1945? Was there really the threat from the Soviet Union and China to the entire Pacific Ocean, when the US claimed to justfiy its own huge military presence in Japan and the rest of Asia? What did or do it really want? Chomsky first shocked me with all of his interpretations of history and then provided me with a fresh perspective on history. Now I know the world is not necessarily what I have been tought and made to believe to be. Whether you like his works or not, you cannot deny the fact that he provides a shocking and deconstructing theory for explaining world affairs in the past and today.

Call him a conspiracy theorist, total nut, or genius, Noam Chomsky is one of the most respected intellectuals in America. This book details some of the exploits (pun intended) that America tries to pull off as "doing good in the world". There are some flaws, like for example Chomsky really criticizes the Marshall Plan as being American centered and doesn't give credit to what has really revitalized Europe and Japan, regardless of the intents starting out or some of the authoritarian beginnings.
This book really put it all together for me. The thing with Chomsky is that all of his information is documented, and he shaped his theories on what is actually recorded. An example of this is that if you tell most people that George Bush Sr is connected with the Bin Laden family, they may call you crazy. But the fact is, even the Wall Street Journal reported that he is thru a defense conglomerate called the Carlyle group.

This book offers an illuminating alternative to reliance upon the mass media for the facts underlying US international relations in the 80s-early 90s. While certain portions of this book are repetitive, being based upon a series of articles that contain a fair amount of overlap, I did not find it particularly hard to follow. Chomsky's main thesis is that the actions taken by the US government in the name of defending and promoting "democracy" in Central America, East Timor, Iraq and elsewhere are often, when subjected to reasoned analysis, nothing more than acts of outrageous hypocrisy and cynical self-interest. In many cases, this leads to the nonsensical result of toppling genuine democratically elected governments, which are in turn replaced by far less democratic, more authoritarian regimes, which are then ironically hailed by the US government and media as "triumphs" of "democracy". The emphasis in practice is therefore not on actual democracy, but using the label as a cover for supporting governments that meekly follow US orders or are at least are repressive enough to subvert social forces within their territories that otherwise might endanger US business interests. Viewed in light of this analysis, numerous otherwise puzzling US actions, such as the failure to remove Saddam Hussein at the end of the Gulf War, make perfect and chilling sense. Chomsky also forcefully argues that the form of democracy existing at home in the US is also largely a sham, i.e., two major political parties that appear on the surface to offer major differences in philosophy but in reality focus public discussion within an extremely narrow range of debate and, in their virtually identical pro-business mindsets, can be characterized as "two horses with the same owner". Chomsky's book still has great relevance today notwithstanding its early 90s vintage. It passionately and persuasively reaffirms the vital importance of genuine democratic principles while effectively challenging and refuting many false conceptions about the form of "democracy" as it appears in actual practice.