Chomsky overcomplicates the crisis over US threats against Iran

Noam Chomsky has a piece in today’s Guardian¹ in which he sets out what he believes would be needed to resolve what he calls “the Iranian nuclear crisis”.

If his piece were to be taken seriously, one would have to emerge from it with the depressing impression that, realistically, the crisis is utterly intractable. For Chomsky, a resolution of the crisis would require utopian global changes – implementation of a fissile material cutoff and steps by the world’s nuclear powers to live up to their side of the Non-proliferation Treaty. The latter is particularly absurd, as it seems most likely this treaty was always intended to operate as a “noble lie”, with none of the major nuclear powers ever having remotely intended to give up their own nuclear deterrent forces (as I have discussed elsewhere²). If resolution of the crisis really does depend upon these countries giving up their nuclear deterrent forces, then it is probably insoluble.

National defence is the most basic of all the justifications for the existence of national governments. Nuclear deterrence is demonstrably today the only ultimately effective means of national defence, and therefore the only provider of genuine national sovereignty³. Until that basic reality changes – perhaps through technological development, or the rise of a world government - a strong argument can be made that for any national government to abandon a nuclear deterrent force which has been bought at great cost would be a fundamental betrayal of its people. Perhaps Chomsky believes further cosmetic measures could revive the pretence that the nuclear powers’ side of the non-proliferation bargain is something other than a fig-leaf. Perhaps Britain and France could be persuaded to merge their (somewhat token) forces in an EU deterrent force. Maybe we can trumpet some supposed reductions in the number of times over the main Russian and American nuclear arsenals are capable of destroying the world. Ultimately, though, such measures are not going to persuade those nations which have built nuclear weapons out of a genuine need for defence against real threats, to abandon them⁴. Believing they might is pure utopian fantasy.

Fortunately, the crisis over Iranian nuclear development is much simpler to resolve than that. The resolution requires, however, clear perception of the false understanding which makes the problem seem intractable. Once it is recognised that the problem is not Iran’s activities, but rather the actions (or threatened actions) of the US and Israel, it becomes clear that the solution needed is not to coerce Iran into refraining from entirely legal and legitimate action, but to deter the US and Israel from illegal aggression.

It is (potentially, at least) much easier to deter wrongful aggression even by a superpower, than it is to bully a substantial nation into obedience to unjust restrictions. All that is required is to make it absolutely clear that the aggression will not be tolerated. Hopefully, the much-touted new Shanghai Cooperation Organisation might develop into a full-fledged defensive military alliance, which would effectively bring Iran under the Russian and Chinese nuclear umbrellas and supply Iran with much-needed conventional military muscle. Short of that, (and it seems unlikely that will develop quickly enough to defuse the present crisis) the key is probably for the EU nations to take direct and effective steps to protect Iran against Israeli or American military strikes.

The likely costs to the US of an attack upon Iran are heavy, particularly in the light of the ongoing disaster in Iraq, and all the signs are that the US regime is being forced to rethink its apparent earlier intention to attack Iran as soon as practicable after Iraq. Probably, the stiff resistance of the Iraqis has saved the world from the even greater catastrophe of an American attack on Iran. The decision probably hangs close to balance, and it seems likely that to ensure the outcome remains on the side of sanity, we only need European governments and media to stop pandering to the American lie that Iran is a “threat”. Such fear-mongering is what gives rise to atrocities such as the invasion of Iraq. European governments must understand that every time they pay lip-service to the American lie that Iran is a threat, they give more political cover to those who would like to see a military confrontation. Every attempt to “resolve” the crisis by putting diplomatic pressure on Iran helps to structure the popular western perception of the position as a false image of an “Iranian crisis”, rather than the true perception of the situation as a problem with the behaviour of the United States and Israel.

We should be putting pressure on the true source of the problems over Iranian development of civilian nuclear power – Israeli and American threats – rather than upon the nation which is merely exercising its sovereign right to pursue civilian nuclear power.

Chomsky sees this, and includes a reference to the need to "call off the very credible US and Israeli threats that virtually urge Iran to develop nuclear weapons as a deterrent”. However, his divergence into the realms of nuclear disarmament fantasy distract from this core issue and thereby help to spread the mistaken, but widespread, view of this as an “Iranian crisis”. Most ironic, given Chomsky’s personal background, is the way the title of his piece helps to promote that very fallacy. “Iranian nuclear crisis”, indeed!


Footnotes

1 “A negotiated solution to the Iranian nuclear crisis is within reach”, Guardian June 19th 2006

2 “Nonproliferation: from Noble Lie to pretext for war”

3 But doesn’t, say, Germany have genuine national sovereignty? Only on the sufferance of the nuclear powers. Were the Russian government, say, to demand any concession from the German government on pain of nuclear destruction, then only two things could allow the German government ultimately to avoid compliance or destruction of the nation – a “nuclear umbrella” provided by other nations (the US, France and the UK, for instance), or forbearance in the face of German stubborn-ness by nuclear-armed Russia. Non-nuclear nations cannot but lose unlimited wars with nuclear powers. Of course, this unpalatable reality is buried deep beneath layers of diplomacy, practicability and nuclear taboo, but it remains present whether we like it or not.

4 China needs nuclear weapons to deter nuclear-armed America – a proven aggressor nation which has made no secret of its hostility towards China – as well as, more distantly at the moment, India and Russia. Pakistan needs nuclear weapons to deter India, and vice versa. The US and Russia need them to deter each other. Israel needs them to deter Arab nations.
Indeed, of all the nations in the world Iran is probably the one with the greatest prima facie case for having a genuine and urgent need for a nuclear deterrent. It has seen two of its neighbours invaded and occupied by a hugely powerful and nuclear-armed aggressor nation (the US), whose government persistently makes public threats against it and openly engages in internal subversion with the goal of the overthrow of Iran’s present government and its replacement by a more amenable one. Strangely, as discussed in the essay referenced in note ii above, it seems as likely that Iran’s rulers may refrain from obtaining nuclear weapons out of real religious conviction, as not. In my own view, Iran’s rulers would be crazy (and irresponsible, in the exercise of their duty to protect their nation) not to seek a nuclear deterrent force in the present circumstances, but I suppose we are constantly being told, by Americans in particular, that the Iranian regime is made up of religious fanatics.

Foreign deaths a price worth paying - again - for the US regime

The moral bankruptcy of the US ruling class was on display again this week, with the resurgence of the obscene argument that immense numbers of foreign deaths caused by US actions are a price worth paying for the achievement of US foreign policy goals.

Clinton's Secretary of State Madeleine Albright notoriously made this assertion about the Iraqi deaths caused by sanctions:

Lesley Stahl on U.S. sanctions against Iraq: We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright: I think this is a very hard choice, but the price--we think the price is worth it.

FAIR

This week, Bush's Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made the same argument, although now those deaths of foreigners are justified merely to provide a chance of achieving Washington's foreign policy objectives:

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Wednesday that the U.S. military interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan do not assure those countries will become successful democracies. But she said the chance for success is worth the price.

Rice: Democracy Uncertain in Iraq, Afghanistan, Washington Post, June 14th 2006

Americans generally seem unconcerned at their leaders' willingness to decide for other people how many of their lives are worth sacrificing for an American cause. I suspect they might not take the reverse situation so smugly.

Imagine the American hysteria we'd all have to sit through if Iran's President Ahmadinejad were to make some public speculation about how many dead Americans would be "a price worth paying" for Iran to be safe from attack!

The sentencing fuss – one of the few popular controversies we can actually do something about

There is currently a popular concern at the shortness of time served in prison following conviction for violent offences (including those of a sexual nature), which is reflected in the newsworthiness of any related story. Unusually for real world matters, this is actually one issue for which a simple solution is available and theoretically easy to implement.

There will always be disputes about whether particular sentences are long enough, or whether sentences should generally be longer or shorter for various categories of offence. One’s position on the general cases will depend upon one’s personal stance on a number of issues – what weight to attach to each of the justifications for imprisonment (revenge, deterrence, removal from society, rehabilitation), degree of confidence in the ability of the system to actually convict the right person, and others. At the heart of the current issue, however, is a concern on the part of government to keep the numbers in prison within the overall capacity of the prisons themselves¹.

Numbers in prison in England and Wales are very high by European standards, have been going up for years, and are reaching new records². The government’s forecasts had recently to be revised upwards, after increases exceeded the previous predictions³. Here are some figures. In April this year, there were 76,764 in prison in England and Wales. This was a 3% increase on the year before.⁴ The Home Office expects a remarkable 76,520 – 90,780 (!) to be in prison by 2011.⁵

At a legislative stroke, we could reduce the prison population immediately by a number in the region of 12,000, and reduce very substantially the future intakes of prisoners, while simultaneously bringing our justice system into closer accord with real justice and not offending a single victim by releasing the person who offended against him or her.

The answer is to re-legalise all drugs possession and use (and void all past convictions under these misguided laws). Morally, there is no more justification for imprisoning a drug user or dealer than there was for imprisoning homosexuals, when that was the law in this country. To say this is not necessarily to declare one's approval of either homosexuality or drug use or abuse, but merely to recognise that such matters are not within government's rightful scope.

At the same time as ending prohibition, a licensing and taxation regime should be devised and put into force. The purposes of this regime should be only to maintain public order, control children’s access to harmful substances, provide and enforce standards of labelling and purity, and raise money to fund costs arising out of the use and abuse of drugs. This regime should bring alcohol and tobacco use and abuse into the same broad category as heroin, cocaine, cannabis, and all the medical drugs. The general principle should be that drug use or abuse is a matter solely for the adult or responsible parent, with government intervention restricted to general supervision of the consequences and circumstances, rather than prohibition.

It really is as simple as that. Whether use or abuse of any particular drug would increase or decrease following the above change is debatable, but is not really important – this is a matter for individuals and their families and friends. While there is undoubtedly some cost to society consequent upon the abuse of any drug, it is probably much less than the costs to society of prohibition of that drug, in most cases.

Not only would we achieve an immediate reduction in the prison population, of the order of 15%, but we would also reduce the numbers of violent crimes, property thefts and corruption crimes which are indirectly caused by the effects of prohibition in our society. This is very hard to quantify, but the experience of alcohol prohibition in the US demonstrates just how corrosive of public order prohibition can be.

As a society, we would then have the choice of cutting government expenditure on prisons substantially by reducing capacity, or using the excess capacity to allow real criminals to be held for longer.⁶ The popular view at the moment would seem to be that serious offenders generally should not be released early to clear space in the prisons, and should generally serve longer sentences.



Footnotes

1 There have been numerous stories illustrating this particular point, but here's a recent one from the Times May 29th 2006: "Short, sharp shock sentences delayed as prisons are bursting at the seams"
2 Times April 29th 2005 “Steep rise in jail terms sends prison population to new high”
3 Home Office Statistical Bulletin: “Updated and revised prison population projections 2005-2011”
4 Home Office National Offender Management Service, “Population in Custody Monthly Tables – April 2006 England and Wales”.
5 Home Office Statistical Bulletin: “Updated and revised prison population projections 2005-2011”
6 Of course, we would also have to face a similar decision regarding the reallocation of the massive policing and court costs which would be immediately saved by ending prohibition. Tough times, eh?

Take real responsibility for once, Mr Blair

Mr Blair again calls for support for a policy of keeping British troops in Iraq.

There is room for legitimate debate regarding whether pulling out of Iraq now would be the best policy. However, Blair muddies this debate by his continued refusal to take responsibility for the original invasion in the proper manner, by resigning.

It is my belief that one reason (perhaps the "real reason") he is determined to stay there is that pulling out would represent the final admission that his personal project of seeking to achieve political ends in Iraq by the use of military force was a disastrous failure. I believe that the consequent deaths of British military men, and all the other costs to Britain of remaining there, are "a price worth paying", for him, to postpone this admission. Whether he is consciously aware of this motivation or not, I have little doubt it is there. He clearly has few scruples about killing innocent people in order to achieve personal goals, since he was willing to use war as a tool of policy in the first place.

Whether I am correct in this belief or not (and assessments of personal motivations must always ultimately be speculative), the fact that this possibility exists explains the deep wisdom of the now old-fashioned view that politicians responsible for contentious decisions which are widely perceived as failures, or as based upon error or deceit, should resign as a simple matter of honour.

This allows the successor to try to deal with the consequences unhampered by the suspicion that retrospective self-justification forms a large part of his motivation.

It is generally believed that Mr Blair deceived the nation regarding the reasons for attacking Iraq. If he did not deceive the nation, then the only viable alternative explanation is that he actually believed what he said at the time, which suggests monumental incompetence. I believe the former is the case, but even if it is not, if Mr Blair had any sense of personal honour or shame he would have resigned anyway when it became clear that the general belief in it cannot be shaken. Instead he has clung desperately to his position, in the hope that some sort of victory will allow him to claim personal vindication. It is at least somewhat satisfying that, by doing so, he has probably irretrievably further tarnished what remained of his own reputation and that of his party along with it.

Apart from the widespread suspicion about the reasons for attacking Iraq, it cannot be seriously disputed that the invasion of Iraq has been objectively a disaster for Britain.

We have lost over a hundred soldiers, spent millions, further damaged our international reputation by association with a US regime widely regarded as rogue and by blatantly breaching our own treaty commitment to renounce the unilateral use of force, and been complicit in an invasion which has caused tens or hundreds of thousands of innocent deaths along with massive destruction of property and essentially destroyed the viability of Iraq as a unified state. The Iraqis will be paying the butcher's bill for our gung ho decision to resort to military force, probably for many years to come.

And all we have to show for this catalogue of disasters is the destruction of the former Iraqi regime. It is difficult to see how this is a benefit to us at all. If one adopts a hard-eyed realpolitik position, Saddam's Iraq was no real threat to us at all in 2003 (certainly less of a threat than the current and foreseeable future situations in the region). Saddam himself would eventually have been killed or overthrown or died naturally. Our interests have only been damaged by destabilising Iraq.

If one adopts a humanitarian position, there is likewise no reason to suppose that anything has been gained, unless one has a fanatic's ideological devotion to some notion of Democracy as the ultimate cure-all. It may be that Mr Blair and some of his fellow paternalists follow that particular ideology (it is widespread in the west these days, especially the US and UK). Certainly many of them claim to do so. However, there is no reason why such an absurd notion should be given credence by the sane. Iraq had a democracy in the past, and there is no reason why the current democracy should not end the same way. The current Iraqi government, maintained in partial power by US and UK guns, is sectarian and will only retain control in minority areas by the use of death squads and torture (just like Saddam). As usual, our intervention has merely switched the identities of the repressors and the repressed, but we will doubtless turn a blind eye to the ongoing repression on the basis that it is "understandable revenge". Certainly people are now being killed and tortured at far higher rates than under Saddam, except for during the periods in which he was fighting wars, civil or otherwise.

So even if there was no actual deceit in the justification for war, certainly the war itself has been an unmitigated foreign policy disaster. A leader responsible for such a disaster should resign.

Test post

Testing this completely new thing that I only signed up for so as to be able to reply to Prof Cole's site. Perhaps I'll find it useful.