US considers World Court hostile, and therefore ignores it
The attack against Nicaragua [in favor of the contra rebels] was one of the highest priorities as the Reagan administration in 1981. Nicaragua approached the World Court for relief. Expecting the US would abide by a court decision, the team prepared a
very narrow case regarding the mining of Nicaraguan harbors.
In 1986, the court found in Nicaragua's favor, condemning Washington for "unlawful use of force." The court also defined "humanitarian aid" explicitly, ruling all aid to the Nicaraguan
contras strictly military, and hence illegal.
The decision had little detectable effect. The World Court was condemned as a "hostile forum", and therefore irrelevant, like the UN. Others claimed the court had "close ties to the Soviet Union," a claim
not worthy of refutation. Congress responded with an additional $100 million in "humanitarian" aid.
Perhaps such memories help account for the low level of international support, especially from Latin America, for the US bombing of Afghanistan.
Mideasterners call US-Israel-Turkey the Axis of Evil
Like its patron the US, Israel has military forces that are larger & technologically more advanced than those of any NATO power apart from the US. Its conventional military forces are used to attack its neighbors & to control & subjugate the population
in the territories it occupies, in ways not easily overlooked in the region or by people elsewhere who are concerned with human rights.
Israel also has a close military alliance with the other major regional military power, Turkey. The US-Israel-Turkey
alliance is sometimes called "the Axis of Evil" in the Middle East. The term is understandable. There is always plenty of evil to go around, and this axis at least has the merit of existing, unlike the one concocted by George Bush's speechwriters, which
consists of two states that had been at war for 20 years and a third thrown in because it is non-Muslim and universally reviled. The US-Turkey alliance might undergo some changes if the US is able to shift military bases from eastern Turkey to Iraq.
The basic conception is that although the Cold War is over, the US still has the responsibility to protect the world--but from what? Plainly it cannot be from the threat of "radical nationalism'--that is, unwillingness to submit to the will of the
powerful. Such ideas are only fit for internal planning documents, not the general public. From the early 1980s, the conventional technique for mass mobilization was losing its effectiveness: [Hence] Reagan's "evil empire." New enemies were needed.
Source: Acts of Aggression, by Noam Chomsky, p. 28
Jul 2, 2002
US regularly in contempt of international law
Contempt for the rule of law is deeply rooted in U.S. practice and intellectual culture. Recall, for example, the judgment of the World Court in 1986 condemning the United States for "unlawful use of force" against
Nicaragua, demanding that it desist and pay extensive reparations, and declaring all U.S. aid to the contras, whatever its character, to be "military aid," not "humanitarian aid."
The Court was denounced on all sides for having discredited itself.
The terms of the judgment were not considered fit to print, and were ignored. The Democrat-controlled Congress immediately authorized new funds to step up the unlawful use f force. Washington vetoed a
Security Council resolution calling on all states to respect international law--not mentioning anyone, though the intent was clear.
Indonesia is a real "rogue state", but we like their oil
Since 1991, Iraq has displaced Iran and Libya as the leading "rogue state." Others have never entered the ranks. Perhaps the relevant case is Indonesia, which shifted from enemy to friend when General Suharto took power in 1965, presiding over an enormou
slaughter. Suharto killed 10,000 Indonesians just in the 1980s, according to Suharto, who wrote that "the corpses were left lying around as a form of shock therapy."
In Dec. 1975, the UN Security Council unanimously ordered
Indonesia to withdraw its invading forces from East Timor "without delay" and called upon "all States to respect the territorial integrity of East Timor as well as the inalienable rights of its people to self-determination." The
US responded by (secretly) increasing shipments of arms to the aggressors.
The US also happily accepts the robbery of East Timor's oil (with participation of a US company), in violation of any reasonable interpretation of international agreements.
US fought Haitian democracy in favor of US investors
[After the US invasion of Haiti in 1994], democracy has been restored. The new government has been forced to abandon the democratic and reformist programs that scandalized Washington, and to follow the policies of Washington’s candidate in the 1990
election, in which he received 14% of the vote.
Haiti has been largely under US control and tutelage since the Marines first invaded 80 years ago. By now the country is such a catastrophe that it may be scarcely habitable in the not-too-distant future.
In 1981, a USAID-World Bank development strategy was initiated, based on assembly plants and agroexport, shifting land from food for local consumption. The consequences were the usual ones: profits for US manufacturers and the Haitian super-rich,
and a decline of 56% in Haitian wages through the 1980s. It was the efforts of Haiti’s first democratic government to alleviate the growing disaster that called forth Washington’s hostility and the military coup and terror that followed.
Polite people are not supposed to remember the reaction when Kennedy tried to organize collective action against Cuba in 1961: Mexico could not go along, a diplomat explained, because “if we publicly declare that Cuba is a threat to our security, 40
million Mexicans will die laughing.” In the US, we take a more sober view, on the assumption that the US has every right to overthrow another government, in this case, by aggression, large-scale terror, and economic strangulation.
While the Clinton
administration promises to “liberate” the suffering Cuban people, a more plausible conclusion is more the reverse: the “American economic strangulation of Cuba” has been designed and maintained [to hide] the successes of Castro’s programs to improve
health & living standards [which would] spread “the Castro idea of taking matters into one’s own hands.” To evaluate the claim that US policies flow from concern for human rights & democracy, the briefest look at the record is more than sufficient.
Our Latin America policy benefits investors, not people
In secret postwar planning [in the 1940s], each part of the world was assigned its specific role. In Latin America, Washington expected to be able to implement the Monroe Doctrine [which forbids European intervention in the Americas], but in a special
sense. The interests of Latin Americans are merely “incidental,” not our concern. The US sought to displace its traditional rivals, England and France, and establish a regional alliance under its control.
The “functions” of Latin America were
clarified at a hemispheric conference in February 1945, where the State Department warned that Latin Americans prefer “policies designed to bring about the broader distribution of wealth and to raise the standard of living of the masses.”
These ideas are unacceptable: the first beneficiaries of a country’s resources are IUS investors, while Latin America fulfills its service function without unreasonable concerns about general welfare that might infringe on US interests.
Countries develop by avoiding colonization & ignoring market
In the 18th century, the differences between the first and third worlds were far less sharp than they are today. Two obvious questions arise:
Which countries developed, and which not?
Can we identify some operative factors?
The answer to the first question is fairly clear: Outside of Western Europe, two major regions developed: the US and Japan-that is, the two regions that escaped European colonization. Japan’s colonies [in East Asia] are another case;
though Japan was a brutal colonial power, it did not rob its colonies but developed them, at about the same rate as Japan itself.
On the second question: How did Europe and those who escaped its control succeed in developing?
By radically violating approved free market doctrine. That conclusion holds from England to the East Asian growth area today, surely including the US, the leader in protectionism from its origins.
US aid to Americas correlates with torture by governments
US aid has tended to flow to Latin American governments which torture their citizens. It has nothing to do with need, only with willingness to serve the interests of privilege. Broader studies reveal a correlation between torture and US aid and provide
the explanation: both correlate with improving the climate for business.
The agro-export model produces an “economic miracle” where GNP goes up while the population starves. Popular opposition develops, which you then suppress with torture.
Source: What Uncle Sam Really Wants, by Noam Chomsky, p. 29-30
Jan 13, 1991
US historically opposes Third World nationalism and rights
US planners stated their view that the threat to the new US-led world order was “nationalistic regimes” that are responsive to “popular demand for immediate improvement in the low living standards of the masses.”
The planners’ basic goals, repeated over and over again, were to prevent such “ultranationalist” regimes from taking power-or if they did take power, to remove them and install governments that favor private investment of domestic and foreign capital,
production for export and the right to bring profits out of the country.
The US has been willing to tolerate social reform only when the rights of labor are suppressed and the climate for foreign investment is preserved.
We’ve consistently opposed democracy if its results cannot be controlled. The problem with real democracies is that they’re likely to fall prey to the heresy that governments should respond to the needs of the people instead of those of US investers.
I think the prospects are pretty dim for Eastern Europe. The West has a plan for it-they want to turn large parts of it into a new, easily exploitable part of the Third World.
There used to be a colonial relationship between Western and Eastern Europe.
Now, there’s a serious conflict over who’s going to win the race for robbery and exploitation. Is it going to be German-led Western Europe or Japan? There are a lot of resources to be taken and lots of cheap labor.
But first we have to impose the capitalist model on them. We don’t accept it for ourselves-but for the Third World, we insist on it. If we can get them to accept that, they’ll be easily exploitable and will move toward a new role as a Brazil or Mexico.
Because the USSR used to support governments the US was trying to destroy, there was a danger that US intervention in the Third World might explode into a nuclear war. Now, the US is much more free to use violence around the world.
Diplomacy is a particularly unwelcome option. The US has very little popular support for its goals in the Third World. This isn’t surprising, since it’s trying to impose structure of domination and exploitation.
A diplomatic settlement is bound to respond to the interests of the other participants, and that’s a problem when your positions aren’t popular.
Negotiations are something the US commonly tries to avoid. That has been true in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Central America.
