How to Destroy a Planet Without Really Trying
The question is: What are people doing about it? None of
this is a secret. It’s all perfectly open. In fact, you
have to make an effort not to see it.
There have been a range of reactions. There are those who
are trying hard to do something about these threats, and others who
are acting to escalate them. If you look at who they are, this
future historian or extraterrestrial observer would see something
strange indeed. Trying to mitigate or overcome these threats
are the least developed societies, the indigenous populations, or
the remnants of them, tribal societies and first nations in Canada.
They’re not talking about nuclear war but environmental disaster,
and they’re really trying to do something about it.
In fact, all over the world -- Australia, India, South America --
there are battles going on, sometimes wars. In India, it’s a
major war over direct environmental destruction, with tribal
societies trying to resist resource extraction operations that are
extremely harmful locally, but also in their general consequences.
In societies where indigenous populations have an influence, many
are taking a strong stand. The strongest of any country with
regard to global warming is in Bolivia, which has an indigenous
majority and constitutional requirements that protect the “rights of
nature.”
Ecuador, which also has a large indigenous population, is the
only oil exporter I know of where the government is seeking aid to
help keep that oil in the ground, instead of producing and exporting
it -- and the ground is where it ought to be.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who died recently and was the
object of mockery, insult, and hatred throughout the Western world,
attended a session of the U.N. General Assembly a few years ago
where he elicited all sorts of ridicule for calling George W. Bush a
devil. He also gave a speech there that was quite interesting.
Of course, Venezuela is a major oil producer. Oil is
practically their whole gross domestic product. In that
speech, he warned of the dangers of the overuse of fossil fuels and
urged producer and consumer countries to get together and try to
work out ways to reduce fossil fuel use. That was pretty
amazing on the part of an oil producer. You know, he was part
Indian, of indigenous background. Unlike the funny things he
did, this aspect of his actions at the U.N. was never even reported.
So, at one extreme you have indigenous, tribal societies trying
to stem the race to disaster. At the other extreme, the
richest, most powerful societies in world history, like the United
States and Canada, are racing full-speed ahead to destroy the
environment as quickly as possible. Unlike Ecuador, and indigenous
societies throughout the world, they want to extract every drop of
hydrocarbons from the ground with all possible speed.
Both political parties, President Obama, the media, and the
international press seem to be looking forward with great enthusiasm
to what they call “a century of energy independence” for the United
States. Energy independence is an almost meaningless concept,
but put that aside. What they mean is: we’ll have a century in
which to maximize the use of fossil fuels and contribute to
destroying the world.
And that’s pretty much the case everywhere. Admittedly,
when it comes to alternative energy development, Europe is doing
something. Meanwhile, the United States, the richest and most
powerful country in world history, is the only nation among perhaps
100 relevant ones that doesn’t have a national policy for
restricting the use of fossil fuels, that doesn’t even have
renewable energy targets. It’s not because the population
doesn’t want it. Americans are pretty close to the
international norm in their concern about global warming. It’s
institutional structures that block change. Business interests
don’t want it and they’re overwhelmingly powerful in determining
policy, so you get a big gap between opinion and policy on lots of
issues, including this one.
So that’s what the future historian -- if there is one -- would
see. He might also read today’s scientific journals.
Just about every one you open has a more dire prediction than the
last.
“The Most Dangerous Moment in History”
The other issue is nuclear war. It’s been known for a long
time that if there were to be a first strike by a major power, even
with no retaliation, it would probably destroy civilization just
because of the nuclear-winter consequences that would follow.
You can read about it in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.
It’s well understood. So the danger has always been a lot
worse than we thought it was.
We’ve just passed the 50th anniversary of the Cuban Missile
Crisis, which was called “the most dangerous moment in history” by
historian Arthur Schlesinger, President John F. Kennedy’s advisor.
Which it was. It was a very close call, and not the only time
either. In some ways, however, the worst aspect of these grim
events is that the lessons haven’t been learned.
What happened in the missile crisis in October 1962 has been
prettified to make it look as if acts of courage and thoughtfulness
abounded. The truth is that the whole episode was almost
insane. There was a point, as the missile crisis was reaching
its peak, when Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev wrote to Kennedy
offering to settle it by a public announcement of a withdrawal of
Russian missiles from Cuba and U.S. missiles from Turkey.
Actually, Kennedy hadn’t even known that the U.S. had missiles in
Turkey at the time. They were being withdrawn anyway, because
they were being replaced by more lethal Polaris nuclear submarines,
which were invulnerable.
So that was the offer. Kennedy and his advisors considered
it -- and rejected it. At the time, Kennedy himself was
estimating the likelihood of nuclear war at a third to a half.
So Kennedy was willing to accept a very high risk of massive
destruction in order to establish the principle that we -- and only
we -- have the right to offensive missiles beyond our borders, in
fact anywhere we like, no matter what the risk to others -- and to
ourselves, if matters fall out of control. We have that right, but
no one else does.
Kennedy did, however, accept a secret agreement to withdraw the
missiles the U.S. was already withdrawing, as long as it was never
made public. Khrushchev, in other words, had to openly
withdraw the Russian missiles while the U.S. secretly withdrew its
obsolete ones; that is, Khrushchev had to be humiliated and Kennedy
had to maintain his macho image. He’s greatly praised for
this: courage and coolness under threat, and so on. The horror
of his decisions is not even mentioned -- try to find it on the
record.
And to add a little more, a couple of months before the crisis
blew up the United States had sent missiles with nuclear warheads to
Okinawa. These were aimed at China during a period of great
regional tension.
Well, who cares? We have the right to do anything we want
anywhere in the world. That was one grim lesson from that era,
but there were others to come.
Ten years after that, in 1973, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger
called a high-level nuclear alert. It was his way of warning
the Russians not to interfere in the ongoing Israel-Arab war and, in
particular, not to interfere after he had informed the Israelis that
they could violate a ceasefire the U.S. and Russia had just agreed
upon. Fortunately, nothing happened.
Ten years later, President Ronald Reagan was in office.
Soon after he entered the White House, he and his advisors had the
Air Force start penetrating Russian air space to try to elicit
information about Russian warning systems, Operation Able Archer.
Essentially, these were mock attacks. The Russians were
uncertain, some high-level officials fearing that this was a step
towards a real first strike. Fortunately, they didn’t react,
though it was a close call. And it goes on like that.
What to Make of the Iranian and North Korean Nuclear
Crises
At the moment, the nuclear issue is regularly on front pages in
the cases of North Korea and Iran. There are ways to deal with
these ongoing crises. Maybe they wouldn’t work, but at least you
could try. They are, however, not even being considered, not
even reported.
Take the case of Iran, which is considered in the West -- not in
the Arab world, not in Asia -- the gravest threat to world peace.
It’s a Western obsession, and it’s interesting to look into the
reasons for it, but I’ll put that aside here. Is there a way
to deal with the supposed gravest threat to world peace?
Actually there are quite a few. One way, a pretty sensible
one, was proposed a couple of months ago at a meeting of the
non-aligned countries in Tehran. In fact, they were just
reiterating a proposal that’s been around for decades, pressed
particularly by Egypt, and has been approved by the U.N. General
Assembly.
The proposal is to move toward establishing a
nuclear-weapons-free zone in the region. That wouldn’t be the
answer to everything, but it would be a pretty significant step
forward. And there were ways to proceed. Under U.N.
auspices, there was to be an international conference in Finland
last December to try to implement plans to move toward this.
What happened?
You won’t read about it in the newspapers because it wasn’t
reported -- only in specialist journals. In early November,
Iran agreed to attend the meeting. A couple of days later
Obama cancelled the meeting, saying the time wasn’t right. The
European Parliament issued a statement calling for it to continue,
as did the Arab states. Nothing resulted. So we’ll move
toward ever-harsher sanctions against the Iranian population -- it
doesn’t hurt the regime -- and maybe war. Who knows what will
happen?
In Northeast Asia, it’s the same sort of thing. North Korea
may be the craziest country in the world. It’s certainly a
good competitor for that title. But it does make sense to try
to figure out what’s in the minds of people when they’re acting in
crazy ways. Why would they behave the way they do? Just
imagine ourselves in their situation. Imagine what it meant in
the Korean War years of the early 1950s for your country to be
totally leveled, everything destroyed by a huge superpower, which
furthermore was gloating about what it was doing. Imagine the
imprint that would leave behind.
Bear in mind that the North Korean leadership is likely to have
read the public military journals of this superpower at that time
explaining that, since everything else in North Korea had been
destroyed, the air force was sent to destroy North Korea’s dams,
huge dams that controlled the water supply -- a war crime, by the
way, for which people were hanged in Nuremberg. And
these official journals were talking excitedly about how wonderful
it was to see the water pouring down, digging out the valleys, and
the Asians scurrying around trying to survive. The journals
were exulting in what this meant to those “Asians,” horrors beyond
our imagination. It meant the destruction of their rice crop,
which in turn meant starvation and death. How magnificent!
It’s not in our memory, but it’s in their memory.
Let’s turn to the present. There’s an interesting recent
history. In 1993, Israel and North Korea were moving towards
an agreement in which North Korea would stop sending any missiles or
military technology to the Middle East and Israel would recognize
that country. President Clinton intervened and blocked it.
Shortly after that, in retaliation, North Korea carried out a minor
missile test. The U.S. and North Korea did then reach a
framework agreement in 1994 that halted its nuclear work and
was more or less honored by both sides. When George
W. Bush came into office, North Korea had maybe one nuclear weapon
and verifiably wasn’t producing any more.
Bush immediately launched his aggressive militarism, threatening
North Korea -- “axis of evil” and all that -- so North Korea got
back to work on its nuclear program. By the time Bush left
office, they had eight to 10 nuclear weapons and a missile system,
another great neocon achievement. In between, other things
happened. In 2005, the U.S. and North Korea actually reached
an agreement in which North Korea was to end all nuclear weapons and
missile development. In return, the West, but mainly the
United States, was to provide a light-water reactor for its medical
needs and end aggressive statements. They would then form a
nonaggression pact and move toward accommodation.
It was pretty promising, but almost immediately Bush undermined
it. He withdrew the offer of the light-water reactor and
initiated programs to compel banks to stop handling any North Korean
transactions, even perfectly legal ones. The North Koreans
reacted by reviving their nuclear weapons program. And that’s
the way it’s been going.
It’s well known. You can read it in straight, mainstream
American scholarship. What they say is: it’s a pretty crazy
regime, but it’s also following a kind of tit-for-tat policy.
You make a hostile gesture and we’ll respond with some crazy gesture
of our own. You make an accommodating gesture and we’ll reciprocate
in some way.
Lately, for instance, there have been South Korean-U.S. military
exercises on the Korean peninsula which, from the North’s point of
view, have got to look threatening. We’d think they were
threatening if they were going on in Canada and aimed at us.
In the course of these, the most advanced bombers in history,
Stealth B-2s and B-52s, are carrying out simulated nuclear bombing
attacks right on North Korea’s borders.
This surely sets off alarm bells from the past. They
remember that past, so they’re reacting in a very aggressive,
extreme way. Well, what comes to the West from all this is how
crazy and how awful the North Korean leaders are. Yes, they
are. But that’s hardly the whole story, and this is the way
the world is going.
It’s not that there are no alternatives. The alternatives
just aren’t being taken. That’s dangerous. So if you ask what
the world is going to look like, it’s not a pretty picture.
Unless people do something about it. We always can.
Noam Chomsky is Institute Professor Emeritus in the MIT
Department of Linguistics and Philosophy. A
TomDispatch regular, he is the author of numerous
best-selling political works, including
Hopes and Prospects,
Making the Future, and most recently (with
interviewer David Barsamian),
Power Systems: Conversations on Global Democratic Uprisings and the
New Challenges to U.S. Empire (The American Empire Project,
Metropolitan Books).
[Note: This piece was adapted (with the help of
Noam Chomsky) from an
online video interview done by the website
What, which
is dedicated to integrating knowledge from different fields with the
aim of encouraging the balance between the individual, society, and
the environment.]
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Copyright 2013 Noam Chomsky
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175707/tomgram%3A_noam_chomsky%2C_the_eve_of_destruction/