Noam Chomsky exclusive interview: “Insofar Algeria accommodates to US goals it becomes acceptable”
Authors: Mohamed El-Ghazi, M. Aït Amara
Algeriepatriotique: In the United States presidents change but the warlike policy is always the same. Who runs the United States?
Noam Chomsky: The executive branch makes the decisions, Congress has a secondary role. Throughout, the influence of concentrated economic power is highly influential, though not always decisive. The population has little influence except at the margins, apart from extreme wealth and privilege. All topics that have been well studied
Authors: Mohamed El-Ghazi, M. Aït Amara
Algeriepatriotique: In the United States presidents change but the warlike policy is always the same. Who runs the United States?
Noam Chomsky: The executive branch makes the decisions, Congress has a secondary role. Throughout, the influence of concentrated economic power is highly influential, though not always decisive. The population has little influence except at the margins, apart from extreme wealth and privilege. All topics that have been well studied
The United States foreign policy seems to focus almost exclusively on the Arab world. Is it just because of oil?
Depends what periods you are considering. The major wars the US carried out since World War II were in Southeast Asia. Latin America was the main target of military intervention and subversion until the continent began to liberate itself about 10 years ago, events of historical importance. In recent years the Arab world has been a major target as US control over the incomparable energy reserves of the region has been threatened.
Since the Vietnam War, the United States continues to be entangled in conflicts from which they can’t get out (Iraq, Afghanistan…). Is it a deliberate policy by Washington or is it a continuous strategic error?
It’s not an error, except insofar as policies sometimes fail. There are solid reasons for these actions, case by case.
Algeria has fought terrorism for two decades while the country was subjected to an embargo on arms abandoned by the democratic powers and isolated on the international scene. Today, the United States believes that Algeria is spearheading the fight against transnational terrorism. Why this change?
That’s not quite the US position. Insofar as some country – Algeria or any other – accommodates to US goals it becomes acceptable. The same was true of Qaddafi right up to the decision to overthrow him in favor of a government that it was assumed might be more reliable.
Experts speak about what it’s called “information dictatorship”. Can masses within this media hurricane still have the ability to distinguish between what’s right and what’s wrong?
The same ability they always have had. Takes work and effort, but it’s by no means impossible, and plenty of people succeed to one or another degree. It is hard to do alone, but as in the case of other complex tasks, working together people can achieve a lot.
The capitalist Western world witnesses a serious economic and financial crisis. Analysts believe that capitalism has reached the end of a cycle and it is on a downward trend. Who will rule the world from now on?
US power is indeed in decline – in fact has been since it peaked at the end of World War II. But although global power is diversifying, there is for the present no challenger to the role of global hegemony. As for “capitalism”, it depends what one means by this vague term. Thus the US is considered the prime “capitalist state”, though the economic system relies on extensive state intervention from creativity and innovation to protecting major private capital concentrations from collapse, it is highly monopolized and thus with limited market reliance, and in many other ways departs from the abstract models of “capitalism.”
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