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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has arrived in the United States as part of his bid to stop a nuclear deal with Iran during a controversial speech before the U.S. Congress on Tuesday. Dozens of Democrats are threatening to boycott the address, which was arranged by House Speaker John Boehner without consulting the White House. Netanyahu’s visit comes just as Iran and six world powers, including the United States, are set to resume talks in a bid to meet a March 31 deadline. "For both Prime Minister Netanyahu and the hawks in Congress, mostly Republican, the primary goal is to undermine any potential negotiation that might settle whatever issue there is with Iran," says Noam Chomsky, institute professor emeritus at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "They have a common interest in ensuring there is no regional force that can serve as any kind of deterrent to Israeli and U.S. violence, the major violence in the region." Chomsky also responds to recent revelations that in 2012 the Israeli spy agency, Mossad, contradicted Netanyahu’s own dire warnings about Iran’s ability to produce a nuclear bomb, concluding that Iran was "not performing the activity necessary to produce weapons."
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AARON MATÉ: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has arrived in Washington as part of his bid to stop a nuclear deal with Iran. Netanyahu will address the lobby group AIPAC today, followed by a controversial speech before Congress on Tuesday. The visit comes just as Iran and six world powers, including the U.S., are set to resume talks in a bid to meet a March 31st deadline. At the White House, Press Secretary Josh Earnest said Netanyahu’s trip won’t threaten the outcome.
PRESS SECRETARY JOSH EARNEST: I think the short answer to that is: I don’t think so. And the reason is simply that there is a real opportunity for us here. And the president is hopeful that we are going to have an opportunity to do what is clearly in the best interests of the United States and Israel, which is to resolve the international community’s concerns about Iran’s nuclear program at the negotiating table.
AARON MATÉ: The trip has sparked the worst public rift between the U.S. and Israel in over two decades. Dozens of Democrats could boycott Netanyahu’s address to Congress, which was arranged by House Speaker John Boehner without consulting the White House. The Obama administration will send two officials, National Security Adviser Susan Rice and U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power, to address the AIPAC summit today. This comes just days after Rice called Netanyahu’s visit, quote, "destructive."
AMY GOODMAN: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is also facing domestic criticism for his unconventional Washington visit, which comes just two weeks before an election in which he seeks a third term in Israel. On Sunday, a group representing nearly 200 of Israel’s top retired military and intelligence officials accused Netanyahu of assaulting the U.S.-Israel alliance.
But despite talk of a U.S. and Israeli dispute, the Obama administration has taken pains to display its staunch support for the Israeli government. Speaking just today in Geneva, Secretary of State John Kerry blasted the U.N. Human Rights Council for what he called an "obsession" and "bias" against Israel. The council is expected to release a report in the coming weeks on potential war crimes in Israel’s U.S.-backed Gaza assault last summer.
For more, we spend the hour today with world-renowned political dissident, linguist, author, Noam Chomsky. He has written over a hundred books, most recently On Western Terrorism: From Hiroshima to Drone Warfare. His forthcoming book, co-authored with Ilan Pappé, is titled On Palestine and will be out next month. Noam Chomsky is institute professor emeritus at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he’s taught for more than 50 years.
Noam Chomsky, it’s great to have you back here at Democracy Now!, and particularly in our very snowy outside, but warm inside, New York studio.
NOAM CHOMSKY: Delighted to be here again.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, Noam, let’s start with Netanyahu’s visit. He is set to make this unprecedented joint address to Congress, unprecedented because of the kind of rift it has demonstrated between the Republicans and the Democratic president, President Obama. Can you talk about its significance?
NOAM CHOMSKY: For both president—Prime Minister Netanyahu and the hawks in Congress, mostly Republican, the primary goal is to undermine any potential negotiation that might settle whatever issue there is with Iran. They have a common interest in ensuring that there is no regional force that can serve as any kind of deterrent to Israeli and U.S. violence, the major violence in the region. And it is—if we believe U.S. intelligence—don’t see any reason not to—their analysis is that if Iran is developing nuclear weapons, which they don’t know, it would be part of their deterrent strategy. Now, their general strategic posture is one of deterrence. They have low military expenditures. According to U.S. intelligence, their strategic doctrine is to try to prevent an attack, up to the point where diplomacy can set in. I don’t think anyone with a grey cell functioning thinks that they would ever conceivably use a nuclear weapon, or even try to. The country would be obliterated in 15 seconds. But they might provide a deterrent of sorts. And the U.S. and Israel certainly don’t want to tolerate that. They are the forces that carry out regular violence and aggression in the region and don’t want any impediment to that.
And for the Republicans in Congress, there’s another interest—namely, to undermine anything that Obama, you know, the entity Christ, might try to do. So that’s a separate issue there. The Republicans stopped being an ordinary parliamentary party some years ago. They were described, I think accurately, by Norman Ornstein, the very respected conservative political analyst, American Enterprise Institute; he said the party has become a radical insurgency which has abandoned any commitment to parliamentary democracy. And their goal for the last years has simply been to undermine anything that Obama might do, in an effort to regain power and serve their primary constituency, which is the very wealthy and the corporate sector. They try to conceal this with all sorts of other means. In doing so, they’ve had to—you can’t get votes that way, so they’ve had to mobilize sectors of the population which have always been there but were never mobilized into an organized political force: evangelical Christians, extreme nationalists, terrified people who have to carry guns into Starbucks because somebody might be after them, and so on and so forth. That’s a big force. And inspiring fear is not very difficult in the United States. It’s a long history, back to colonial times, of—as an extremely frightened society, which is an interesting story in itself. And mobilizing people in fear of them, whoever "them" happens to be, is an effective technique used over and over again. And right now, the Republicans have—their nonpolicy has succeeded in putting them back in a position of at least congressional power. So, the attack on—this is a personal attack on Obama, and intended that way, is simply part of that general effort. But there is a common strategic concern underlying it, I think, and that is pretty much what U.S. intelligence analyzes: preventing any deterrent in the region to U.S. and Israeli actions.
AARON MATÉ: You say that nobody with a grey cell thinks that Iran would launch a strike, were it to have nuclear weapons, but yet Netanyahu repeatedly accuses Iran of planning a new genocide against the Jewish people. He said this most recently on Holocaust Remembrance Day in January, saying that the ayatollahs are planning a new holocaust against us. And that’s an argument that’s taken seriously here.
NOAM CHOMSKY: It’s taken seriously by people who don’t stop to think for a minute. But again, Iran is under extremely close surveillance. U.S. satellite surveillance knows everything that’s going on in Iran. If Iran even began to load a missile—that is, to bring a missile near a weapon—the country would probably be wiped out. And whatever you think about the clerics, the Guardian Council and so on, there’s no indication that they’re suicidal.
AARON MATÉ: The premise of these talks—Iran gets to enrich uranium in return for lifting of U.S. sanctions—do you see that as a fair parameter? Does the U.S. have the right, to begin with, to be imposing sanctions on Iran?
NOAM CHOMSKY: No, it doesn’t. What are the right to impose sanctions? Iran should be imposing sanctions on us. I mean, it’s worth remembering—when you hear the White House spokesman talk about the international community, it wants Iran to do this and that, it’s important to remember that the phrase "international community" in U.S. discourse refers to the United States and anybody who may be happening to go along with it. That’s the international community. If the international community is the world, it’s quite a different story. So, two years ago, the Non-Aligned—former Non-Aligned Movement—it’s a large majority of the population of the world—had their regular conference in Iran in Tehran. And they, once again, vigorously supported Iran’s right to develop nuclear power as a signer of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. That’s the international community. The United States and its allies are outliers, as is usually the case.
And as far as sanctions are concerned, it’s worth bearing in mind that it’s now 60 years since—during the past 60 years, not a day has passed without the U.S. torturing the people of Iran. It began with overthrowing the parliamentary regime and installing a tyrant, the shah, supporting the shah through very serious human rights abuses and terror and violence. As soon as he was overthrown, almost instantly the United States turned to supporting Iraq’s attack against Iran, which was a brutal and violent attack. U.S. provided critical support for it, pretty much won the war for Iraq by entering directly at the end. After the war was over, the U.S. instantly supported the sanctions against Iran. And though this is kind of suppressed, it’s important. This is George H.W. Bush now. He was in love with Saddam Hussein. He authorized further aid to Saddam in opposition to the Treasury and others. He sent a presidential delegation—a congressional delegation to Iran. It was April 1990—1989, headed by Bob Dole, the congressional—
AMY GOODMAN: To Iraq? Sent to Iraq?
NOAM CHOMSKY: To Iraq. To Iraq, sorry, yeah—to offer his greetings to Saddam, his friend, to assure him that he should disregard critical comment that he hears in the American media: We have this free press thing here, and we can’t shut them up. But they said they would take off from Voice of America, take off critics of their friend Saddam. That was—he invited Iraqi nuclear engineers to the United States for advanced training in weapons production. This is right after the Iraq-Iran War, along with sanctions against Iran. And then it continues without a break up to the present.
There have been repeated opportunities for a settlement of whatever the issues are. And so, for example, in, I guess it was, 2010, an agreement was reached between Brazil, Turkey and Iran for Iran to ship out its low-enriched uranium for storage elsewhere—Turkey—and in return, the West would provide the isotopes that Iran needs for its medical reactors. When that agreement was reached, it was bitterly condemned in the United States by the president, by Congress, by the media. Brazil was attacked for breaking ranks and so on. The Brazilian foreign minister was sufficiently annoyed so that he released a letter from Obama to Brazil proposing exactly that agreement, presumably on the assumption that Iran wouldn’t accept it. When they did accept it, they had to be attacked for daring to accept it.
And 2012, 2012, you know, there was to be a meeting in Finland, December, to take steps towards establishing a nuclear weapons-free zone in the region. This is an old request, pushed initially by Egypt and the other Arab states back in the early '90s. There's so much support for it that the U.S. formally agrees, but not in fact, and has repeatedly tried to undermine it. This is under the U.N. auspices, and the meeting was supposed to take place in December. Israel announced that they would not attend. The question on everyone’s mind is: How will Iran react? They said that they would attend unconditionally. A couple of days later, Obama canceled the meeting, claiming the situation is not right for it and so on. But that would be—even steps in that direction would be an important move towards eliminating whatever issue there might be. Of course, the stumbling block is that there is one major nuclear state: Israel. And if there’s a Middle East nuclear weapons-free zone, there would be inspections, and neither Israel nor the United States will tolerate that.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to ask you about major revelations that have been described as the biggest leak since Edward Snowden. Last week, Al Jazeera started publishing a series of spy cables from the world’s top intelligence agencies. In one cable, the Israeli spy agency Mossad contradicts Prime Minister Netanyahu’s own dire warnings about Iran’s ability to produce a nuclear bomb within a year. In a report to South African counterparts in October 2012, the Israeli Mossad concluded Iran is "not performing the activity necessary to produce weapons." The assessment was sent just weeks after Netanyahu went before the U.N. General Assembly with a far different message. Netanyahu held up a cartoonish diagram of a bomb with a fuse to illustrate what he called Iran’s alleged progress on a nuclear weapon.
PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: This is a bomb. This is a fuse. In the case of Iran’s nuclear plans to build a bomb, this bomb has to be filled with enough enriched uranium. And Iran has to go through three stages. By next spring, at most by next summer, at current enrichment rates, they will have finished the medium enrichment and move on to the final stage. From there, it’s only a few months, possibly a few weeks, before they get enough enriched uranium for the first bomb. A red line should be drawn right here, before—before Iran completes the second stage of nuclear enrichment necessary to make a bomb.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in September 2012. The Mossad assessment contradicting Netanyahu was sent just weeks after, but it was likely written earlier. It said Iran, quote, "does not appear to be ready," unquote, to enrich uranium to the highest levels needed for a nuclear weapon. A bomb would require 90 percent enrichment, but Mossad found Iran had only enriched to 20 percent. That number was later reduced under an interim nuclear deal the following year. The significance of this, Noam Chomsky, as Prime Minister Netanyahu prepares for this joint address before Congress to undermine a U.S.-Iranian nuclear deal?
NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, the striking aspect of this is the chutzpah involved. I mean, Israel has had nuclear weapons for probably 50 years or 40 years. They have, estimates are, maybe 100, 200 nuclear weapons. And they are an aggressive state. Israel has invaded Lebanon five times. It’s carrying out an illegal occupation that carries out brutal attacks like Gaza last summer. And they have nuclear weapons. But the main story is that if—incidentally, the Mossad analysis corresponds to U.S. intelligence analysis. They don’t know if Iran is developing nuclear weapons. But I think the crucial fact is that even if they were, what would it mean? It would be just as U.S. intelligence analyzes it: It would be part of a deterrent strategy. They couldn’t use a nuclear weapon. They couldn’t even threaten to use it. Israel, on the other hand, can; has, in fact, threatened the use of nuclear weapons a number of times.
AMY GOODMAN: So why is Netanyahu doing this?
NOAM CHOMSKY: Because he doesn’t want to have a deterrent in the region. That’s simple enough. If you’re an aggressive, violent state, you want to be able to use force freely. You don’t want anything that might impede it.
AMY GOODMAN: Do you think this in any way has undercut the U.S. relationship with Israel, the Netanyahu-Obama conflict that, what, Susan Rice has called destructive?
NOAM CHOMSKY: There is undoubtedly a personal relationship which is hostile, but that’s happened before. Back in around 1990 under first President Bush, James Baker went as far as—the secretary of state—telling Israel, "We’re not going to talk to you anymore. If you want to contact me, here’s my phone number." And, in fact, the U.S. imposed mild sanctions on Israel, enough to compel the prime minister to resign and be replaced by someone else. But that didn’t change the relationship, which is based on deeper issues than personal antagonisms.
As Iraq launches a new military operation to retake the city of Tikrit from the self-proclaimed Islamic State, thousands of Iraqi forces and militia fighters have converged in the city Samarra to strike nearby ISIS strongholds. The United States is expected to provide air support as part of its continued bombing campaign. The offensive comes as the Iraqi military prepares for a major U.S.-backed operation to retake Mosul from ISIS in the coming weeks. ISIS "is one of the results of the United States hitting a very vulnerable society with a sledgehammer, which elicited sectarian conflicts that had not existed," says Noam Chomsky. "It is hard to see how Iraq can even be held together at this point. It has been devastated by U.S. sanctions, the war, the atrocities that followed from it. The current policy, whatever it is, is not very likely to even patch up or even put band-aids on a cancer."
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Aaron Maté. Noam Chomsky is our guest for the hour, the world-renowned political dissident, linguist, author of over a hundred books, MIT professor emeritus. Aaron?
AARON MATÉ: Yes. Noam, I wanted to ask you about ISIS. The big news is that Iraq is planning a major offensive to retake Mosul. It’s currently launching strikes to recapture Tikrit with U.S. support. My question is about the effectiveness of the U.S. strategy. To what extent is the U.S. constrained by its own policies in terms of the effectiveness of defeating ISIS, constrains in terms of its ties to Saudi Arabia and its refusal to engage with Iran and groups like Hezbollah, which have been effective in fighting ISIS?
NOAM CHOMSKY: Patrick Cockburn, who has done by far the best reporting on this, describes it as an Alice in Wonderland strategy. The U.S. wants to destroy ISIS, but it’s opposing every force that’s fighting ISIS. So, the main state that’s opposed to ISIS is Iran. They support the Iraqi government, the Shiite government. But Iran is, you know, on our enemies list. Probably the main ground forces fighting ISIS are the PKK and its allies, which are on the U.S. terrorist list. That’s both in Iraq and in Syria. Saudi Arabia, our major ally, along with Israel, is both traditionally, for a long time, the main funder of ISIS and similar groups—not necessarily the government; rich Saudis, other people in the emirates—not only the funder, but they’re the ideological source. Saudi Arabia is committed, is dominated by an extremist fundamentalist version of Islam: Wahhabi doctrine. And ISIS is an extremist offshoot of the Wahhabi doctrine. Saudi Arabia is a missionary state. It establishes schools, mosques, spreading its radical Islamic version. So, they’re our ally. Our enemies are those who are fighting ISIS. And it’s more complex.
ISIS is a monstrosity. There’s not much doubt about that. It didn’t come from nowhere. It’s one of the results of the U.S. hitting a very vulnerable society—Iraq—with a sledgehammer, which elicited sectarian conflicts that had not existed. They became very violent. The U.S. violence made it worse. We’re all familiar with the crimes. Out of this came lots of violent, murderous forces. ISIS is one. But the Shiite militias are not that different. They’re carrying out—they’re the kind of the—when they say the Iraqi army is attacking, it’s probably mostly the Shiite militias with the Iraqi army in the background. I mean, the way the Iraqi army collapsed is an astonishing military fact. This is an army of, I think, 350,000 people, heavily armed by the United States and trained by the United States for 10 years. A couple of thousand guerrillas showed up, and they all ran away. The generals ran away first. And the soldiers didn’t know to do. They ran away after them.
AMY GOODMAN: We have 20 seconds.
NOAM CHOMSKY: Hmm?
AMY GOODMAN: We have 20 seconds.
NOAM CHOMSKY: Yeah. Well, now, it’s basically—the effect, it’s hard to see how Iraq can even be held together at this point. It’s been devastated by U.S. sanctions, the war, the atrocities that followed from it. The current policy, whatever it is, is not very likely to even patch up, put band-aids on the cancer.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to have to leave it there, but we’ll continue this discussion tomorrow on Democracy Now! Our guest, Noam Chomsky, institute professor emeritus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Six months after the end of a devastating Israeli assault on Gaza, aid agencies have condemned the lack of progress in rebuilding Gaza, saying reconstruction of tens of thousands of destroyed homes, schools and hospitals has been "woefully slow," with 100,000 Palestinians still displaced. Our guest, Noam Chomsky, notes it was the Pentagon that supplied many of the weapons used in the massive destruction. "The arms were taken from arms the U.S. stores in Israel. They are pre-positioned in Israel for eventual use by U.S. forces," Chomsky says. "Israel is regarded essentially as an offshore military base."
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AARON MATÉ: And meanwhile, support for the occupation continues, so much so that during the Gaza assault the U.S. rearmed Israel.
NOAM CHOMSKY: It was kind of interesting how the U.S. rearmed Israel. The arms—it’s true that the Pentagon sent more arms to Israel. They were actually running out of arms in this vicious assault against a totally defenseless population. The arms were taken from arms that the U.S. stores in Israel; they’re pre-positioned in Israel for eventual use by U.S. forces. That’s one part of the U.S.-Israel strategic alliance. That’s one small part of it, is that Israel is regarded as essentially an offshore military base. So we store, pre-position arms there, and some of those arms were transferred to Israeli control so that they could complete—continue the massive destruction of Gaza, which is horrific and one of many indications of the nature of the alliance.
It’s a very close alliance, and deep enough—so, for example, one of the interesting leaks from WikiLeaks was a U.S. government study of—a Pentagon study of sites in the world that are of such high significance that we must protect them at all costs. One of them was right near Haifa. It was the Rafael military industries. It’s one of the main producers of drones and other high-tech military equipment. And the relation—and that’s one of the highest—strategic sites of highest importance. And, in fact, the relationship is so close that Rafael actually transferred its management offices to Washington, where the money is and the contacts are. It’s essentially an offshore military base, in many ways, also a major source for U.S. investment, high-tech investment. So, Intel, for example, is setting up its major new facility for next-generation chips in Israel. Warren Buffett just bought a big Israeli company. There are many very close relationships, and they’re not going to be affecting by a personal conflict between Baker and Shamir or Obama and Netanyahu.
AMY GOODMAN: And the Obama administration has taken great pains, even as this division has taken place, to show its support for Israel. On Sunday, Secretary of State John Kerry said the U.S. has intervened on Israel’s behalf hundreds of times in the international arena.
SECRETARY OF STATE JOHN KERRY: Prime minister of Israel is welcome to speak in the United States, obviously, and we have a closer relationship with Israel right now in terms of security than at any time in history. I was reviewing the record the other day. We have intervened on Israel’s behalf in the last two years more than several hundred—a couple of hundred times in over 75 different fora in order to protect Israel.
AMY GOODMAN: That was U.S. secretary of state on ABC’s This Week. Noam Chomsky?
NOAM CHOMSKY: And it’s interesting to look at the cases. The most—one of them actually received a fair amount of publicity, because it was so remarkable. That was, I suppose, February 2011, roughly, at the U.N. Security Council. There was a resolution proposed at the Security Council calling on Israel to abide by official U.S. policy. The official U.S. policy is objection to settlement expansion. It’s a pretty minor issue, incidentally. That’s what’s talked about. But the issue is the settlements, not the expansion. They’re all illegal. They’re criminal activities. They undermine any hope for any peaceful settlement. But U.S. policy is that settlement expansion is, as they put it, not helpful to peace. The Security Council proposed a resolution asking Israel to abide by official U.S. policy. Obama vetoed it. You know, that’s real support for Israel.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to break and then come back to our discussion with the world-renowned political dissident, linguist, author, institute professor emeritus at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Noam Chomsky. Stay with us.
The recent ceasefire in Ukraine continues to hold after a shaky start, days after Secretary of State John Kerry publicly accused Russian officials of lying to his face about their military support for separatist rebels. The United Nations says the death toll from the nearly year-old conflict has topped 6,000. This comes as tens of thousands rallied in Moscow to honor the slain opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, who had accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of authoritarian rule. "It’s fashionable in the United States and Britain to condemn Putin as some sort of distorted mind," says Noam Chomsky, but he notes no Russian leader can accept the current Ukrainian move to join NATO. He argues a strong declaration that Ukraine will be neutralized offers the path to a peaceful settlement.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Aaron Maté. Our guest for the hour is MIT institute professor emeritus, Noam Chomsky, known around the world for his political writings.
We’re going to turn right now to the issue of Russia and Ukraine. Secretary of State John Kerry is meeting with Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov in Geneva to discuss the conflict in Ukraine. The meeting comes just days after Kerry publicly accused Russian officials of lying to his face about their military support for separatist rebels. Russia and Ukraine are also holding direct talks in Brussels to resolve a dispute over the delivery of Russian gas. The U.N. said today the death toll from the nearly year-old conflict has topped 6,000. A recent ceasefire continues to hold, over a shaky start.
Also in Russia, the murder this weekend on Friday night of the opposition leader, Boris Nemtsov. A former deputy prime minister turned dissident politician, Nemtsov was shot dead Friday night near Red Square. He was going to lead a major rally that was critical of Vladimir Putin on Sunday. It grew much larger after his death, with tens of thousands, perhaps 50,000 people, marching past the Kremlin carrying signs reading, "I am not afraid."
Noam Chomsky, if you can comment on what’s happening in Russia and Ukraine?
NOAM CHOMSKY: What’s happening is quite ugly. And I think the criticisms are mostly accurate, but they’re kind of beside the point. There’s a background that we have to think about. It’s fashionable now in the United States and Britain to condemn Putin as some sort of a distorted mind. There’s an article in Psychology Today analyzing his brain, asking why he’s so arrogant. He’s been accused of having Asperger’s; an irritable, rat-faced man, as he’s described by Timothy Garton Ash and so on. This is all very reminiscent of the early 1950s, when I was a graduate student then. At that time, the U.S. had overwhelming power, and it was able to use the United Nations as a battering ram against its enemy, the Soviet Union, so Russia was, of course, vetoing lots of resolutions, condemning it. And leading anthropologists in the United States and England developed a—began to analyze why the Russians are so negative, what makes them say no at the United Nations all the time. And their proposal was that the Russians are negative because they raise their children in swaddling clothes, and that makes them negative. The three or four of us at Harvard who thought this ridiculous used to call it diaperology. That’s being re-enacted—a takeoff on Kremlinology. This is being re-enacted right now.
But the fact is, whatever you think about Putin—OK, irritable, rat-faced man with Asperger’s, whatever you like—the Russians have a case. And you have to understand the case. And the case is understood here by people who bother to think. So, for example, there was a lead article in Foreign Affairs, the main establishment journal, by John Mearsheimer with a title like something like "The West is Responsible for the Ukraine Crisis." And he was talking about the background. The background begins with the fall of the Soviet Union, 1989, 1990. There were negotiations between President Bush, James Baker and Mikhail Gorbachev about how to deal with the issues that arose at the time. A crucial question is: What happens to NATO? NATO had been advertised, since its beginning, as necessary to protect western Europe from the Russian hordes. OK, no more Russian hordes, so what happens to NATO?
Well, we know what happened to NATO. But the crucial issue was this. Gorbachev agreed to allow Germany, a unified Germany, to join NATO, a hostile military alliance. It’s a pretty remarkable concession, if you think about the history of the preceding century, half-century. Germany alone had practically destroyed Russia several times, and now he was agreeing to have Germany join a hostile military alliance led by the only superpower. But there was a quid pro quo, that Germany—that NATO would not move one inch to the east. That was the phrase that was used in the interchanges, meaning to East Germany. And on that condition, they went forward. NATO immediately moved to East Germany. When Gorbachev vigorously protested, naturally, he was informed by the United States that it was only a verbal commitment, it wasn’t on paper. The unstated implication is, if you are naïve enough to think you can make a gentlemen’s agreement with us, it’s your problem. They didn’t say that; I’m saying that. But NATO moved to East Germany; under Clinton, moved right up to Russia’s borders.
Just a couple of weeks ago, U.S. military equipment was taking part in a military parade in Estonia a couple hundred yards from the Russian border. Russia is surrounded by U.S. offensive weapons—sometimes they’re called "defense," but they’re all offensive weapons. And the idea that the new government in Ukraine, that took over after the former government was overthrown, last December, late December, it passed a resolution, overwhelmingly—I think something like 300 to eight or something—announcing its intention to take steps to join NATO. No Russian leader, no matter who it is, could tolerate Ukraine, right at the geostrategic center of Russian concerns, joining a hostile military alliance. I mean, we can imagine, for example, how the U.S. would have reacted, say, during the Cold War if the Warsaw Pact had extended to Latin America, and Mexico and Canada were now planning to join the Warsaw Pact. Of course, that’s academic, because the first step would have led to violent U.S. response, and it wouldn’t have gone any further.
AMY GOODMAN: The Cuban missile crisis.
NOAM CHOMSKY: Yeah, and it’s very interesting to think about what actually happened at the Cuban missile crisis, which is very striking. The issue—the crucial issue with the missile crisis was—the peak moment was October 26th and 27th, right at the end. Khrushchev had sent a letter to Kennedy offering to end the crisis by simultaneous, public withdrawal of Russian missiles from Cuba and U.S. missiles from Turkey. These were obsolete missiles for which a withdrawal order had already been given, because they were being replaced by much more lethal U.S. missiles and Polaris submarines, invulnerable submarines. So that was the offer. They would withdraw the missiles; we would withdraw obsolete missiles, which are already being replaced by more lethal ones. Kennedy refused. And his own subjective assessment, whatever that means, of nuclear war was a third to a half. That’s got to be the most horrific decision in history. Khrushchev backed down, fortunately. The U.S. did secretly say that it would withdraw the obsolete missiles, of course, which it didn’t need anymore. But if you take a look at the balance of power that was assumed to be legitimate, we are—you have to establish the principle that we have a right to surround anyone with lethal offensive weapons that can obliterate them in a second, but they can’t do anything anywhere near us. Same as with—take a look at the conflict with China over the maritime conflict. Where is it taking place? I mean, is it off the coast of California? Is it in the Caribbean? No, it’s off the coast of China. That’s where we have to protect what we call freedom of the seas, not in—in China’s waters. This is a part of the concept that we basically own the world, and we have a right to do anything anywhere we like, and nobody has a right to stand up to it.
Now, in the case of the Ukraine, again, whatever you think about Putin—think he’s the worst monster since Hitler—they still have a case, and it’s a case that no Russian leader is going to back down from. They cannot accept the Ukrainian move of the current government to join NATO, even probably the European Community. There is a very natural settlement to this issue: a strong declaration that Ukraine will be neutralized, it won’t be part of any military alliance; that, along with some more or less agreed-upon choices about how—about the autonomy of regions. You can finesse it this way and that, but those are the basic terms of a peaceful settlement. But we have to be willing to accept it; otherwise, we’re moving towards a very dangerous situation. I mentioned before that the Doomsday Clock, famous clock of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, has just been advanced to three minutes before midnight. That’s very close. Midnight means we’re finished. That is the highest, closest it’s reached since 1983.
And we might remember what happened then. What happened then was that the Reagan administration, as soon as it came into office, began highly provocative actions. It wanted to probe Russian defenses, so they simulated air and naval attacks against Russia, very publicly and openly. They wanted the Russians to know, to see how they’d respond. Well, it was a very tense moment. Pershing II missiles were being installed in western Europe with a five- to 10-minute flight time to Moscow. Reagan had announced the so-called Star Wars program, which is called defense, but strategic analysts on all sides agree that it’s a first-strike weapon, what’s called missile defense. It was an extremely tense period. The Russians were concerned. It was known at the time that they were concerned, but recently released archives, Russian archives, indicate that the concern was very high. There’s a recent U.S. intelligence report analyzing in detail what their reactions were, and it concludes—its words are—"The war scare was real." We came close to war. And it’s worse than that, because right in the—1984, right at the peak of this—this is when the Doomsday Clock was approaching midnight—right in the midst of that, Russian automated detection systems, which are much worse than ours—we have satellite detection. We can detect missiles from takeoff. They have only radar detection, line of sight, so they can only detect missiles when you can kind of see them with radar. They detected a U.S. missile attack. The protocol is for that information to be transmitted to the high command, which then launches a preventive strike. It went to a particular individual, Stanislav Petrov. He just decided not to transmit it. That’s why we’re alive to talk about it.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to have to break, then come back to Noam Chomsky, professor emeritus at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, author of over a hundred books. We’ll be back in a minute.
Headlines:
Russia: 50,000 Rally over Death of Putin Critic Boris Nemtsov
Tens of thousands of people have rallied in Moscow to honor the slain opposition leader Boris Nemtsov. A former deputy prime minister turned dissident politician, Nemtsov was shot to death Friday night near Red Square. Speaking just hours before in what would be his final interview, Nemtsov had accused Russian President Vladimr Putin of authoritarian rule.
Boris Nemtsov: "We need political reform in the country. When all the power is concentrated in the hands of one person, and when that person rules eternally, it will all end in absolute catastrophe. The main question people ask us is: 'You are inviting us to join the march. If we come, what will change?' I answer: 'If a lot of people come, something will change.'"
Weeks before his death, Nemtsov reportedly told a Russian news site he feared Putin wanted him dead. Putin has condemned the murder and vowed to find the perpetrators. Nemtsov had been set to lead Sunday’s rally to protest Russia’s economic policies and its military role in Ukraine. It instead turned into a vigil in his memory. An estimated crowd of 50,000 marched past the Kremlin, carrying signs reading, "I am not afraid."
Kerry in Geneva for Ukraine Talks as Conflict Toll Tops 6,000
Secretary of State John Kerry is meeting with Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov in Geneva to discuss the conflict in Ukraine. The meeting comes just days after Kerry publicly accused Russian officials of lying to his face about their military support for separatist rebels. Russia and Ukraine are also holding direct talks in Brussels to resolve a dispute over the delivery of Russian gas. The United States said today the death toll from the nearly year-old conflict has topped 6,000. A recent ceasefire continues to hold after a shaky start.
Iraq Launches Operation to Retake Tikrit from ISIS
Iraq has launched a new military operation to retake the city of Tikrit from the self-proclaimed Islamic State. Thousands of Iraqi forces and militia fighters have converged in the city Samarra to strike nearby ISIS strongholds. The United States is expected to provide air support as part of its continued bombing campaign. The offensive comes as the Iraqi military prepares for a major U.S.-backed operation to retake Mosul from ISIS in the coming weeks.
Syrian Opposition Groups Reject U.N. Ceasefire Plan
Opposition groups in Syria have rejected the U.N. plan for a temporary ceasefire in the northern city of Aleppo. U.N. envoy Staffan de Mistura recently won a pledge from the regime of Bashar al-Assad to stop attacks on Aleppo for up to six weeks. But Aleppo’s Revolutionary Council says it will not meet with de Mistura unless he proposes a "comprehensive solution" based on Assad’s removal from power. This month marks the fourth anniversary of Syria’s civil war.
ISIS Frees 21 Christians; Over 200 Remain Captive
The Islamic State has reportedly freed 21 Assyrian Christians kidnapped in Syria. But more than 200 Assyrians are said to remain in ISIS captivity following its raids on more than a dozen villages last week.
Netanyahu Arrives in D.C. Ahead of Speech to Congress
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has arrived in Washington for a trip aimed at stopping a nuclear deal with Iran. Netanyahu is set to address the pro-Israeli lobby group AIPAC today followed by a controversial speech before Congress on Tuesday. His visit comes just as Iran and six world powers, including the United States, are set to resume talks in a bid to meet a March 31 deadline. We will have more on Netanyahu’s visit and the Iran nuclear talks when we spend the rest of the hour with Noam Chomsky, after headlines.
Palestinians Mark Anniversaries of Goldstein Massacre, Bilin Protests
Hundreds of people have rallied in the West Bank to mark a pair of anniversaries in the Palestinian struggle against Israeli occupation. On Friday, demonstrators gathered in Hebron to mark the 20th anniversary of the massacre of 29 Palestinian worshipers by U.S.-born settler Baruch Goldstein. Protesters also marched in the village of Bilin to mark the 10th anniversary of the village’s campaign against the Israeli separation wall, which carves up the West Bank to divide Palestinian land and annex the major Jewish settlement blocs. Dov Khenin, a leftist member of the Israeli Parliament, was among the Israeli protesters taking part.
Dov Khenin: "Now this is a very important struggle, because it is a struggle of a small village that from day one opened its houses, opened its hearts to other people, to people from international community, to democratic Israelis who come here and together struggle and demonstrate against the confiscation, against the separation wall, against occupation."
Egyptian Court Declares Hamas a Terrorist Group
An Egyptian court has upheld a decision that deems the Palestinian group Hamas a terrorist organization. The move will further strain ties between Egypt and Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip on Egypt’s northern border. Hamas has called the decision "shocking and dangerous." Hamas could react by no longer accepting Egypt as a broker with Israel, a role it most recently played during the assault on Gaza last summer.
Venezuela Unveils New Restrictions on U.S. Diplomats, Politicians
Venezuela has announced the arrest of an unspecified number of Americans on charges of espionage, at least some of whom have reportedly been released and left the country. Speaking at a rally, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro said the suspects were trying to stoke anti-government political sentiment.
President Nicolás Maduro: "We’ve detected activity, and we have captured some U.S. citizens in undercover activities, in hidden activities, espionage, trying to win over people in towns along the Venezuelan coast, trying to win over people in some neighborhoods. In Táchira, we captured a pilot of a U.S. plane of Latin origin with all sorts of documentation."
Maduro also announced new restrictions on the number of U.S. diplomats allowed in Venezuela, and rule changes that will subject Americans to the same visa requirements Venezuelans face in the United States. Maduro has also unveiled a list of American politicians barred from entering Venezuela in response to U.S. sanctions against Venezuelan officials last year. Maduro has repeatedly accused right-wing opponents of fomenting a coup with U.S. support. The White House has denied the charges but said last week it’s considering "tools" to "steer the Venezuelan government in the direction ... they should be headed."
Cuba, U.S. Hold 2nd Round of Talks
The United States and Cuba have held a second round of talks as part of the effort to restore full diplomatic ties for the first time in more than half a century. After meeting in Washington, the head of the U.S. delegation, Roberta Jacobson, said the two sides could reopen embassies in time for a regional meeting next month. The head of the Cuban delegation, Josefina Vidal, said Cuba expects the United States to remove it from the State Department’s list of countries sponsoring international terrorism.
Roberta Jacobson: "We can get this done in time for the Summit of the Americas, and I certainly think that with the kind of cooperation that we had today, I certainly leave those conversations today optimistic, but committed and recognizing the work that still has to be done."
Josefina Vidal: "It’s a priority for Cuba that we hope is addressed and is solved in the process towards the re-establishment of diplomatic relations, because, as I already said, it would be very difficult to say that we have re-established relations with our country still on a list that we believe very, very firmly that we have never belonged to and we do not belong to."
Uruguay Swears in New Leader, Replacing "World’s Poorest President"
Uruguay has sworn in Tabaré Vázquez as its new president. Vázquez previously served in the post from 2005 to 2010, when his leftist ally and now outgoing president, José Mujica, replaced him. Mujica, a former guerrilla fighter, leaves office after a term that included the legalization of marijuana, abortion and same-sex marriage. He chose to live in a modest one-story home instead of the presidential palace, and famously donated 90 percent of his salary to charity. That earned Mujica the nickname "world’s poorest president."
Bangladeshis Honor Slain U.S.-Born Blogger
A large crowd gathered in the Bangladeshi capital of Dhaka on Sunday to honor a Bangladeshi-American blogger killed in a brutal attack. Avijit Roy, a U.S. citizen born in Bangladesh, was walking home from a book fair when machete-wielding assailants hacked him to death. Roy’s wife and fellow blogger, Rafida Ahmed, was left seriously wounded. Roy’s family says Islamist extremists recently threatened him for speaking out against religious fundamentalism.
Congress Passes Measure to Fund DHS for 1 Week
Congress has averted a partial shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security just hours before the agency was set to lose its funding. On Friday, lawmakers approved a stopgap measure keeping the DHS open for another week. House Democrats helped approve the bill hours after far-right Republicans revolted against a three-week funding measure brought by House Speaker John Boehner. Republicans have sought to tie the DHS money to reversing President Obama’s executive actions on immigration. Boehner has reportedly promised Democrats that a "clean" long-term funding bill without the immigration provisions will reach the House floor this week.
Los Angeles Police Shooting of Homeless Man Caught on Video
Los Angeles police have shot and killed a homeless man in an encounter caught on video and viewed millions of times online. The footage shows police wrestling the man to the pavement and deploying a Taser. In the foreground, a woman who tries to pick up an officer’s baton is also wrestled to the ground. A voice in the background appears to yell "drop the gun" before at least five gunshots are heard. A warning: This footage is graphic. The man, identified by witnesses as "Africa," was pronounced dead at the scene. Police say they opened fire after a struggle over an officer’s gun. One witness described his account of the shooting.
Witness: "About five officers wrestled him down to the ground. He managed to get up. They took him down again. Then they beat him while he was on the ground. Next thing I knew, I heard one shot. And I looked over across the street, and I seen three more shots being fired at the guy, who was laying down on the ground."
Los Angeles police say they are investigating.
Dozens Rally Against Chicago Police "Black Site"
Dozens of people have rallied in Chicago outside a secretive police facility tied to the abuse and mistreatment of prisoners. The Guardian revealed last week Chicago police have used a nondescript warehouse known as Homan Square to conduct detentions and interrogations. Prisoners were allegedly denied access to their attorneys, beaten, and held for up to 24 hours without any official record of their detention. On Saturday, a group of demonstrators gathered at Homan to demand an investigation and the facility’s closure.
Protester 1: "When you became officers, you became public servants, not an extension of a military branch of the state. We are not the enemy."
Protester 2: "Mr. Mayor, we demand an immediate, impartial investigation of Homan Square. We demand that you shut down this facility, at least so far as taking any accused people here. There are plenty of police lockups better monitored than this one around the city."
Local activists have organized another rally today calling on Chicago to pay compensation to victims of longtime police abuse.
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