Noam Chomsky The USA is a mafia with Fatima Bhutto

Going back to the military-industrial complex, let's name it properly, high-tech industry, advanced industry. The expenditures for the Afghan war, trillions of dollars, break it down. How much of it went to Afghanistan? Most of it stays in the country to those who are benefiting from it. So, is it a failure? Depends where you look. With regard to the Iraq, I think there's a big difference between Iraq and Afghanistan. The Afghanistan war was a real, from an imperial point of view, a real error from the start. Both wars, I should say, are criminal wars, and Britain is deeply implicated in the criminality, particularly on the player. They're both criminal enterprises, but different. Simply from the point of view of imperial strategy, the invasion of Iraq made good sense. Iraq is one of the world's major oil producers, very cheap oil. Stick a hole in the ground, oil gushes out, you know, to be filling, drilling. It's right in the middle of the main energy sector of the world. So, taking over Iraq, from an imperial point of view, made quite good sense. And it was openly stated at the time, openly advertised, that this was the first step. They were just going on to... There were another seven countries in the headlights to go after. So, that's standard imperial policy. Perfectly sensible. Didn't work out. They caused an utter catastrophe. Don't have to run through it. All over the region, devastation. Didn't harm the United States, devastating for the region, but they didn't achieve the imperial goals. They were, in fact, stated clearly by the end, by 2007, when it was clear that the Iraq invasion was failing. This was then still the Bush administration. George W. Bush, November 2007, came out with what's called a SOFA agreement, status of forces agreement, with the government of Iraq. The proposal was that the United States should have permanent military bases in Iraq, and that U.S. corporations, meaning energy corporations, should have preferential access to the Iraqi market. This was taken so seriously that a couple months later, when the budget was passed, Bush added what are called signing statements, saying, these are the provisions of the budget that I'm not going to pay attention to, and it included all the ones I mentioned. Well, the U.S. imposed government of Iraq refused to accept it. But those were the imperial goals. Perfectly understandable. Not achieved. That's common in the history of imperialism. Now, what about Afghanistan? No purpose whatsoever. No strategic purpose. No interest in Afghanistan. No interest in Al Qaeda. That was made perfectly clear. The Taliban offered to surrender shortly after the U.S. invaded. The attitude of the U.S. government was explicit. We do not negotiate surrender. That would, of course, turn over bin Laden, Taliban. We're not interested. We don't negotiate surrender. What are we? That was actually described very well by the leading anti-Taliban, Afghan resistance leader, Abdul Haq, by the revered in Afghanistan. He was interviewed in The Guardian, in fact, shortly after the U.S. invasion by Anatoly Yevhen, a distinguished Central Asian scholar, who asked Abdul Haq, why do you think the Americans invaded about two weeks after the invasion? He said, they're going to kill a lot of Afghans. They're going to undermine our quite promising efforts to overthrow the Taliban from within. But they don't care. They want to show their muscle and intimidate everyone. It's about right. Pretty much what Donald Rumsfeld said shortly after, we don't negotiate surrender. We want to show our muscle and intimidate everyone. That makes perfect sense from the point of view of the Mafia, which is basically international society. You don't. You've got to intimidate everyone and show your muscle. We see it happening right now, goes way back to the British, to the French, far back as you go. I mean, besides being an imperial failure, Afghanistan also, or the fall of Kabul and the fall of Afghanistan, would also suggest a decline in American power in the sense that this week, Russia has hosted Afghanistan talks, the first high-level international engagement with the Taliban since they came to power, which America chose not to participate in. It would also signal a change in direction. They've been pivoting away from Pakistan, being quite petulant, let's say. President Biden hasn't engaged with the Pakistani premier. Secretary of State Blinken has made it very clear that Pakistan is not on his first roster of calls when dealing with Afghanistan. They seem to be following through with something that began in earnest with Trump, which is a pivot to India. But I want to ask you about America pivoting not just away from Pakistan and to India, but specifically pivoting towards a head of state, Narendra Modi, who is, by all accounts, an out-and-out fascist, who oversaw the massacre of thousands of Muslims when he was the chief minister of Gujarat, and was a man so reviled that before he became prime minister of India, no Western country would grant him even a visit visa. Can you speak to America's shift in the region, away from Pakistan and towards India? That has to do with the general so-called pivot to Asia, which is aimed at China. China is supposed to pose a tremendous threat to the United States. That's what you read everywhere, this huge giant threat. But what is the China threat? How is China threatening the United States? China is very repressive internally. Is that a threat to the United States? Is repression in other countries a threat to anybody? No, it's not. In fact, the China threat was described very accurately by a well-known international statesman, Paul Keating, former prime minister of Australia. He said the China threat is China's existence. China's existence as a part of the world that does not accept American orders. That's not intimidating. They don't back down. That's a threat. The United States cannot accept that. And if you understand international affairs, you can see why. International affairs, as I mentioned, is rather similar to the mafia. The godfather has to show his muscle, intimidate everyone, make sure they follow. The godfather wants people like Tony Blair who follow along without raising any questions, no matter how crazy it is. That's what the godfather wants. Well, Europe is pretty much like that. Take the Iran sanctions. Europe is strongly opposed to them. It tries to get around them and block them. Same with the Cuba sanctions. In fact, not just Europe, the entire world is opposed to them. General Assembly is 184 to 2. United States and Israel. Israel has to follow the United States plan. So basically unanimous. Everyone follows the sanctions. Why? The godfather is powerful. You don't fool around with him. You get in his way, he can cause you great damage. One thing the godfather can do is throw you out of the international financial system, which is run from New York, and there's plenty of other ways. So Britain, of course, even more so after Brexit. But for a long time, most of Europe, most of the rest of the world follows order. Not China. That's the China threat. You look at the China threat, it's at the Chinese border, not at the U.S. border. China's eastern coast is surrounded by U.S. bases with nuclear armed missiles aimed at China. There's nothing like that in the Caribbean or the coast of California. The South China Sea, which is contested, is portrayed as a freedom of navigation issue when the West sends naval armadas there, has nothing to do with freedom of navigation, which has not been threatened in the least. It has to do with a technical problem, which is certainly subject to negotiation, a problem, an ambiguous statement in the law of the sea, which, incidentally, the United States hasn't ratified. It's the only maritime country that refused to ratify it. Nevertheless, it claims Morocco is under the law of the sea, established what are called exclusive economic zones, 200 miles offshore for every maritime state. The question is, what activities are permitted inside the EEZ? Specifically, are military and intelligence activities permitted there? China says no. India says no. In fact, India recently vigorously protested U.S. military actions inside its economic exclusive zone. The United States says yes. Okay, that's the technical issue. The law of the sea is not totally precise on this. It says no threat or use of force. Lawyers can argue about what that means. That's obviously something for diplomacy and negotiation, not for provocative actions, which raise tension. Okay, that's the issue. That's the China threat. But part of the pivot to Asia to confront the so-called China threat is closer relations with the major state outside of China. Modi can do whatever he wants. He can destroy Indian democracy, which he's doing, a major attack on secular democracy. He can launch, it's not quite a coup de grace, but crusades against Muslims in all sorts of ways. Deprive them of citizenship with the citizenship law against alleged illegal immigrants. Take over Kashmir, expanding sharply Indian repression in Kashmir. Pretty much anything he likes, as long as he follows orders. That's the way the mafia runs. Take Saudi Arabia, one of the most repressive, violent states in the world. Does it ever matter? Doesn't matter. They have the oil, they do what we say. It's interesting, you mentioned the 800 military bases that the US has all over the world. China, as far as I know, has just one military base. And not only that, for every dollar that America spends on renewable energy, China is spending three, which, according to the UN, makes it the leading investor in renewables. I want to ask about climate. I want to ask about the planet. In your book with Robert Pollin, Climate Crisis and the Green New Deal, you detail the urgent action that's required of human life is to be sustained on the planet. You talk about the elimination of fossil fuels from our current gargantuan amount, from what we are using to zero. You talk about eliminating meat consumption. My favorite suggestion that the book offers was jail time for CEOs who failed to meet their renewable energy target. Every day we have more and more information about global heating. Just this week, the UN Climate Agency says that eastern glaciers will vanish in just two decades. That will put 118 million people in the continent of Africa alone at risk of drought, floods, and extreme heat. I think like a lot of people, I'm part of an environmental action collective. One of the questions we struggle with all the time is how to best frame the climate crisis in order to nurture urgent collective action rather than apathy. We all seem to have the same information, but there doesn't seem to be any action. How do we do that? How do we nurture? First of all, let's put the facts on the table. They're not really in dispute. We're approaching a precipice. A couple more steps towards it, we fall over, and we're done. It doesn't mean everybody's going to die right away. It just means we'll be moving toward, we'll be passing tipping points, irreversible ones, and the world will be moving towards decades, maybe centuries of horror, terror, destruction, indescribable. We'll be almost lucky not to be alive. Doesn't mean it'll take time for the last remnants to have moved towards near extinction, maybe a long time, but it'll be essentially over. You read the ExxonMobil playbook. They say, don't worry, we can keep pouring poisons into the atmosphere. Someday, some technology will be devised which doesn't exist, which will take the poisons out of the atmosphere. You want to hear it explicitly, just listen to Joe Manchin, the kingmaker in the U.S. Congress. Cole Barron, the leading recipient in Congress of fossil fuel funding, his mantra is, no elimination, only innovation, straight out of the ExxonMobil PR industry. Well, it's not unknown. Actually, every part of the Biden climate bill is either gone or will soon be gone. And it's not just the United States. On August 9th, the IPPC came out with its latest report, dire report. Bottom line is, we've got to stop using fossil fuels right now, not tomorrow, right now, certain percentage, certain percentage every year, until finally you reach something like phasing out, pretty much phasing out fossil fuels by roughly mid-century. That's the lesson. Everybody understands it. What's the reaction? Increase fossil fuel production. Joe Biden, the day after the IPCC report, issued an appeal to OPEC to raise production because gas prices in the United States are getting too high. European Union followed along immediately, calling on the producer states to increase production because there's a fuel price that's harming the economy. Two ways out of it. One is destroy the possibility for life for your grandchildren. That's one possibility. The other possibility is move even more, much more rapidly, far more rapidly towards renewable energy to try to meet the IPPC proposal. Which way was chosen? Unanimous. Virtually unanimous. Tells us something about our institutions and even about who we are. It's not a pleasant lesson. No, it's not over. We don't have to take the last steps towards the present. It's well known how to avoid, not only avoid the crisis, but create a better world, much better world. There are detailed proposals by International Energy Agency, that's a producer-based agency, detailed proposals. My co-author, Rob Holland, a fine economist, has developed very explicit proposals, pretty much along the same lines. Jeffrey Sachs, another major economist, on the same thing. There's a resolution in Congress put forth by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and came in on the Sanders wave. And the senior editor, senior senator from Massachusetts, Ed Markey, has been interested in environmental issues. The resolution is pretty much the same. It's all there. You know how to do it. Human intelligence has reached the point where it can solve the crisis. Human moral capacity has not. Institutional structures block it. Partly, but not totally, institutional structures are neoliberal. The neoliberal version of capitalism, vicious class, one-sided class war, is a death line. So, you can't do anything except raise short-term profits for the very rich. Okay, that's the end.