[ Silence ]
>> Professor Noam Chomsky:
From the outset of the War,
Second World War in 1939,
Washington anticipated that it,
that the War would end with
the United States in a position
of overwhelming power.
High level state
department officials
and non-governmental foreign
policy specialists met regularly
through the, the wartime years.
They laid out plans
for the post-War world.
They delineated what they
called the Grand Area
that the U.S. was to dominate.
The, the Grand Area
was to include
at least the Western
Hemisphere, the entire Far East,
and the British Empire, which
the U.S. was planning to take
over including the U.S.
Middle East Energy Resources.
The British Foreign
Office was aware of this.
If you look at their documents,
not very happy about it,
but [laughter] said we're
going to have to recognise
that we're going to be a junior
partner as they called it
in the evolving world,
world order.
The, but that was in the early
years of the, of the War.
As Russian forces started to
grind down the Nazi armies
after Stalingrad, the conception
of the Grand Area was enlarged
to include as much of
Eurasia as possible,
including certainly
the industrial
and commercial centre, the
heartland of Western Europe.
Now within the Grand
Area, and now quoting,
"Within the Grand
Area, the U.S. was
to maintain unquestioned
power with military
and economic supremacy while
ensuring the limitation
of any exercise of sovereignty
by states that might interfere
with its global designs."
That's a live policy right now,
come back to crucial instances.
One should bear in mind how
venerable the doctrine is,
and how appropriate to
the nature of the world
that was, in fact, emerging.
You have to remember that when
the Second World War ended,
the U.S. literally had
half the world's wealth,
position of power and security
that was totally unparalleled.
Nothing like it in history,
and that was understood.
It's quite clear from
the documentary record,
I'm quoting now that
President Roosevelt was aiming
at United States hegemony
in the post-World War,
that's quoting the British
diplomatic historians Geoffrey
Warner, quote an
accurate assessment.
And more significant,
the careful worked-on
plans were implemented
in very much the terms in
which they were outlined during
the War.
They were implemented
shortly after.
Well, it was always
recognised from the beginning
that Europe might choose to
follow an independent path.
NATO was partially intended
to counter this threat,
and rather strikingly, as
soon as the official pretext
for NATO, you know, protecting
Europe from the Russian hoards,
as soon as that dissolved
in 1989,
reflectively, NATO was expanded.
If anyone had believed
the propaganda,
it should have disappeared.
Instead, it expanded.
One of the interesting things
that happened in 1989 as a lot
of clouds lifted, you could sort
of see policies less
concealed by ideology.
So NATO's expanded to the east.
Now that was in violation of
verbal pledges to Gorbachev,
which he was naive
enough to believe.
He was pretty irritated by
it, but nothing he could do,
and it's since been
expanded beyond.
Now it's a U.S.-run
global intervention force,
and it has an official task.
The official task is controlling
the crucial infrastructure
of the global energy system.
That's quite an expansive role,
and that's what NATO
is now committed to.
The Grand Area doctrine
limits the sovereignty
of others explicitly,
but it grants the United
States the unrestricted rights.
That's what it means to
be a global hegemony,
and that was made very
clear and explicit at once.
For example, in 1946,
when the U.S. agreed
to a world court jurisdiction,
but with a condition.
The condition was that the
United States would not be
subject to any international
treaties,
meaning the U.N. charter,
charter of the Organisation
of American States, later the
Genocide Convention and so on.
That, this, this has come up
before the Court repeatedly,
and the Court has accepted
and as it was required to do,
the reservation that none
of these treaties apply
to the United States.
The principles also clearly
license military intervention
at will, and that
conclusion has been clearly,
not only implemented
continuously
but also pretty clearly
articulated.
One tends to think of the
right-winged administrations,
but that's misleading.
One of the most expansive forms
of the doctrine was
under Clinton.
In fact, Bill Clinton, the
Clinton administration declared,
quote that the United
States has the right
to use military force
unilaterally
to ensure uninhibited access to
key markets, energy supplies,
and strategic resources,
and must maintain military
forces forward deployed
in Europe and Asia in order to
shape people's opinions about us
and to shape events that
will affect our livelihood
and our security.
That's actually much
more expansive than the,
the much maligned George W.
Bush doctrine that came later.
The Clinton doctrine doesn't
even require the pretext
that the Bush doctrine
insisted on,
but it was presented politely.
So, therefore, it didn't
[laughter] arouse much interest.
Actually, the antagonism towards
Bush was almost entirely styled,
not sub, substance
is pretty standard.
The, I think that's one of the
reasons Obama was so welcomed
in Europe, the style change.
Not the substance,
but the [laughter].
The same principles governed
the invasion of Iraq.
That became clearer as
U.S. failure to impose its,
its will became clearer.
As that proceeded,
the actual goals
of the invasion couldn't be
concealed any longer behind the
pretty rhetoric about,
you know, democracy
and all sorts of nice things.
In November 2007, the White
House issued what it called a
Declaration of Principles
concerning Iraq,
two main points.
The one was that U.S. forces
must remain indefinitely
in Iraq.
The military bases right to
carry out combat operations,
and, secondly, that Iraq must
privilege U.S. investors.
Two months later,
in January 2008,
President Bush informed Congress
that he would reject legislation
that might limit the permanent
stationing of U.S. armed forces
in Iraq or U.S. control
of the oil resources
of Iraq, I'm quoting.
These are demands, incidentally,
that the United States had
to abandon shortly after, in
the face of Iraqi resistance,
as it had been forced
to back off step
by step all the way through.
That's a major triumph of
non-violent resistance,
but the U.S. and
Britain have no trouble
at all killing insurgents.
They're very good at killing
people, but they couldn't deal
with the mass non-violent
resistance the hundreds
of thousands of people
demonstrating and protesting.
So they had to back off,
and finally the basic
demands were abandoned.
Articulated pretty clearly
as they were being abandoned.
That's a major defeat
as Jonathan Steele
and other serious
analysts have recognised.
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