AMY GOODMAN: President Obama and European leaders arrived in France today ahead of a key NATO summit to commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of the alliance. Obama will visit Germany today, as well, which is also playing host to the summit.
The French city of Strasbourg is under security lockdown, with 25,000 police on patrol following a day of clashes between protesters and riot police. Three hundred people were arrested, and a German press photographer was hospitalized after being hit in the stomach by a police rubber bullet. Tens of thousands of demonstrators have descended on Strasbourg and the German towns of Kehl and Baden Baden to protest the summit. France has temporarily reinstated border controls with Germany to restrict access to protesters.
The focus of the summit will be Afghanistan, where 70,000 troops, mostly under NATO command, are at war. President Obama will use the talks to enlist support for his escalation of the war. Obama has sent 21,000 extra US troops to Afghanistan, is considering deploying 10,000 more.
Meanwhile, Taliban militants in Pakistan marked the start of the two-day summit by destroying a fleet of nine parked NATO vehicles in transit for Afghanistan.
Last week, President Obama defended his decision to send more troops to Afghanistan.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: The world cannot afford the price that will come due if Afghanistan slides back into chaos or al-Qaeda operates unchecked. We have a shared responsibility to act, not because we seek to project power for its own sake, but because our own peace and security depends on it. And what’s at stake at this time is not just our own security; it’s the very idea that free nations can come together on behalf of our common security.
AMY GOODMAN: To talk about Afghanistan, NATO and the state of US economic and military power in the world today, we’re joined by one of the world’s most astute thinkers and most important intellectuals of our time: linguist, philosopher, social critic, political dissident, Noam Chomsky.
Noam Chomsky is a prolific author and Institute Professor Emeritus at MIT, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, just down the road from here, where he taught for over half a century. Among his many dozens of books are Rogue States: The Rule of Force in World Affairs; The New Military Humanism: Lessons from Kosovo; Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel, and the Palestinians; Manufacturing Consent; Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies; and Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy. There’s a great collection of his work, just out now, edited by Anthony Arnove, called The Essential Chomsky.
Noam Chomsky, welcome to Democracy Now!
NOAM CHOMSKY: Very glad to be with you.
AMY GOODMAN: It’s great to be with you here in Massachusetts in the studio, instead of talking to you on the phone at home.
NOAM CHOMSKY: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: So, let’s start with what’s happening with this NATO summit celebrating sixty years, France rejoining after more than four decades. Your analysis?
NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, the obvious question is why bother celebrating NATO at all? In fact, why does it exist? It’s twenty years now, almost, since the Berlin Wall fell. NATO was constructed on the—with the reason, whether one believes it or not, that it was going to defend Western Europe from Russian assault. Once the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union was beginning to collapse, that reason was gone. So, first question: why does NATO exist?
Well, in fact, the answers are interesting. Mikhail Gorbachev made an—agreed, made a remarkable concession at that time to the United States. NATO’s essentially run by the United States. He offered to allow a reunited Germany to join NATO, a hostile military alliance—