by JEREMY KUZMAROV
“Major world powers need to shift from confrontation to accommodation soon; otherwise, we’ll go off the precipice together.”
The renowned linguist and political dissident Noam Chomsky gave a grim prognosis on international politics at a webinar hosted by Massachusetts Peace Action on April 26.
Chomsky told the audience that he was dismayed to read in the pages of Foreign Affairs, the journal of the prestigious Council on Foreign Relations, that we “can have a small nuclear war with Russia…who cares.”
This kind of talk, said Chomsky, is “beyond insanity.” A nuclear war will result in mass suffering and destruction of much of the planet—as whoever strikes first will engender retaliation.
Chomsky said that Albert Einstein was once asked what weapons would be used to fight World War III. He responded that he didn’t know, but that “World War IV would be fought with sticks and stones.” Which appears to be where we are headed.
U.S. generals, who Chomsky said should know better, are talking openly about war with China, almost as if it is a fait accompli.
The U.S. is encircling China militarily as the Biden administration is in the process of a) building up the U.S. military base network in the Philippines; b) fortifying the U.S. military alliance with South Korea and Japan; c) sending nuclear-armed submarines and precision weapons to Australia aimed at China; and d) sending B-52 nuclear-armed bombers to Guam.
The ongoing U.S. economic war on China was apparent in U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo’s remarks that all Western countries must cooperate in preventing Chinese innovation and development—implying that China should be strangled economically.
The Biden administration has stipulated that no U.S. ally can send anything to China without U.S. components, including the Netherlands, a leader in the lithographic industry key in the development of computer chips.
According to Chomsky, the U.S. is now essentially trying to de-industrialize Europe by cutting it off from the China market and from Russian minerals as a result of the war in Ukraine.
European allies are partially submitting, though partially refusing, to comply with Washington’s designs, while much of the rest of the world is committed to asserting their independence from the U.S.-dominated global system, trading more and more in non-U.S. currencies and improving commercial relations with China.
According to Chomsky, Washington was recently humiliated by China when it brokered a major peace agreement between Saudi Arabia and Iran, which counteracted the long-standing U.S. policy of trying to build up a bloc of reactionary Arab states to counter Iran.
The destructiveness of U.S. policies in the Middle East is emblematic of a failed empire whose days seem more and more to be doomed.
With the looming threat of environmental disaster, Chomsky said that peace movements must demand an immediate shift from confrontation with China and Russia to cooperation—otherwise we will all go off the precipice together.
Seoul’s Growing Integration into U.S. War Planning
Chomsky’s talk occurred during a week when South Korea’s conservative President Yoon Suk Yeol was visiting with President Biden at a special summit to discuss the further integration of Seoul into U.S. war planning and the military integration of the two countries.
At a joint press conference after the summit, Biden and Yoon announced a new U.S. commitment to deploy a nuclear-armed submarine in South Korea for the first time since the early 1980s.
This was part of a set of new steps designed to boost U.S.-South Korean cooperation on military training, information sharing and other forms of strategic collaboration, with General Kenneth Wilsbach, the Commander of the U.S. Pacific Air Forces, suggesting that the U.S. may soon be landing nuclear capable B-52 bombers at South Korean air bases.
In an interview published on April 19, Yoon laid out the agenda for his trip, stating that Seoul could potentially begin sending lethal military aid to Ukraine and backing Washington’s campaign to start a war with China over Taiwan. Yoon has also recently taken measures to normalize relations with Japan in order to better facilitate a tripartite alliance with the U.S. against China.
The RAND Corporation characterized Yoon as Biden’s “perfect South Korean partner” because he supported an expansion of joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises and the U.S. military training in order to “deter North Korean aggression,” along with membership in the new Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, whose main purpose is to isolate China.
Yoon was honored during his Washington visit with a state dinner, the highest diplomatic honor, in which celebrity chef Edward Lee whipped up a Korean-inspired menu, Broadway performers provided entertainment, and Yoon was seated at a table with Hollywood starlet Angelina Jolie and her adopted son Maddox who attended a university in South Korea.
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