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Noam Chomsky
Noam Chomsky full length interview with BBC Channel 4 News : Who rules the world now?
Burgess COMMENTARY
Peter Burgess
Noam Chomsky full length interview: Who rules the world now?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edicDsSwYpk
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Transcript
English (United Kingdom) 0:00Mr Chomsky that impotence of voters, that angry impotence as you talk about, presumably 0:05you’d say that is what is responsible for the rise of Donald Trump, is it? 0:11It’s pretty clear what is responsible for the rise of the support for Trump and there’s 0:19general agreement about it. If you take a simple look at economic statistics, the primary 0:26support for Trump is coming from mostly white working class poor people who’ve been cast 0:36by the wayside during the neo-liberal period. They’ve lived through a generation of stagnation 0:44or decline. Real male wages are about what they were in the 1960s. There has also been 0:53a decline in functioning democracy, the overwhelming evidence reveals that even their own elected 1:02representatives barely reflect their interest and concerns. A contempt for institutions, 1:09especially congress has just increased, skyrocketed it’s down single digits often. These are 1:18people who, meanwhile there has of course been wealth created, it’s gone into very 1:26few hands, mostly into a fraction of the top 1%. So there’s enormous opulence. 1:34Yes indeed and how dangerous do you think this all is in terms of Donald Trump for example. 1:40I mean he has been toning down some of his most extreme pronouncements recently. He may, 1:46if he ever got anywhere near power, he could be held in check by congressman. How dangerous 1:50do you think he is to America? Well the greatest danger that he and indeed 1:58every republican candidate poses is barely mentioned. It’s kind of reminiscent of Sherlock 2:05Holmes’ dog that did not bark. The greatest danger is – there are two huge dangers that 2:15the human species faces. We’re now in a situation where we have to decide whether 2:21the species survives in any decent form. One is the rising danger of nuclear war, which 2:28is quite serious. The other is environmental catastrophe. Now on these issues Donald Trump 2:34and the other republican candidates are basically uniform. On the threat of nuclear war. 2:42And do you believe that Hilary Clinton, the democratic frontrunner, would champion those 2:47issues in a way that would satisfy you? Not in any way that would satisfy me, but 2:54at least she recognises that climate change is going on and that we have to do something 3:01about. Every single republican candidate denies that it’s happening, with the soul exception 3:08of Kasich who says sure it’s happening but we shouldn’t do anything about it and that’s 3:14having an impact. The Paris negotiations last December were aiming at a treaty, they couldn’t 3:23reach it for a simple reason; the republican congress would not accept it. So it’s a 3:30voluntary agreement which means even the weak standards that we’re proposed will be barely, 3:38maybe it undermines the likelihood that even they will be met. Every Republican candidate, 3:44including Trump wants to eliminate the environmental protection agency, Richard Nixon’s legacy, 3:51to cut back regulation to restart the press of business quickly as possible. On militarism, 3:59every one of them wants to raise the huge military budget, already over half of discretionary 4:05spending leading right now. It’s one factor leading to confrontations which could be extremely 4:13hazardous and this again is not being discussed. And briefly, I’d suggest one thing that 4:19you might agree with Donald Trump on would be about the EU. He talks about the UK may 4:26leave the EU, you’ve railed against European Union bureaucracy. Could you agree with him 4:32on that? No I don’t. In fact I actually have no real 4:38strong opinion on Brexit but my concern about it would be that it would weaken the European 4:47Union but it would also probably leave Britain even more, don’t want to use too strong 4:54a word, subordinate to US power than it is today. Which I don’t think would be a good 5:00thing for the world or Britain. What in a nutshell is the answer to “Who 5:04rules the world now?” As I try to discuss in the book, there is 5:11no simple answer. We usually think of states when that question is raised and with regard 5:19to states there’s no doubt that the United States, despite its decline for many many 5:26years, is still overwhelmingly more powerful than any state or group of states. But that’s 5:33only one factor. States have internal structures. An internal distribution of power. In the 5:42United States power is overwhelmingly and increasingly, in recent years, in the hands 5:48of a very narrow sector of corporate wealth, private wealth and power. And they have counterparts 5:56elsewhere who agree with them, who interact with them largely and that’s another dimension 6:02in who rules the world. And there’s also the public. The public can have, sometimes 6:08does have, enormous power. We can go back to David Hume, first major modern work on 6:17political philosophy. Foundations on the theory of government pointed out that force is on 6:23the side of the governed, those who are governed have the force if they are willing to and 6:29eager to and recognise the possibility to exercise it. Sometimes they do. That’s a 6:36major force in who rules the world. But when it comes to state power, you don’t 6:41buy the idea of China as the next superpower, the imminent superpower? 6:47China? I mean China plays a very important role in the world undoubtedly. If you take 6:54a look at say per capita income, it’s far behind the United States and other developed 7:01states. It has enormous internal problems, demographic, ecological, resources and so 7:11on. It’s undoubtedly going to play an important, in military terms it’s not even a fraction 7:16of the United States and Western powers. So yes, economically it’s significant but bear 7:24in mind that a good deal of Chinese production is actually far unknown. Apple, world’s 7:32major corporation happens to produce in China, largely, but that’s US production which 7:40happens to use Chinese facilities, labour and other facilities. So China is a growing, 7:49developing power, in some domains in fact it’s gone quite far even in the high technology 7:57industry. So for example in production of solar panels, China’s in the lead, not just 8:04in mass production but also in innovation and high tech development. All of this is 8:11significant but it is by no means of power on the scale of the United States. In fact 8:16take a look at the confrontations between China and the United States now. There are 8:22serious confrontations. Are they in the Caribbean? Are they off the coast if California? No, 8:29they’re in waters around China where China and others have territorial claims. That’s 8:39symbolic reflection of the nature of state power. 8:44Well you describe, scathing about the United States, no one will be surprised to hear that. 8:50You described it as a leading terrorist state. I’m just interested how you’d describe 8:57Russia. How I describe Russia? Authoritarian, brutal, 9:05harsh. Carrying out ugly actions in its own region. The United States on the other hand 9:13carries out such actions all over the world. In fact again, look at the – there are serious 9:18confrontations between Russia and the United States and once again are they on the Mexican 9:25border? The Canadian border? No, they’re on the Russian border. In fact right at the 9:31point of the traditional invasion route through which Russia has been virtually destroyed 9:41several times in the past century, also earlier history. Again, that’s no apologetics for 9:49what Putin may be doing but it should lead us to understand, have a rational perspective 9:57on the relationship between these forces in the world. As for the U.S. being the leading 10:02terrorist state I should say that’s hardly just my opinion. So for example I noted when 10:09I was introduced, the person who introduced me said that I regard the United States as 10:18the gravest threat to world peace. That’s not exactly, it a little misrepresents the 10:25situation. There are international polls run by the leading U.S. polling agency, Gallop, 10:32its international affiliates Gallop/WIN and one of the questions they ask is “which 10:39country is the greatest threat to world peace?” and the United States is first by a huge margin. 10:46Far behind in second place is Pakistan, that’s undoubtedly inflated by the Indian vote and 10:53others have slight mention, so that’s global opinion. And I should mention that this was 11:02not even reported in the United States, happen to be reported by the BBC but wasn’t reported 11:07in the United States. As for being a terrorist state, President Obama’s global assassination 11:15campaign, draw an assassination campaign, is extreme terrorist war. I mean if Iran, 11:23let’s say was carrying out a campaign to assassinate people around the world who would 11:31thought might be planning to harm Iran, we would regard it as terrorism. For example, 11:38if they were bombing the editorial offices of the New York Times and The Washington Post 11:45which publish [ ] by prominent figures saying that we should bomb Iran right now, not wait. 11:53So obviously they want to harm Iran. Suppose Iran was assassinating them and anybody who 11:59happened to be standing around, all over would we regard that as terrorism? I think we would. 12:05Let me put a few questions to you from people online. People are sending in questions off 12:11our Facebook. First Gary says what are the dangers of T Tip? 12:20Putin? The dangers are- No, Sorry. What are the dangers or T TIP? 12:32The Transatlantic Trade Partnership? TTIP? Oh, TTIP? They’re pretty extreme. In fact 12:36Greenpeace, a couple of days ago, released 280 pages of internal documents on this so-called 12:47trade agreement and they spell out details of what all of us should know. The so-called 12:55free trade agreements are not free trade agreements. In fact to a large extent they’re not even 13:00trade agreements. These are investor right agreements. There’s a reason why they’re 13:05kept secret from the public and as soon as you look them you see why. Notice I say secret 13:12from the public, not secret. They’re not kept secret, they’re not secret to the corporate 13:18lawyers and lobbyists who are writing the detailed regulations. Of course in the interests 13:24of their constituents, doesn’t happen to be the public of the world or their own countries. 13:31So these are highly protectionist for the benefit of private power, so-called intellectual 13:39property rights, effectively raise tariffs. They’re called patents but which have an 13:48enormous impact on economies. Great, wonderful for pharmaceutical and media court conglomerates 13:55and others. Investors, corporations are given the right to sue governments, something you 14:10and I can’t do but a corporation can, to sue governments for harming their future, 14:17potentially future profits. You can figure out what that means and such cases already 14:23in the courts – they’re not in the courts they go to private trade adjudication groups 14:30made up largely of corporate representatives. They’re already going on with NAFTA and 14:37we can expect more of them. There are provisions that undermine efforts at regulation including 14:45incidentally, regulation of environmental dangers and rather strikingly the phrase “Climate 14:56Change” does not appear in these 280 pages, which are illustrative of the whole structure. 15:05So they have almost no, I should say that these agreements, so-called Pacific and Atlantic 15:11have virtually no effect on tariffs. Tariffs are already quite low among the major trading 15:18partners. When you read the propaganda about it, it says “oh yeah sure, Vietnam is going 15:23to have to lower its tariffs.” Yeah, almost no effect on trade. The major trading partners 15:30already have agreements that have reduced the terrorists very substantially. There are 15:36few exceptions, not many. So these are basically – we should disabuse our self of the illusion 15:43that these are free trade agreements, anything but. And to a large extent not even trade 15:49agreements. We have the experience of others like NAFTA, many years of experience. So take 15:55say NAFTA, it has all of the aspects that I just described but even more. Consider even 16:03what is called trade. Interactions across the US-Mexico border, they’ve increased 16:11substantially since NAFTA. So economists will tell you trade is greatly increased but have 16:17a look at them. So for example, suppose that General Motors produces parts in Indiana, 16:26sends them to Mexico for assembly and sells the car in Los Angeles. That’s call trade 16:35in both directions, but it’s not. Its interactions internal to a command economy. It’s as if 16:43during the days of the Soviet Union, parts were made, say in Leningrad, sent to Warsaw 16:52for assembly and sold in Moscow. We wouldn’t call that trade. That’s interactions internal 17:00to a command economy. Well Noam Chomsky, Thank you very much for 17:05being so generous with your time and for staying on to have that live online discussion. Thank 17:08you. Published on May 14, 2016 Cathy Newman's full interview with Philosopher Noam Chomsky. From Trump and Clinton, to climate change, Brexit and TPP, America's foremost intellectuals presents his views on who rules the world today. Subscribe for more: bit.ly/LtASif. SHOW MORE COMMENTS • 5,785