Rogue States

by Noam Chomsky

  31. Peterson, CSM, Feb. 17, 1998.

  32. David Gardner, FT, Feb. 28, 1998; Robin Allen, FT, March 3, 1998.

  3. Crisis in the Balkans

  This article originally appeared in Z Magazine, May 1999. Sec also my The New Military Humanism and my A New Generation Draws the Line.

  1. Ann Scales and Louise Palmer, Kevin Cullen, BG. March 25, 1999; Bill Clinton, NYT, May 23, 1999.

  2. “Overview,” NYT, March 27, 1999. Also Sunday Times (London), March 28, 1999: “NATO’s supreme commander, Wesley Clark, was not surprised at the retaliatory upsurge. ‘This was entirely predictable at this stage,’ he said,” referring to the “horrific” impact on civilians.

  3. BG, April 4, 1999.

  4. James Hooper, “Kosovo: America’s Balkan Problem,” Current History, April 1999. A strong advocate of NATO military action, Hooper is executive director of the Balkan Action Council in Washington, having served in the State Department as deputy director responsible for Balkan affairs, then deputy chief of mission in Warsaw.

  5. Hooper, “Kosovo: America’s Balkan Problem.”

  6. Colum Lynch, BG, Oct. 8, 1998; Susan Milligan, BG, Oct. 9, 1998.

  7. Jane Perlez, “Trickiest Divides Are Among Big Powers at Kosovo Talks,” NYT, Feb. 11, 1999. Kevin Cullen, “US, Europeans in Discord over Kosovo,” BG, Feb. 22, 1999.

  8. See chap. 2, note 15, in this volume.

  9. Serge Schmemann,”The Critics Now Ask: After Missiles, What?,” NYT, Dec. 18, 1998. Colum Lynch, “In the End, US Urged a Change,” BG, May 21, 1998. See chap. 1, in this volume.

  10. Steven Erlanger, “Belgrade ‘Targets’ Find Unity ‘From Heaven,’” NYT, March 30, 1999; Veran Matic, op-ed, NYT, April 3, 1999; Randolph Ryan, “NATO Bombs Raze Dreams of Democracy,” BG, April 4, 1999.

  11. Barton Gellman, William Drozdiak, WP Weekly, March 29, 1999.

  12. William Glaberson, NYT, March 27, 1999.

  13. See my World Orders Old and New, and sources cited, particularly Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the Washington Office on Latin America. See chap. 5, in this volume.

  14. See my The New Military Humanism, chap. 3.

  15. Ibid.

  16. Kevin Cullen and Anne Kornblut, BG, April 4, 1999; Clinton speech, April 1, 1999, at Norfolk Air Station, in NYT, April 2, 1999.

  17. Colum Lynch, “US Seen Leaving Africa to Solve Its Own Crises,” BG, Feb. 19, 1999.

  18. Lesley Stahl interview with Madeleine Albright, 60 Minutes, May 12, 1996.

  19. Columbia University professor of preventive diplomacy David Phillips, cited by Ethan Bronner,”The Scholars: Historians Note Flaws in President’s Speech,” NYT, March 26, 1999.

  20. Sean Murphy, Humanitarian Intervention: The United Nations in an Evolving World Order (Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1996). Citations are from his 1994 doctoral dissertation of the same title. For review, see American Journal of International Law, vol. 92 (1998), 583f. On Japan’s actions and rhetoric in Manchuria as compared with those of the US in Vietnam, see my “Revolutionary Pacifism of A.J. Muste,”reprinted in American Power and the New Mandarins: Historical and Political Essays (Pantheon, 1969), 323—66.

  21. Gaddis, “The Old World Order,” NYT Book Review, March 21, 1999.

  22. See chap. 1, in this volume.

  23. Samuel Huntington, Foreign Affairs, March-April 1999.

  24. Kevin Done, FT. March 27 and 28, 1999.

  25. For details on the documentary record and coverage, see my The New Military Humanism, chap. 5.

  26. Henry Kissinger, “Commentary,” BG, March 1, 1999.

  27. Tony Judt,”Tyrannized by Weaklings,” op-ed, NYT. April 5, 1999.

  28. Serge Schmemann, “A New Collision of East and West,” NYT, April 4, 1999.

  29. Cohen, Federal News Service, April 1, 1999.

  30. Adam Clymer, NYT, March 29, 1999.

  31. Clinton speech, NYT: April 2, 1999; Bob Hohler, BG, April 3, 1999.

  32. Jane Perlez, NYT, March 28, 1999, and many others.

  33. Hedley Bull, “Justice in International Relations,” Hagey Lectures, University of Waterloo, Ontario, 1983, 1-35. Louis Henkin, How Nations Behave (Council on Foreign Relations, Columbia Univ., 1979), 144-45; also cited in Murphy, Humanitarian Intervention, as being of particular significance.

  4. East Timor Retrospective

  Portions of this article originally appeared as ZNet commentaries, Oct. 4, 1999, and Oct. 23, 1999, and in “Western ‘Green Light’ for Massacres,” Le Monde diplomatique. Oct. 1999. For further detail, update, and sources, see references of chap. 1, note 5, in this volume.

  1. Report of the Security Council Mission to Jakarta and Dili, Sept. 8-12, 1999.

  2. NYT, op-ed, Sept. 15, 1999.

  3. BG. Sept. 15, 1999. Later UN estimates were that 85 percent of the population had been expelled.

  4. Benedict Anderson, statement before the Fourth Committee of the UN General Assembly, Oct. 20, 1980. For fuller quotes and context, see my Towards a New Cold War.

  5. David Briscoe, AP online, Sept. 8, 1999.

  6. For review and sources, see my Year 501.

  7. Alan Nairn, The Nation, Sept. 27, 1999.

  8. Elizabeth Becker, NYT, Sept. 14, 1999.

  9. Sander Thoenes, FT. London, Sept. 8, 1999; CSM, Sept. 14, 1999.

  10. Guy Alcorn, Sydney Morning Herald, Aug. 25, 1999, citing US State Dept. spokesman James Foley. Defense Secretary William Cohen, press briefing, Sept. 8, 1999.

  11. Elizabeth Becker and Philip Shenon, NYT, Sept. 9, 1999. Steven Mufson, Sept. 9, 1999.

  12. Peter Hartcher, Australian Financial Review (Sydney), Sept. 13, 1999.

  13. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, A Dangerous Place (Little, Brown, 1978).

  14. Arnold Kohen, WP, Sept. 5, 1999.

  15. Philip Shenon, NYT, Sept. 13, 1999.

  16. The Observer (London), Sept. 13, 1999.

  17. Becker and Shenon, NYT, Sept. 9, 1999.

  18. Jenkins, Sydney Morning Herald, July 8, 1999. Anderson, New Left Review 235, May/June 1999.

  19. Brian Toohey, Australian Financial Review, Aug. 14, 1999, referring to a radio interview “earlier this year.”

  20. The Observer, Sept. 13, 1999.

  21. Mark Dodd, Sydney Morning Herald, July 26, 1999.

  22. For sources below, see my A New Generation Draws the Line.

  5. The Colombia Plan

  This article originally appeared in Z Magazine, June 2000.

  1. Arms transfers, Adam Isacson and Joy Olson, Just the Facts: A Citizen’s Guide to US Defense and Security Assistance to Latin America and the Caribbean (Latin America Working Group and Center for International Policy, Washington DC, 1999). For background and sources not cited here, see my Deterring Democracy, chaps. 4 and 5; and my World Orders Old and New. chaps. 1 and 2. See also Javier Giraldo, S.J., Colombia: The Genocidal Democracy (Common Courage, 1996). On the correlation, see Lars Schoultz, chap. 10, p. 127, in this volume. For broader confirmation and inquiry, which helps explain the reasons, see Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman, Political Economy of Human Rights. vol. I, chap. 2.1.1; Herman, The Real Terror Network (South End, 1982), 126ff. There is a substantial literature of case studies.

  2. Martin Hodgson, “The coca leaf war,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, May/June 2000. Officially, Colombia states that “Plan Colombia will cost a total of $7.3 billion, of which $4.2 billion will be financed by the Colombian Government, and $3.1 billion contributed by the international community,” with $1.08 billion for “a counter-narcotics strategy.” Press release, Colombian Embassy, Washington, DC, June 2, 2000. “Intentional ignorance” is the phrase used by human rights monitors Donald Fox and Michael Glennon, commenting on Washington’s decision “not to see” the terror it was carrying out, through proxies, in Central America. “Report to the International Human Rights Law Group and the Washington Office on Latin America,” Washington DC, April 1985, 21. Also Glennon, “Terrorism and ‘intentional ignorance,’” CSM, March 20, 1986.
See my Necessary Illusions, 78.

  3. Fiscal years. On US arms transfers, see Tamar Gabelnick, William Hartung, and Jennifer Washburn, Arming Repression: US Arms Sales to Turkey During the Clinton Administration (World Policy Institute and Federation of American Scientists, Oct. 1999). For review of US-Turkey counterinsurgency programs, see my The New Military Humanism.

  4. Judith Miller, NYT; April 30, 2000. The other great achievers in the war against terrorism are Spain (at least, those members of the government who have not yet been jailed for torture and atrocities for their counterterrorism activities) and Algeria, a reference that surpasses comment. The report and review merit much more extensive discussion.

  5. Reuters, May 9, 2000 (datelined Ankara); AFP, May 26, 2000. AP, BG. Chicago Tribune, WP (brief excerpt), May 27, 2000. Anne Kornblut, “Congress sees differences on China, Cuba,” BG, May 27, 2000. Kinzer, “Turkey Reviews the Darkest Hours in Its Painful Past,” NYT. May 28, 2000. Kinzer, “Turkish Study Finds Torture of Prisoners Is Widespread,” NYT, June 4, 2000, noting that “the mostly Kurdish population has long complained of bad treatment by police” in the southeast; not quite the full story. On Kinzer’s rendition of Turkey’s massive ethnic cleansing and terror operations of the ‘90s, and of the Clinton administration’s contribution to them, see my The New Military Humanism. For review of his impressive feats of suppression of US atrocities and undermining of diplomacy in his previous post in Nicaragua, see my Necessary Illusions.

  6. Merely to illustrate, as the April military assaults were being organized, editors of eight newspapers in a Kurdish province were facing possible three-year prison sentences if found guilty of spelling a Kurdish festival Newroz instead of Nevroz, as in Turkish orthography (AP Worldstream, March 25, 2000).

  7. Ferit Demer, Reuters, datelined Tunceli, Turkey, April 1, 2000. Chris Morris, Guardian (London), April 3, 2000. “Arab League Denounces Turkish Incursion into Iraq,” Mena (Cairo), April 4, 2000; Kurdish News Bulletin, April 1—16, 2000. A US database search found only AP, Los Angeles Times, April 2, 2000, 326 words. Rubin, US Dept. of State daily press briefing, April4, 2000; M2 Presswire.

  8. Federal News Service, Defense Dept. Briefing, Secretary of Defense William Cohen, “Turkey’s Importance to 21st Century International Security,” Grand Hyatt Hotel, Washington, DC, March 31, 2000; Charles Aldinger, “US Praises Key NATO Ally Turkey,” Reuters, March 31 , 2000.

  9. Human Rights Watch, The Ties That Bind: Colombia and Military-Paramilitmy Links, Feb. 2000. Martin Hodgson, CSM, April 26, 2000 (UN Report). State Dept. Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, 1999 and 1998. 1999 report cited by Hodgson, “coca leaf war.” Swedish director quoted by Ana Carrigan, “Dogs of war are loose in Colombia,” Irish Times, May 6, 2000.

  10. Winifred Tate, Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), Oct. 6, 1999. Comisión Colombiana de Juristas, “Panorama de los derechos humanos y del derecho humanitario en Colombia: 1999,” Sept. 1999; see Colombia Update 11:3-4 (Winter/ Spring 2000). Bland, “Colombia: Don’t forget the lesson of Salvador,” LAT, April 10, 2000. UNICEF, CODHES, cited by Maurice Lemoine, “The Endless Undeclared Civil War,” Le Monde diplomatique, May 2000.

  11. Federal News Service, May 1, 2000, State Dept. Briefing.

  12. Lindsay Murdoch, The Age (Australia), April 8, 2000; Barry Wain, Asia editor, WSJ (Asia edition), April 17, 2000. On East Timor and Kosovo, sec my essays “In Retrospect” and “‘Green Light’ for War Crimes,” published in several languages and versions in 1999-2000, updated 111 my A New Generation Draws the Line.

  13. Ibid., and The New Military Humanism for details and sources.

  14. AFL-CIO, “Statement on the Situation of Labor in Colombia and US Policy,” Feb. 17, 2000, distributed by WOLA. Human Rights Watch, World Report 2000 (Human Rights Watch, Dec. 1999).

  15. In April 2000, the FARC announced the formation of a new political party, the Bolivarian Movement for a New Colombia, calling for “a new political, social, and economic envi ronment . . . that would make the use of arms unnecessary.” AP, April 30, 2000, Miami Herald Web site, and Reuters, El Nuevo Herald (Miami), cited in Weekly News Update on the Americas 535 (April 30, 2000). The new party “will, however, remain clandestine for now to prevent its leaders from being slaughtered, said FARC commanders.” Vivian Sequera, AP, BG, April 30, 2000.

  16. Steven Greenhouse, NYT, March 15, 1994. See my World Orders Old and New for further quotes and comment.

  17. Arlene Tickner, general coordinator of the Center for International Studies at the University of the Andes, Bogota, “Colombia: Chronicle of a Crisis Foretold,” Current History, Feb. 1998.

  18. Lars Sehoultz, Human Rights and United States Policy toward Latin America (Princeton, 1981), 7. Vázquez Carrizosa, and further background, see references of note 1.

  19. Michael McClintock, “American Doctrine and Counterinsurgent State Terror,” in A. George, ed., Western State Terrorism (Polity-Blackwell, 1991), 139; McClintock, Instruments of Statecraft (Pantheon, 1992), 222.

  20. Ibid., 227.

  21. On the programs of the guerrillas, see Andrés Cala, “The Enigmatic Guerrilla: FARC’s Manuel Marulanda,” Current History, Feb. 2000; Karen DeYoung, “Colombia’s Non-Drug Rebellion,” WP National Weekly, April 17, 2000. See also the FARC “agenda for negotiations,” in Adam Isacson, “The Colombian Dilemma,” International Policy Report (Washington, DC: Center for International Policy), Feb. 2000.

  22. James Wilson, “Rebels tax plan outrages Colombia,” FT, April 28, 2000. Also Carrigan, op. cit.

  23. Larry Rohter, “Colombia Agrees to Turn Over Territory to Another Rebel Group,” NYT. April 26, 2000; Alma Guillermoprieto, New York Review, May 11, 2000. For analysis in more depth, see Lemoine, op. cit., discussing the appeal of the FARC to many peasants and working people who see it as “the army of the poor,” and particularly to women, who now constitute one-third of its forces, because of its break from oppressive and degrading practices that are particularly harsh at the depths of poverty and desperation.

  24. James Wilson, “Colombia’s citizens get the chance to confront rebels,” FT, April 26, 2000.

  25. La Prensa Gráfica (San Salvador), April 28, 2000; cited in Weekly News Update on the Americas 535, April 30, 2000; also earlier updates cited there. Kintto Lucas, Interpress Service (Quito, Ecuador), March 23, 2000.

  26. For background and analysis, see particularly Arnold Chien, Margaret Connors, and Kenneth Fox, “The Drug War in Perspective,”in J.Y. Kim, J. Millen, A. Irwin, and J. Gershman, eds., Dying for Growth (Institute for Health and Social Justice/Partners in Health, Cambridge MA [Common Courage, 2000]).

  27. General Accounting Office, Drug Control: Narcotics Threat from Colombia Continues to Grow, June 1999.

  28. Alan Feuer, “US Colonel is Implicated in Drug Case,” NYT, April 4, 2000.

  29. John Donnelly, BG, March 9, 2000. See “Paramilitary Leader Goes Public,” Latinamerica Press (Peru), March 20, 2000.

  30. DeYoung, “Colombia’s Non-Drug Rebellion.”

  31. Cala, “Enigmatic Guerrilla.” Ricardo Vargas Meza, The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the lllicit Drug Trade (Accion Andina [Bolivia], TNI [Netherlands], WOLA [Washington, DC]), June 1999.

  32. Ibid. Also Vargas, “Drug Cultivation, Fumigation, and the Conflict in Colombia” (TNI and Acción Andina Colombia), Oct. 1999; Hodgson, “coca leaf war.” Also Larry Rohter, “Colombia Tries, Yet Cocaine Thrives,” NYT, Nov. 20, 1999, on opposition by the Colombian government and farmers to the US insistence on crop-destruction programs rather than the crop-substitution programs they prefer. On current plans for the use of biological in addition to the usual chemical weapons, see “UN to Unleash Biowar Against Colombian Cocaine Plant,” AFP, March 8, 2000, reporting an article in the British journal New Scientist (March 9, 2000) on a plan funded by the US and UN to conduct open field trials of a fungus (Fusarium oxysporum) so far tested only in US government greenhouses. “The biowar tactic is being considered because of t
he failure of crime busters to stamp out the coca crop,” AFP reports. Farmers in Peru claim that a fungus that has sharply reduced coca production there “has also mutated and is killing many traditional crops, including bananas, cacao, coffee, corn, lemon grass, papaya, and yucca,” but “US government officials insist that charges that they are connected in some way to the fungus are groundless.” Eric Lyman, “US Accused of Creating Blight Killing Coca Plants and Harming Other Crops,” San Francisco Chronicle, Nov. 4, 1999.

  33. Walter LaFeber, “The Alliances in Retrospect,” in A. Maguire and J.W. Brown, eds., Bordering on Trouble: Resources and Politics in Latin America (Adler & Adler, 1986). Joseph Treaster, “Coffee Impasse Imperils Colombia’s Drug Fight,” NYT, Sept. 24, 1988. On Food for Peace and the effects of US “export subsidies” and on the use of counterpart funds, see William Borden, The Pacific Alliance: United States Foreign Economic Policy and Japanese Trade Recovery. 1947-1955 (Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1984), 182f. For more general information, see Tim Barry and Deb Preusch, The Soft War (Grove, 1988). On the background, see also Chien et al., “The Drug War in Perspective,” in Dying for Growth.

  34. Susan Strange, Mad Money: When Markets Outgrow Governments (Univ. of Michigan, 1998), 127.

  35. See chap. 10, in this volume.

  36. Tim Weiner, “Congress Agrees to $7.1 Billion in Farm Aid,” NYT. April 14, 2000; Nicolas Kristof, “As Life for Family Farmers Worsens, the Toughest Wither,” NYT, April 2, 2000; Laurent Belsie, “Collapse of Free-Market Farm Economy?,” CSM, March 23, 2000. For detail and informative analysis, see National Farmers Union (Saskatoon, SK, Canada), The Farm Crisis, EU Subsidies and Agribusiness Market Power, report presented to Canadian Senate Standing Committee on Agriculture and Forestry, Ottawa, Feb. 17, 2000.

  37. One current illustration is the reaction to the Declaration of the South Summit in the Havana meeting of April 2000. It condemned the Western-instituted forms of “globalization” and called for “an international economic system which will be just and democratic,” emphasizing the “right to development” that the US rejects, also condemning “the so-called ‘right’ of humanitarian intervention” and any military or economic intervention to prevent countries from developing their own “political, economic, social, and cultural systems,” with many specific charges and proposals. As is customary, the declaration of countries accounting for 80 percent of the world’s population was unreported and ignored.