Best of Tom Dispatch: Noam Chomsky "Who Owns the World?"

In Noam Chomsky’s “Who Owns the World?” -- the most popular TomDispatch post of all time (which means the last 10 years) -- he wrote of one key imperial principle: “The U.S. cannot tolerate ‘any exercise of sovereignty’ that interferes with its global designs.” Hence, the under-reported but staggering U.S. build-up in the Persian Gulf.

Of late, most “build-up” publicity has gone to the Obama administration’s “pivot” to Asia (to “contain” China), including an announcement that 60% of U.S. naval power will sooner or later be deployed to Asian waters. But much of this remains a promise for the future. The real “pivot” focus of the moment, if it can even be called that after all these years, remains Iran. That country is largely surrounded by American military bases continually beingbuilt up, including a new missile defense radar station at a secret site in Qatar, part of a developing U.S. regional anti-missile system. In addition, there is an ongoing build-up of U.S. commando forces; of the military power of U.S. regional allies, thanks to new weapons systems of all sorts regularly being put on offer by Washington; of U.S. naval forces in the Persian Gulf, already enormous and still growing, including not one but twoaircraft carrier battle groups, minesweepers, a new “floating base”for possible special operations forces, and tiny drone submersibles being “rushed” to the region. And don’t forget a similarly large-scale build-up of U.S. air power, including the deployment of the most advanced U.S. fighter plane, the F-22, to a base in the United Arab Emirates.

Add this to a series of warlike acts, including ever-tightening oil sanctions against Iran, the release of cyber worms meant to infect Iranian computer systems connected to its nuclear program, and an evident Israeli campaign to assassinate Iranian nuclear scientists, and you have quite a “pivot” in what is, let’s not forget, the oil heartlands of the planet. Much of this is being covered in a scattered, almost absentminded way in the mainstream media. Yet anyone familiar with how World War I began knows that massive military build-ups or mobilizations -- and a rickety Iranian regime is doing its best to respond regionally with its own mini-military build-up -- can lead to war, whether either side actually intends it or not. A U.S. ship recently firing on an Indian boat -- and killing one fisherman -- near Iran is a reminder of where such inherently trigger-happy situations can lead.

Add to all this the fact that the planet’s former self-proclaimed “sole superpower” is visibly decaying and increasingly desperate to maintain its pretensions to global dominance, and you have a formula for future disaster. Isn’t it sad in its own way that Chomsky’s piece, first posted at this site in April 2011 (like the 2004 Chalmers Johnson piece reposted last Sunday), is in no way outmoded? It’s not faintly ready for the dustbin of history, and in fact, it remains ahead of its moment. In this sense, the United States is a Chomskyan nation, eerily following the path he’s laid out for it and so, undoubtedly, heading for something ugly indeed. Tom


Is the World Too Big to Fail?
The Contours of Global Order
By Noam Chomsky

The democracy uprising in the Arab world has been a spectacular display of courage, dedication, and commitment by popular forces -- coinciding, fortuitously, with a remarkable uprising of tens of thousands in support of working people and democracy in Madison, Wisconsin, and other U.S. cities. If the trajectories of revolt in Cairo and Madison intersected, however, they were headed in opposite directions: in Cairo toward gaining elementary rights denied by the dictatorship, in Madison towards defending rights that had been won in long and hard struggles and are now under severe attack.

Each is a microcosm of tendencies in global society, following varied courses. There are sure to be far-reaching consequences of what is taking place both in the decaying industrial heartland of the richest and most powerful country in human history, and in what President Dwight Eisenhower called "the most strategically important area in the world" -- "a stupendous source of strategic power" and "probably the richest economic prize in the world in the field of foreign investment," in the words of the State Department in the 1940s, a prize that the U.S. intended to keep for itself and its allies in the unfolding New World Order of that day.

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