The United States sought to construct a global system in which other industrial powers pursue "regional interests" within the overall framework of order managed from Washington, as Henry Kissinger admonished the European allies. Meanwhile the Third World is to "fulfill its function" as a market and source of raw materials and cheap labor. Every effort will be made to direct Eastern Europe on the same course. High-level planning documents frankly identify the major threat to U.S. interests as "nationalistic regimes" that are responsive to popular pressures rather than the needs of investors. These concerns underlie persistent U.S. subversion and intervention on the pretext of Soviet threats, the correlation between U.S. aid and human rights violations and the extreme hostility to democracy unless power remains securely in the hands of business, oligarchy and military elements that respect U.S. priorities. Gorbachev's initiatives provide only the occasion for tactical adjustments; policy and its roots are unchallenged, and virtually excluded from discussion within the ideological system.

With the decline of U.S. power and the diversification of the international order, however, traditional goals become more difficult to achieve. Further problems arise from internal dissidence and the loss of the Soviet threat as an instrument of population control. It is natural that the U.S. reaction to Gorbachev's moves and the European accommodation to them should be halting and uncertain.

Since the latter days of the Indochina war, U.S. elites have undertaken intensive efforts to increase corporate profits, weaken unions and the welfare system, temper the "crisis of democracy" by restoring public apathy, and strengthen state-corporate linkages. They have also sought to solidify the U.S.-controlled bloc, incorporating Canada and viable sectors of Latin America while maintaining traditional domains elsewhere. But the world is increasingly out of control as well as out of step.

Soviet military expenditures began to level off in the mid-1970s -- contrary to what was claimed to justify the Carter-Reagan military buildup and attack on social programs--and are declining as Gorbachev attempts to rescue the stagnant command economy. While Reagan Administration militancy may have hindered these developments, it did not stop them, and by the mid-1980s Washington was compelled to reduce its aggressiveness, hysterical rhetoric and military growth as the costs of Reaganite economic mismanagement became unacceptable. Fortuitously, both superpowers, for independent reasons, are on a path away from confrontation.

With Bolshevism disintegrating, capitalism long abandoned and state capitalist democracy in decline, there are prospects for the revival of libertarian socialist and radical democratic ideals that had languished, including popular control of the workplace and investment decisions, and, correspondingly, the entrenchment of political democracy as constraints imposed by private power are reduced. These and other emerging possibilities are still remote, but are no less exciting than the dramatic events unfolding in Eastern Europe.

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zcomm The economies of Eastern Europe stagnated or declined through the 1980s, but went into free fall as the IMF regimen was adopted with the end of the Cold War in 1989. By the fourth quarter of 1990, Bulgaria’s industrial output (which had previously remained steady) had dropped 17 percent, Hungary’s 12 percent, Poland’s over 23 percent, Romania’s 30 percent. The UN Economic Commission for Europe expects a further decline of 20 percent for 1991, with the same or worse likely in 1992. One result has been a general disillusionment with the democratic opening and, in fact, growing support for the former Communist parties.

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ES: Robert Kaplan writes about foreign policy. I spoke to him recently about his book Warrior Politics, and I put some of your points to him and he said, about the distinction between the terrorist states that you call Israel, America, and the terrorist states that America calls the Taliban, "I wish Noam Chomsky had been with me in Romania in the 70s or the 80s, just one of the seven or eight Warsaw States, with just one of the 7 or 8 prison systems with 700,000 political prisoners. Adult choice of foreign policy is made on distinctions. The argument that Chomsky makes has no distinctions because there's a difference between the quantity and the kind of dictators that America supported and the quantity and the kind of things that went on in the Communist world for 44 years."

Chomsky: OK, so let's take his example, Romania under Ceausescu. Hideous regime, which he forgot to tell you the United States supported. Supported right until the end, as did Britain. When Ceausescu came to London he was feted by Margaret Thatcher. When George Bush the First came into office, I think the first person he invited to Washington was Ceausescu. Yes, Romania was a miserable, brutal regime supported by the United States right to the end, as Robert Kaplan knows very well, so the example he gave is a perfect example.

ES: It wasn't supported by the States in the 70s though?

Chomsky: In the 70s, in the 80s, right to the end of Ceausescu's rule. It was supported by the United States. The reasons had to do with great power politics. They were sort of breaking Warsaw Pact policies and so on, but the very example he picks illustrates it and we can proceed onward.

So the very example he gives shows the absurdity of his position and it's a small example because we support much more brutal regimes. It has nothing to do with Cold War issues.

I gave an example in South Eastern Turkey, several million refugees, tens of thousands of people killed, a country devastated, that's rather serious.

Nobody accused Milosevic of that in Kosovo.

Suharto was one of the worst killers and torturers of the late twentieth century. The United States and Britain supported him throughout. He's “our kind of guy,” as the Clinton administration said in 1995. Horrible atrocities, in fact, when he came into office in 1965 with a coup the CIA compared it to Hitler, Stalin and Mao.

It led to total euphoria in the United States and Britain, and massive support when he carried out even worse atrocities, comparable atrocities in East Timor --  over 200,000 people killed -- full support continued right through the end of his rule, in fact, continued past his rule. In late 1999 when they were rampaging and destroying what was left of East Timor, the US and Britain continued to support him and I can continue through the world like this…

ES: Well, what Kaplan says is -- there is a distinction …that everyone's got some blood on their hands, but he says -- we have significantly less blood because we are soft imperialists, not state terrorists.

Chomsky: So when we supported his example, Ceausescu in Romania, right to the end, that's good? How about killing several million people in Vietnam. How about killing hundreds of thousands of people in Central America in the 80s, leaving four countries devastated beyond, maybe beyond recovery?