by Noam Chomsky
Witnessing such a sorry state of affairs is by no means a monotonous, monochromatic activity. It involves what Foucault once called “a relentless erudition,” scouring alternative sources, exhuming buried documents, reviving forgotten (or abandoned) histories. It involves a sense of the dramatic and of the insurgent, making a great deal of one’s rare opportunities to speak. There is something profoundly unsettling about an intellectual such as Chomsky who has neither an office to protect nor territory to consolidate and guard. There is no dodging the inescapable reality that such representations by intellectuals will neither make them friends in high places nor win them official honors. It is a lonely condition, yes, but it is always a better one than a gregarious tolerance for the way things are.
Edward W. Said
New York, New York January 1999
Preface to the Updated Edition
F
or some time, I’ve been compelled to arrange speaking engagements long in advance. Sometimes a title is requested for a talk scheduled several years ahead. There is, I’ve found, one title that always works: “The current crisis in the Middle East.”
One can’t predict exactly what the crisis will be far down the road, but that there will be one is a fairly safe prediction. That will continue to be the case as long as basic problems of the region are not addressed.
Furthermore, the crises will be serious in what President Eisenhower called “the most strategically important area in the world.” In the early post-War years, the United States in effect extended the Monroe Doctrine to the Middle East, barring any interference apart from Britain, assumed to be a loyal dependency and quickly punished when it occasionally got out of hand (as in 1956). The strategic importance of the region lies primarily in its immense petroleum reserves and the global power accorded by control over them; and, crucially, from the huge profits that flow to the Anglo-American rulers, which have been of critical importance for their economies. It has been necessary to ensure that this enormous wealth flows primarily to the West, not to the people of the region. That is one fundamental problem that will continue to cause unrest and disorder. Another is the Israel-Arab conflict with its many ramifications, which have been closely related to the major U.S. strategic goal of dominating the region’s resources and wealth. For many years, it was claimed the core problem was Soviet subversion and expansionism, the reflexive justification for virtually all policies since the Bolshevik takeover in Russia in 1917. That pretext having vanished, it is now quietly conceded by the White House (March 1990) that in past years, the “threats to our interests” in the Middle East “could not be laid at the Kremlin’s door”; the doctrinal system has yet to adjust fully to the new requirements. “In the future, we expect that nonSoviet threats to [our interests will command even greater attention,” the White House continued in its annual plea to Congress for a huge military budget. In reality, the “threats to our interests,” in the Middle East as elsewhere, had always been indigenous nationalism, a fact stressed in internal documents and sometimes publicly.1
A “worst case” prediction for the crisis a few years ahead would be a war between the U.S. and Iran; unlikely, but not impossible.
Israel is pressing very hard for such a confrontation, recognizing Iran to be the most serious military threat that it faces. So far, the U.S. is playing a somewhat different game in its relations to Iran; accordingly, a potential war, and the necessity for it, is not a major topic in the media and journals of opinion here.2
The U.S. is, of course, concerned over Iranian power. That is one reason why the U.S. turned to active support for Iraq in the late stages of the Iraq-Iran war, with a decisive effect on the outcome, and why Washington continued its active courtship of Saddam Hussein until he interfered with U.S. plans for the region in August 1990. U.S. concerns over Iranian power were also reflected in the decision to support Saddam’s murderous assault against the Shiite population of southern Iraq in March 1991, immediately after the fighting stopped. A narrow reason was fear that Iran, a Shiite state, might exert influence over Iraqi Shiites. A more general reason was the threat to “stability” that a successful popular revolution might pose: to translate into English, the threat that it might inspire democratizing tendencies that would undermine the array of dictatorships that the U.S. relies on to control the people of the region.
Recall that Washington’s support for its former friend was more than tacit; the U.S. military command even denied rebelling Iraqi officers access to captured Iraqi equipment as the slaughter of the Shiite population proceeded under Stormin’ Norman’s steely gaze.
Similar concerns arose as Saddam turned to crushing the Kurdish rebellion in the North. In Israel, commentators from the Chief of Staff to political analysts and Knesset members, across a very broad political spectrum, openly advocated support for Saddam’s atrocities, on the grounds that an independent Kurdistan might create a Syria-Kurd-Iran territorial link that would be a serious threat to Israel. When U.S. records are released in the distant future, we might discover that the White House harbored similar thoughts, which delayed even token gestures to block the crushing of Kurdish resistance until Washington was compelled to act by a public that had been aroused by media coverage of the suffering of the Kurds, recognizably Aryan and portrayed quite differently from the southern Shiites, who suffered a far worse fate but were only dirty Arabs.
In passing, we may note that the character of U.S.-U.K. concern for the Kurds is readily determined not only by the timing of the support, and the earlier cynical treatment of Iraqi Kurds, but also by the reaction to Turkey’s massive atrocities against its Kurdish population right through the Gulf crisis. These were scarcely reported here in the mainstream, in virtue of the need to support the President, who had lauded his Turkish colleague as “a protector of peace” joining those who “stand up for civilized values around the world” against Saddam Hussein. But Europe was less disciplined. We therefore read, in the London Financial Times, that “Turkey’s western allies were rarely comfortable explaining to their public why they condoned Ankara’s heavy-handed repression of its own Kurdish minority while the west offered support to the Kurds in Iraq,” not a serious PR problem here. “Diplomats now say that, more than any other issue, the sight of Kurds fighting Kurds [in Fall 1992] has served to change the way that western public opinion views the Kurdish cause.” In short, we can breathe a sigh of relief: cynicism triumphs, and the Western powers can continue to condone the harsh repression of Kurds by the “protector of peace,” while shedding crocodile tears over their treatment by the (current) enemy.3
Israel’s reasons for trying to stir up a U.S. confrontation with Iran, and “Islamic fundamentalism” generally, are easy to understand. The Israeli military recognizes that, apart from resort to nuclear weapons, there is little it can do to confront Iranian power, and is concerned that after the (anticipated) collapse of the U.S.-run “peace process,” a SyriaIran axis may be a significant threat. The U.S., in contrast, appears to be seeking a long-term accommodation with “moderate” (that is, proU.S.) elements in Iran and a return to something like the arrangements that prevailed under the Shah.
How these tendencies may evolve is unclear.
The propaganda campaign about “Islamic fundamentalism” has its farcical elements—even putting aside the fact that U.S. culture compares with Iran in its religious fundamentalism. The most extreme Islamic fundamentalist state in the world is the loyal U.S. ally Saudi Arabia—or, to be more precise, the family dictatorship that serves as the “Arab facade” behind which the U.S. effectively controls the Arabian peninsula, to borrow the terms of British colonial rule. The West has no problems with Islamic fundamentalism there. Probably one of the most fanatic Islamic fundamentalist groups in the world in recent years was led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the terrorist extremist who had been a CIA favorite and prime recipient of the $3.3 billion in (official) U.S. aid given to the Afghan rebels (with roughly the same amount reported from Saudi Arabia), the man
who shelled Kabul with thousands killed, driving hundreds of thousands of people out of the city (including all Western embassies), in an effort to shoot his way into power; not quite the same as Pol Pot emptying Phnom Penh, since the U.S. client was far more bloody in that particular operation.
Similarly, it is not at all concealed in Israel that its invasion of Lebanon in 1982 was undertaken in part to destroy the secular nationalism of the PLO, becoming a real nuisance with its persistent call for a peaceful diplomatic settlement, which was undermining the U.S.-Israeli strategy of gradual integration of the occupied territories within Israel. One result was the creation of Hizbollah, an Iranian-backed fundamentalist group that drove Israel out of most of Lebanon. For similar reasons, Israel supported fundamentalist elements as a rival to the accommodationist PLO in the occupied territories. The results are similar to Lebanon, as Hamas attacks against the Israeli military become increasingly difficult to contain. The examples illustrate the typical brilliance of intelligence operations when they have to deal with populations, not simply various gangsters.
The basic reasoning goes back to the early days of Zionism: Palestinian moderates pose the most dangerous threat to the goal of avoiding any political settlement until facts are established to which it will have to conform.
In brief, Islamic fundamentalism is an enemy only when it is “out of control.” In that case, it falls into the category of “radical nationalism” or “ultranationalism,” more generally, of independence whether religious or secular, right or left, military or civilian; priests who preach the “preferential option for the poor” in Central America, to mention a recent case.
The historically unique U.S.-Israel alliance has been based on the perception that Israel is a “strategic asset,” fulfilling U.S. goals in the region in tacit alliance with the Arab facade in the Gulf and other regional protectors of the family dictatorships, and performing services elsewhere. Those who see Israel’s future as an efficient Sparta, at permanent war with its enemies and surviving at the whim of the U.S., naturally want that relationship to continue—including, it seems, much of the organized American Jewish community, a fact that has long outraged Israeli doves. The doctrine is explained by General (ret.) Shlomo Gazit, former head of Israeli military intelligence and a senior official of the military administration of the occupied territories. After the collapse of the USSR, he writes,
Israel’s main task has not changed at all, and it remains of crucial importance. Its location at the center of the Arab Muslim Middle East predestines Israel to be a devoted guardian of stability in all the countries surrounding it. Its [role] is to protect the existing regimes: to prevent or halt the processes of radicalization and to block the expansion of fundamentalist religious zealotry.4
To which we may add: performing dirty work that the U.S. is unable to undertake itself because of popular opposition or other costs. The conception has its grim logic. What is remarkable is that advocacy of it should be identified as “support for Israel.”
With some translation, Gazit’s analysis seems plausible. We have to understand “stability” to mean maintenance of specific forms of domination and control, and easy access to resources and profits. And the phrase “fundamentalist religious zealotry,” as noted, is a code word for a particular form of “radical nationalism” that threatens “stability.”
Despite shifting alliances in a highly volatile region, Israel’s role as a U.S. strategic asset seems stable in the foreseeable future. Its advanced economy, like that of its patron, relies very heavily on the creativity and funding of the enormous state sector. The two countries are linked in joint research and development projects, mostly military and spin-offs, and Israel provides basing and storage facilities for the vast U.S. system of intervention forces targeting the oil-producing regions. Though effectively an extension of the U.S. military and economic interests, Israel is not entirely under control—client states commonly pursue their own paths, to the chagrin of the masters. Contradictions abound, at least contrary strains, as they do in U.S. policy as well. The Israeli Air Force is very visibly carrying out maneuvers in Eastern Turkey aimed at Iran, using advanced U.S. 15-E jets that can attack Iran and return without refueling. At the same time. headlines in the Israeli press report, “Israel and Iran have been conducting direct trade relations—from 1994.” Unlike the U.S., Israel does not officially list Iran as an enemy state, and there are no official barriers to trade, which is small but growing.5
Israel’s development and deployment of weapons of mass destruction continues under U.S. aegis, as it has since the Kennedy years. The wellinformed military analyst Uzi Mahanaimi reports that “Israeli assault aircraft have been equipped to carry chemical and biological weapons manufactured at a top secret institute near Tel Aviv, military sources revealed yesterday”. Crews flying U.S. F-16 jets are trained to “fit an active chemical or biological weapon within minutes of receiving the command to attack.” The weapons are manufactured at a biological research institute in Nes Ziona, near Tel Aviv, which “attracted unwanted scrutiny” when Dutch authorities confirmed that it was the intended destination of an El Al airliner that crashed in Amsterdam, killing many people on the ground, and found to have been carrying nerve gas components. “There is hardly a single known or unknown form of chemical or biological weapon…which is not manufactured at the institute,” according to a biologist who held a senior post in Israeli intelligence. Nes Ziona does not work on defensive and protective devices, but only biological weapons for attack, according to the British Foreign Report. The devices have already been used, the report continues, in the attempt by Mossad agents to kill Khaled Mishal in Jordan, which backfired.6
Once again, Israel is following in the footsteps of its patron. After World War II, the U.S. took over the hideous biological warfare operations of Japanese fascists, including the personnel, and protected them from war crimes prosecution—ridiculing Russian war crimes trials of these Class A war criminals as Communist-style show trials. The U.S. takeover of the programs was denied until it was exposed in the Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars in 1980. The achievements of the Japanese Mengeles became the core of U.S. biological warfare capabilities—one reason, along with nuclear bombs, why the U.S. official stand from 1950 was that it is “fallacious” to divide weapons “into moral and immoral types,” and that the concept of “weapons of mass destruction” does “not appear to have any significance.” The Joint Chiefs of Staff included biological warfare in war plans by 1949. Shortly after, the plans included a first-use option, along with nuclear weapons, a position formalized by the National Security Council in 1956 and in force until the 1972 treaty banning biological warfare. Recently released Chinese and U.S. archives raise questions about the actual use of these weapons in North Korea and China, previously assumed (by me as well) to have been Communist propaganda; China appears to have downplayed their use, so as not to provide information to the enemy.7
The international framework in which these developments are proceeding is fraught with danger and uncertainty. The U.S. has been isolated for years in its policies on Israel and the Palestinians, and only since its Gulf War victory has it been able to institute the program it had demanded in opposition to a very broad international consensus. The U.S. is now quite isolated in its policies towards Iran, which most of the world wants to reintegrate into the international system. In the case of Iraq, the U.S. and U.K. have lost much of the limited support they had in the past, and must now pursue military action in increasingly brazen violation of the UN Security Council and regional opinion. Secretary of Defense William Cohen “won no public support” when he “visited Saudi Arabia and five other friendly Persian Gulf countries” to explain the U.S. policy of punitive raids against Iraq in March 1999. A senior Saudi official stated: “We object to any nation taking matters into its own hands, and using bombing as an instrument of diplomacy.” Saudi Arabia has consistently refused to allow U.S. combat planes based there to join in operations against Ir
aq.8
The U.S. hope is that the region’s governments are sufficiently despotic so as to be able to suppress the growing popular opposition to the savage devastation of the civilian society of a neighboring Arab country—opposition that is growing elsewhere as well.
Concerns over these developments must surely have become serious as the U.S. and its British client were seeking to prepare the ground for bombing of Iraq in late 1997. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was sent to Saudi Arabia, but treated with noticeable coolness. In sharp contrast, former Iranian president Rafsanjani, “still a pivotal figure in Tehran, was given an audience by the ailing King Fahd in Saudi Arabia,” and as his 10-day trip ended on March 2, Foreign Minister Prince Saud described it as “one more step in the right direction towards improving relations.” He also reiterated that “the greatest destabilising element in the Middle East and the cause of all other problems in the region” is Israel’s policy towards the Palestinians and U.S. support for it. These policies might activate popular forces that Saudi Arabia greatly fears, as well as undermining its legitimacy as “guardian” of Islamic holy places, including the Dome of the Rock in East Jerusalem, now effectively annexed by U.S./Israeli “greater Jerusalem” programs. Shortly before, the Arab states had boycotted a U.S.-sponsored economic summit in Qatar that was intended to advance the “New Middle East” project of Clinton and Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres. Instead, they attended an Islamic conference in Teheran in December 1997, joined even by Iraq.9
The increasingly prominent Turkish-Israel alliance is not welcome to other countries of the region, and there are signs that they may be considering Iranian initiatives to develop a regional system that would be more independent of U.S. control, including the Gulf oil producers, Egypt, and Syria. That is not a prospect that U.S. planners can lightly tolerate, particularly with the reasonable likelihood that not too far in the future the current oil glut will decline and the Middle East share in global oil production will substantially increase. It is against the background of such possible developments in the region that U.S. planning with regard to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict must be assessed.
