Rogue States: The Rule of Force in World Affairs

From Back Cover:
Described by the New York Times as “an exploder of received truths,” Noam Chomsky is an articulate opponent of political hypocrisy, state brutality, and abuse of power. Rogue States is the result of his tireless efforts to measure the world’s superpowers by their own standards and to hold them responsible for the acts they commit in the name of their people.

The United States and its allies come in for particular scrutiny for their numerous blatant violations of the very international laws they claim to uphold. With analysis of the United States’s bombing campaign against Iraq, NATO’S intervention in Kosovo, US support for a regime terror in East Timor, and the political crisis in Colombia, Chomsky interrogates the rhetoric of Western foreign policy to reveal the insidious interests behind insupportable actions —from paralyzing economic sanctions to surgical military strikes.

Chomsky also turns his penetrating gaze towards continuing US involvement in the Middle East, Southeast Asia, the Caribbean, and Latin America to trace the enduring combined effects of military domination and economic imperialism on these Regions.

Throughout, Chomsky reveals the United States’s increasingly open dismissal of United Nations resolutions, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and international legal precedent in justifying its motives and actions. As his analysis of US statecraft and warmongering amply reveals, the rule of law has been reduced to a mere nuisance in the United States’s brazen bid for the title of “rogue state.”

Noam Chomsky, Institute Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is a world-renowned linguist, philosopher, and political analyst. He writes extensively and lectures around the world on international affairs, US foreign policy, and human rights. He has published many books with South End Press, including Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel, and the Palestinians and Powers and Prospects: Reflections on Human Nature and the Social Order.

Table of Contents 1. Rogues’ Gallery: Who Qualifies? 2. Rogue States 3. Crisis in the Balkans 4. East Timor Retrospective 5. “Plan Colombia” 6. Cuba and the US Government: David vs. Goliath 7. Putting on the Pressure: Latin America 8. Jubilee 2000 9. “Recovering Rights”: A Crooked Path 10. The United States and the “Challenge of Universality” 11. The Legacy of War 12. Millennium Greetings 13. Power in the Domestic Arena 14. Socioeconomic Sovereignty Notes Index
An Excerpt from Rogue States by Noam Chomsky
The concept of “rogue state” plays a pre-eminent role today in policy planning and analysis.
The current Iraq crisis is only the latest example. Washington and London declared Iraq a “rogue state,” a threat to its neighbors and to the entire world, an “outlaw nation” led by a reincarnation of Hitler who must be contained by the guardians of world order, the United States and its British “junior partner,” to adopt the term ruefully employed by the British foreign office half a century ago. The concept merits a close look.
[…]
A secret 1995 study of the Strategic Command, which is responsible for the strategic nuclear arsenal, outlines the basic thinking. Released through the Freedom of Information Act, the study, Essentials of Post-Cold War Deterrence, “shows how the United States shifted its deterrent strategy from the defunct Soviet Union to so-called rogue states such as Iraq, Libya, Cuba and North Korea,” AP reports. The study advocates that the US exploit its nuclear arsenal to portray itself as “irrational and vindictive if its vital interests are attacked.” That “should be a part of the national persona we project to all adversaries,” in particular the “rogue states.” “It hurts to portray ourselves as too fully rational and cool-headed,” let alone committed to such silliness as international law and treaty obligations. “The fact that some elements” of the US government “may appear to be potentially ‘out of control’ can be beneficial to creating and reinforcing fears and doubts within the minds of an adversary’s decision makers.” The report resurrects Nixon’s “madman theory”: our enemies should recognize that we are crazed and unpredictable, with extraordin