I love Noam Chomsky so much. To me he is epitome of what a rational caring intellectual should be. Number one, he strives for the truth and while can have intellectual blind spots, isn't afraid of calling them out.
We had him has a guest speaker for an internal presentation at Google and of course we had some hyper-rational libertarian eastern block swe kid who was going to take him down and Noam was super respectful, spared with the kid for awhile and then changed the subject slightly while destroying the libertarian kid's entire argument.
You don't just debate Noam Chomsky.
https://nerocam.com/DrFun/Dave/Dr-Fun/df200304/df20030409.jp...
Noam Chomsky vs. Michel Foucault - Dictatorship of the Proletariat https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpoLLAJ1t74
I don't. There are some things out there that are up for debate. But not Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Chomsky, for some weird reason, chose to take Russia's side.
Edit: To be sure, I wish him full recovery and many more happy years.
https://www.e-flux.com/notes/470005/open-letter-to-noam-chom...
This is a mischaracterization. He explained Russia's stated motivation for invading Ukraine, that it felt threatened by NATO's continual eastward encroachment and breaking of promises not to do so. That's different than endorsing the invasion, which he did not.
The problem is that's a false narrative.
There were never any promises, and Putin barely even cared that it resulted in Finland and Sweden joining NATO.
Because Russia's stated motivation for invading Ukraine was never Putin's actual reason, which is basically an emotional desire for historical greatness by reclaiming Russia's lost empire, combined with war always being an excellent mechanism for staying in power and distracting from domestic problems.
So it's sad to see anyone falling for Putin's lies so easily. (See also Mearshimer.)
But how do you know so clearly that the one thing is a lie and the other is the truth?
Even if you reject the "encroaching NATO" narrative, what makes "Putin just woke up one day and decided that remaking the Soviet Union and/or the zarist Russian Empire would be a great thing to do in the 21th century" the more plausible hypothesis?
What information do you have that Mearsheimer doesn't?
Russia is a nuclear-armed state. They have nothing to fear from NATO. They can never be invaded or conquered again, by anyone, ever.
Except from within.
Disagree? Answer my questions below, and explain exactly how you would go about attacking Russia.
Why does thinking about nuclear weapons cause most people to think in absolutist terms like this?
Maybe Russia was counting on getting a 15-minute warning of ICBMs approaching, but if a hostile military can station missile right on their southwestern border (523 miles from the center of Moscow) their plan goes out the window.
It wouldn't, because their SSBNs and their hidden silos would ensure the counter strike afterwards.
USA isn't counting on a 15 minute warning either, MAD is ensured via second strike capability AFTER the first strike, if you are counting for the first strike you've already lost.
Well it seems to be well-established MAD orthodoxy that if your enemy has nukes right at your border, and you don't have nukes right at their border, your deterrence ability is diminished.
See: the Cuban Missile Crisis:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Missile_Crisis
In any case, even in a MAD setting every side will be constantly trying to manoeuver to a position of advantage. That's what military people do when they're not actually fighting, kind of how computer nerds play video games when they're not coding, eh?
Where are you getting your sources from here? The Cuban Missile Crisis occurred in the context of the early 1960s whereby bombers were the primary method of delivery. Since the late 1960s, the ICBM is the bedrock of the MAD strategy, and the need of a second-strike capability via SSBNs and hidden silos after absorbing a nuclear attack.
There is no real "advantage" over having an extra few minutes or not. Russia is also building some sort of nuclear tsunami weapon, the US does not care. Because the strategy remains unchanged from threat of ICBMs. Frankly speaking, if you want to talk about what actually is a disadvantage for Russia right now, it's this war. If NATO actually invaded, they'd caught with their pants down. Hell, the US might even successfully ensure a first strike given they moved their air defences away.
The fact that Putin started this war even when knowing this should tell you that he dosen't actually view NATO as a threat. And they're not, from the Houthis, to Iran to Hamas, everbody can tell the US has no stomach for a war. This is not the result of US aggression, it is the result of US unassertiveness
We just funded and managed two 20 year wars across the planet from our borders, one in a landlocked country. Russia couldn't move a tank column down a highway at the beginning of this war.
Putin is definitely crushing us at manly and assertive displays, though.
The problem with that is that NATO is next door to Russia now. Nuclear deterrence doesn't work that well when it means nuking your foot.
Seen another way, Russia doesn't need ICBMs to reach London, Paris, Berlin...
But, really, try to think more carefully of what you're discussing: nuclear war. The threat to the existence of human civilisation from that is too big for macho politics and "we're stronger than them" braggadocio. As Chomsky pointed out once, and as aggravating as this is, that means letting assholes get away with murder on the international scene; which means not just Russia, but also the US, Israel, China, and who knows who else, in time.
Cuba was more of a sovereignty/sphere-of-influence problem than a nuclear-warfare problem. That ship has long since sailed with regard to Russia's borders. Moscow is half-surrounded on the west, as well it should be given its history of combining expansionist behavior with atrocities like communism and the Holodomor.
The Russians have had more than ample opportunity to join the civilized world and stop acting like dicks, but that's apparently not what they want to do. So, containment it is.
And if they feared NATO encroachment on their borders, trying to take over Ukraine was a really stupid way to discourage that. Nukes are scary enough, but nukes in the hands of stupid people are downright terrifying. Personally I doubt any of theirs still work, but that's all too easy to say.
Russian SSBNs stay pretty close to base. They don't range over the world's oceans like US ones do, and ISTR an expert opining that the US can probably track them.
But on second thought, I concede that the shortened warning time relative to ICBMs is probably not a major cause of Russia's anxiety about Ukraine.
Why does thinking about nuclear weapons cause most people to think in absolutist terms like this?
I don't understand the question. Can you elaborate?
How would you go about invading Russia, as a senior NATO commander? Russia's stated policy is to deploy nuclear arms against any invading force.
As for a hypothetical sneak attack on Moscow, are you familiar with the concept of the strategic defense triad?
NATO would have to nuke Russia, then invade. Tank crew are protected from fallout radiation. If they have filtered air, I think they can enter "fallout plumes" right away. Soldiers not protected by tanks will be able to enter in about 3 weeks: weapons fallout is very different in character from the contamination from, e.g., Chernobyl or Fukushima. It dissipates much more rapidly. In fact, since the fallout plumes will cover only about half of the land area or less, the tanks can map out the locations of the plumes, after which the infantry might be able to enter the parts of the country missed by the fallout plumes well before 3 weeks after the end of the nuclear attack. (The fallout stays in one place after it has fallen out of the sky and has hit the ground -- or more precisely the fallout that does end up being blown around by the wind after it has hit the ground is small enough in particle size to not be deadly, though it will mess up your mucus membranes via beta radiation, hence my words above about filtering the air for the tanks.)
When Jens Stoltenberg says that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought, his "cannot be won" is not literally true. He is saying it to emphasize that NATO would never even consider starting a nuclear war. And in fact I don't think the US or NATO ever would choose to start an intercontinental nuclear war, but it is very hard for the Kremlin to come to understand the US well enough to be as confident of that as I am (having lived in the US for over 60 years). Also, the people who run Russia and who will run Russia after Putin is dead are professional spies. They are evaluated by how seriously they take national security. Also, Russia has been invaded about 50 times in its recorded history: by the French, the Germans, a Polish-Lithuanian confederation, Sweden, the Turks many times, various groups (other than the Turks) looking to get slaves, Central Asian peoples and many kinds of steppe nomads (mostly notably the Mongols, Tatars and Cossacks). The whole country takes national security very seriously.
Of course NATO would want to evacuate its cities before it begins its attack. If it does, more than half of its population will survive the inevitable Russian response -- probably much more than half. (It's been a while since I saw the relevant papers.) Also, the US has spent many tens of billions on research into missile defense, and Russia cannot know with any certainly whether that research has born enough fruit so that the US can shoot down most of Russia ICBMs in a big war. Also, the Kremlin has expressed concern that the US Aegis system can shoot down Russian ICBMs, and now that Ukraine is good buddies with NATO, Russia has to consider the possibility of NATO's stationing many Aegis systems in Eastern Ukraine in addition to the Aegis systems already on US destroyers in the Baltic Sea.
In 1951 or so, China sent an army of about a million men against a large number of soldiers of the US Army. This Chinese army had the usual instructions from its political masters, namely, to kill as many US soldiers as possible and to destroy their equipment. They did this even though they would only get their first nuke in the 1960s whereas in 1951 the US had hundreds of nukes. Although the events I just described are a far cry from China's invading the US homeland, it does go against the notion that nukes are somehow a magical shield against conventional military attacks if even a non-nuclear military will contemplate attacking a nuclear power.
By the way, consider the motive of Beijing in 1951: the reason they risked getting nuked was to avoid having a regime (namely, the regime in Seoul) friendly to the US on their border. They preferred having a buffer state, namely, North Korea between them and any country friendly enough with the US to maybe agree to host US troops. They preferred it so much that they sent a million men and risked getting nuked. That is one of the data points that led Mearsheimer, Kissinger, Merkel, Sarkozy and many other security experts to criticize the plan of adding Ukraine to NATO. (Merkel and Sarkozy stopped their criticism because Paris and Berlin depend on Washington to guarantee their security, which gives Washington the last word on Paris and Berlin's security policy, so they went along with the plan even though that thought they still thought it was dumb.)
I think this doesnt really add up. Cause as soon as the US would invaded Russia, not only would Russia nuke the invading armies. They would very probably also start nuking command infrastructure. Which might or might not trigger the MADs doctrine.
Let me try again. The US has about 1400 nuclear weapons or more precisely it has "intercontinental delivery systems" to deliver that many warheads to targets in Russia. (If it is cheating on its obligations under the New START treaty, it could have more.) The US would use most or all of those 1400 warheads on Russia before it starts its invasion. It makes no sense to start an invasion of Russia (e.g., with tanks and trucks) without first thoroughly nuking it (hitting cities, infrastructure and military bases).
(And it makes no sense to nuke Russia without first evacuating US cities and advising Americans to make fallout shelters, which would mostly consist of trenches dug into the ground covered by logs or plywood covered by a plastic sheet to keep out the rain covered by 18 inches of dirt.)
And because that whole Tom Clancy scenario hinges critically on whether the initial NATO missile attack is launched from 523 miles away or 1500, Ukraine should run the white flag up the pole, accept Putin's terms, and get over themselves, already.
Got it.
There's no difference in distance between Latvia/Estonia (NATO members) and Ukraine.
NATO threat to Russia is internal fear-mongering propaganda and I have no idea why Mearsheimer and others talk about it with a serious face. We're not in the middle of 20th century anymore.
On one hand we have EU/US/NATO intelligence saying Kiev will fall in 72 hours to the 2nd best army in the world.
And then on the other hand we must believe Mearsheimer that Putin really fears that EU/US/NATO would start a war out of the blue with a country that has 45% of world's nuclear arsenal in the middle of Europe?
Give me a break.
No one sane in Europe is interested to start a war with Russia.
Europe and especially Merkel have spent the last few decades turning Russia into an important trading partner and tying them heavily into the European market. This worked well for them with the economic union post World War 2 (that turned into the European Union) which stopped wars in Europe for almost a century.
Similar approach was taken with Russia, but sadly it didn't work.
Russia has every right to fear NATO and make plans around it. But to say Russia invaded Ukraine because of NATO (or nazis) is nonsense.
I don't believe you'll even find any Russian opposition/anti-government journalist/scientist/economist or politician talk the "NATO threat" reasoning seriously. They know what Putin has been doing to their country for the last 20+ years, and it has nothing to do with NATO.
Sane, no, but Macron for instance suggested the West should send boots on the ground in Ukraine, and while he's clearly unhinged he was until recently the President of the second most powerful EU country and an important nuclear Nato member (although French people I've met were dismissive about the French nuclear deterrent; "it can bleach corals", I was told).
And don't forget that the far right (to put it politely) is rising in Europe, including in France and in Germany were they are the second most powerful political power and possibly soon the first in France. Do you know what happened last time the far right was rising in Europe?
When we're talking about nuclear war as a possible future I don't think it hurts to hedge al the bets ever.
this argument is nonsense. There is 365miles from Moscow center to border with Latvia, NATO member.
There are plenty of articles by respected international relations and Russia experts you can find that explains it quite clearly.
The IR community does not share Mearsheimer's take. He is very much known to be the exception. Which is why he's the only one we're referring to by name here, because his analysis is so contrary to the overwhelming consensus of experts.
Could you share some of those? I'd be interested.
(Having both "pro-russian" and "pro-western" family members, so I'm engaged in lots of discussions currently and would be glad for new information, no matter which side)
I think it's important which countries the experts are coming from. That our own IR/Russia experts are sharing this view doesn't seem very surprising to me - it's a war situation after all. I just notice that a lot of non-Western countries seem to be at least undecided which narrative to follow, e.g. Brazil, India, Turkey, many African countries. (Ignoring China which is obviously allied with Russia and therefore also has a clear bias).
Also, BRICS membership seems to be in demand, what I wouldn't expect if it was generally believed to be dominated by an insane, warmongering megalomaniac.
Mearsheimer is not alone though (even though it's definitely a minority position here). Jeffrey Sax, Ulrike Guerot and, well, Noam Chomsky come to mind, or also organisations such as fair.org with well-documented sources.
> I think it's important which countries the experts are coming from.
I don't think it's important to engage in prejudice based on national origin.
> I just notice that a lot of non-Western countries seem to be at least undecided which narrative to follow
141 countries decided that Russia's aggression is deserving of condemnation and must stop: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_General_Assembl...
Additionally, the court with relevant jurisdiction (composed of impartial judges from western and non-western countries) has decided that Putin should be arrested and tried for his crimes: https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/situation-ukraine-icc-judges-is...
Doesn't seem too undecided.
This doesn't seem to contradict Chomsky's take, who doesn't seem to endorse any kind of war or violence at all. Hence his take seems to be a critique on western behavior that seems fair and warranted.
You are correct, I was replying to our shared colleague xg15, not Chomsky. We were discussing the decisions of different countries around the world.
My post did not cover Chomsky's takes on the matter because, honestly, I have not read them. Not for lack of desire, just personal time and priority.
One of Putin's stated goals when he came to power was joining NATO. He did not feel threatened by it until he needed to justify his imperialistic behavior.
Or until the European stance changed, under the influence of the US, from one of including Russia to excluding. At least that's what Ulrike Guerot claims to have experienced.
I have no idea if this is true. I also don't want to say that Russia always tells the whole truth without lies and propaganda. But I'm finding it rather that our own side doesn't behave in the Ukraine conflict as we behave in other conflicts between third countries. We also engage in a lot of propaganda and biased reporting, especially on the topic of Ukraine and Israel (as shown by fair.org), so I've become careful too quickly deciding what the truth is.
(I do disagree in at least one point with all the russia apologists though: Whatever may have happened in Ukraine before the war and whatever the larger context is, what is happening right now there is driven by Russia and is absolutely devastating for Ukrainians. That Ukrainians hate Russia is absolutely understandable. So I think we should continue to support Ukraine. Nevertheless, if there was some hidden context in the lead-up of the war, it would be in our best interests to expose this.)
Europe was happily buying more and more gas from Russia and wanted to increase trading until the directional change from Putin.
Mearsheimer "has" all the information; it just doesn't fit his preferred narrative ("The U.S needs to stop picking on Russia so they can team up together against China"), so he discards the parts get in the way of that narrative. Such as the long and deep history of Russia's colonial attitude toward Ukraine, for example.
As to a more realistic narrative -- it's a bit more nuanced than the formulation you suggest, but even so -- is pretty much obvious once we look at the things Putin and key people around him have been saying, along with the last 350 years of so of Russia's history vis-a-vis its neighbors and Belarus and Ukraine in particular.
The links in the short comment tree below (which answered essentially the same question from just a few weeks ago) might be useful here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40455815
Mearsheimer can be a bit too convincing for his own good, surely. What he has argued that is certainly convincing is that Russia was ready to negotiate a peace at the start of the war, when Russians and Ukrainians met in Belarus and then in Istanbul. If Putin wanted to recreate Imperial Russia, or the Soviet Union, then why would he negotiate for peace?
That's Mearsh's argument, which he articulates, e.g. here in Lex Friedman's show (sorry, I couldn't find a better source):
https://youtube.com/watch?v=r4wLXNydzeY&t=2684
Full transcript here:
https://lexfridman.com/john-mearsheimer-transcript/
To distract western military support.
To distract offensive\defensive ukrainian plans.
To construct a peaceful narrative at home or the war mongering west.
To strengthen or pet allies, who mediate.
To gain intelligence about the willingness of territorial sacrifice.
Would Putin ever publicly admit his grand soviet plan? If no, then how would he behave instead? Consider georgia, chechenia, belarus, etc.
Exactly. Both 1st + 2nd order thinking are needed when evaluating the PR efforts of leaders, particularly when their messages go against their actions.
Can you expand on that a bit more? Sorta get what you're saying but I think I might not have a super coherent sense of what that is
I don't know, maybe? All those sound plausible but then you have to try and justify each of them with some kind of evidence of some sort, otherwise you're just playing the guessing game.
Now, I don't like guessing. When Russia entered negotiations the war was clearly not going its way, so the obvious explanation is that Putin wanted to disentangle from it with the least damage to his image as possible.
The question is why the negotiations failed, if they were really as advanced as suggested in the articles I linked above. Since the name of Boris Johnson has been brought up (in the context of being one of the Western representatives that told Zelenskiy to drop the deal) I tend to believe that a peace deal failed because at least one side in the negotiations was incompetent fools who should have never made it in power. That the other side is probably the same makes no difference.
Some more background on all that.
That Russia and Ukraine were negotiating an end to the war, early on, and that their representatives met in Istanbul and hammered out a deal is not in dispute, you can find information about those talks all over the 'net, e.g. here by the BBC:
https://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-europe-60890199
And here by Reuters:
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/turkey-says-russia-ukra...
From what I can find online, the negotiations advanced to the point where there was a comprehensive deal on the table that detailed security guarantees for Ukraine and a neutrality commitment on their side, but the deal was abandoned. Mearsheimer has claimed that it was because the US and the UK told the Ukrainians to drop the deal because they could win the war with the continued support of the West (and we saw how well that turned out). I obviously don't know enough to tell for sure whether that claim makes sense. There may well have been more than one reason that the deal fell apart.
Details here:
https://archive.ph/ajonZ
And a longer discussion here, were a speaker claims that Putin's plan was a US-style change of government, like the Americans did in Baghdad, (and we all saw how well that one turned out):
https://www.nprillinois.org/2024-05-06/the-story-behind-2022...
I don't know who those people are though in the panel, so I have no idea about their credibility etc.
Now, whatever the reason for the negotiations, I think it's indisputable at this point that Russia did come to the negotiating table and proposed terms to end the conflict. A sensible thing to do given that their "special operation" was, at the time, going to the dogs.
This is laughable. Russia cannot give any credible security guarantee to a country that it has just invaded! The war has shown precisely that Russia still believes that it has the right to control Ukraine and that any negotiated peace is nothing more than a temporary pause in hostilities in anticipation of a more opportune moment for Russia. Putin is a cypher and no-one really knows exactly why he wants to invade and conquer Ukraine, but as it is enormously plain at this point that he does want to do so, this entails that there is no really workable negotiated settlement.
Security guarantees would be provided by Western countries, not only Russia.
Ukraine is in no need of further security guarantees from Western countries save the one guarantee that Russia will never accept: NATO membership. Without that – and the associated obligation to offer a direct military response to Russian aggression – it's difficult to see how any security guarantee could possibly extend beyond what Western countries are already providing.
Russia's key conditions for the supposed "deal" that you refer to were that (i) the size of the Ukrainian army would be heavily constrained and that (ii) Russia would have a veto on any response to future aggression against Ukraine. Ukraine rejected the deal because it would have been worthless.
If Putin wanted to recreate Imperial Russia, or the Soviet Union, then why would he negotiate for peace?
Because as he keeps saying over and over -- the only "peace" he will accept is one in which his claims to sovereignty on the territories he is currently sitting are recognized by Western powers. This was his core demand during the Istanbul talks, and it's his current demand now (though he's upped it a bit recently to include regime change in Kyiv).
For a serial territorial aggressor like the modern Russian state, "peace" is simply another mechanism for arriving that same the desired end state.
It's also useful as a propaganda tool, to mollify the opposition to what he's doing ("See, Putin just wants peace -- he even says so!"), get people to start talking about how costly the war is, how the West is the real aggresor and so forth. That's where Mearsheimer et al come in.
That's probably because the wars started by "the West" (US and allies) are significantly more than the wars started by Russia or the USSR. See: vietnam, Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan. Not that Russia is some big supporter of peace, but the US and its allies are the current global bully. And you don't need Mearsheimer to tell you that.
So if Russia wants to get to play the top bully too, for a while -- well, we should just cut them some slack and let them have their way for a while? Because fair is fair, right?
That seems to be the essence of your argument here.
There are many many reasons for war, not just because Putin wrote a fancy paper long ago about his aspirin, or because the drought in Crimea was costing Russia tons of money since they took over and had their water cut off or the falling population and economy that purposely did not reinvest properly to keep Putin in power.
Giving a simple answer is not wrong if the long one takes much longer to explain. Multiple factors can be true, I'm sure Russia was uneasy that Siberia wanted to leave and with Ukraine gone they would have no direct access to water there. And the threat of China slowing taking over Russian land *with Russian permission of course*. Russia has attempted to do something even if extremely poorly miscalculated. That's kinda what Russia is known for, doing something and very often failing at it.
They have been lucky, sometimes clever but often terrible truly terrible at long term long planning. Ask their unpatriotic AI what it thinks, they will get mad about it too.
Explain?
Aspiration + autocorrect?
Many people also hate mearsheimer if he talks about what he predicts will happen vs what he'd like to happen (Ukraine or Israel).
Chomsky's foreign policy views can somewhat accurately be reduced to "everything is either American imperialism or reactions against it," to a degree that he ignores the imperialist tendencies (and other unpleasantries) of countries that aren't the US because they're against the US. For example, his denial of the Cambodian genocide essentially boiled down to "well, the US doesn't like the Khmer Rouge, so therefore everybody criticizing the Khmer Rouge was overselling the criticism, how was anyone at the time to know what they were doing?"
While not fresh on the specifics of this controversy, my implicit understanding through Manufacturing Consent was that the Cambodian genocide was more likely a consequence of the United States bombing Cambodia's arable farmland into a booby trapped hellscape, which caused many people to flee to the capital. After some geopolitical games the US played, a psychopath became head of state for Cambodia, and one of those initiatives was ordering those starving people to suddenly leave the capital and go farm, and another was to unalive people at death camps. I don't think he denied the genocide. It makes a lot of sense that many people died of famine as a direct consequence of US destruction of arable farmland, and that the US would create a narrative to hide that and did not let the tragedy of Pol Pot "go to waste".
I don't think that makes sense - they only bombed a small percentage of Cambodia but no doubt the turmoil helped Pol Pot get into power.
Assuming that small percentage were most of the arable farmland in Cambodia, would it make more sense? That is to say, if you were misled to believe the impact was smaller than reality would it make you think differently? Small being a relative term. IIRC, IT WAS 25% of Cambodia's landmass and most of its good farmland.
Christopher Hitchens on Chomsky and 9/11:
"...it would be a credulous fool who swallowed the (unsupported) word of Osama Bin Laden that his group was the one responsible. An attempt to kidnap or murder an ex-president of the United States (and presumably, by extension, the sitting one) would be as legally justified as the hit on Abbottabad. And America is an incarnation of the Third Reich that doesn’t even conceal its genocidal methods and aspirations. This is the sum total of what has been learned, by the guru of the left, in the last decade."
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2011/05/noam-chomsky-on-...
This is a serious mischaracterization of what Chomsky said. He didn't argue that Osama bin Laden didn't do 9/11, he argued that the American government denied him the right to be innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.
Hitchens supported the war and voted for Bush. Of course he hates Chomsky.
Rather he chose to understand the point of view from their side. It is extremely difficult to do so and only a few public facing individuals is able to do ( Jeffrey Sachs etc. )
That's kind of the problem. He should have been trying to understand it from the Ukrainians side more than seeing the thing as US vs Russia.
It seems a bit of a historical change - in the 19th century view it would be ok for the Russians to get pissed off with the US trying to steal their Ukrainian peasants and associated property. These days you're supposed to let sovereign democracies do their own thing even if they have smaller armies.
Is that how it works? How about letting your ally wipe out a sovereign nation in the ME? Does that count as these days? Or casually kill 2+ mln civilians in Iraq.
“These days” also apply to us and our allies and it is an unfortunate part of how things run.
Yes, until they make the mistake of democratically electing someone you don't like, at which point you send in the secret services to instigate violent regime change.
There's an entire wikipedia article dedicated to the US doing that all over the place:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...
They sort of did that to my own country (Greece) where they supported a ridiculous military dictatorship (Junta), although I don't think they actively helped it to power. If you find my comments coloured by a certain antipathy towards US external policy, that may be one reason.
If he watched this narrative for two decades, he’d know the dynamics. What he understood instead is the official media position of the day, in which the bad guy is the main actor. That is still impressive for a foreigner, but of no use. Even a half brained dog can see through it here if lived long enough. Sadly our population is heavily handicapped in this regard because it was never exposed to rational argument, which itself is (IMO) the root of all our evils. All our opposition always sucked at politics and literally died out. Good politicians don’t die.
This is much like trying to understand the US invasion of Iraq from the neoconservative point of view, and parroting it uncredulously. This necessitates dehumanizing the invaded population.
Just Russia?
Noam Chomsky had some financial money transfers and a series of meetings arranged by Jeffrey Epstein. At least one meeting with Ehud Barak (former PM of Israel). And he refused to explain himself.
This got quickly swept under the rug. But it's there even on mainstream media if you bother to search for it.
If I recall, he did explain himself… it boiled down to it being none of your or my business. I despise Epstein, but as he was heavily involved in finance, I am sure many people had dealings with him that were not sexual in nature.
You can find many things that Noam missed the mark on. To err is human. But this is conspiratorial and not fair. If you were judged by all the people you had financial or social dealings with I’d imagine you would share a similar sentiment.
Jeffrey Epstein was sus ever since he appeared because of the way he suddenly rose up in ranks, got handed billions of dollars without having done any significant deals himself. His connections to Mossad and US elites should've raised red flags for someone like Chomsky. I see no reason to give anyone dealing with Epstein the benefit of the doubt.
Considering he’s significantly anti-Israel I’m curious even if there were nefarious purposes behind his meeting with Barak what direction do you think it swayed him in?
In addition a LOT of academics met with Epstein. The whole point of Epstein was that he clawed himself up the social ladder by schmoozing with money people and raising funds for academic work. It would be entirely shocking if Epstein raised all this money for academia and didn’t even try and meet probably the only famous academic in the world.
Taking sides is a sign of emotional, not intellectual approach. And Russia/Ukraine conflict is way far from good fighting evil simplified construct.
I don't like leftists in general and Chomsky in particlar, but I give him huge respect for intellectual and independent position, which will cause him losing appreciation from people like you.
There's a 2023 interveiw with him here on Ukraine https://truthout.org/articles/chomsky-a-stronger-nato-is-the...
I'd say rather than emotional he has the usual academic thing of being up in one specialist area - in this case US imperialism and not up on another speciality like Russia's history of invasion, expansion and the like.
Wow.
The guy has a different opinion.
It's going to happen a lot so maybe better to get used to it?
They guy built a brand (rightfully) opposing US imperialist wars only to side with a Russian imperialist war.
It matters.
I think matters of geopolitics and war especially must be up for debate.
Russia's action are absolutely up for debate.
It is probably needless to say, but you do not have to agree with someone on everything, especially to admire someone's knowledge or contributions in specific fields.
"Taking russia's side" seems like a wild mischaracterization of the situation.
Chomsky regularly and rigorously defends genocidal regimes. Look up "Cambodian genocide denial" on wikipedia and you'll find an entire section devoted to Chomsky. This isn't anything new, and I'm surprised how much sympathetic support he's getting in this thread.
He is such a terrible person he has his own section on the Wikipedia page for "Cambodian Genocide Denial"[1] and is heavily featured in the page for "Bosnian Genocide Denial"[2]. Chomsky is a disgusting hack who runs cover for any genocidal freak that pays lip service to the hammer and sickle.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodian_genocide_denial#Chom... [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosnian_genocide_denial#Revisi...
oh wow, its the same dead horse being beaten again and again and again.
The whole thing is more semantical argument than ideological.
Chomsky is not 100% right on everything and his world views are more black and white than the world they describe.
But he is an excellent linchpin to validate your own views against.
People who hate him always attack him based on few things from the past, while following/praising people who are spineless.
Its like people always go after Nazi and right wingers about the same kind of stuff. Like let it go people.
equivalent example?
What a frighteningly distorted view of "rational" and "intellectual".
America is perfect? No bad to be found here? I find this hard to believe.
Would have loved to be a fly on the wall had he been able to do a guest spot at Google recently.
I'm willing to bet he would've gone off-script and given Google hell for their engagements with Israel and treatment of their own employees who protested.
Noam wouldn't be allowed to speak at NeuGoogle.
+1
±1
ISTR he was there on a book tour? Ready to talk politics. Got a bunch of linguistics questions.