Noam Chomsky: The Global Power Dynamic in 2008 | Big Think

Noam Chomsky: The Global Power Dynamic in 2008

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Chomsky talks about the three major world power systems: North America, Europe and Northeast Asia

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Noam Avram:

Noam Avram Chomsky was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on December 7, 1928. He attended the University of Pennsylvania where he studied linguistics, mathematics, and philosophy. In 1955, he received his Ph. D. from the University of Pennsylvania, however, most of the research leading to this degree was done at Harvard between 1951 and 1955. Since receiving his Ph. D., Chomsky has taught at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he now holds the Ferrari P. Ward Chair of Modern Language and Linguistics.

Among his many accomplishments, he is most famous for his work on generative grammar, which developed from his interest in modern logic and mathematical foundations. As a result, he applied it to the description of natural languages.

His political tendencies toward socialism and anarchism are a result of what he calls "the radical Jewish community in New York." Since 1965 he has become one of the leading critics of U.S. foreign policy. He published a book of essays called American Power and the New Mandarins which is considered to be one of the most substantial arguments ever against American involvement in Vietnam.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Noam Chomsky: Well there are basically three major power systems, roughly speaking: North America, Europe and North East Asia, joined to Indian and South Asia and to South East Asia. There are lots of integration among them, they are not distinct, but they are identifiable power centers. Separate from them are the major oil producers, which have power, but have a lot of financial resources.

Europe and the United States are roughly comparable in every dimension except military force. The United States, its military spending now exceeds substantially that of the rest of the world combined, and nothing is even close.

The North East Asia is probably the most dynamic economic region in the world; China, Japan, North and South Korea. It has amassed enormous financial resources. In fact, Japan and China, and to some extent the oil producers, have been sustaining the U.S. economy. How long they will do it is unclear.

There’s plenty of violence all over the world, with the most extreme regions are the Middle East region, mainly because that’s the major energy sources of energy for the world. The U.S. invasion of Iraq is the central part of it, but not the only one. And it’s a very volatile area. There could be a confrontation between the U.S. and Iran, a U.S. attack on Iran, which one well known British military historian, Correlli Barnett, said that it would be world III. And he could be right.

There are other tendencies developing. South America, as you mentioned, is actually for the first time in its history since the Spanish invasion, is making significant moves towards integration. The society, countries have been very separate from one another. They have been ruled by tiny, wealthy, mostly Europeanized elites, related to the imperial societies, not to one another. And they are moving towards a degree of integration, its independence.

They are also beginning slowly to tackle some of their immense internal problems. There is a huge inequality. In fact some of the most exciting democratic experiments, may be the most exciting, are taking place right there, especially in Bolivia where the indigenous majority of the population has, for the first time, entered the political arena in a serious way, elected their own candidate from their own ranks. It’s leading to a possible threat of cessation by the white Europeanized elite, which has always around the country and has most of the resources. And there is plenty of sources of conflict there. An important development, in many ways the most exciting area of the world, I think.

There is the Bank of the South, which is broadly supported, could be an alternative development fund, just as the Asian Development Bank could be.

What happens in China and India will be no doubt be of enormous significance. They do have high growth rates. A lot of people have been taken out of poverty. It should be recalled that they have succeeded in doing this largely by violating the rules of game that the western powers have attempted to establish. That’s no surprise the economic historians, because it’s the way the developed countries got rich themselves. But they are now significant players around the world scene. Particularly China.

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