Noam Chomsky - Turning the Tide U.S. intervention in

The Race to Destruction
Classics in Politics: Turning the Tide Noam Chomsky
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concern is “radical nationalism,” which, it is feared, might threaten US
control over these resources. “Radical nationalism” is another of those
curious terms of US political theology—like “Communism,” “stability,”
“containment,” “democracy,” “aggression,” etc.—with technical
meanings only dimly related to their normal sense: in this case, the
reference is to nationalist movements that do not obey orders, whatever
their political complexion may be, as opposed to “moderate
nationalism,” properly obedient. US relations with Israel, unique in
international affairs, have always been closely related to these concerns.
But the structure of military installations designed to deter the
indigenous threat also faces the USSR, to ensure that there will be no
interference from that direction in a core region of the US global
system. 6 A 1983 US Air Force Publication describes the nuclear
weapons mission in Turkey as “in an aggressive growth stage,” with
nuclear-armed aircraft on “alert” status, ready to strike Soviet targets. 7
The same planners who have placed the growing US nuclear arsenal in
Turkey on alert warn us that Nicaragua, even Grenada, is a threat to our
very existence, compelling us to take aggressive action of a sort that
might lead to nuclear war. And their assessment is widely shared, yet
another reflection of the paranoid fever of what passes for intellectual
life.
The US now has more than 13,000 nuclear weapons capable of
striking the USSR, over 11,000 of them classified as “strategic”; the
USSR can explode about 8500 nuclear weapons on the United States.
The US arsenal rose from about 4000 to 9200 during the 1970s while
the Soviet arsenal increased from about 2000 to 6500. France and
England have about 1000 additional nuclear weapons targeted against
the Soviet Union, and their arsenals are rapidly increasing. NATO has
always outspent the Warsaw Pact on armaments by a considerable
margin, even by the US government figures, which have a built-in bias