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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of security and defense.
To evaluate the defensive rhetoric of some state, we must turn to the
historical record. Let us consider, then, a few significant moments,
keeping to the post-World War II period.
As discussed in chapter 2, the US emerged from the war in a position
of world dominance with few parallels in history, and with a firm
determination to keep things that way. The geopolitical framework
developed by planners, which has earlier precedents as noted, persists
unchanged, including the sanctity of the Fifth Freedom and the
commitment to “maintain the disparity” by harsh measures if necessary,
preventing the “contagion” of independent development from “infecting”
other regions, to the extent feasible.
In terms of security from threat, the US was also in an unparalleled
position. There were no threats in the Western Hemisphere and the US
controlled both oceans. No enemy could possibly reach us. There was,
however, one potential threat: the development of ICBMs that could
reach the US, fitted with highly destructive hydrogen bomb warheads. It
is useful, then, to consider what efforts were undertaken to prevent the
development of ICBMs or the hydrogen bomb. The record shows no
serious effort to avert the sole potential threat to the security of the
United States, indeed, little concern about the matter in the first postwar
decade when progress might have been made in this direction. These
facts do not comport well with the thesis that security considerations
guided US policy.
In fact, Stalin’s “peace offensives” were regarded as a serious threat
that must be resisted, as this conventional terminology indicates. A
Business Week analysis of 1949 noted that so far “Stalin’s ‘peace
feelers’ have been brushed aside” by Washington, but there is evidence
that this “peace offensive” is serious, a prospect that they regarded with
some concern, for reasons to which we turn in section 5. The same