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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populations. This is the real meaning of the Cold War, and we should
not forget it, when we turn our attention to the fact that this system of
massacre, torture and oppression may, in the end, engulf us as well.
The Cold War system of global management is highly unstable, and
sooner or later it will break down, as has come close to happening often
in the past. Those who value their reputation as good prophets should
predict that the system will remain stable. As long as it persists, they
will be right, and they can scoff at those who, “driven by vague fears of
the end of the world,” have taken part in such “quasi-religious rituals” as
arms control talks, and at the doomsayers overcome by “Protestant
angst” or other psychic disorders. 102 And when it breaks down, there will
be no one left to prove them wrong.
The system has a certain inner rationality in the short term, within
the framework of state and private planning. In the longer term, it is a
system of mutual suicide, but it is far from easy to see how we can
extricate ourselves from it, because core institutional factors are
involved.
Until major institutional changes become possible, we are limited to
a holding action, rather like putting a band-aid on a cancer, in an effort
to avert imminent catastrophe. Such actions, however frustrating and
often futile they seem, must not be abandoned. It is necessary to oppose
the next fantastic military system that will be concocted, the next
intervention, the next attack on a potential rotten apple. We have a
responsibility to try to protect people who are being viciously oppressed,
and we may also hope to create a certain space in which, perhaps, there
will be a way to work for more substantial institutional changes that will
get to the roots of the problem.
Not all the problems of international society result from US initiatives,
but we have an ample share. In a sense, this is a hopeful sign, since it
means there is much that can be done by people who can muster the