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

The Fifth Freedom
2. The Perceptions of the Planners
n the chambers of power, a clearer vision is also sometimes
expressed. In mid-1941, while schoolchildren were memorizing the
Four Freedoms and—soon after—the Atlantic Charter, the War and
Peace Studies Project of the Council on Foreign Relations, which
included top government planners and members of the foreign policy
elite with close links to government and corporations, explained privately
that “formulation of a statement of war aims for propaganda purposes is
very different from formulation of one defining the true national interest,”
recommending further that 10
I
If war aims are stated, which seem to be concerned solely with
Anglo-American imperialism, they will offer little to people in the
rest of the world, and will be vulnerable to Nazi counter-promises.
Such aims would also strengthen the most reactionary elements in
the United States and the British Empire. The interests of other
peoples should be stressed, not only those of Europe, but also of
Asia, Africa and Latin America. This would have a better
propaganda effect.
In accordance with this conception, Roosevelt spoke of Four
Freedoms, but not of the Fifth and most important: the freedom to rob
and to exploit. Infringement of the four official freedoms in enemy
territory always evokes much agonized concern. Not, however, in our
own ample domains. Here, as the historical record demonstrates with
great clarity, it is only when the fifth and fundamental freedom is
threatened that a sudden and short-lived concern for other forms of
Classics in Politics: Turning the Tide Noam Chomsky
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