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

The Fifth Freedom
freedom manifests itself, to be sustained for as long as it is needed to
justify the righteous use of force and violence to restore the Fifth
Freedom, the one that really counts.
A careful look at history and the internal record of planning reveals a
guiding geopolitical conception: preservation of the Fifth Freedom, by
whatever means are feasible. Much of what US governments do in the
world can be readily understood in terms of this principle, while if it
remains obscured, acts and events will appear incomprehensible, a
maze of confusion, random error and accident. Many other factors also
operate—fortunately, or there would be no hope of modifying state
policies and actions short of social revolution. But this principle is an
invariant core, deeply rooted in the basic institutions of American
society.
Public discussion of the facts would plainly not have “a good
propaganda effect,” so the ideological institutions—the schools, the
media and much of scholarship—keep to a familiar refrain, extolling our
profound concern for human rights, the raising of the living standards,
and democratization. In private, the more intelligent planners reveal that
they labor under few illusions and urge that we not be “hampered by
idealistic slogans” of this sort. The central point was lucidly explained in
an internal document written in 1948 by George Kennan, head of the
State Department planning staff in the early post-World War II period: 11
. . . we have about 50% of the world’s wealth, but only 6.3% of
its population . . . In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object
of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to
devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain
this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national
security. To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality
and day-dreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated
Classics in Politics: Turning the Tide Noam Chomsky
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