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

The Fifth Freedom
million in aid to Nicaragua since the revolution while “express[ing]
irritation” that nearly four times that much, some $1.6 billion, had come
from non-Soviet sources, mostly what he called “misguided” European
governments. The US has predictably devoted itself to terminating this
pluralism and ensuring sole dependency on the Evil Empire. “In 1982,
the French sold Nicaragua about $17 million worth of arms before US
anger made them steer clear of sending any more military items into the
area,” the press reports; the statement is only partly true, since France,
which will gladly sell arms to the devil himself unless prevented by
higher authority, may continue to provide state terrorists in El Salvador
and Guatemala with the required means of destruction, with our full
acquiescence. But only the Soviet bloc is permitted to provide Nicaragua
with arms for self-defense against our attack. 25
When arms do not flow at the approved level from our favored
source, US propaganda invents the required facts, as in the case of
Guatemala in 1954, or the guerrillas in El Salvador during the Reagan
years.
Much the same was true in the case of Maoist China and Castro’s
Cuba, among other examples; in the former case, the US not only
helped create a Sino-Soviet bloc that was not inevitable, given
longstanding conflicts between the Chinese Communists and the USSR
that extend back to the Chinese Civil War, but even insisted with some
passion that the Sino-Soviet bloc remained solid when it was evident to
any rational observer that it was riven by deep conflicts. The important
point is that such behavior is systematic and quite rational, given the
guiding geopolitical conceptions, which are essentially invariant, since
they are rooted in the unchanging institutional structure of ownership
and domination in our own society.
It is commonly remarked that indigenous factors have played a role in
driving the various enemies of the Fifth Freedom into the hands of the
Classics in Politics: Turning the Tide Noam Chomsky
90