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

The Fifth Freedom
Russians. That is true, but not pertinent here. The point is that for quite
understandable reasons, US policy has regularly labored to reinforce
precisely these tendencies and to block alternatives. Nevertheless,
tactical considerations may on occasion dictate a different course, as
when Nixon and Kissinger finally recognized that the Sino-Soviet bloc
was unresurrectible and decided, rationally, to exploit the conflict and to
accept Chinese overtures, hoping ultimately to draw China into the USdominated
sphere and convert it to what we call a more “open”
society—one open to US economic penetration and political control.
In an important study of the Guatemalan intervention, Richard
Immerman argues that top US planners and corporate representatives
closely linked to government (or running it) really believed that
Guatemala’s moderate reforms constituted prima facie evidence for “the
penetration of Central America by a frankly Russian-dominated
Communist group” (Adolf Berle, on behalf of the Council on Foreign
Relations, to the State Department), thus justifying US intervention in
defense of freedom. 26 He may well be right, but the point is of little
significance except for the (rather boring) study of the psychology of
leaders and ideologues. It is a rare individual who consciously believes
that what he or she does is genuinely evil; as noted earlier, it is easy
enough to come to believe whatever is convenient. There is no reason to
doubt the sincerity of Japanese fascists who explained that they were
creating an “earthly paradise” as they swept across China 50 years ago,
not for crass economic motives—Japan was, after all, spending more
than it could hope to gain in protecting the “true nationalists” under its
wing from bandits such as Chiang Kai-shek—but to bring the benefits of
civilization to benighted and oppressed people who had been victimized
by Western imperialism. 27 Similarly, Hitler doubtless sincerely wanted
peace—on his terms—and the integrity and vitality of the German
nation, as he proclaimed, and Soviet leaders yearn for stability and
Classics in Politics: Turning the Tide Noam Chomsky
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