”the war in Ukraine is helping to achieve a goal of a severely weakened Russia.

 

 

  NOAM CHOMSKY AND JEREMY SCAHILL ON THE RUSSIA-UKRAINE WAR, THE MEDIA, PROPAGANDA, AND ACCOUNTABILITY

クリスヘッジがでてくるとやっぱノーム・チョムスキー　youtube がちゃんと選んできてくれているのかね？

　主張とすればかなり重なるところがある。

NC: I think that support for Ukraine’s effort to defend itself is legitimate. If it is, of course, it has to be carefully scaled, so that it actually improves their situation and doesn’t escalate the conflict

However, I still think it’s not quite the right question. The right question is: What is the best thing to do to save Ukraine from a grim fate, from further destruction? And that’s to move towards a negotiated settlement. 

We should bear in mind that the nature of a political settlement, the general nature of it, has been pretty clear on all sides for quite some time. In fact, if the U.S. had been willing to consider them, there might not have been an invasion at all. 

Before the invasion, the U.S. basically had two choices: One was to pursue its official stance, which I just reviewed, which makes the negotiations impossible and may have led to war; the other possibility was to pursue the options that were available. To an extent, they’re still somewhat available, attenuated by the war, but the basic terms are pretty clear. 

OK, your main goals are neutralization and demilitarization, meaning Mexico-style arrangement, let’s pursue that. With regard to Crimea, let’s accept Zelenskyy’s sensible position that let’s delay it, we can’t deal with it now. With regard to the Donbas region, work towards some kind of framework with autonomy, based on the opinions of the people who live there, which can be determined by an internationally supervised referendum. Would the Russians agree? We don’t know. Would the United States agree? We don’t know. All we know is they’re rejecting it, officially. Could they be pressed to accept it? I don’t know. We can try. That’s the one thing we can hope to do. 

JS: I want to ask you about some of the statements that Biden administration officials have made in recent days. On the Sunday talk shows this past weekend, you had the national security adviser and the Secretary of State both laying out what was almost an overt war plan for seeking to fundamentally weaken the Russian state and talking about the war in Ukraine as helping to achieve a goal of a severely weakened Russia. 

JC

I’m sure, Noam, that you and I both agree that there are massive war crimes being conducted right now in Ukraine — certainly Russia is the dominant military power and I wouldn’t be surprised for one second if a huge percentage of the war crimes being committed are being done by Russia. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t war crimes being committed by Ukraine. We already have video evidence of this, of both Ukraine and Russia. But I want to be clear here; I believe that Russia is committing systemic war crimes in Ukraine. But when you have the United States undermining the International Criminal Court, refusing to ratify the treaty, how can Joe Biden call for a war crimes trial, when Dick Cheney and George Bush are walking around as free men, not to mention Henry Kissinger? And when the U.S. itself won’t accept that that court should have jurisdiction equally over all powers in the world?

NC

I mean, throughout the whole Cold War, one of the major issues in international affairs was whether Europe would become an independent force in international affairs, what was called a third force, maybe along the lines that Charles de Gaulle outlined, or that Gorbachev outlined when the Soviet Union collapsed; common European home, no military alliances, cooperation between Europe and Russia, which had become integrated into peaceful commercial blood. That’s one option. 

The other option is what’s called the Atlanticist program, implemented by NATO. The United States calls the shots and you obey, that’s the Atlanticist program. Of course, the U.S. has always supported that one, and has always won. Now Putin solved it for the United States. He said: OK. You get Europe as a subordinate.

 I mean, if anybody’s observing this from outer space, they’d be cracking up in laughter. But not in the offices of Lockheed Martin. They think it’s terrific. Even better in the offices of Exxon Mobil. 

JC

This is a very dangerous trend that we’re witnessing where to question the state now is being very publicly and consistently equated with being a traitor.

NC: That’s an old story. 

You go to 1981: U.N. ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick devises the notion of moral equivalence. She said: If you dare to criticize the United States, you’re guilty of moral equivalence. You’re saying we’re just like Stalin and Hitler. So you can’t talk about the United States. 

There’s another term that’s used now. It’s: whataboutism. If you talk about what the U.S. is doing right now, it’s whataboutism, you can’t do that. You’ve got to adhere firmly to the party line, strictly to the party line. We don’t have the kind of force that Hitler and Stalin had. But we can use obedience, conformity — a lot of things we’ve been talking about. And you get a sort of similar result — not new. 

米国がウクライナに武器供与するのは妥当だが、エスカレートしないように注意しなくてはいけない。しかし、米国はそれができない。

米国は政治的妥結については不作為。

戦争前でも政治的に戦争を回避できた可能性。

NATO不参加　最小限軍事力、クリミア問題は将来に、ドンバスは地域住民の投票で　という案を関係者にはかってみるべき。

アメリカはウクライナ戦争をロシアを弱体化する好機として使っている。

アメリカは自国の戦争犯罪人は匿っておきながらロシアの戦争犯罪人を裁こうとしている。

冷戦後　ワルシャワ条約機構やNATOといった軍事同盟を消滅させて、ロシアと欧州が協力しあって第３勢力を形成する選択肢もあったが、プーチンのお陰でそれも台無しになり、米国が親分で欧州が服従する大西洋主義が残った。

今回の戦争で軍需産業と石油産業が潤う。

戦争が始まって、国に反対するものは裏切り者と罵られ、アメリカの罪を持ち出そうものならWhataboutismだ！とか言って口を塞がれる、風潮が高まっている、と。