Chomsky

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Constructing a Global Leviathan: A Corporeal Form for a Transnational Demoi?

Book Review: Noam Chomsky,* Hopes and Prospects (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2010), 336 pages. ISBN: 978-1-931859-96-7.

Jean-Paul Gagnon, Ph.D.** Centre for Greater China Studies 10 Lo Ping Road, New Territories, Hong Kong Email: jpg@jeanpaulgagnon.com

Chomsky delivers what is almost an encyclopaedic record of nearly global anti-democratic occurrences perpetrated mostly, if not entirely, by the non-democratic activities of union-state foreign policies. As convincingly detailed in Hopes and Prospects, the foreign and at times domestic activities of the USA, Israel, Indonesia and Australia among others each play significant roles in subverting democracy around the world. The reader is immediately swept into a torrent of evidence – so much that at times the book must be put down to let anger subside. It left this reader, already in his opinion well-steeped in critical international relations theory, to ask: can all of this be true? There is simply so great a weight of evidence delivered in the book that even if, under an imaginary condition, a fraction of it were true such would be sufficient to spark outrage. If, as this reviewer thinks it to be, all of the evidence is true or as close to truth as humanly possible – a response beyond outrage is needed to fly into the face of illegitimate behaviours of powerful states. As will come to be discussed, it is argued that this book sparks the need for the strengthening of the international Leviathan: that magnificent figure composed of transnational demoi and multifarious cross-boundary political bodies.

That Leviathan is sustained wholly by the ethereal life-force of a critical global belief in something called democracy as a body or function able to deliver billions of individuals into a better life.

Chomsky does not explicitly define his conception of democracy but by reading this work (and of course his many others) the reader can generally deduce that his conception has mainly to do with preventing the abuse of concentrated power. In other words, his conception appears to have an emphasis on monitory and discursive democracy systems in what is argued to be the correct assumption that such are effective at combating abuses of power or the illegitimate rules, actions and biases of unionstates. This is of course thought to be the case due to these democratic systems having emphases on non-violence, open if not proceduralized political discussion bolstering the role of the citizen, and strong accountability, transparency as well as anti-corruption measures to keep political bodies, corporations, media, militaries or other under public Noam Chomsky is an Emeritus Professor in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Email: chomsky@mit.edu. ** Dr Jean-Paul Gagnon is an Honorary Research Fellow with the Centre for Greater China Studies housed by the Hong Kong Institute of Education. He edits the Journal of Democratic Theory. Email: jpg@jeanpaulgagnon.com. *

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scrutiny. What is seen here, as in his other works, is a democracy from an embattled place. Indeed, Hopes and Prospects should be widely read and translated into as many different languages as possible so as to give the demoi of this world the knowledge of what abuses have come to our champion Democracy. It is possible that Chomsky hoped for this outcome: that if the demoi composing the international Leviathan learned of these atrocities that our champion suffered that we would rise, like indigestion and bile, through the viscera of the union-state so as to bring it to its knees and have it expel its secrets and powers for democratic governance to order.

The book provides a very critical and important picture. If it were a scene painted by Jacques Louis David it would be an image filled with the foul activities of foreign policies – of injustice, blood, and murder. Much of the evidence presented to the reader is not normatively given in the treatments of global politics – and if it is, that is usual done in a more tempered manner which may not be an entirely good thing. Now, the tone of the book might of course have been dictated to some extent by its publisher Haymarket which ostensibly strives to support the needs of mainly English-speaking activists.

Nevertheless, by moving the locus of thought about the need to improve democracy from ‘the usual suspects’ of the USA, Canada, Western Europe, Australia and New Zealand, and focusing on South and Central America or the ‘Arab’ States, it is quickly apparent that terribly large amounts of effort are still needed to bring more democracy to this world by empowering the demoi therein and bolstering at the very least both monitory and deliberative democratic systems. With each passing page in Hopes and Prospects, the heart of the democrat is torn: there is so very much evidence here of violence against individuals and democracy perpetuated through covert foreign policy. And these activities were shown by Chomsky to have been so covert that even those many individuals from the countries of international bandits have generally no knowledge of the atrocities their own governments committed.

This reader found, however, that Chomsky did not offer enough critical hope or enough rigorous prospects that the demoi could use to counterweight the anti-democratic occurrences which he so systematically presented – somewhat belying the title. Indeed, after having read this engaging and truly infuriating book (halfway through I was already headed to the Bastille) this reader is left to wonder what practical devices we as the demoi of this world could come to deploy to bring these rogues of the international community to abide by our democratic power. How can we, as citizens and citizenries composing the only legitimate political power left in this world, come to construct the global Leviathan? The demoi of multinational organizations, countries, provinces, regions, and localities need to build its metaphorical and functional arms, legs, torso and head. But how can this come about or continue? One obvious offering would be for greater education about the demoi’s lack of power internationally – about this broken democratic Leviathan in global politics that is incapable of enforcing democratic hegemony. There is too the longstanding issue of how demoi within the state cannot seem to control the

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foreign affairs of their governments. As Hans Blokland, Chomsky, John Keane, Roland Axtmann and many others have asked: where was the intra-state hegemony of the USA’s people prior to the invasion of Iraq?

Or, to offer a less dated example, where is the power of the demoi in Israel to reel its current government in? The general agreement, it seems, is that most individual citizens of the USA or Israel are being swindled, stonewalled or excluded. To focus solely on the Iraqi example, the disempowering of the Hussein regime could have occurred using completely different tactics which would have most importantly saved countless lives, and less importantly (in comparison to a life) a great deal of infrastructure, socio-cultural, and economic capital.

So the demoi are here left to decide what they can use outside of the standard siren call for greater targeted education on the two topics outlined above. Pithily, how can the global union of the demoi as well as the intra-state demoi1 become empowered to control the vagabonds, pirates, and lawless states in the international forum? This reviewer supposes that the answer depends on temporality: the empowerment sought after is more likely to happen carefully over time through the mutations of collective memory and generational shift but only if the issues at hand stay in the issue-attention spectrum of as much of the demoi as possible. One risk of deploying aggressive short-term policies is that mistakes that would otherwise be avoided through a conservative approach could occur. An example is castigating as many US-Americans and Israelis (among many other nationalities) as possible despite the vast majority of them having no responsibility for the actions of certain administrations. That is wrong but may, to some, seem like a good option to make these citizens aware of the issue at hand so that they can align themselves with the interests of democracy and not continue in apathy or ignorance to the crimes their governments commit. That being said, there is too a risk of being overly conservative: by only looking to long-term action and education-promotion, the international Leviathan might yet again stand idly while champions of democracy or simply good innocent people are killed for whatever reason: oil, money – power?

So, at this point, the demoi are left to the middle ground: the need to act as quickly as possible without losing sight of the value of the long-term (that classic, if not damningly irritating, liberal-conservative tension seen in action at present over Syria or before with Libya and the Siege of Sarajevo for example). But what is this centrist approach? Chomsky unfortunately does not tell us. For one, it probably has to do with nonviolence. That is of paramount importance. We, as demoi internationally, have also to prioritize our demands – and to be fair this has been happening through various agents. Thus non-violence and prioritization It is reasoned that there are multiple demoi within a state who are capable of identifying or being identified as a demos. But that singular body of the demos is fragile, constantly shifting, and not entirely true to the nature of plurality which permeates almost all contemporary democratic societies. This is an important discussion, lastly to my knowledge held publicly between John Keane and Roland Axtmann at Deakin University’s Democratic Governance Symposium (Burwood in Melbourne, December 2011) kindly organized by Benjamin Isakhan and Hans Lofgren.

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should already be in place as two pillars of centrist action. Clearly these are important but insufficient as certain administrations still evade our global Leviathan should it just be based on these two pillars. A third pillar lies most clearly with the evolution of what John Keane (through Life and Death and The Future of Representative Democracy) came to call ‘redblooded commercial journalism’ or what many others have come to call new and responsible media. Australia, for example, has just released a report which reflects movements had in many other countries for the increased policing of media reportage (see the Finkelstein inquiry for more).

My twist on this growing potential of new and responsible media is that it should look increasingly to activities of foreign affairs: chase the vagabonds, put them under the unflattering light of public scrutiny, bring their shameful acts to the eyes of the global demoi, and show our Leviathan where to strike with its fists of fury and might. New responsible media in this sense might serve as the eyes of the Leviathan. But lo, did this happen when the world witnessed the Israeli blockade? Or when the Clinton, Bush, Putin, Obama et al administrations did not show evidence of nuclear disarmament? The answer is clearly no: settlements still continue being built. Palestinians are still in apartheid and live in what many are coming to call ghettoes reflecting the plight that many European Jews suffered at the hands of tyrants and criminals – bastards and murderers. So the third pillar, although weak and growing, is clearly not enough. Our Leviathan it appears does not know how to strike and right the wrongs through a democratic ethos. I do suppose that our fourth pillar then should be lessons in the ‘martial’ arts: the Leviathan must learn the skills of non-violent combat.

Let us take an example from Chomsky’s Hopes and Prospects as his own words are far more effective than any paltry sentences that this reviewer might make: The fall of the Berlin wall was rightly celebrated in November 2009, but there was virtually no notice of what had happened one week later in El Salvador, on November 16, 1989: the brutal assassination of six prominent Latin American intellectual, Jesuit priests, along with their housekeeper Julia Elba and her daughter Celina, by the elite Atlacatl battalion, armed and trained by Washington. The battalion had just returned from a several-month refresher course at the JFK Special Warfare school at Fort Bragg, and a few days before the murders underwent a further training exercise run by U.S. Special Forces flown to El Salvador… (page 271) The narrative continues from there to tell the reader of how this type of training was provided to elite battalions who left thousands or more corpses throughout Latin America during the 1980s under Reagan’s ostensible ‘war on terror’. This period is often referred to as the Condor Years. Here is a documented example of the El Salvadorian government in 1989 ordering a squad closely trained by the US government to murder at least nine people because they were pro-citizenry and anti-government

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and did not commit violence. What would our Leviathan do to punish those responsible for such a crime (non-violence being the key)? Although an answer can only be given in part here, it has to do with targeting those individuals involved and not innocents within the state (i.e. broad sanctions are no good). It is proposed that should our Leviathan have been strong enough then, she could have identified those who signed the murders, those who committed them, and tried to find those who were aware of the fact (Chomsky finds it highly unlikely that certain politicians, bureaucrats or members of the military in the USA were not aware of the killings). She could freeze all of their assets, place them under arrest, and remove all of their powers. Try them to the full robust extent of the law, using all of humanity’s latest technologies, and make their crimes known to all. Put sentence to them and the world carries on, probably a better place.

‘Yea, but who will arrest members of the El Salvadorian, Israeli or US governments?’ asks the realist in the room. Indeed, who will? This Gordian rabbit-hole of a discussion has led perhaps unsurprisingly to the need for this world to give greater power to the international courts and international police to arrest rigorously-proven offenders in whatever governments, corporations or countries in which they may be found. Even with a powerful global Leviathan, she can do nothing unless we greatly empower and enforce the agents she sends on our behalf. Maybe we could have simply arrested Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi, and all of their closest ‘cronies’ and we could be seeing trials as is ongoing with Hosni Mubarak. If these individuals resisted arrest, then there could have been grounds to take them by force but only with the sanctioning of a contestatory provisional (temporary) government from within the polity in question. That may have saved countless lives, prevented the escalations of war, and further empower sub-national through to global democracy.

But of course, timing is everything. Libya should have been addressed in this ‘democratic’ manner decades ago. The same is to be said with Iraq and Afghanistan and possibly even Syria or Israel. When crimes are committed against a democracy, or the processes of democratization, however those might be defined, that is when the international ‘demoic’ Leviathan needs to strike into ferocious action. With eyes and ears (new decentralized responsible media), brain (critical and strategic thinking from individual citizens throughout the world, various leaders and so forth to be transparently harvested by decision takers), arms (international police, courts) and legs (local bodies moving to support the action of the Leviathan) we do have the capacity to let the Leviathan strike when the timing is right. It took Hopes and Prospects and a number of other landmark books (such as Life and Death of Democracy) for this one particular conception of international action to arise. In the politics before and during the Cold War it seemed that this type of international democracy hegemony could not possibly be a reality. But now, with the internet, new media, new information technology, transnational and multinational governance, and the growth of a demoic Leviathan – it is a reality.