ANDY CLARK
This email is from Don Rhodes, from Melbourne, in Australia, and he says: "I do not believe that the US wants to dominate the world. The Americans have been attacked on several fronts, 9/11 being only one of them. Someone has to bring into line rogue states and it is the USA alone that has the capability to do this. Without such a 'world policeman' the world would just disintegrate into warring factions. Look at history for examples of this." What do you make of that sort of statement?
NOAM CHOMSKY
The first sentence is simply factually incorrect. The National Security Strategy states fairly explicitly that the US intends to dominate the world by force, which is the dimension in which it rules supreme, and to ensure that there is never any potential challenge to this domination. That was not only stated explicitly, it has also been commented on repeatedly, right away in the main establishment - the Foreign Affairs journal in its next issue is pointing out that the United States is declaring the right to be what it calls a "revisionist state", which will use force to control the world in its own interests. The person who sent the email may believe that the US has some unique right to run the world by force. I don't believe that, and contrary to what was stated I don't think history supports that at all. In fact the US record, incidentally with the support of Australia, since the period of its global dominance in the 1940s, is one of instigating war and violence and terror on a very substantial scale. The Indochina War, just to take one example in which Australia participated, was basically a war of aggression. The United States attacked South Vietnam in 1962. The war then spread to the rest of Indochina. The end result was several million people killed, the countries devastated, and that's only one example. So history does not support the conclusion and the principle that one state should have a unique right to rule the world by force. That's an extremely hazardous principle, no matter who the country is.
The Dominion is a monthly paper published by an incipient network of independent journalists in Canada. It aims to provide accurate, critical coverage that is accountable to its readers and the subjects it tackles. Taking its name from Canada's official status as both a colony and a colonial force, the Dominion examines politics, culture and daily life with a view to understanding the exercise of power.