Noam Chomsky On New Zealand’s Nuclear Free Policy

I’m a procrastinator by nature, but waiting 36 years to
publish this interview with Noam Chomsky on New Zealand’s
nuclear free policy is slack even by my standards.

My
old mate Tim Bollinger has organised an all-day event
to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the atomic bombing of
Nagasaki, on Saturday 9 August, and it seems as good a
reason as any to revisit the interview and Chomsky’s
thoughts on nuclear disarmament.

In 1987 the
Guardian Weekly ran a very brief review of the Chomsky
Reader. I’d never heard of Chomsky but the
description of him as America’s number one dissident stuck
with me.

In those pre-internet days, the mainstream
newspapers had a virtual monopoly on international news and
voices like Chomsky’s were entirely absent.

I was
working as a cub reporter on the Hawke’s Bay Herald
Tribune and the Guardian Weekly – printed on
tissue-like paper and airfreighted from the UK – was one
of the few sources of in-depth international news available
to me.

But even in the Guardian Weekly,
America’s number one dissident warranted just 200 or
so words.

I wouldn’t read anything by Chomsky himself
until the following year, when I was in Harbin, the capital
of China’s northernmost province Heilongjiang.

A
Chinese American who was studying in Harbin gave me a copy
of the libertarian socialist Z Magazine which
included a 10,000 plus word feature by Chomsky
on his recent visit to Israel and the occupied
territories.

Four years previously I’d spent time in
Israel and the West Bank and had been grappling with what
I’d seen there. Chomsky helped me make sense of it like no
other writer had.

I was teaching conversational
English at the Harbin Medical University and when I
mentioned the Chomsky article to a class of medical
specialists I was surprised and delighted when one of them
not only knew who Chomsky was but said her husband was
studying linguistics with him at MIT.

She mentioned
that Chomsky was well known for making himself available to
anyone wanting to talk to him.

Six months later I put
that to the test and found myself in his MIT office
interviewing about New Zealand’s then relatively new
nuclear free policies.

On my return to New Zealand, I
attempted to interest the Dominion and NZ
Listener in running an article based on the interview
but had no luck.

A lot’s changed over the last four
decades but it’s striking how consistent, insightful,
informed and principled Chomsky’s views are.

The
interview has been edited for clarity.

The
Unsettling Spectre of Peace

Rose: Some of those
arguing for New Zealand to remain in the ANZUS alliance say
the country could do more for nuclear disarmament inside the
alliance than outside it. Do you think that’s
realistic?

Chomsky: New Zealand plainly has a
limited range of possible options open to it. It’s a small
country; it’s not a major actor in world affairs.

But
it does have at least symbolic significance. Its stand on
nuclear issues has certainly raised the question of why we
have to rely on widespread proliferation of nuclear bases.
And that’s good, those questions should be
raised.

Whether New Zealand can raise these questions
more by being in the alliance or more by being out of it is
a kind of a technical question that I don’t think it’s easy
to give an answer to. I presume that the question’s academic
anyway because New Zealand’s going to want to stay in some
form of alliance. And the question really is, should it
press forward on its resistance to a nuclear
strategy?

Supporters of ANZUS typically argue that
the US defends democracies, preventing the spread of
communism and the so-called domino theory which they claim
could see communism spreading down into the South Pacific.
Does America defend democracies?

We have plenty of
evidence on the question of whether the United States
defends democracy. And the answer is pretty definitive,
namely support for anything that could rationally be called
democracy is an extremely low priority for American
policy.

In fact, it’s probably something that’s
generally avoided, unless we mean by democracy something
rather special. If we mean by democracy rule by business
interests, oligarchy and military linked to U.S. interests
and U.S. power, if that’s what we mean by democracy, then
yes, the United States supports democracy. If we mean by
democracy a system in which people have political rights and
people can organise and there’s access to the media and
social activism is tolerated and human rights are preserved,
if we mean any of those things by democracy, then the fact
of the matter is U.S. assistance and aid are negatively
correlated with democracy.

That’s been in fact shown
in study after study, and you can look at that region of the
world, say, take Indonesia. The United States was, like
Australia, I don’t know about New Zealand, but certainly the
United States and Australia were quite pleased at the
military coup in 1965, and with the subsequent slaughter of
hundreds of thousands of people, destroying the largest mass
popular organisation in Indonesia. The reactions to that
were qualified applause, plainly that didn’t establish
democracy.

It eliminated any conceivable basis for
democracy, and that remains the case. Indonesia remains a
very well-functioning police state behind a formal
democratic facade, and the United States and its allies are
quite pleased with that. And that’s very typical.

You
look at, say, Latin America, where U.S. influence has been
enormous. The United States has been influential in
overthrowing democratic systems, in repressing the kinds of
popular organisations that might lead to really functioning
democracy. It’s always called anti-communism, but it has
nothing to do with that.

Destroying peasant self-help
groups organised by the Catholic Church, is called
anti-communism. It’s just a name for anything you want to
destroy, and there’s just no doubt that that’s typical of
U.S. foreign policy. What’s more, it’s stated that
way.

You don’t have to just look at the historical
record, you can look at the documentary record. The United
States is a very open society, probably the most open in the
world. We have great access to internal planning
documents.

Secret documents are either leaked or
declassified relatively soon and efficiently, and we now
have a quite extensive record of secret planning documents
through the 1950s, and in fact considerably beyond, and it’s
very clear and explicit. The U.S. foreign policy at the
National Security Council over and over reiterates and
emphasises that the major threat to the United States is
what are called nationalist regimes, or sometimes
ultra-nationalist regimes, which are responsive to pressures
from the masses of the population for social reform, for
diversification of production, for independence, and so on.
It’s stated very explicitly, and those are the regimes that
must be undercut.

It doesn’t matter whether they’re
from the right or from the left or run by the military or
run by some political party that calls itself communist or
whatever. It’s all the same. If they are nationalist and
independent and are not willing to subordinate themselves to
the perceived needs of U.S. foreign policy, which means
access to resources and investment opportunities and so on,
then they have to be overthrown. Democracy has nothing to do
with it.

The freedom to rob and
exploit

It’s what you’ve referred to as the fifth
freedom, isn’t it?

It’s called the fifth freedom,
the freedom to rob and exploit, which is basically, if you
want a one-phrase description of foreign policy, which
naturally misses some nuances because it’s one phrase,
that’s about as close as you can get. The record with regard
to democracy is extremely poor.

You mentioned
Indonesia. New Zealand’s paranoia about a Russian invasion
pre-date the Russian Revolution with gun emplacements being
built in 1905. But that fear has been replaced in recent
time with a focus on Asia and in particular Indonesia has
seemed expansionist…

It’s not just seemed. It
is expansionist.

Do you think staying on
good terms with the US would help protect us against
possible Indonesian expansion, even though it seems unlikely
they’d ever go as far as New Zealand?

Indonesia
expands into third world areas which can’t fight back. No
one ever attacks someone who can fight back.

So,
Indonesia will expand into East Timor, for example, because
there they know that they can carry out a major slaughter or
something, approaching genocide, with full Western support,
which they got, in fact. Again, I don’t know about New
Zealand, but they got support from every Western power,
primarily the United States, but also its allies, right
through the worst period of the slaughter. And that they
know they can get away with, so of course they’ll do
it.

Attacking New Zealand would be a different matter.
Regardless of whether we were in an alliance. Whether New
Zealand is or is not in a formal alliance, its links to
international capital are so tight that it would be
protected against any Indonesian attack.

Are
countries that take part in military alliances with America
tacitly supporting the dictatorships of Central and South
America and Southeast Asia backed by the
US.

That’s their choice. Usually the answer, in
fact, is yes. There are some exceptions, but those are
separate choices.

Being a part of, say, NATO, does not
entail that one must support a murderous terror state in El
Salvador. In fact, it has that consequence, but that’s just
a decision of the governments in question. It’s not forced
on them by their membership in the NATO
alliance.

South Pacific Nuclear Free
Treaty

The USA, England, and France all refused to
sign the South Pacific Nuclear Free Treaty. It was a very
watered-down treaty designed specifically to get the USA and
UK to sign – France was never going to.

Why
do you think the US and UK refused to sign up to
it?

I think we have to be a little more cautious
here. This is only one of a number of cases.

For
example, the United States also refused to support a South
Atlantic zone of peace. It was the only country in that case
voting against that at the United Nations. To put what you
just said in a broader perspective, take a look at the
United Nations disarmament votes.

The most interesting
and dramatic case is in the fall of 1987, at the time of the
summit which led to the INF [Intermediate-range Nuclear
Forces] Treaty, so all attention was focused on disarmament.
Exactly at that time, the UN had a series of votes on
disarmament. There were votes on a comprehensive test ban,
on the end to development of weapons of mass destruction, on
a number of other such issues.

On some of them, the
United States was completely alone. The votes were like 154
to 1. On some of them, it picked up France, so you get votes
like 135 to 2. On a few, it also picked up England, so votes
like 140 to 3 and so on. That’s the picture
throughout.

The United States and France are committed
nuclear powers, and England just tails along behind the
United States. That’s what’s called a special relationship.
They are in the lead, not just in the South Pacific area, in
opposing moves towards relaxation of nuclear
tensions.

That has to do with their own perceived role
as global powers. There are reasons for this. There is a
sense in which the United States and its allies are
deterring the Soviet Union, but we have to understand that
sense.

If you look at the actual planning documents
and the actual course of history, and even the public
statements, you can see what the sense is. The United States
is a global power, and it maintains its dominance by a
potential threat of military force and military
intervention, which is sometimes carried out. In Vietnam,
for example, it intervened 10,000 miles away in a massive
war, a war of aggression, in fact, against South Vietnam,
which is what it really was.

Intervention globally has
been very widespread. The United States considers it to be
its right, in fact its duty, to have the potential of
intervening using military force basically almost anywhere
in the world. That means that there’s a chance of
intervention, in fact a likelihood of intervention, in areas
where the United States does not have a conventional force
advantage.

When the Soviet Union intervenes, say in
Afghanistan, Poland, Eastern Europe, Czechoslovakia, it has
an enormous conventional force advantage. It doesn’t have to
rely on a nuclear threat. But when the United States
intervenes, it often intervenes in areas where it’s at a
conventional disadvantage, and that means it has to be
extremely intimidating.

It has to intimidate any
potential enemy, so they’ll back off. And the way you’re
very intimidating is by having a nuclear threat. So, there’s
a good reason why the United States uses the threat of
nuclear force constantly.

It wants to prevent anyone
from deterring it. It wants to overcome the deterrence of
either indigenous forces, which may be able to resist a
conventional attack, or the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union
deters the United States, there’s no doubt about
that.

Over and over again, the Soviet Union has
deterred the United States. For example, even close by, the
United States carried out a long war of terrorism against
Cuba, a major terrorist attack of the 20th century, but it
did not, after the Bay of Pigs, it did not invade Cuba
directly, outright, and basically that’s because of Soviet
deterrence, which led to the missile crisis and scared
people off, and after that there was a kind of backing off
on both sides.

How do Gorbachev’s liberal reforms
fit into that?

It’s very interesting to see how
American commentators are reacting. So, for example, they
are quite publicly saying that they’re concerned about
Gorbachev’s reforms. One reason is that the alleged threat
of the Soviet Union has played a very significant mobilising
role within the United States.

Every modern industrial
society has some mechanism by which the state intervenes in
the economy. Massively, in fact. It plays the role of a
coordinator, or stimulates production, or organises exports,
or one thing or another.

And the United States,
despite all the talk of free trade, has a very powerful
state component in the economy. In fact, if you look at the
two areas of the U.S. economy that are more or less
competitive internationally, namely high technology
agriculture, capital intensive agriculture, and high-tech
industry, they’re both state subsidised. Capital intensive
agriculture has always received both protection and some
very extensive subsidy from the state, and high-tech
industry is just a spinoff of the military system.

And
in fact, it was understood from early on, about 1950, that
the U.S. economy would be able to continue to function, and
in fact, European and Japanese industrial recovery would be
possible if there was extensive stimulation at that time by
the United States, and it would have to come through the
military system. That was clearly understood early on.
It’s often called military Keynesianism.

It’s not
easy to find an alternative to that. Economists can make up
technical alternatives, but they really don’t work, because
you have to deal with the fact that the public has to be
willing to support it. It’s very costly.

And
furthermore, the state intervention has to be carried out in
a way which enhances the prerogatives of private capital and
does not interfere with those prerogatives. So, there’s all
kinds of models that economists make up that won’t work,
because they infringe on management prerogatives. On the
other hand, military spending is just a gift.

It’s
just a welfare state for the rich. Military spending means
that the taxpayer subsidises research and development, and
the taxpayer agrees to purchase any junk that’s produced.
And that’s just a gift.

Economic Keynesianism a gift
to the wealthy

It’s a gift to the wealthy and the
management corporations and so on, so naturally that’s what
they fall into. But to maintain that system, you have to
have an enemy. In fact, the Wall Street Journal the
other day had an article which the headline was something
like, “The Unsettling Spectre of Peace.”

And it
was about how we’re going to deal with this. And they say,
well, there’s some solutions, like we can move to high-tech
armaments without any soldiers, so you have all kinds of
crazy robots flying around and stuff. Of course, none of it
will work.

It doesn’t make any difference, none of
it’s supposed to work. You’ve got to make sure that there’s
something going on that allows the United States to keep its
technical edge. And this is not weapons.

I mean, look
at the history of computers, for example. It’s subsidised.
It’s a spin-off of the Pentagon and the space programme, up
until the point where they become competitive, then private
industry moves in and makes the profits.

It’s public
subsidy and private profit. Now, that’s one thing. The other
is that, as I say, the United States needs – you have to
mobilise the population behind the intervention,
too.

You can’t send half a million troops to attack
South Vietnam by simply saying, look, we don’t like what’s
going on in South Vietnam, so we’re going to attack it and
do our own regime. You can’t say that. You have to say
you’re defending it.

Hitler was defending Germany from
the Poles. And the United States was defending South Vietnam
against the South Vietnamese. And that sells in countries
like the United States and New Zealand and the Western
world.

Everybody accepts U.S. propaganda without a
second thought. Of course, it’s idiotic. I mean, the main
war was against the South Vietnamese, clearly. There were
bombing and casualty figures and so on. But we were
defending it, and ultimately, we were defending it against
the Soviet Union and China and the Sino-Soviet conspiracy to
take over the world and the same when we attack Nicaragua,
we’re defending ourselves from the Russians.

When we
attack Grenada it’s very hard to convince people that a
country of 100,000 people that has a little nutmeg is going
to conquer the United States. But if it’s an outpost of the
Soviet Union, well, I mean, you’ve got to tremble because
who knows what those guys are up to with their missiles and
terror and so on. If you lose the Soviet threat and it’s now
being lost, it’s going to be very hard to mobilise the
population for intervention.

In fact, that’s a large
part of the reason why all this hysteria is being concocted
about drugs. Drugs is a problem, but sending arms to
Colombia has nothing to do with the drug problem. In fact,
it’s probably going to exacerbate it because the Colombian
military is doubtless involved with the
narco-traffic.

Well, it’s all obvious, but it’s a way
of building up hysteria in the country. You’re here now, so
you just read the newspapers and look at television. All you
see is, boy, we’ve got to fight this war against
drugs.

It’s what they tried to do with international
terrorism a couple of years ago.

But over the long
term, these things don’t work very well. People sooner or
later are going to begin to see that the drug problem is the
destruction of the inner cities.

My neighbourhood
isn’t being destroyed by drugs. The inner city is. And it’s
not because the Colombians.

And sooner or later,
people will realise that. And that technique of mobilisation
isn’t going to work. And with the loss of the Soviet threat,
or at least the decline of the Soviet threat, they’re trying
to keep it up because it’s going to be serious.

That’s
why there’s concern. On the other hand, there’s a feeling
that it’s to the good because the Soviet deterrent is
declining. And that’s said very openly.

So, for
example, it’s very openly stated in editorials, in the
Washington Post, in the op-eds, in the New York
Times, and so on, that we have to test to see whether
Gorbachev is serious by seeing if he allows us a free hand
in Central America. So, if Gorbachev continues to support
the Nicaraguans in their attempt to defend themselves
against our attack, that shows he’s not serious. Because
that poses certain limits on our attack.

As far as
nuclear weapons are concerned you can understand why a
global power which depends on the need to intervene anywhere
and also needs to be able to get its population to support
massive military expenditure such a country is going to
support a nuclear strategy.

What can small nations
do?

The peace movement in New Zealand seemed to
lose momentum after the country passed the nuclear free
legislation and the US kicked us out of ANZUS. Is there more
that we can do?

There’s no question. Small
countries, like, say, Sweden, who have been out of alliance
for a long time have been able, when they wanted to, to play
a pretty constructive role in some areas. The nuclear issue
is an issue, and it’s a serious one, but it’s not the one
that really affects people’s lives. I mean, the people of
East Timor aren’t being attacked by nuclear
weapons.

They’re being wiped out by conventional
weapons, just to pick something close by. Or, say, Nigeria
and the Philippines, where there’s a lot of atrocities going
on. You don’t have to look very far away to see the use of
state violence, either domestically or across borders, which
is extremely ugly.

And New Zealand can play a
constructive role there as an independent country, just like
Sweden sometimes does. So, for example, and it doesn’t even
have to be local. I mean, the United States is, let’s take
U.S. policy in Central America, which is extremely
ugly.

I mean, several hundred thousand people have
been slaughtered there in the last decade, which is not a
small thing, and countries have been ruined to the point
where they may not survive. Now, I mentioned the Soviet
deterrent, but Europe, and countries like, say, Sweden, have
also provided a deterrent. They have been able, at some
level, to support constructive development programmes, which
gives a certain margin of survival for groups that are
trying to resist the U.S. plan for the region, which is
essentially just subordinated to U.S. needs.

Those are
factors that can’t be overlooked. The United States is a
dominant world power, but it’s not a truly hegemonic world
power. It may have been around 1950; it certainly isn’t
anymore.

It’s first among many now, and that means
that other countries, either by symbolic action or by
economic support or by public positions, can have an
influence. I mean, after all, internally, the United States
is quite free. Comparatively speaking, the citizen of the
United States is quite free from state coercion and
power.

There isn’t much that the government can do to
you, comparatively speaking. And that means that the public
opinion can make a big difference if it can get organised
and mobilised, and support from the outside is often very
helpful in developing alternatives.

Is there a risk
of US intervention for countries like New Zealand in
speaking out forcibly against its policies or do you think
that they would keep their hands off Anglo-Saxon western
types?

You know, I think there’s good reason to
believe that something pretty shady took place in Australia
with the overthrow of the Whitlam government, and
Australia’s a pretty big country.

It’s not a
third-world country. The details of that, as far as I know,
are still somewhat obscure, but there’s plenty of grounds
for suspicion about CIA involvement and external
involvement, both from Britain and the United
States.

But it’s not just that. I mean, there’s also
economic reprisals. The U.S., again, has a dominant, if not
always decisive, role in international law and international
economic institutions.

Just the fact that the United
States has such a huge market gives it enormous power over
other countries. I mean, closing off the U.S. market, for
example, can wipe out many countries in the world. That’s
the main thing that happened in Nicaragua. Much more
significant than the Contras was closing off the U.S.
market.

That’s a way of strangling a small country.
Those are all risks that are taken by anyone who pursues an
independent authority.

So, it’s just being aware
of the risks and navigating those?

I think it’s a
matter of finding other alliances. I mean, for example, the
world is really splitting up into a number of different
blocs, and that kind of competition leaves all kinds of
options open. I mean, with Europe moving towards
unification, there’s going to be a kind of a German-based
bloc, which is not insignificant.

In scale, it’s
comparable to, even bigger than the United States. It can
get its act together to major force in world affairs. The
Japan-centred Yen bloc is a major power bloc.

The
United States, in fact, is trying to construct its own bloc.
That’s part of incorporating Canada into the Free Trade
Agreement.

The Caribbean Basin Initiative is an
attempt to incorporate whatever is viable in that region
into a U.S.-dominated system, comparable to the system that
Japan has developed in its periphery. And at least these
three major economic blocs are going to be competitive,
already are competitive, will be even more so. They’ll all
be trying to get their fingers into the Soviet system, which
is just basically a third-world area that they’d like to be
able to exploit to send capital to and get resources from
and so on.

And in that kind of a complex world, the
margin for manoeuvre could be substantial.

An
Anglo-Saxon lake

General Douglas MacArthur said
the South Pacific should be managed as an Anglo-Saxon lake.
And Michael Bedford of Third World reports told me he
thought New Zealand’s anti-nuclear stance made a far
bigger impact than, say, Vanuatu’s because we’re part of
the Anglo-Saxon world. Do you think that’s
true?

Unquestionably. I mean, that’s a major
factor in policy. But it’s not just that.

I mean, just
take a look at the economies of the two countries. Sure,
there’s a racial overlap. I mean, you can discount what a
small third-world country does.

And nobody would even
know where Vanuatu is. Probably in Africa. You’d have to be
able to say it’s in Africa. Because that’s where all the
weird countries and weird names are.

Lots of people
in the US don’t know where New Zealand is for that
matter.

Former prime minister David Lange, the
man largely responsible for bringing the anti-nuclear policy
to fruition, has often said that the policy is not for
export.

Do you think other countries following
New Zealand’s or Vanuatu’s nuclear-free examples would make
the world a safer place?

I think the reduction of
nuclear weapons will. The proliferation of nuclear weapons
is extremely dangerous. The superpowers have arsenals that
are vastly beyond any conceivable strategic need and all of
that is enormously dangerous plus harmful just in getting
rid of nuclear waste and so.

David Lange argued it
was consistent to be anti-nuclea andr remain in an alliance
with the US. Do you think that’s either consistent or
desirable?

That depends very much on what the
alliance is. And if the alliance is one of defence of its
members against foreign attack. That’s quite academic. I
don’t think there’s even a remote chance of that. But if
that’s what the alliance is for, well, yes, sure, you can be
in it.

I mean if nuclear weapons do bind alliances
together, that’s a threat against their weaker members. If
the alliance is a mechanism of suppressing others, you don’t
want to be in the alliance. You should be against it. You
should try to dismantle it. If the alliance is sort of cover
for you know economic integration and so on, yes, sure, but
you don’t want to limit it to these countries. I mean,
extend it. I think one should ask what’s the alliance for?
Who’s going to attack New Zealand?

Japan’s
socialist party looks like it has a real chance of winning
an election in the future. The party has a strong
anti-nuclear policy. What do you think the US reaction would
be to Japan asserting its anti-nuclear
constitution?

My suspicion is that ways will be
found around any assertion of that policy. So, for example,
it’s been Japanese policy for decades not to allow warships
with nuclear weapons to enter Japanese ports. But although
that’s the policy, it’s never been adhered to.

I
don’ think it’s going to matter much whether it’s LDP or
the Socialist Party. I mean, Japan is basically run by a
state bureaucracy and industrial financial conglomerates.
They’re going to continue running the country whatever
politicians happen to be sitting in office.

So, you
don’t see much chance of them actually putting their foot
down and banning nuclear ships?

Not unless there’s
major popular support in the country. Something like the
revolutions that developed in the 50s and 60s there’s no
reason to expect the political bureaucracy to change the
policy.

There are anti-nuclear movements very
similar to New Zealand’s in the Philippines, Greece, Spain,
Denmark and probably elsewhere. Do you think New Zealand
should actively encourage that?

I think a kind of
a loose informal alliance among smaller powers that want to
see the threat of nuclear weapons decline is a good idea. If
they’re interested in the survival of the human species and
so on, sure, they should band together. They don’t have to
form a formal alliance.

They should communicate and be
mutually supportive and have common plans not just against
the nuclear arsenals of the superpowers but against
proliferation which is extremely dangerous. Maybe even more
dangerous.

Do you have a view on how a country
that’s decided it wants to be outside of the nuclear
umbrella should organise its armed forces. New Zealand’s
military has been designed primarily to fight in British or
later US wars overseas. We’ve fought in virtually every
war instigated by Britain or the US since the Boer
War.

I don’t think one can have a general policy
about that.

My own judgment, for example, is that
participation in the Second World War was entirely
legitimate. It was obligatory. On the other hand,
participation in the in the Indo China war was grotesque.
That was like participating in the Russian attack on
Afghanistan. So, if an alliance requires participation in
all wars, get out of
it.

…………………………….

Jeremy
Rose is a Wellington-based journalist who writes the
Substack, Towards
Democracy. Jeremy will talk to David Robie about his
book Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage of the Rainbow
Warrior at the Aro
Valley Peace Talks, Nagasaki Day, Saturday 9 August,
2025.

© Scoop Media