Noam Chomsky full length interview: Who rules the world now?

Mr Tonky that impotance of Voters that angry impotance as you talk about presumably you'd say that is what is responsible for the rise of Donald Trump is it it's pretty clear What U is responsible for the rise of the support for Trump and there's General agreement about it if you take a simple look at U economic statistics the primary support for for Trump is coming from uh mostly U white working class poor people who've been cast by the wayside During the neoliberal period they've lived through a generation of stagnation or decline real male wages are

about what they were in the 1960s there has been it's also been a decline in uh functioning democracy the overwhelming evidence revealed that the their even their own elected representatives are barely reflect their interests and concerns contempt for institutions uh especially Congress has just uh increased skyrocketed it's down single digits often these are people who U meanwhile there has of course been wealth uh wealth created uh it's gone into very few hands Prim mostly into a fra ction of the top 1% indeed enormous opulence yes indeed and how dangerous do you think this all is

in terms of Donald Trump for example I mean he has been toning down some of his most extreme pronouncements recently he may if he ever got anywhere near power he could be held in check by Congress I me how dangerous do you think he is to America well the greatest danger that he and indeed every Republican candidate poses is barely mentioned it's kind of reminiscent of Sherlock Holmes's dog that did not bark uh the greatest danger is the there are two huge dangers that the human species faces we're now in a situation where we have

to decide whether the species survives in any decent form one is the rising danger of nuclear war which is quite serious the other is environmental catastrophe now on these issues Donald Trump and the other Republican candidates are basically uniform and do you believe the threat of nuclear and do you believe that Hillary Clinton the Democratic front runner would Champion those issues in a way that would satisfy you not in any way that would satisfy me but at least she recognizes that uh uh climate change is going on and that we have to do something about

it every single Republican candidate denies that it's happening with the sole exception of Kasich who says sure it's happening but we shouldn't do anything about it and that's having an impact uh the Paris uh uh negotiations last December were aiming at a treaty uh uh they couldn't reach it for a simple reason the Republican Congress would not accept it so it's a voluntary agreement which means even the weak standards that were proposed uh will be barely maybe it undermines the likelihood that even they will be met uh every Republican candidate including Trump wants to eliminate

the Environmental Protection Agency Richard Nixon's Legacy uh to cut back regulation to race toward the precipice as quickly as possible on militarism every one of them wants to raise the huge military budget already uh over half of discretionary spending uh leading right now it's one factor leading to confrontations which could be extremely hazardous and briefly I think this is not being discussed indeed well I'd suggest one thing perhaps that you might agree with Donald Trump on uh would be about the EU I mean he talks about the fact that the UK may leave the EU

uh you've railed against European Union bureaucracy could you agree with him on that no I don't in fact I actually have no real strong opinion on brexit but I've haven't my my concern about it would be that it would weaken the European Union but it would also probably leave Britain even more uh don't want to use too strong a word subordinate to us power than it is today which I don't think would be a good thing for the world or Britain what in a nutshell is the answer to who rules the world now there are

as I try to discuss in the book there is no simple answer we usually think of States when that question is raised and with regard to States uh there's no doubt that the United States despite its decline for many many years is still overwhelmingly more powerful than any state or group of states but that's only one factor uh states have internal structures an internal distribution of P of power in the United States power is overwhelmingly an increasingly in recent years in the hands of a very narrow sector of U corporate wealth private wealth and power

so that's and they have counterparts elsewhere who agree with them who interact with them largely and that's another dimension in who rules the world and there's also the public the public can have sometimes does have enormous power we can go back to David Hume first major modern work on political philosophy foundations of the theory of government pointed out that force is on the side of the governed those who are governed have the force if they are willing to and eager to and recognize the possibility to exercise it sometimes they do that's a major force in

who rules the world but when it comes to state power you don't buy the idea of China as the next superpower the imminent superpower China I mean China H China's plays a very important role in the world undoubtedly if you take a look at say per capita income it's far behind the United States States and other developed States it has enormous internal problems demographic ecological uh resources and so on and it's uh undoubtedly going to play an important in military terms it's not even a fraction of the United States and Western Powers so it's yes

and economically it's significant but bear in mind that a good deal of Chinese production is actually fore unowned uh Apple world's major corporation happens to produce in China largely uh but that's us production uh which happens to use Chinese uh uh facilities labor and uh and other facilities so China is a growing developing power in some domains in fact it's gone quite far even in uh high technology industry so for example it production of solar panels China's in the lead not just in mass production but also in Innovation and high-tech development and all of this

is significant but is by no means a power on the scale of the United States in fact take a look at the confrontations between China and the United States now there are serious confrontations uh are they in the Caribbean are they off the coast of California no they're in waters around China where China and others have territorial claims those that's a symbolic reflection of the uh nature of state power well you describe you're scathing about the United States no one will be surprised to hear that um you describe it as a leading terrorist state I'm

just interested how you'd describe Russia how I describe Russia authoritarian brutal harsh uh carrying out ugly actions in its own region uh the United States on the other hand carries out such actions all over the world in fact again look at the there are serious confrontations between Russia and the United States and once again are they on the Mexican border the Canadian border no they're on the Russian Border in fact right at the point of the uh traditional Invasion route uh through which Russia has been virtually destroyed several times in the past Century Also earlier

history again that's no apologetics for what Putin may be doing but it's uh should lead us to to have a a rational perspective on the relationship between the forces in the world as for the us being the leading terrorist State I should say that's hardly just my opinion uh so for example I noted when I was introduced uh the in the person who was introducing me said that uh I regard the United States as the gravest threat to World Peace that's not not exactly it's a little misrepresents the situation there are international polls run by

the Le leading us polling agency Gallup its International affiliate Gallup win and one of the questions they ask is which country is the gravest threat to world peace and the United States is first by a huge margin far behind in second place is Pakistan that's undoubtedly inflated by the Indian vote and others have slight mention so that's Global opinion and I should mention that uh uh this is was not even reported in the United States happened to be reported by BBC but wasn't reported in the United States uh as for being a terrorist State uh

President Obama's uh Global assassination campaign drone assassination campaign is an extreme terrorist War I mean if Iran let's say was carrying out a campaign to uh assassinate people around the world Who would thought might be planning to harm Iran uh we would regard it as terrorism for example if they were bombing the editorial offices of the New York Times And The Washington Post which publish op EDS by prominent figures saying that we should bomb Iran right now not wait so obviously they want to harm Iran suppose Iran was assassinating them and anybody who happened to

be standing around uh all over would we regard that as terrorism I think we would well let me put a few questions to you from people online um people are sending in questions via Facebook um first Gary um says what are the dangers of ttip of Putin the dangers no no sorry what are the dangers of ttip of T the transatlantic trade and ship TTI TTI oh TTI oh yeah oh they're pretty extreme in fact uh Green Piece a couple of days ago released uh 280 pages of uh internal documents on this so-called trade agreement

and U they spell out details of what all of us should know the so-called free trade agreements are not free trade agreements in fact to a large extent they're not even trade agreements these are investor right agreements there's a reason why they're kept secret from the public and as soon as you look at them you see why notice I say secret from the public not secret they're not kept secret they're not secret to the corporate lawyers and lobbyists who are writing the detailed regulations of course in the interests of their constituents not doesn't happen to

be the public of the world of their own countries so these are highly protectionist uh for the benefit of private power so-called intellectual property rights uh uh raise uh effectively raise tariffs they're called patents but very which which have an enormous impact on economies great uh uh wonderful for pharmaceutical and media cor conglomerates and others uh the uh the right the the investors corporations are given the right to sue governments something you and I can't do but a corporation can to sue governments for harming their future potentially future profits you can figure out what that

means and such cases are already in the courts for they're not in the courts they go to private trade uh adjudication groups made up largely of corporate Representatives they're already going on with the NAFTA and we can expect more of them there are uh Provisions that undermine efforts at U regulation including incidentally uh regulation of environmental uh uh dangers and rather strikingly the phrase climate change does not appear in these 200 180 Pages uh which are illustrative of the whole uh structure so these they have almost no I should say these these agreements so-called Pacific

and Atlantic have virtually no effect on tariffs tariffs are already quite low among the major trading partners when you read the propaganda about it it says oh yeah sure Vietnam's going to have to lower its tariffs yeah almost no effect on trade the major trading partners already have uh agreements that have reduced uh tariffs very substantially there's a few exceptions not many so these are Bas we should disabuse ourself of the illusion that these are free trade agreements anything but and to a large extent not even trade agreements uh we have the experience of others

like NAFTA many years of experience so take say NAFTA it has all of the uh aspects that I just described but even more uh consider even what is called trade interactions across the US Mexico border they've increased substantially since NAFTA so economists will tell you trade has greatly increased but have a look at them uh so for example suppose that uh General Motors produces Parts in Indiana uh sends them to Mexico uh to for assembly and sells the car in Los Angeles that's called trade in both directions but it's not it's interactions internal to a

command economy it's as if uh during the uh days of the Soviet Union uh parts were made say in Leningrad sent to Warsaw for assembly and sold in Moscow we wouldn't call that trade that's interactions internal to a command economy well Nome CH chsky thank you very much for being so generous with your time and for staying on to have that live online discussion thank you