The Long View Noam Chomsky Interviewed By The Irish Times

Staunton: The Irish Government obviously has a problem in that its received more explicit assurances than most other countries - because it asked for the assurances before the Americans stopped giving specific assurances about places - that no prisoners have gone through Irish airports. You see there are several separate points here. I did an interview with someone else from The Irish Times and he asked me a very straightforward question - what do you think about the use of Shannon for military flights? And he said there was a suspicion that it's being used for rendition flights. So I said military flights are a complicated matter and by now it's not military flights for the war, it's military flights for the occupation, which is different. So I didn't say anything about military flights. But I said if they use it for rendition, it's completely shameful to take part in criminal acts like that. And I understand there are spotters at Shannon and at Heathrow who are picking up these Gulfstream flights which both governments deny. If either government or any government is giving any support whatsoever for what is just pure torture, there's nothing else to say about it. Staunton: But what the Irish say is that the only information they have about these flights is that the Americans have told them that there are no prisoners on these flights going through Ireland. The question is what should the Irish do? Refuse. It's an Irish airfield. If the United States wants to torture people, let them do it some other way. Staunton: There's also the business that by asking, say, to search these planes, it would be an unfriendly gesture to a friendly power which is not only an important economic partner but has also played an important role in Northern Ireland and continues to do so. So you have to make choices. It's true, a government has to make ugly choices. But there's a question of what decision you make in a complex situation. Sometimes you do things which in other circumstances require you to offend your moral principles. Yes, that happens in life. But we should be clear on the principles. I mean, conscious participation in anything as grotesque as rendition, which is just a euphemism for torture, is outrageous. Suppose they wanted to torture people in Ireland. Suppose they sent people to Ireland for torture. It's basically the same thing. You can say it's a friendly gesture but... Staunton: Much of Ireland's foreign policy is now expressed through the European Union, and the United States has been ambivalent about the whole business of European integration, particularly the idea of a defence identity. What's your view of the course of European integration? It's ambiguous. Actually, the United States has been ambivalent about it since the 1940s. On the one hand, the US has always pressed for some form of European unification for obvious reasons. I mean, if IBM is investing in Europe, they'd rather have one location with one currency and one language and so on than installations in 20 different places. A lot of this integration developed as a result of American multinational corporations. In fact, the Marshall Plan was the framework in which multinational corporations developed. It's one reason why it was pressed. It's openly discussed by the Commerce Department, for example. So yes, that's a pressure for integration. It's much better to have a big market with uniformity of practices and so on. On the other hand, the US has always been concerned that Europe might go off in its own direction. It used to be called a "potential third force" during the Cold War. And by 1970 when the world had become economically tripolar - three major economic centres: Japan - based, German - based Europe, and North America, roughly on a par - these concerns became much more serious, and by now they're much more serious. So the questions of European integration, there are several dimensions to them. They are the centre of the industrial, financial, commercial power of Europe. It's Germany and France, it's not a big secret. You bring in the old Russian satellites, they're likely to be more subordinated to the United States. Similarly, Spain and Italy are expected to be more subordinated even if they are not always so. So that's a way of diluting. It's the same with Turkey. The US has been pressing very hard for the inclusion of Turkey for years, not because they're in love with Turkey but because they want to ensure that the European Union is more controllable. Same with the extension of NATO. NATO is basically under US control so if NATO extends, it extends the US control system. So from an international point of view, it's [European enlargement] dubious. But from the domestic point of view, I think it's a good thing for Europeans to be able to cross borders without paying any attention to have the common currency, and so on. That's all to the good. On the other hand, there are some things the European Union has done which I think are very negative. For example, the power of the European Central Bank, which is so outrageous that even conservatives in the United States can't believe it. It's way more than the Federal Reserve. And it's harmed European growth. They're ultra - inflation conscious. They've kept interest rates too high, they've slowed growth, they're completely unaccountable. That's negative. The one, I think, beneficial unplanned consequence of the European Union is that it's stimulating a kind of regionalism - "Europe of the regions", so - called - which is a good thing. So in regions of Spain and in England and other places there's a revival of local cultures, local languages, some degree of autonomy in Catalonia and the Basque country. Scotland has limited autonomy. You hear Welsh spoken in Cardiff, which you didn't used to do. Those things are all positive. So like any complicated system it has positive and negative features to it. http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=11&ItemID=9868

Note: http://www.zmag.org/con...