Contents: Introduction: Noble goals and Mafia logic -- Disciplining the Global South -- The war on Southeast Asia : Vietnam/Laos/Cambodia -- 9/11 and the wrecking of Afghanistan -- Iraq : the crime of the century -- The myth of American idealism -- The U.S., Israel, and Palestine -- The great China threat -- NATO and Russia after the Cold War -- A world in peril : the threats of nuclear war and climate catastrophe -- The domestic roots of foreign policy : serving the "national interest" -- Our "rules-based" order : the application of international law -- How mythologies are manufactured : propaganda and the public mind -- Conclusion : hegemony or survival?
"The United States is very much like other powerful states. It pursues the strategic and economic interests of dominant sectors of the domestic population." - The Myth of American idealism, pp.4-5
The table of contents listed above describes The Myth of American Idealism’s basic gestalt exceptionally well, but we could summarize even more succinctly by quoting the book’s subtitle – how U.S. foreign policy endangers the world – only adding perhaps the controversial rider that American foreign policy also endangers the U.S. itself, this despite official pronouncements to contrary. In a word, American foreign adventurism doesn’t make its ordinary citizens any safer, probably just the opposite.
Before we go further, two things. First, American culture, citizens and yes, sometimes even the government, have been a force for many good things in the way of movements and accomplishments, both in the United States and abroad. Second, the present book doesn't even pretend to opine that the U.S. is uniquely evil. It’s not that, say, China and Russia – and a host of lesser powers – are blameless, far from it. But because of the power and influence the United States has wielded in world affairs since the end of World War II, it has the potential to commit huge wrongs, which apologists rationalize as well-intentioned ‘mistakes’ that didn’t work out.
In any case, in The Myth of American Idealism, Noam Chomsky and Nathan Robinson survey the history of U.S. military and economic activity around the world, focusing on the post-1945 years. Chomsky and Robinson examine the American pursuit of global domination, and in particular survey the appalling extent of American missteps brought about by its hegemonic, Mafia don approach to foreign policy, which, boiled down to its unvarnished essence, is: what we say goes, in other words the Godfather’s word is law. This practice extends at least as far back as 1945, and probably earlier. Perhaps even more disturbing is how dominant elites in the United States have pushed self-serving myths about this country's commitment to "spreading democracy," while pursuing a reckless foreign policy that served the interest of few and endangered all too many, without even bothering to inform, much, less consult, the broader American public. To be sure, in true Mafia don fashion the American empire can on occasion be generous, but only when it chooses to, and in the manner it chooses to, read: when convenient to do so, and to those friendly to its interests.
Regarding the common practice of American support of unsavory foreign governments (aka brutal right wing military dictatorships), paraphrasing Myth: if killers and torturers are sympathetic to American interests, killers and torturers will do just fine, and inconvenient details like moral principles and international law simply don’t apply. The corollary here is that “nationalist” (read: democratically elected, popular) governments will be bad for American interests, and perhaps even more disconcerting, they set a bad example for other countries to follow. In all cases ‘American interests’ are determined by the U.S. socio-economic-political elite and not the general public.
Despite the accusatory tone throughout, in many ways Myth of American Idealism is more history than political commentary or editorial opinion: the ideas and events are presented in more or less chronologic order, and more important, are excruciatingly referenced by eighty pages of citations and detailed footnotes, with many of the sources originating from official documents. They reveal the extent of connivance, in some cases outright deception, at the highest levels of American government. Perhaps even worse is the idée fixe of ‘optimistic’ thinking (with no basis in reality) that often served as the template for official policy making.
I invoke the clichéd truism that this book ought to be required reading for any concerned citizen who wants to have a better understanding of what our government has been up to for at least the past eighty years, and shows few signs of willingness to change [1]. Indeed, if more current events are any indication, the rogue state practice has if anything only intensified in recent years.
Alas, I fear the principal readership of this book will be those who don’t necessarily need to read it, that is to say, those for whom the basic thesis put forth in Myth is not news – leftists, pacifists, anarchists, internationalists, anti-war and climate change activists, left-leaning historians and journalists [2]. As for those at the other end of the political spectrum, i.e. the ones who really need to read this book, it’s unlikely they are receptive to Chomskyan ideas in the first place. They may never have even heard of Chomsky, much less be familiar with his writings. Still, I’d be curious to know the response of hard core right wingers and MAGA-heads to the contents of Myth.
All this is not to suggest that The Myth of American Idealism is above criticism, or that Chomsky and Robinson always get it right. Despite the generally good press the book has received, some sources fault Chomsky for being too selective in his examples, that his philosophy is basically warmed over isolationism, that he could well be wrong in his assumption that most American citizens believe the myth of idealism and benevolence, and for his more or less rehashing what he’s been saying for the past six decades. And it must be admitted that these and other criticisms are, at least in part, well taken.
To be sure, those familiar with Chomsky’s writings will find little new in Myth. In a sense it’s a condensed version of the great man’s writings and public statements that have already appeared. On the other hand it’s about the perfect place to start for a Chomsky novice. More important perhaps, as an insightful contrarian take on U.S. foreign policy since WW2, written in concise, nontechnical language, one could hardly do better than the present book.
[1] Perhaps it’s instructive to recall the all too prescient words of Senator Frank Church. As much as Church’s work on the committee that bears his name has assured his place in political history,* an even greater, albeit much less well-known, moment occurred on February 21, 1968, in a speech on the Senate floor, in which Church specifically criticized American involvement in Vietnam.** He also cautioned against the trends of U.S. imperialism and militarism generally, and the ascendancy of a national-security state. Ergo the U.S. was acting more like an empire than a republic. The speech is extensively quoted in James Risen’s book,*** and space precludes our inclusion in detail here, but perhaps we might be allowed to reference an especially prescient passage:
“… in the face of all this, I wish I could express some confidence that, by an act of our own volition, we might soon commence to alter this country’s foreign policy from one of general, to one of selective, involvement. But I have no such confidence. Like other nations before us that drank deeply from the cup of foreign adventure, we are too enamored with the nobility of our mission to disenthrall ourselves. Besides, powerful vested interests now encrust and sanctify the policy. Were we to wait for the hierarchy of either political party to advocate a change of course, I fear we would wait indefinitely.”
What is most remarkable about the speech, and this passage in particular, is not just its soaring eloquence, but that it could be delivered today, over a half century later, and be just as on the money, perhaps more so given recent events and the, frequently misguided, American response to said events. Church cautioned we might wait indefinitely for our leaders to change course, and today, nearly six decades later, it seems we’re still waiting.
* United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities (1975-76), commonly referred to as the Church Committee.
** The full text of the admittedly long winded speech, titled ‘The Torment in the Land,’ can be found in the Senate Congressional Record, Wed. Feb 21, 1968.
*** James Risen, The Last Honest Man: The CIA, the FBI, the Mafia, and the Kennedys, and One Senator's Fight to Save Democracy, Little, Brown, 2023.
[2] The book makes for a painful read, and not only for its coverage of the extent of American complicity in international crimes. Like Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States,* which is cut from the same ideological cloth as Myth, few individuals escape the rapier gaze. Political parties, too. Robinson and Chomsky point out that both Democrats and Republicans have consistently supported the imperialist, militarist version of American foreign policy. Myth also upsets the apple cart regarding some of our most cherished figures. To wit: a reading takes the gloss off JFK’s leftist, pacifist image.** Likewise Jimmy Carter’s human rights record: while in office his actions were often at odds with his later, noble pronouncements. Sobering examples that even the most idealistic minded of presidents will have trouble going against entrenched foreign policy interests when push comes to shove.
* While Chomsky and Zinn share the same leftist ideological framework, Zinn’s A People’s History focuses mostly on domestic social and political movements, less so on foreign policy.
** JFK and Vietnam is covered more thoroughly in Chomsky’s Rethinking Camelot: JFK, the Vietnam War and U.S. Political Culture. The inescapable conclusion is that Kennedy simply continued and intensified the momentum of gradual escalation his predecessors had already begun. Insofar as his Vietnam policy is concerned about the best that can be said for JFK is that his successors were far worse.
Further reading: Vincent Bevins, The Jakarta Method: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World, Public Affairs, 2020. Jakarta Method covers much the same territory as Myth of American Idealism, from a Cold War context, focusing on American co-ordination and support for anti-communist coups in Indonesia and Brazil in the 1960s. Bevins’s book is a devastating indictment of the dubious methods Washington used to ‘win’ the Cold War. The result was the deaths and otherwise ‘disappearances’ of millions of people and the installation of right-wing dictatorships throughout the Third World, the reverberations of which continue to this day.
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