The Rhetoric of the “International Community”

The Rhetoric of the “International Community” is Noam Chomsky’s critique of a phrase that makes the preferences of powerful states appear universal. In the interviews, he contrasts the language of collective opposition to terrorism with the absence of collective action, arguing that Western governments often use “international community” to mean themselves and treat those who reject their policies as outside the legitimate political community. The phrase thus obscures both disagreement and the distribution of power behind military decisions.

Who the Community Includes

Chomsky begins with the Bush administration’s immediate demand that countries choose between joining the United States and risking destruction. He presents this as a coercive framing of international relations: governments are invited into a coalition, but the choice is cast not as a debate over evidence, law, or policy, but as allegiance or enmity.

The apparent unity of that coalition does not, in his account, establish a shared global position. He says that the “international community” opposes terrorism, including terrorism by powerful states and the crimes of September 11, yet does not act as a single political body. When Western states and intellectuals invoke the term, he argues, they refer to themselves. Those who oppose the actions of the rich and powerful are effectively excluded from the category.

Chomsky uses the NATO bombing of Serbia to illustrate the gap between the phrase and the wider world’s views. Western rhetoric described the bombing as an action of the “international community,” although, he says, much of the world opposed it, often openly. In this usage, the label does not neutrally record a consensus; it assigns the authority of consensus to an action whose opponents are made rhetorically invisible.

Terrorism, Law, and Selective Standards

The same boundary-setting shapes the term terrorism. Chomsky notes that the word conventionally means terrorism directed against “us and our friends.” That convention allows powerful states to condemn violence by adversaries while placing their own force outside the category, despite his insistence that state violence must also be considered.

He sets this rhetorical asymmetry against legal standards. In discussing the attacks of September 11 and possible retaliation, he invokes the postwar rule that force is prohibited except in self-defense against an armed attack, or where the Security Council acts to protect international peace and security. He argues that reprisals are prohibited and that the United States could not invoke the self-defense provision in the circumstances he describes unless the same principles were applied to the United States as to its adversaries.

His account of Nicaragua supplies a further contrast between formal collective mechanisms and the conduct of a powerful state. After the International Court of Justice ruled in Nicaragua’s favor and ordered the United States to cease its actions and pay reparations, the United States rejected the ruling and intensified its attacks. It then vetoed a Security Council resolution calling on states to respect international law; at the General Assembly, a similar resolution passed by a majority, while the United States and Israel voted against it for two consecutive years. Chomsky presents these episodes as evidence that appeals to international law and collective authority can be resisted by a state powerful enough to disregard them.

Coalitions and Strategic Interests

The distinction between collective participation and American direction recurs in Chomsky’s discussion of coalition-building. He recalls that the Clinton administration had described its policy as acting multilaterally when possible, but unilaterally when necessary. Madeleine Albright and Secretary of Defense William Cohen reiterated that approach, including a commitment to use military power unilaterally to defend vital interests such as access to markets, energy sources, and strategic resources. Chomsky considers Bush’s policy a more pronounced extension of this established practice, rather than a wholly new departure.

In his reading, the coalition assembled after September 11 might soften the administration’s rhetoric without changing its underlying policy. Coalition partners, he argues, were expected to support the United States quietly and obediently, not to share in making decisions. Washington continued to reserve the right to act as it chose and avoided clear reliance on international institutions where law would require them. Chomsky therefore treats coalition membership as distinct from collective authority: participation can lend an appearance of unity without distributing control.

He also links the language of international cooperation to the material stakes of American policy. The world’s principal energy reserves lie chiefly in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf region, with significant resources in Central Asia as well. Afghanistan, he says, was a relatively minor piece on this strategic board, but proposed pipelines there could assist American efforts to control Central Asian resources. The region’s energy geography and the prospect of military access help explain why alliance-building and intervention cannot be understood only through their public antiterrorism rationale.

Military Power and the Meaning of Consensus

Chomsky interprets the establishment of major American bases in Central Asia after the war in Afghanistan as a major consequence of September 11. He connects those bases to multinational corporations operating under American dominance and to the effort to surround the world’s most important energy resources in the Gulf. Before the war, Diego Garcia had been the safest base in the system directed toward the Gulf; the new Central Asian positions, in his account, made forceful intervention easier if Washington considered it appropriate.

He also reads the Afghanistan bombing as a demonstration of American capacity and a warning about the consequences of defying its rules. He acknowledges that secret documents are unavailable and presents this as a reasonable inference, not a documented account of internal deliberations. To clarify the interpretation, he compares the bombing with NATO’s campaign against Serbia, whose stated purpose, as Tony Blair and Bill Clinton explained it, included maintaining NATO’s credibility. Chomsky argues that this meant the credibility of the United States and its principal arms client, rather than an abstract credibility shared equally by all members of the alliance.

The phrase “international community,” in this analysis, performs political work: it can turn a coalition led by a dominant state into a claim of worldwide legitimacy, while strategic aims, legal disputes, and opposition remain outside the frame. Chomsky does not say that the events of September 11 left international politics unchanged. He concludes instead that most underlying problems persisted, while the new phase of the war on terror brought significant changes, some with serious and unwelcome consequences.