War on Terror

The War on Terror, as Noam Chomsky examines it, is not simply a campaign against violence by non-state groups. It is also a contested political label: its meaning changes according to who commits violence, while the campaign conducted in its name risks repeating the very harms it claims to prevent. Chomsky links the post-September 11 response to older U.S. policies, warns that retaliation can feed further violence, and argues that the campaign also advances American military dominance and expands state power at home and abroad.

Definition and the politics of naming

Chomsky argues that calling the response a war can obscure the harder questions of crime, responsibility, and evidence. Terms such as crimes against humanity would require identifying perpetrators and holding them accountable, an approach that raises questions about international crimes previously condemned by the International Court of Justice. By contrast, the phrase War on Terror can serve as propaganda unless the campaign actually targets terrorism according to its own stated definitions. Chomsky contends that Western powers could not consistently apply those definitions to their own conduct without exposing the United States and its clients to the same accusation.

The argument rests on a distinction between a literal definition and a conventional political usage. Chomsky cites the official U.S. definition of terrorism as the calculated use or threat of violence for political, religious, or ideological ends, including through intimidation, coercion, or the creation of fear. Under that definition, he says, the September 11 attacks were unquestionably a horrific terrorist crime. But in political practice, he argues, terrorism is often a label reserved for violence committed by enemies against the United States or its allies; comparable conduct by powerful states is described instead as coercive diplomacy or counterterrorism.

Chomsky connects that distinction to the U.S. doctrine of low-intensity warfare, which he says closely resembles official definitions of terrorism in its use of coercion against civilian populations for political purposes. Terrorism, in this account, is not merely an instrument of the weak but can be a component of state policy. He further argues that postwar U.S. counterinsurgency programs drew on Nazi models, including consultation with Wehrmacht officers and use of their manuals. The labels applied to actors can therefore turn on political alignment: groups and actions described as terrorist may be renamed freedom-fighting when policy changes, and classified again as criminal afterward.

Retaliation, evidence, and the risk of escalation

Chomsky sets two possible responses against each other: investigate and prosecute crimes under law, or answer them with extreme violence and accept the likelihood of escalation. He points to legal avenues used in other contexts, including Nicaragua’s unsuccessful resort to international law, Britain’s handling of the IRA, and the U.S. response to the Oklahoma City bombing. His point is not that these examples guarantee success, but that lawful investigation and accountability were scarcely considered in the public discussion of the attacks.

Instead, he says, public calls for violence largely neglected the likely civilian consequences, especially for Afghans already suffering under the Taliban. He argues that such a response would also fulfill the aims of Osama bin Laden and his network by helping to generate support for their cause. This warning, he says, was conveyed to the Bush administration by NATO leaders familiar with Central Asia and probably by U.S. intelligence agencies from the early days after the attacks. Killing Osama bin Laden without credible evidence of his involvement, he cautions, could make him a martyr to many Muslims who condemned the attacks; his message could continue to circulate through tens of thousands of tapes and interviews even if he were dead or imprisoned.

Chomsky says the warning appears to have influenced the administration’s choice of plan, but he disputes that the resulting response was measured. He cites a September 16 report that Washington had asked Pakistan to stop fuel supplies and halt truck convoys carrying much of the food and other goods reaching Afghan civilians. In the following days, Pakistan carried out the requests and, on September 27, confirmed the closure of its 2,300-kilometre border with Afghanistan, citing concerns that Osama bin Laden’s men might hide among refugees. The military threat also led international aid organizations to evacuate, paralyzing assistance programs. Chomsky presents these developments as a warning that avoiding an immediate large-scale attack does not, by itself, prevent serious harm to civilians.

Earlier policy and shifting alliances

Chomsky rejects the idea that the War on Terror began with the attacks of September 11. He recalls that the Reagan administration had, two decades earlier, described international terrorism as a major threat to the United States and its allies, and had promised a campaign to eradicate it. In his account, the administration simultaneously organized international terrorist campaigns that led to the International Court of Justice condemning the United States, and supported destructive operations in southern Africa. He attributes 1.5 million deaths and $60 billion in damage there to South African actions backed by the West during the Reagan years. He argues that the resulting mid-1980s rhetoric about a terrorist “cancer” concealed the extent to which the United States and its allies were themselves spreading the violence they said must be eliminated.

The shifting use of labels is illustrated by Chomsky through the Kosovo Liberation Army. The United States officially condemned the group as terrorist in 1998 for attacks on Serbian police and civilians, which the group described as attempts to provoke a disproportionate Serbian response. By January 1999, British officials reportedly considered the group responsible for more deaths than Serbia. Chomsky says that Western documentation showed no tangible change on the ground before monitors withdrew and NATO bombing began in late March, but that U.S. and British policy had changed: the former terrorists became freedom fighters. After the war, he says, they and their allies were again called terrorists, thugs, and criminals as they carried out similar actions in Macedonia, a U.S. ally. For Chomsky, the sequence demonstrates how political decisions can alter the vocabulary used for substantially similar conduct.

Strategic aims and military reach

Chomsky interprets the post-September 11 campaign as an opportunity to consolidate existing trends, including the Bush administration’s doctrine of global military predominance. He argues that governments used the attacks to intensify repressive policies: Russia sought latitude to continue its actions in Chechnya, China joined the coalition for similar reasons, and Turkey offered troops while its prime minister cited U.S. support for Turkey’s campaign against its Kurdish population. He also says Israel recognized that it could act more harshly against Palestinians with stronger U.S. backing. In this analysis, the campaign’s coalition did not unite only against a shared threat; it also furnished governments with a political opening to pursue established agendas.

The domestic consequences are part of the same argument. Chomsky says that even more democratic societies, including the United States, used the climate of fear and demands for patriotism to impose restrictive measures and unpopular laws. He characterizes the Bush administration as exploiting the opportunity to advance policies against much of the U.S. population, including future generations, while serving the interests of large corporations that dominated the administration.

He also identifies a major change in the United States’ military position: for the first time, it established substantial bases in Central Asia. Chomsky connects those bases to multinational corporations under U.S. dominance, access to the region’s resources, and the strategic encirclement of major energy resources in the Persian Gulf. Before the war in Afghanistan, he says, Diego Garcia was the safest U.S. base in the network extending from the Pacific to the Azores; the new deployments improved the capacity for intervention. The bases thus represent, in his account, more than a direct response to the attacks: they expand the reach from which the United States can act in a strategically important region.

Power, precedent, and the aftermath

Chomsky argues that the Bush administration viewed the campaign as a means of consolidating its already overwhelming military superiority and extending global dominance. He points to a reported exchange during Saudi Prince Abdullah’s visit to the United States in April. Abdullah urged the administration to take account of Arab reactions to U.S. support for Israeli repression; a senior official reportedly answered that the United States did not care what he or other Arabs thought. The same account contrasted the force used in Afghanistan with the earlier Gulf War and described firmness as a way to secure respect and prevent further challenge. Chomsky reads this as an explicit demonstration of capability, not simply a response directed at a particular armed network.

He extends that interpretation to the bombing of Serbia, which Tony Blair and Bill Clinton had justified in terms of NATO’s credibility—understood, in Chomsky’s analysis, as the credibility of the United States and its principal arms client. He suggests, while acknowledging the absence of confidential documents, that the Afghanistan bombing may likewise have been intended to warn the world about the consequences of defying U.S. rules. These are Chomsky’s interpretations of strategic purpose, distinct from the administration’s public rationale.

His concluding assessment is that the basic international problems largely remained in place, even as September 11 accelerated pre-existing policies and brought consequential changes. The War on Terror consequently has several connected dimensions in his account: a declared campaign against terrorism, a vocabulary that treats similar violence differently depending on the actor, a military strategy that strengthens U.S. reach, and a security rationale used to justify domestic and foreign repression. Its central contradiction is that the campaign’s claim to oppose terrorism cannot be separated from the question of whether the state applies its own definition consistently to itself and its allies.