XIXe siècle

The nineteenth century serves as a measure of historical continuity in Noam Chomsky’s discussion of political violence. Rather than treating the language of humanitarian intervention as self-evident, he sets it against earlier imperial ventures and argues that moral descriptions of force can conceal the interests and responsibilities of powerful states.

Imperialism and humanitarian language

Chomsky compares the naming of the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia as a humanitarian intervention with what he calls ordinary imperial adventures of the nineteenth century. He notes that influential scholarship on recent examples of intervention before the Second World War discussed Japan’s invasion of Manchuria, Mussolini’s invasion of Ethiopia, and Hitler’s seizure of the Sudetenland. The point of the comparison is not that the scholars endorsed those descriptions as humanitarian; rather, the language of humanitarianism had served to mask crimes.

He therefore treats the nineteenth century not as a remote backdrop but as a warning about political vocabulary. A government’s passionate declarations of benevolent intent do not establish that force is humanitarian, since force is routinely justified in such terms. In his account, the Kosovo case made the weakness of the stated humanitarian rationale especially apparent, while the interests motivating governments were different.

Power, violence, and definition

The historical comparison supports a broader challenge to distinctions that classify violence differently according to who commits it. Chomsky cites Michael Stohl’s observation that force or threatened force by great powers is conventionally called coercive diplomacy rather than terrorism, even when its methods and purposes would fit a literal description of terrorism if used by others. The convention, in this view, does political work: the identity of the powerful actor changes the label applied to similar conduct.

Chomsky also sets the official U.S. definition of terrorism beside the doctrine of low-intensity warfare. He argues that their definitions are nearly alike: both describe coercive means directed at civilians for political, religious, or other purposes. On that basis, he rejects the idea that terrorism belongs only to weak non-state actors and presents state practice as part of the same analytical problem. The nineteenth-century comparison places this argument within a history of imperial power rather than treating it as a novel feature of contemporary politics.

Historical continuity and strategic consequences

The book’s longer historical frame also connects state policy to consequences that outlast the immediate use of force. Chomsky traces the networks that later became associated with Osama bin Laden to recruitment, training, and arming efforts in the 1980s, conducted by the CIA alongside Pakistan and other partners for the war against Soviet forces in Afghanistan. He describes the later reach of these networks across several regions and argues that their development cannot be understood without considering the earlier policies that helped form them.

He likewise argues that U.S. policy contributed indirectly to the September 11 attacks through the militant networks rooted in those earlier arrangements. This account does not make the attacks a direct consequence of U.S. policy; it instead emphasizes a longer chain of actions and reactions, and the importance of examining the conditions in which such groups recruit. In that sense, the historical perspective associated with the nineteenth century extends beyond comparison: it directs attention to continuity, responsibility, and the consequences of power.

Historical analogy and unequal standards

Chomsky applies a universal moral standard to the use of force: conduct judged wrong when directed at one population should not become acceptable when practiced by another. He invokes U.S. violence against Cuba and Nicaragua as examples and notes that the United States was condemned for international terrorism by the International Court of Justice and the United Nations Security Council, although it vetoed the relevant resolution. He contrasts these cases with the question of whether the United States and Britain were entitled to bomb Afghanistan in order to compel the delivery of suspects or, later, to overthrow its rulers.

The same challenge appears in his account of the strategic purposes attributed to the Afghanistan bombing. He suggests that it could function as a demonstration of U.S. power, much as the NATO bombing of Serbia had been defended in terms of alliance credibility. The historical comparison thus links the language used to justify interventions with the unequal standards applied to powerful states: older imperial habits remain relevant wherever force is presented as exceptional, benevolent, or beyond ordinary accountability.