Seconde Guerre mondiale

The Second World War appears as the decisive historical threshold behind the postwar prohibition on reprisal and the attempt to place force under common rules. In Noam Chomsky’s argument, the lesson is not merely that war can be catastrophic: it is that states devised a different legal framework because centuries of reciprocal violence had brought Europe close to self-destruction, and that framework must apply to powerful states as well as their adversaries.

The postwar rule against reprisal

Chomsky describes the settlement made at the end of the Second World War as a response to Europe’s long history of reciprocal violence. Under the resulting pact, the use of force was excluded in principle except in self-defense against an armed attack, pending action by the United Nations Security Council to protect international peace and security. Reprisals, specifically, were prohibited. The account presents this arrangement as a deliberate break with the logic that an attacked country may simply strike back wherever it chooses.

That distinction supplies the legal frame for Chomsky’s discussion of the attacks on the United States in 2001. He argues that the United States was not under armed attack in the sense contemplated by Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, and therefore could not invoke that provision as justification for force. The underlying test is one of consistency: the principles of international law cannot be claimed for states one favors while withheld from states one dislikes.

The danger of reciprocal violence

The historical warning is also material, not only juridical. Chomsky argues that centuries of European violence had carried the continent toward self-annihilation; with weapons of mass destruction, reviving the principle of answering aggression with retaliation threatens the continuation of human life itself. The postwar rejection of the “massacre” of mutual reprisal is thus presented as a practical necessity born of experience, not an abstract restraint detached from consequences.

He tests the proposed rule by reversing its application. If an attacked country were entitled to bomb the capital of the state it regarded as responsible, Nicaragua, South Vietnam, and Cuba would have been entitled to bomb Washington, while Palestinians would have been entitled to bomb Tel Aviv. Chomsky’s point is that such examples expose the asymmetry in calls for retaliation: the rule is readily applauded when applied to others, but not accepted when the same permission would extend to them.

Legal accountability and American power

The postwar principle is placed alongside Chomsky’s account of the United States’ conduct in Nicaragua during the 1980s. He says the International Court of Justice ruled in Nicaragua’s favor, ordering the United States to stop its actions and pay substantial reparations; the United States rejected the decision and intensified its attacks. At the United Nations Security Council, the United States vetoed a resolution calling on states to respect international law. The General Assembly later adopted a similar resolution by a majority, while the United States and Israel voted against it for two consecutive years; El Salvador joined them on one occasion. The comparison sharpens the article’s central tension: institutions created to restrain force existed, but the most powerful state could reject their judgments.

Chomsky also argues that international legal institutions would likely support the arrest and trial of Osama bin Laden and his associates, including the use of force if their responsibility could be demonstrated. He says nearly the whole world had asked the United States for evidence and that proof could have secured backing for an international operation under United Nations auspices. In his account, diplomatic means might also have been available, but proposals from the Taliban were rejected and force was chosen instead. The postwar framework therefore represents both a route to accountability and a standard against which unilateral action can be judged.

The ideal and later strategic policy

The argument does not treat the postwar settlement as having ended the pursuit of strategic power. Chomsky traces the United States’ stated preference for acting multilaterally when possible and unilaterally when necessary to Bill Clinton’s 1993 communication to the United Nations; Madeleine Albright reiterated the position, and Defense Secretary William Cohen described reliance on unilateral military power to defend vital interests in 1999. The stated interests included access to essential markets, energy sources, and strategic resources. In Chomsky’s reading, the coalition assembled after the 2001 attacks might soften official rhetoric without changing that policy: partners were expected to support the United States quietly rather than participate in decisions, while Washington reserved the right to act as it chose.

He connects this strategic continuity to the geography of military power. Before the war in Afghanistan, Diego Garcia was described as the most secure American base in a system directed toward the Persian Gulf and stretching from the Pacific to the Azores. The establishment of substantial American bases in Central Asia, for the first time, improved the capacity for intervention and was linked in Chomsky’s analysis to control of regional resources and the surrounding energy-producing areas. These claims set the postwar legal ideal against a later order in which military reach and access to resources remain central considerations.

Chomsky makes the same distinction between public justification and strategic purpose when discussing the bombing of Afghanistan and NATO’s bombing of Serbia. He suggests that the Afghanistan campaign may have been intended chiefly to warn other states of American capabilities if they did not comply with Washington’s rules. He cites the explanation that the Serbia bombing was undertaken to preserve NATO’s credibility, specifying that this meant the credibility of the United States and its leading arms client, not that of Norway or Italy. His account closes on the contrast between the enduring postwar problems of international power and the changes introduced by September 11, some of which, he warns, would have significant and unwelcome consequences.