The United States needs to rethink its approach to international conflict management and prevention, Noam Chomsky said.
Chomsky, a foreign policy analyst and Massachusetts Institute of Technology linguistics professor, focused on the nuclear proliferation in Iran and American policy toward Israel at a lecture entitled ‘Obama, the Middle East and the Prospects of Peace’ at Boston University’s Jacob Sleeper Auditorium on Tuesday to 300 attendees.’
The lecture was co-hosted by the School of Education and Axis of Hope, a Boston-based nonprofit dedicated to improving the practice of international conflict prevention.
Chomsky maintained Iran is not as great of a nuclear threat as the general public may think, affirming that Iran is acting within the parameters of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1968, which limited the spread of nuclear weapons and whose provisions are still effective today.’
‘All states [must] resolve their conflicts within the framework of the Non-Proliferation Treaty,’ he said. ‘Who was that resolution directed at? Nothing in the resolution relates to Iran. Iran is not threatening the use of force, and as far as anyone knows, they are staying within the bounds of the treaty.’
Chomsky said people may have more to fear from two countries that the American public would not typically associate with terrorism.
‘The resolution is actually directed at the two states that consistently and regularly do resort to force and the threat of force, namely the United States and Israel,’ he said. ‘Those are the countries that carry out aggression regularly and repeatedly, that invade other countries, occupy other countries, invoke terror and violence and they’re unique in that respect.’
He acknowledged that most of the world does not want Iran to develop nuclear weapons, but said the U.S. government and its media have exaggerated the possibilities.’
‘There has been a massive propaganda campaign that demonizes Iran, that portrays it as a major threat to world peace that has been going on for the past three years,’ Chomsky said.’
Chomsky also discussed the issue of peace in Israel, drawing comparisons between the conflict management necessary there and the approach taken in Northern Ireland in the early 1990s.’
Chomsky said he had questioned a criminal in Ireland about the nature of the conflict.’
‘I asked him one question,’ he said. ”What do you think you are achieving by killing Protestants?’ His answer was, basically, ‘I’m not achieving anything. He killed my cousin, so I’m going to kill his uncle. That’s the way it is.”
Chomsky said a couple of years later, the criminal was on a negotiation team and now works for the government.’
‘The reason it happened is that the British finally recognized that if you want to deal with terror, you had better pay some attention to its roots,’ he said. ‘Terror is based on grievances and a lot of those grievances are legitimate.’
By listening to the outrages of the people, a government has a jumping-off point for negotiations and can attempt to eradicate terrorism from the ground up, Chomsky said.’
‘They finally agreed to respond to the terror not with more violence but with attention to the grievances,’ he said. ‘There’s been a tremendous improvement since then, and it’s an important lesson of preventative diplomacy and one that should be widely applied.’
Axis of Hope executive director and School of Education professor Carl Hobert said he was satisfied the lecture.’ ‘
Co-host of the event, Hobert has been involved with the promotion of conflict management and prevention for many years.’
‘[Chomsky] has been a great mentor to me, and he’s obviously very provocative,’ he said. ‘This is what I want to expose my students to: How to be provoked and how to have a ground to stand on and be able to say ‘I feel this way.”
School of Management alumnus Hasan Mahmood said he was glad he decided to attend.’
‘The event was organized well,’ he said. ‘The Q-and-A could have been more heated . . . it was pretty low key. I definitely enjoyed the lecture, though.’