>Failed States
Chomsky's point is that America is the world's greatest threat to democracy. This argument is made to reverse the rhetorical narrative of neoliberals who believe that an interventionist foreign policy and Bush-era style military adventurism is not only conducive to, but a necessary and appropriate instrument of support for, the proliferation of "democracy" in the world.
This argument comes in the context of previous arguments he has made in other books and articles published over the course of his academic life to the effect that the America has repeatedly abused appeals to human rights' preservation (e.g., Chile, Nicaragua, and the rest of South and Central America in the 1980s) to justify advancing its own interests; and speciously labeled its allies "democracies" (again, Chile) and its enemies "totalitarian dictatorships" as a pretext for or against military intervention.
On a psychological level, what we as people do is tell stories. We try to fit pieces of the puzzle together together to make sense of it all and that's what Chomsky is doing here. The problem is in what he chooses to talk about. For example, a savvy reader encountering Failed States will wonder why, if Chomsky was going to initiate his analysis with wars with the Native Americans, he has not considered some of the things that the United States has done to facilitate democracy in the world (such as shepherding Europe out of totalitarianism after World War II). That glaring omission being immediately obvious to a critical reader, one might have thought Chomsky would have bothered to anticipate the counterpoint to his position drawn from that set of historical events. So, there are weaknesses in his analysis. This is not the only one, but it's a weakness.
As I've said before, where I appreciate Chomsky is in his tendency to discuss things that are often ignored by the media and which would not even enter the consciousness of most Westerners because we are not in a position to receive that kind of information. But, he and I disagree about what all of these things mean even if I agree with him about what the world is -- in many cases. That is not, however, to say that it is enough that Chomsky said something to accept it uncritically.
Here's an illustration of that point, that has appeared in multiple Chomsky publications:
Nuclear Winter. There is absolutely no science backing the conclusion that nuclear war would bring about nuclear winter in the world, despite the fact that various "scientists" have published "papers" suggesting this as nothing less than an inevitable consequence of nuclear engagement. Those papers were published by "useful idiots" and actual KGB agents of disinformation, and were uncritically published resulting in a popular phenomenon. This falls into the category of what people in the intel world call "active measures". Chomsky, not knowing the science -- or lack of it -- picked this up from others and began to use it as a concept illustrating some of the moral stakes in the Reagan administration's actions (or, provocations, to hear Chomsky tell the tale) in relation to getting Gorbachev to capitulate in any number of ways.
CIA Activity. At least four prominent examples of Soviet or Russian disinformation have found their way into Chomsky's analysis of various Middle Eastern affairs, and the actions (terrorist and otherwise) of certain Middle Eastern groups. For example, Chomsky cited an item of Soviet disinformation as a piece of evidence in rebuttal to the Reagan Administration's military actions against Libya in 1986. Chomsky claims that Libyan terrorists were not behind a bombing in Berlin preceding the Reagan Administration's air strikes against Tripoli, based on the lack of a finding by the West German police. He alludes to it being a CIA False Flag. It was not a false flag. West German investigators were fed false information by Soviet illegals (not immigrants, spies) in West Berlin and outside which led to their failure to attribute. Even still, a failure to attribute is a far cry from a false flag. Soviets later planted the claim in foreign newspapers -- which Chomsky later received and based his analysis on. To the extent Chomsky relied on foreign media uncritically, especially coming out of India, Pakistan, and other hotbeds for Soviet disinformation in the 1980s and 90s, he made these same sorts of mistakes with regular consistency.
So, to read or not to read...
Failed States is worth reading, so long as the reader accepts and understands that one has to actually think about what Chomsky is saying and why. Again, I agree with him on most of the facts (except in instances like those discussed above), though I strongly disagree with him on the big picture.
Why I disagree with Chomsky on the big picture is not obvious, though it should be. What Chomsky's grand narrative of American imperialism and aggression fails to account for how much worse the world would be in the absence of the very actions he laments. The deficit is likewise present among all the "isolationists" on both the left and the right (that is not to imply that Chomsky is an isolationist per se).
