Anarchist activist Noam Chomsky is urging Western powers to stop intervening in Ukraine as he believes the peace process is being impeded due to intervention.
“Right at this moment, you hear heroic statements by people in Congress or foreign policy specialists saying we should set up a no-fly zone, for example, to defend Ukraine,” Chomsky said during an interview with Current Affairs, being sarcastic in his remarks.
He added that “the latest polls show about 35 percent of Americans are listening to the heroic speeches from Congress and advisors” and believe “we should enter into the war in Ukraine, even if it threatens to lead to a nuclear war.”
Chomsky is highly alarmed about this propaganda drive that has been successful in turning a substantial number of Americans into rabid maniacs essentially begging for World War 3. He believes that the propaganda is stopping a nuanced solution that could actually lead to peace from emerging.
“In this world, there are two options with regard to Ukraine. As we know, one option is a negotiated settlement, which will offer Putin an escape, an ugly settlement. Is it within reach? We don’t know; you can only find out by trying and we’re refusing to try. But that’s one option,” Chomsky said.
“The other option is to make it explicit and clear to Putin and the small circle of men around him that you have no escape, you’re going to go to a war crimes trial no matter what you do. Boris Johnson just reiterated this: sanctions will go on no matter what you do. What does that mean? It means go ahead and obliterate Ukraine and go on to lay the basis for a terminal war,” he added.
Chomsky stopped short of criticizing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky but said that Zelensky’s cheerleading for support from foreign powers is only worsening the conflict.
“Well, I would not criticize Zelensky. He’s acting with great courage, great integrity. You can understand and sympathize with his position from where he sits… Yes, we could enter the war. We could provide Zelensky with jet planes and advanced weapons. Pretty soon Putin would be radically escalating the attack on Ukraine, would wipe it out which he has the capacity to do. He would be attacking the supply chains that are providing advanced weapons. And we’d be in a war, which would be a nuclear war, which would wipe us all out,” Chomsky said.
Chomsky compares the motives of the individuals pushing for war with Russia to the same drive that led to the War on Iraq.
“You can read articles in the prestigious Atlantic Council expressing intense moral outrage about Russia’s hideous crimes in Ukraine. You take a look at the people who were writing those articles, go back a couple of years, they were issuing praise for the marvelous achievement of the invasion of Iraq, using rhetoric which would have embarrassed the most abject apparatchik in Russia praising the noble intentions, the effort to bring democracy to backward Iraq,” he said.
Chomsky doubts the aptitude of Putin for his belligerence in Ukraine, which he believes has played into the hands of the expansion plan of the U.S. empire.
“Putin did what every man of violence does: reach for the violent option, attack Ukraine with criminal aggression, and hand the United States on a silver platter its most fervent wish: Europe deep in its pocket. More than ever before. The greatest gift that the Kremlin could have given Washington, while it stabs itself in the back,” he said.
