Noam Chomsky, the distinguished linguistics professor, prolific author and radical activist, trended on Twitter last weekend for his comments about Ukraine and Russia.
In an interview with Nathan Robinson in the leftist Current Affairs magazine, Chomsky accused the United States of being willing to “fight to the last Ukrainian” rather than seek a negotiated settlement that, imperfect as it may be, at least avoided the bloodshed in the Ukraine would stop . A consensual easing would have the added benefit of slowing down a dangerous escalation in tensions between the US and Russia.
The dominant tone of Twitter replies was upset and dismissive. More than a few people made analogies to Chamberlain Surrender to Hitler in Munich. Others named Chomsky a Putin puppet or claims that the linguist wanted Russia’s “genocidal war” to go faster. Far more level-headed critics recommended that what he said was inconsistent with the common rights of people subjected to foreign aggression fight back– and with Chomsky’s own support for, for example Palestinians resist Israeli occupation.
However, a closer look at the interview shows that nothing Chomsky said deserves this criticism. In fact, in an atmosphere less belligerent, it would be easy to imagine the New York Times editorial board saying many of the same things. And there is no contradiction in Chomsky’s approach to Russian and Western imperialism.
Nowhere in the interview did he suggest that Ukrainians should simply lay down their arms and ask nothing in return. Nor did Chomsky blame Ukraine for the Russian invasion or deny that the Ukrainian government had any authority in determining its own course of action.
In fact, he has repeatedly praised Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for being “an honorable person” who has shown “great courage” and “great integrity.” Even those of Zelenskyy’s demands that could have truly catastrophic consequences for the world, such as his call for western powers to establish a no-fly zone, are understandable from a Ukrainian perspective, Chomsky said.
In other interviews, Chomsky also said that Zelenskyi was right in dismissing Russia’s immediate demands and that the Ukrainian president’s public response to Putin in March was “reasonable and appropriate.” None of this means that Chomsky and his critics don’t have genuine and deep differences of opinion about American policy toward the war in Ukraine. It’s just that the source of this disagreement lies elsewhere.
Chomsky’s analysis is that the options are either a serious push for Russia, Ukraine, the US and other powers to sit down and negotiate a negotiated settlement to end the fighting, or a continued escalation in which they will, at best, escalate countless more Ukrainian lives will be lost. At worst, the regional war could escalate into a broader conflict that could lead to World War III.
A common objection to this type of reasoning is that concerns about World War III leave the US and its allies vulnerable to “nuclear blackmail” from Putin and other nuclear-armed villains. But treating this as a new precedent is ahistorical.
Concerns about proxy wars between a nuclear-armed power and a peripheral country backed by a rival power, escalating into direct conflict between the superpowers, have been a staple of great power politics for many decades. This is one of the reasons why LBJ refrained from a full-scale invasion of North Vietnam. And it’s a concern that surely would have weighed heavily on then-Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev and his advisers if they had ever seriously considered getting involved more directly in the war.
Even if we assume for the sake of argument that there is only a half-percent chance that tensions between the United States and Russia could escalate into World War III over Ukraine, that should be more than enough to keep decision-makers awake at night to keep. Think how excited you would be if the odds against you winning a multi-million dollar lottery jackpot were only 200-1.
“Even if we assume, for the sake of argument, that there is only a half-percent chance that tensions between the United States and Russia will escalate into World War III over Ukraine, that should be more than enough to keep decision-makers awake at night.” to keep .”
And even putting aside World III’s slim but terrifying chance, Chomsky is still right.
The line “fight Russia to the last Ukrainian” was borrowed by Chomsky from Chas Freeman, Bill Clinton’s assistant secretary of defense in the early 1990s. Both Chomsky and Freeman before him made it clear in the interview that while the Biden administration has lavishly supported Ukraine with its military aid and has sought to inflict maximum economic damage on Russia through sanctions, it has shown little interest in direct action against American involvement in peace talks. This suggests that the US is currently hoping for a full Ukrainian victory and is unwilling to accept a chaotic process of negotiated de-escalation.
Perhaps the right course of action is to press hard for a total defeat of Russia, no matter how long it takes or how many lives are lost. A frequent refrain from Chomsky’s less vitriolic critics is that the US should not be drawn into peace negotiations because, as national security commentator Nicholas Grossman has said brings it, when and if the Ukrainians accept a peace agreement should be “their decision”. others have recommended that there is a contradiction here. Expert Zaid Jilani asks whether Chomsky would advise “the Palestinians or the Kurds” to “give up their national aspirations” just to avoid bloodshed.
In fact, Chomsky agreed much deeper Compromises in the Palestinian case than in the Ukrainian. He has been a proponent of a two-state solution for decades. He was also a critic of the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.
In his discussion with Robinson, Chomsky suggested that a peace deal in Ukraine would include a diplomatic commitment to Ukrainian neutrality, as well as “some level of accommodation for the Donbass region with a high degree of autonomy, perhaps within a federal structure in Ukraine might realize that Crimea, like it or not, is not on the table.”
Restoring Crimea and joining NATO were aspirations that Ukraine would likely never fulfil, and it is hard to imagine that a negotiated compromise between the parties would not include some level of accommodation for the breakaway Russian vassal states in the Donbass region would. The fact is that such a solution would sacrifice Ukrainian “national aspirations” much less than a two-state solution in Israel/Palestine would endanger historical Palestinian aspirations.
Even in the best version of such a solution, with Israel withdrawing to its pre-1967 borders to allow for the formation of a Palestinian state throughout the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, the vast majority of all Israeli territory. Palestine would fall into Israeli hands. And given Israel’s settlement policy over the last few decades, it is likely that any two-state settlement would leave the Palestinians with even less territory.
Furthermore, to keep a good analogy, the US would first have to switch sides and then pass vast amounts of arms to Hamas and Fatah to fight the Israeli army – while showing little interest in a negotiated solution that, so imperfectly, would exist whatever it is, would at least create a Palestinian state.
Would many of Chomsky’s critics really support such a policy?
Complaints that Chomsky and Freeman deny Ukraine the power to act when they accuse the US of being prepared to “fight Russia to the last Ukrainian” or that American involvement in peace talks would deprive Ukrainians of the right to make such decisions meet, misses the point on several levels.
First, there are reports of Zelenskyy himself calling on “the West” to “take more part in the negotiations to end the war”. British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace has let it slide that he “knows” that Ukrainians want the UK and other powers at the table. And it is public knowledge that Zelenskyy said that “the world” and not just Ukraine “needs to talk to Putin.” So there is at least some evidence that the US and other Western powers, which take a less distanced approach to negotiations, would themselves respect Ukraine’s wishes.
Second, even if Zelenskyy did not want the US around the table, the US has a long history of both sides working to get both sides of conflicts to engage in peace talks and take a direct role in the negotiations . For example, was it wrong for the US to put pressure on the UK and the Irish Republican Army (IRA) to make peace in the 1990s? Here it is not Chomsky, but his critics, who want to set strange new standards for global diplomacy.
It is one thing to argue that the US should reduce its role in the world to the point where it no longer makes sense to engage in negotiations about conflicts in distant parts of the world. A great many Americans would flatly reject this proposal as “isolationism.” I’m not one of them.
But whatever you think about this issue, we cannot have it both ways – if the US can interfere by flooding the conflict zone with weapons to help our favored side win, then we certainly can not too much interference, to promote peace negotiations.
One final point: US-led international sanctions have caused deep suffering to the Russian economy. American diplomats participating directly in the talks and offering to lift these sanctions would certainly be a major lure for Russia to agree to the kind of peace deal Professor Chomsky is outlining – one that would see Russia give up most of its original war aims.
Remember Putin’s outrageous claim that he wants to “demilitarize and denazify” Ukraine? It is hard to imagine what would count as achieving this brief regime change in Kyiv.
Many Americans are convinced that Putin will never accept such a total victory and that there is no point in pushing for a diplomatic solution. All I can say is that unless we try, we won’t know.
Diplomacy can be messy and demoralizing. Peace negotiations rarely result in near-perfect justice. But the alternative is—at best—an enormous amount of preventable human suffering, and at worst, the end of human civilization. Let’s give peace a chance.