Noam Chomsky - When is Military Intervention Justified?

[LeftIsBest]

As Australians, we need to remember the US and UK were directly working against us in regards to assisting East Timor.

[jones]

Try and try as he did, the last interviewer could not trip him up.

[spinnact]

How does he have this depth of knowledge at his fingertips? Correcting a journalist on the nuances of a paper that the journalist appears to have actually had in front of him. It's astounding. He will be an unbelievable loss when he goes; I won't know where to go for this kind of intellectual rigour and analysis, his firm handle on the truth despite the oceans of bullshit coming from governments and the media.

[smashmouthleonard]

Who takes Mr Chomsky's place when he dies?

[johnsmith]

I think these conditions are extremely important, and the fact that they’ve been so flagrantly ignored by the architects of US foreign policy is revealing. However, couldn’t there be cases that are hypothetically warranted that fall outside of either of these conditions?

Suppose that a state led genocide of a minority population were being perpetrated, and other countries only received information of this as it began to occur. Technically then the situation might be that the majority is against intervention (if tribal tensions within the country are strong enough that they support genocide, or if the state propaganda is extremely effective). Also, one could technically argue that non violent means have not been “exhausted”, though it would seem rather immoral to make lame attempts at diplomacy in the process of such an atrocity.

I do understand this is an extreme hypothetical and am aware of the state propaganda that exists to convince people that such situations make up the majority of US intervention. I’m under no such illusion that this is the case, but I’m wondering about this simply as an exercise in thought and am attempting to establish some points of principle. If anyone has an answer to this, I’d much appreciate feedback 👍🏽

[AHHH-gp]

Military intervention..Its Universal Declaration of human rights laws

[doodelay]

There are two ways to look at this confrontation, u can hold Chomsky up to be a sort of savant who has perfect recall of everything he's read down to the year and line of each paragraph, or you can imagine that maybe he was wrong in this case and is very good at obscuring it.

[ninjaboy]

I hope to have the intellect and eloquence of Noam

[AHHH-gp]

When the Rebels, Talibans, Alqaeda and the Terrorist hides behind the Civilians

[imhoisntworthmuch]

nobody can 'replace' chomsky and his legacy will last when that time comes.. look at the views. it *must* continue.
*yes, everything must pass..
I prefer this channel as opposed to early 'archives'.

[nicolemusic]

He argues that there are some conditions in which military intervention is justified. One is that all non-military means have been tried/exhausted but with no result. 'A second condition is that the people in the country in which you're intervening support the intervention. Under those conditions and you can think of others, intervention would be justified. However, we don't ever apply those conditions.' citing South Africa under an apartheid state. For that case, '"there's not a doubt that the overwhelming majority [of the] population would have favoured intervention, probably military intervention [...] other means had been tried for decades" before turning to military intervention.

[julianthornley]

I wish I and people were More like him

[jcolwill]

0:29 Unless the intervention was undertaken by an imperialist country.

[AHHH-gp]

UDHR Protects the Civilians but to what extent?

[nicholasdarraugh]

You always give the original source, where is it (especially for the final one)?

[kentallard]

Although the Indonesian government formally complied with the UN vote once Clinton phoned Jakarta to warn them about their IMF loans many in the government and military did not want to and were very eagre for war. Many members of the militias in East Timor were in fact soldiers, police, and special forces in plain clothes and the militias had been provided access to government armories. There was some effort to try to use them to provoke a confrontation. The British made Hawke jets that Chomsky mentions were on standby in West Timor to attack if fighting broke out. British Special Boat Service commandos and Gurkhas were embedded with the Australian special operations RESFORCE that were the first to sweep through the areas first as the Australians deployed, they had firefights with these militias and disguised soldiers. Had things indeed escalated British forces would have been fired on by British made equipment.

[patrickbooth]

Well Noam, Its difficult to get approval of a foreign population for intervention.