Prele responds to united fruit

HERMANN: Let us ask Mr. Perle about that. You gave me a response. The international liberalism that you said you like, he is saying produces an economic model that produces crops for export, which profit only a small sector and produces indigenous wide-scale poverty and starvation.

PERLE: Well, this is garbage of course, as is the whole notion that American policy consists of a group of people sitting in the State Department and figuring out how we can exploit the rest of the world, which is, in essence, what Professor Chomsky is asserting. It ignores the fact -- I do not know what development model he has in mind, I imagine it is a Marxist development model...
If you want to know what I have in mind, it is very simple: independence.
PERLE: Wait a minute...
CHOMSKY: I would like to say...
PERLE: That's not a development model.
CHOMSKY: No, because I don't think...
PERLE: Is there any country that installed the development model that you would recommend?
CHOMSKY: I think you're missing my point. Neither the United States, nor the Soviet Union, nor Britain or anyone else has a right to ram some development model down somebody's throat.
PERLE: That is... I'm not...
CHOMSKY: I can tell you what I think, and in an academic seminar we could talk about how development should take place, but that's not to the point here. The question is, whether the countries of the world and the peoples of the world are allowed to pick their own development model. That's the question.
PERLE: Of course they are, and in fact, if you look at the countries that have been most prosperous and most successful, that have picked their own path, and whose people have prospered and whose institutions are democratic and flourishing, they are for the most part countries that have maintained close and friendly relations with the United States. And if you look at the Pacific basin, for example, the success stories in the Pacific basin are countries like Taiwan and Japan and Korea, you can look at Singapore, you can look at Hong Kong, the development model that has worked there has worked with very substantial results for the benefit of the people. They are independent in every sense. I noticed how you slipped in "quasi-democratic" as a description of Europe.
CHOMSKY: Yes.
PERLE: I don't know exactly what you have in mind...
CHOMSKY: I'll explain. 
PERLE: The quasi... But it was a relevant question that you dodged: what development model you have in mind, because I think what I detect underneath all of it is a simple equation of independence with a development model that you happen to prefer, that is something other than a capitalist model of development. And I think you ought to tell us what it is!
CHOMSKY: Well, you see, you're assuming that I have your values, and I don't have your values.
PERLE: I'm quite sure you don't.
CHOMSKY: I have my own ideas about how development takes place, but my point is that neither I, nor you or the US government or the Soviet government or anyone else has the right to ram those ideas down someone else's throat.
PERLE: No one's quarreling about that.
CHOMSKY: Now if you want to have this discussion on development models, I'd be perfectly happy to have it. It's just irrelevant here. I mean, in fact, let's take a look at the development models you say have worked. If you look at them you'll notice something very interesting. The ones you mentioned are the right ones. They worked in a particular way, the Pacific basin. But in order to understand those development models, you have to look at the history of those regions. History and documents and so on really are important. You can't just make this stuff out of your head. Now the countries that have developed in the Pacific basin are in fact the countries that are former Japanese colonies. And there's a reason for that: Japanese colonialism was very brutal, but was quite different from European colonialism. If you look back at the record, you'll find that it operated in a different way. Japanese colonialism, while extremely brutal, actually carried out development. And in fact, if you look at the history of these countries since the period of Japanese colonization, you'll find that development took place -- industrial development, in fact, under conditions of extraordinary brutality. It then of course stopped during the second world war and post-world war period, and then took off again where it was under pretty much the same model, namely, a state-controlled, directed economy. What they have, we call it capitalism, has in fact very little to do with capitalism. Well, that's a particular kind of development model. It didn't just come by free choice. I mean, in Korea, say, it came after ten years of war: the Korean war started in 1945, remember. In 1945, when the United States intervened in South Korea, and the Soviet Union came into North Korea, what happened was that a civil war began. And in South Korea, about a hundred thousand people were killed before what we call the Korean war broke out, with plenty of conflicts across the borders -- the Russians pulled out, incidentally. That's the basis for the Korean war, then came the fighting, the destruction of Korea, the control over it by the conquerors. You may say it's good or bad or whatever, it certainly wasn't free. In Taiwan, the development was carried out under, in fact, a conquering army, he Kuomintang army. And similarly, in Indonesia, let's say, the development again wasn't just free. In Indonesia there was a military coup in 1965, strongly supported by the United States. 700,000 people, approximately, were slaughtered within four months, mostly landless peasant. That destroyed the only mass-based political party in the country, with US enthusiastic support, I should say. Then came a certain kind of development model, one which opened up the country to exploitation by Canada, by Japan, by the United States, and a certain kind of development, if you like.
All of these are forms of development, but they didn't come by free choice: they came by forceful imposition. Just as the development in Hungary didn't come by free choice, it came by forceful imposition. Of a different kind, undoubtedly: the forms of US intervention are different from the forms of intervention of other countries, for all sorts of reasons, but it's rammed down people's throats, it's not their choice.
When moves began to take place in a way inconsistent with our officially stated goals, namely the threat of ultra-nationalism began to develop, independent regimes responsive to the demands of the population for improvement in their living standards and diversification of production, we have repeatedly intervened by force to block it. We did so in Guatemala since 1954, over and over again, we did it in the Dominican Republic, we've done it in the Southern Cone, we've done it extensively throughout Central America. In the current period, we're doing it now in the Philippines. There's case after case after case.