Richard Perle

RICHARD PERLE: There is a story told, perhaps apocryphal, but perhaps true, about Machiavelli on his death bed. A priest was summoned, leaned over to the ailing philosopher and said: "Are you prepared to reject the Devil and embrace the Lord?" There was no response from Machiavelli, so the priest repeated his question, again no response. He asked a third time, and this time Machiavelli raised his head slightly from the pillow and he said: "Father, this is no time to be making new enemies." And I do not want to make new enemies this evening, but I cannot allow what I have just heard to stand unquestioned.
So perhaps I might begin with the very beginning, with the notion implied by Professor Chomsky that there is a sense in which Soviet propaganda, which characterizes the United States and its allies as imperialist, is somehow "the mirror image" -- I think it is his phrase -- of what he calls American propaganda. 
I would hope that Professor Chomsky would acknowledge that there is at least one fundamental difference between propaganda in this country and propaganda in the Soviet Union, and that is that in the Soviet Union, there is a monopoly disposed of by the state over what is said and written, what is presented over the air, for which there is no comparison in a society of multiple voices, one indeed that produces Professor Chomsky's books in large numbers, publishes his articles and invites him to participate on the airwaves as C-SPAN is now doing.
I listened with interest to Professor Chomsky's account of the "State Department planners." I am not quite sure who they are, with the exception of George Kennan, and I presume the references to Kennan were meant to include him in the group of State Department planners, who in Mr. Chomsky's view, planned for a Grand Area, an imperial American policy in the Far East, he said, in Europe, and in the Middle East. And yet if we look at American policy in the post-war period, what was its principal thrust? Its principal thrust was the establishment of the Marshall plan to help rebuild the economies of Europe, assistance to Japan to rebuild Japan along democratic lines, indeed the reconstruction of a Japanese constitution, and massive disarmament of American military forces. That is the foreign policy that Professor Chomsky would have you believe was designed to implement a vast imperial ambition. It would be among the most extraordinary miscalculations in the history of international politics to base an imperial policy on the reconstruction of other powers and the dismantlement of one's own military establishment and yet that was the essence of American policy in the post-war period.
Our policies, Professor Chomsky would have you believe, were intended to produce American control. But where do you see signs of American control in relations, say, to our principal allies in the world? I had the privilege for more than 6 years, of representing the United States, among other places, in meetings of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, an organization of 16 independent nations, and I can assure you that there was not a representative from any other nation around that table, who would for a moment accept the notion that the United States controlled the policy of his country. When we deliberated as we freq did, in order to produce the statements that from time to time we made on a consensus basis, we had to persuade others to accept language that they could sign, and frequently, indeed most of the time, we were only able to achieve consensus by making essential compromises, so that everyone was content with what became the policy of this collective organization -- hardly a system of control.
I would caution you not to trust too much on every piece of paper that is produced in the Department of State.
Now I find curious indeed the underlying thesis, and I take this to be the underlying thesis of Mr. Chomsky's presentation, that the United States somehow has an interest, that the United States and its citizens or its elite, if you would care to put it that way, would somehow benefit from the destruction of democracy. It is totally unproven. It has been my impression over the years that the United States benefits most, when it is able to exist in the world, of some reasonable stability and prosperity. And democracy, as far as we now, is by far the most productive system in the history of mankind for the production of both stability and prosperity, and we would be fools to promote any other political doctrine anywhere else in the world.
Now this is not to say that we have not found ourselves from time to time in situations where our immediate interests happened to lay with a government in power that did not meet our standards of democracy. We live unfortunately in a world in which there are other countries, including some quite powerful countries, who do not believe that their interests lie with the expansion of democracy, but believe rather that their interests, and perhaps indeed their future, lies with the expansion of communist rule, in particular the sort of communist rule that might be directed or substantially influenced from the Soviet Union. And I would not deny for a moment, I would be foolish to deny it, and you would be foolish to fail to understand it, that there have been and will be in the future, doubtlessly, occasions when the United States, for protecting its broad and long-term interest -- promoting democracy around the world, will find it necessary to resist communist expansion by finding itself in opposition to governments that, if they were not contained, would contribute to that potential growth of communist power and influence.
And far from what Professor Chomsky has to say, the notion that the United States has a deliberate policy, to use his words, "attempted to force Nicaragua into the Soviet orbit," when we had every interest in Nicaragua moving out of any orbit, and indeed, assisted in the transition from Somoza to what we thought, what we hoped, what many believed would be a democratic revolution, the notion that it was in our interest to force them into the arms of the Soviets is such an astounding one I hardly know how to respond to it, except to suggest that even the early history of the American relationship with the Sandinista regime makes it clear that we sought to assist that regime, we gave aid to it, and our disappointment is mirrored by leaders of the Contra movement, many of whom were part of the original revolution against Somoza, who fought to install the Sandinista revolution that they believed would be a democratic revolution and they have been bitterly disappointed, as it has become increasingly clear that far from being a democratic revolution it is a totalitarian one.
Professor Chomsky says, in passing almost, that the Reagan administration has been responsible for atrocities comparable to those of Pol Pot... if I understood him correctly. And he will have later in this program an opportunity to elaborate. But that strikes me as an extraordinary statement.
You see the result in the people who take to the sea ... to escape the Vietnam whose independence Professor Chomsky thinks was a desirable outcome.
Now shifting for a moment to the Middle East. The United States, Professor Chomsky says, has blocked a political settlement in the Middle East since 1971. As we look at the recent history of the Middle East, perhaps the only progress toward stability and the settlement of the Middle East has been that diplomatic activity that was nurtured by the United States, and I have in mind in particular the Camp David accord, which at least ended the mortal hostility of Israel and Egypt, which threatened and indeed brought about wars, but threatened wars of even greater severity and destruction. It is only a step, and it does not go nearly far enough, but to accuse the United States of blocking movement toward a settlement when it is in fact the instrument of such movement toward a settlement as we have had, strikes me as bizarre indeed. Now the simple fact is that it is very difficult to persuade our friends in Israel that they should sit down at the negotiating table and conclude an agreement in which they would give up territory that now provides some measure of physical protection in negotiations with an organization that remains to this day pledged in its covenant, in its constitution, in its fundamental articles of existence, that remains dedicated to the destruction of a Jewish state in Palestine.
One cannot ask one's friends to negotiate with an entity that is devoted to the destruction of one's friends.
Ladies and gentlemen, as we continue the evening, ask yourself whether the adumbration of documents that you have not seen and I have not seen, and the weight and the consequence of which it is impossible to estimate, bears up with your impression of where the United States has been in the post-war period, and your sense of what the United States represents, both at home and around the world. Thank you.