Cynthia Peters interviews Noam Chomsky

9 Questions for Noam, of which the following is Question Six:

Can you describe what, if any, shifts there might be in the alignment of power among nations as the U.S. pursues this unilateral course? What might be the implications for NATO?

The US has always been ambivalent about European unification. It has obvious advantages for US economic and strategic power, but there has always been concern that Europe might move towards an independent course. Furthermore, the social market system in Europe has always been regarded as a threat, rather in the way that Canada's health care system has been feared: these are "viruses" that might "infect" the US population, to borrow the terminology of US planners when they moved to crush independent social and economic development throughout the third world. These concerns have motivated US policies towards Europe (and Japan, and elsewhere) since World War II, constantly taking new forms. They were, for example, expressed by Henry Kissinger in his "Year of Europe" address in 1973, when he instructed Europe that it had only "regional responsibilities" within an "overall framework of order" managed by the US government. NATO was conceived, in part, as a way to ensure US control over Europe -- not without support from sectors of European elites, who despise the social market system, and fear European independence, for much the same reasons as their counterparts here. The US is strongly in favor of the accession of the Eastern European countries to the European Union for these reasons. Washington expects to have enough control over them so that they will dilute tendencies towards independence in Europe. And there is quite unconcealed exultation that their reservoir of cheap and easily exploited labor will undermine the European welfare state and the rights of working people, and will drive Europe to the US model of low wages, high workload, limited benefits and job security, high concentration of wealth -- and general economic performance pretty similar to Europe's by most measures. And that has obvious appeal to the corporate sector in Europe as well.

These are long-term factors. How they will play out, and how they will be affected by popular movements, no one can say with any confidence.

That's just Europe, not the world. For about 30 years, the world has been "tripolar" economically, with three major power centers, including Japan-based Asia and now the growing role particularly of China. That raises all sorts of other questions, too intricate to try to pursue here.