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as fascist, terrOrIstIc and VICIOUS as it likes. But it will still receive
huge American aid, as it did from 1964, because it provides a favor–
able investment climate for the United States. It's exactly as every
aid official who testifies before Congress says repeatedly. Now, on the
other hand, Chile, let's say, can more or less respect American-type
political forms, but it's going to receive only American hostility, be–
cause it doesn't provide a favorable investment climate to the United
States.
LEON FESTINGER: Mr. Morgenthau says some unspecified ideology is
the villain and Mr. Chomsky says economics is the villain. And Mr.
Morgenthau says that economics is perhaps one manifestation of this
ideological villain. I would like to hear indications from either or
both of you as to how I could choose between your interpretations.
CHOMSKY: There is a difference. I think that I am suggesting a fairly
clear criterion, which I think is a good first approximation, that has
some predictive value. As I say, it is not the full explanation, but I
claim that it's a good first approximation, if you like. And that is,
I repeat, that the United States will, with reasonably high probability,
tend to support those forces in some foreign country that offer the
best hope of maintaining the freedom for American capital to operate
in that country and to make use of material and human resources
in that country. I think that is, in general, the operative criterion.
I would claim, in fact, that the series of examples that I mentioned
support that. And I don't know of any counterexamples. Further–
more, I would claim beyond that that this is what is asserted by and
large in internal documents, not meant for propaganda, but simply
meant for internal debate and discussion. The internal documents
of the NSC reports, say, of the Pentagon Papers serve as a good
illustration. I don't want to claim too much. I think that in the area
of national policy and politics you can't formulate scientific theories
on the order of physics or anything like that, but thinking of what
one can do in the social sciences, it seems to me that this is a pretty
successful theory. It has its defects, and I would like to insist on a
number of them. For example, I don't think it accounts for what
the United States did in 1965 in Indochina, as I mentioned. I think
that there was a strong component of hysteria that operated at that
point, and I think you see it reflected in the internal documents. But
it does seem to me that at the earlier stage, it did explain what was
happening, and I believe myself that today again that probably ex–
plains what is happening. That is another issue, but I think that
Nixon and Kissinger are moving back to a sort of rational, probably
vicious, imperial policy which probably has some hopes of achiev–
ing the goals that they have set. I should mention, incidentally, that
