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NATIONAL INTEREST
tive. There's a sense of guilt on the paIt of policy-makers. They will
act to protect themse lves against being found out. At the same time
they behave so stupidly as to eventually bring down ruin upon them–
selves.
C HOMSKY :
Well, there may be something to what you say; I don't want
to sound dogmatic about it, but I think there is a simpler explanation.
For one thing, it is by no means obvious that the Kennedy and later
Johnson intellectuals made the wrong decision from the point of view
of the rational calculations of the American ruling groups. They pro–
vided the shield behind which this great miracle of capitalist economic
progress in East Asia could take place. So it's by no means obvious
that they made the wrong decision. 'On the other hand, I do also
think that there was a new element introduced in the 1960s. I
think that it's not surprising, let's say, that a Walt Rostow would be
somewhat different from, let's say, an Averell Harriman in the kind
of policies that he would tend to carry out. I pick Walt Rostow as
an example - I don' t mean to criticize him specifically - of the sort
of academic intellectuals who went down to Washington under Ken–
nedy. What is the basis for their power? Well, the basis for their power
is that they are right, that they are smart, that they know something
others do not know, that they don't make mistakes, that they are the
"first team," as McGeorge Bundy put it. On the other hand, as
far as Harriman is concerned, the basis for his power is that his
grandfather or his father or whoever it was built railroads. I mean,
no matter what mistakes he makes, he still has a right to power. So
he can be quite pragmatic and he can change his policies and he can
tell you that that was wrong, do something else, and so on and so
forth. Walt Rostow can't say that.
If
he says, oh yes fellows, I was
all wrong, do it the other way around, then what he is saying is there
is no reason at all why.I should be here. Now, this is oversimplifying
or exaggerating. But I think there is a difference there. And I believe
that the difference might account for the tendency toward irrational
exaggeration and the hysteria one senses in mid-sixties policy-making.
GERALD FREUND : Where, in fact, can we first see economic determin–
ism as the main thrust of American policy? Was i,t with the Truman
Doctrine? In mentioning the earlier examples, you left out Korea.
Is that another example?
If
economic determinism is
ll1
fact a fun–
damental thrust of this country's forei gn policy and its role in in–
ternational relations, is it the only determining force?
CHOMSKY:
Well, first of all, I never used the term economic determin–
ism. I said that the individuals that do largely staff the executive
have in fact been drawn from specific segments of the corporate elite
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