Noam Chomsky has attained fame in two different areas. He is a world-renowned authority in linguistics and also a major public intellectual. But while in the former area his achievements are universally recognized, even by those who disagree with him, this is not so for his work as a public intellectual, where he is idolized by some, respected by others, tolerated by yet others, and execrated by more than a few.

The Myth of American Idealism is a systematic account of Chomsky’s views on foreign policy based on his articles and interviews. The book has been compiled by Nathan J. Robinson, Chomsky’s close friend and disciple, and prepared after discussions with him and with his full approval. Although Chomsky was unable to examine the final draft because of a disabling stroke, we can be confident that the book accurately presents his opinions.

Chomsky is relentless in making his case that, like other great powers, the United States has from the inception of our republic pursued a rapacious foreign policy aiming at gaining power and pelf for an elite group of business interests and government officials, while not shrinking from atrocities on “inferior” races at home and abroad, all hidden under the cloak of idealism. The Myth of American Idealism provides powerful ammunition for those of us who support a noninterventionist foreign policy along the lines of Murray Rothbard and Ron Paul by its forceful challenge to the justifications given for American involvement in foreign wars and imperialist adventures. Particularly useful in this regard is his account of the way in which progressive intellectuals such as the leading pragmatist philosopher John Dewey supported Woodrow Wilson’s disastrous decision to enter World War I. Dewey and other leading lights of the time such as Walter Lippmann hoped that the economic planning required by participation in the war could be used to advance socialism, and indeed many of the New Deal programs to cartelize and control the American economy had their beginnings in Wilsonian wartime measures.

But the book must be used with caution because there is a flaw in its theoretical framework. On the one hand, Chomsky contends that all strong nations aim to increase their power, but on the other hand, the United States is treated as much worse than its international antagonists, whose policies are viewed as justifiable defenses against American hegemony. 

He also judges the evils of communism much less harshly than anything that savors of the right, though he sometimes but not always acknowledges leftist evils. For example, he praises the communist regime of Fidel Castro for its medical system but does not discuss his harshly repressive measures to suppress internal dissent, including executions by firing squad and long prison terms under brutal conditions. He informs us that when Vice President Richard Nixon met Castro on April 19, 1959, during Castro’s visit to the United States, Nixon reported that Castro said America “should be proud and confident and happy. But every place I go, you seem to be afraid—afraid of Communism.” Chomsky does not tell us that, as Nathaniel Weyl in Red Star Over Cuba and others have documented, Castro had been a communist agent since the late 1940s. Again, while he devotes detailed attention to President John F. Kennedy’s willingness to bring the world to the brink of nuclear annihilation during the Cuban missile crisis, he leaves out the fact that Castro urged the Soviets to launch a nuclear attack against the United States.

In his eagerness to show that America has always been no better than other great powers, Chomsky ignores the fact that there was one respect in which American foreign policy was exceptional in a way that promotes noninterventionism and peace. This is the decision to stay out of European power politics, the main cause at that time for international conflagration. Here the principal source, not cited by Chomsky, is John Quincy Adams’s speech on the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence:

Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence, has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She will recommend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example. She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign Independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force. The frontlet upon her brow would no longer beam with the ineffable splendor of Freedom and Independence; but in its stead would soon be substituted an Imperial Diadem, flashing in false and tarnished lustre the murky radiance of dominion and power. She might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit.

Chomsky notes that Adams thought the United States, acting under the Monroe Doctrine as the hegemonic power of the American continent, would eventually annex Cuba, but he overlooks the fact that part of the Monroe Doctrine was a reiteration of the policy of avoiding European power politics. Chomsky decries American intervention against the weaker nations of Latin America that used the Monroe Doctrine as justification, but he misses the point about nonintervention in Europe.  

Contrary to the claim of Robert Kagan and other neoconservatives, the principle of avoiding American entanglements outside the Western hemisphere was not a matter of weakness, to be ended when America had sufficient military might to contend with the European great powers on their own ground. It was intended as a permanent policy. As George Washington wrote in his Farewell Address,

The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations, is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements, let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us stop. Europe has a set of primary interests, which to us have none or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence therefore it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves by artificial ties in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities. 

Washington does not say that this will be our policy only until we are strong enough to engage in European controversies that are essentially foreign to our concerns.

Nevertheless, the book contains some genuine insights, and one of the most important of these concerns the danger of nuclear annihilation of the world and the necessity in the face of this to curtail nuclear armament and abandon any attempt to win a nuclear arms race. In this connection he cites the eminent literary critic and scholar Elaine Scarry, who “has argued convincingly that the existence of nuclear weapons is necessarily deeply undemocratic. When a tiny number of people hold the fate of the Earth in their hands, she writes, ‘we live in what is more accurately described as a thermonuclear monarchy.’”

It is not only the use of nuclear weapons but also the mass bombing of civilians that should be deemed an atrocity, says Chomsky, and here President Harry Truman has much to answer for: 

In the case of Truman, we have not only the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but the massive firebombing of Japanese cities that took place after the Nagasaki bombings, once the Japanese had offered to surrender. . . . The massive firebombings of Japanese cities . . . were designed to maximize the number of civilian casualties, with U.S. military tacticians producing ‘flammability maps’ of cities to ensure that as many as possible were burned alive. . . . Curtis LeMay was right to point out that had the Allies lost the war, they would likely have been prosecuted as war criminals.

Chomsky is also on solid ground in warning against the continuation of America’s confrontational policy toward China and Russia, which risks nuclear war. “As China grows, [American] efforts to maintain ‘primacy’ over its [China’s] own region will require increasingly aggressive confrontation, something that both major parties in the United States seem committed to,” he says.

Sometimes an interventionist policy toward China is urged on humanitarian grounds, but Chomsky makes a good point in response: “China’s hideous mistreatment of the Uyghurs is deeply morally objectionable. But it is difficult to see how the Uyghur repression makes China a threat to others.” Further, “‘humanitarian’ intervention often worsens conditions for the oppressed, and China might well react to American protests by stiffening its repression, viewing American protests as a challenge to its sovereignty. . . . Perhaps China is not tragically misinterpreting our policy, but has simply read our publicly available strategy documents.”

I fear that I cannot end on a note of praise, as the book’s biases continually intrude on its merits. An example is the discussion of “climate change.” Chomsky presents the issue as if it were a settled matter that we need to “green” the economy immediately if we are to have any hope of averting a global disaster. He alleges that all reputable scientists agree with this position, although that claim is demonstrably false—unless we define a “reputable” scientist as one who does in fact agree. The dissenters include a Nobel laureate in physics. My objection, by the way, does not depend on skepticism about climate change, although I am indeed among the doubters of Chomsky’s alarmism. But one’s view of the matter does not alter the fact that Chomsky is mistaken about the scientific consensus on the issue.

And in the political realm, he is even more intolerant. Chomsky goes so far as to say that Donald Trump, who does not want to “green” the economy, should be prosecuted for a war crime against the Third World, which he thinks will be the main victims of the failure to deal with the malign effects of climate change. So much for freedom of opinion. 

At times Chomsky goes beyond misrepresenting his opponents’ views and engages in outright self-contradiction. “On the domestic front, the Cold War was convenient for both Soviet and U.S. leaders. It helped the military ruling class of the Soviet Union entrench itself in power, and it gave the United States a way to compel its population to subsidize hightech industry,” he says. “In crucial respects, then, the Cold War was a kind of tacit agreement between the Soviet Union and the United States, in which the U.S. conducted wars against the Third World while the Soviet rulers kept an iron grip on their own internal empire and their satellites in Eastern Europe.” But Chomsky also claims that at various times the United States aimed to win a nuclear arms race with Russia, even going so far as to contemplate a preventive nuclear war, and it was one such nuclear confrontation, the blockade of Cuba, that almost did result in nuclear war, as Chomsky recounts in substantial detail. Russia also entertained hopes to win a nuclear arms race. Thus, according to Chomsky, both sides wanted the Cold War to continue and to end. Which was it? It cannot be both.