Who Rules the World?

noam chomsky, who rules the world?

who rules the world?

it's a question with a complicated answer, but an answer that you need to understand.

why?

because the states, organisations, corporations and individuals who control global events and narratives aren't exactly acting in your best interest.

in brief, after world war ii the united states emerged as the dominant global power, exercising its might across the world.

since then its influence has slowly declined.

now its power is shared with other capitalist countries of the g7 and with the institutions they control such as the international monetary fund and the world trade organisation.

this shift reflects a move away from individual nation states ruling the world toward a more nebulous system that serves elite interests and relegates the common good to the status of a mere afterthought.

in this chapter, we'll share snapshots of how leading global players have wielded power and influence and unravelled their hidden motivations.

ready to learn more?

let's get started.

a tale of two september elevens on september 11th, the date when a foreign entity, intent on overthrowing order, attacked a peaceful democracy.

the president was assassinated.

backed by foreign interests, a military dictatorship was installed.

with the support of those same foreign interests, the dictatorship installed similar violent regimes in countries throughout the region.

to clarify, this is september 11th, 1973, the day a us-backed military coup toppled the chilean government of salvador allende and replaced it with the brutal dictatorship of general augusto pinochet.

this september 11th was part of a broader us effort to suppress the rise of communism and radical leftist movements in latin america.

throughout the cold war, the us viewed communism in latin america as a destabilizing force that could disrupt us influence in the western hemisphere.

radical catholicism, inspired by the liberation theology movement which called for social justice for the poor, further alarmed us elites.

under president kennedy, the national security doctrine was implemented, transforming latin american militaries into counterinsurgency forces trained to suppress leftist movements.

a stark example, colombia.

in 1962, us colonel william yarbrough advised the creation of us-trained paramilitary death squads to target peasants, activists, and suspected communists.

these tactics sparked a pattern of state violence across latin america, with similar squads engaging in extrajudicial killings, disappearances, and torture in countries like el salvador, guatemala, and argentina.

let's turn, now, to the second, more infamous, september 11th, 2001's terrorist attacks, in which al-qaeda operatives carried out coordinated attacks on the world trade center in new york city and the pentagon, killing nearly 3,000 people.

a tragic, unforgivable loss of human life.

in response, president bush launched the war on terror, reigniting policies reminiscent of earlier administrations' efforts to suppress latin american insurgents.

the us launched invasions in afghanistan and iraq.

the human cost was staggering.

the financial burden of these ongoing conflicts is projected to reach trillions.

some analysts argue that, in pursuing these costly and destabilizing wars, the usa played directly into osama bin laden's hands.

former cia analyst michael scheuer even remarked that the us became bin laden's greatest ally.

what do the contrasting stories of the two september 11th's reveal?

they expose a deep contradiction in us foreign policy, how narratives are manipulated to serve strategic interests.

the united states has, at different times, upheld democracy or crushed it, condemned totalitarianism or bolstered it, depending on what served its agenda.

this is a double standard that shifts based on strategic convenience rather than, contrary to the usa's own rhetoric, any consistent moral principle.

what do we talk about when we talk about the world?

on february 13th, 2008, imad mugniyeh, a senior hezbollah military commander, was assassinated in damascus.

it is widely believed that israeli and american intelligence agencies were behind the operation.

mugniyeh was a figure of immense importance in hezbollah, implicated in numerous high-profile acts of violence.

western media celebrated his death, declaring that, aside from osama bin laden, the most wanted militant in the world had been brought to justice.

but this raises the question, who is the world?

in this context, the world refers not to the global population but rather to the political and media elites in washington, london, and their supporters.

post 9-11, for example, us newspaper headlines suggested, the world supported president george w. bush's attacks on afghanistan.

in reality, international polls painted a starkly different picture.

support for the attacks was low, as low as 2% in mexico, for example, with widespread backing for finding a diplomatic solution instead.

the assassination of mugniyeh shows how the narrative of the world doesn't accurately reflect actual world events.

mugniyeh's involvement in the hijacking of the israeli bound aquila-laro passenger ship, during which wheelchair-bound american passenger leon klinghoffer was murdered and thrown overboard, sparked global outrage, and rightfully so.

however, the broader context is crucial.

the hijacking was retaliation for the bombing of tunis, a prior israeli military attack that killed 75 civilians.

despite being an ally of tunisia, the us knew of the impending attack but failed to issue a warning.

the aquila-laro incident was not the most devastating incident in the region that year.

a much deadlier attack occurred in beirut.

a car bomb targeting sheikh mohammed hussein fadlala killed 80 civilians, many of them women and girls, on their way home after friday evening prayers.

this attack, which failed to kill its intended target, was orchestrated by the cia with the support of the uk and saudi arabia.

it was not labelled as terrorism.

similarly, a series of israeli-led military operations in southern lebanon, which killed around 20,000 people and left beirut in ruins, were also not considered acts of terrorism, despite the widespread destruction and loss of civilian life.

these operations were part of shimon peres's iron fist campaign, aimed at driving back the palestine liberation organization, plo.

the key distinction lies in who perpetrates the violence.

when groups like hezbollah carry out attacks, they are labelled terrorist acts.

when state actors such as israel and the united states engage in similar or even more destructive campaigns, they evade such labels.

there are three levels of culpability in acts of violence – murder with intent, accidental killing, and murder with foreknowledge, but without specific intent.

while targeted terrorist attacks fall into the first category, the actions of governments like israel and the us are often classified under the latter two, allowing them to escape the moral and legal charges of terrorism.

this manipulation of language serves a strategic purpose.

when anglo-american powers invoke the world, they do so tactically to safeguard their interests.

yet if you ask the actual world who they truly fear, you might get a very different answer.

for much of the global population, the unchecked power of these very governments is far more terrifying than the militants they demonize.

elite institutions pull the political strings who really rules the world?

nation-states are only part of the picture.

to fully understand global power structures, we need to look at what economist adam smith called the masters of mankind.

smith referred to the merchants and manufacturers of 18th-century england, but today's masters are multinational corporations and massive financial institutions.

as american philosopher john dewey noted in the 20th century, as long as politics is the shadow of big business, the attenuation of the shadow will not change the substance.

let's examine one such shadow, that cast by financial institutions on american politics.

over the past several decades, corporate power in the u.s. has steadily driven both major political parties to the right, closer to the priorities of big banks and further from the will of the people.

take the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis.

while the american public was primarily concerned with unemployment, the political establishment, heavily influenced by financial interests, focused on reducing the national deficit.

this shift in priorities wasn't driven by public opinion.

72% of americans favored addressing the deficit by taxing the super-wealthy, but by the desires of the financial elite, who opposed such measures.

instead of responding to public needs, the obama government prioritized bailing out wall street and implementing a far too modest economic stimulus package.

meanwhile, budget requests for the securities and exchange commission, sec, the very agency responsible for regulating wall street, were slashed, another boon for the financial sector, which prefers less oversight.

this pattern didn't start with the 2008 crisis.

it has been building for decades.

since the 1970s, the u.s. economy has shifted dramatically, with the offshoring of manufacturing and the dismantling of capital controls.

free market ideology, which champions deregulation and minimal government intervention, has led to the concentration of wealth in the hands of a select few – ceos, top executives, and those already wealthy.

as election costs skyrocketed, politicians became increasingly reliant on donations from these wealthy interests, forcing them to align with the priorities of corporate america to maintain power.

the result is a system where the masters of mankind – the financial institutions and multinational corporations – focus on their own short-term gain at the expense of broader societal well-being.

citigroup, one of the largest financial institutions, exemplified this mindset in its own internal analysis.

the bank's strategists divided the world into two blocks – the plutonomy, or the ultra-rich elite, and the global precariat, referring to the vast majority who are economically vulnerable.

citigroup advised its investors to focus on the ultra-wealthy as their plutonomy stock basket – a selection of stocks from companies benefiting from extreme wealth concentration had consistently outperformed broader market indices since 1985.

as long as wealth continues to concentrate and the financial elite keep their grip over politics, the gap between the plutonomy and the global precariat can only grow wider.

know your rights what does a nearly thousand-year-old document have to do with your rights today?

quite a lot.

the magna carta, signed in 1215, is one of the most significant texts in the english-speaking world.

it established that the king was not above the law.

later editions included habeas corpus, which protects individuals from unlawful detention, and the charter of the forest, which safeguarded the rights of ordinary people to use the commons – that is, shared resources like forests, pastures and rivers essential for survival.

the magna carta forms the basis for many constitutions, including the usa's.

but other fundamental rights it advances still protect it today.

the right to the commons has been globally eroded as governments and corporations seek to privatise resources that rightly belong to all.

only recently, the world bank supported a mining conglomerate's lawsuit against the country of el salvador for trying to protect its land from destructive gold mining.

historically, this exploitation has been framed under legal doctrines like those used by imperial powers to seize indigenous land and displace native populations.

the tragedy of the commons has often been cited to justify this exploitation.

this refers to the idea that shared resources are inevitably depleted when individuals act in their own self-interest.

yet nobel laureate eleanor ostrom, among many others, has demonstrated that local communities often manage resources like fish stocks and water far more sustainably than corporations.

similarly, colonialist powers have deployed the legal doctrine of terra nullius – land belonging to no one – to justify seizing indigenous land and displacing native populations.

the real tragedy of the commons is not their misuse by the people who rely on them but their exploitation by corporate interests and colonising entities.

just as they have frayed the right to the commons, governments have found ways to erode the rights enshrined in habeas corpus.

for example, the us constitution adopted the magna carta's promise that no free man would be punished without the lawful judgment of the land with one appalling exception.

enslaved people were not considered free men.

the three-fifths compromise counted black people as only a fraction of a person, cementing their dehumanisation.

even after slavery was abolished, black life remained criminalised through vagrancy laws and other racist policies.

while governments and corporations create loopholes to constrain our freedoms and access to resources, the magna carta serves as a reminder that the principles of justice and equality still stand.

how long until midnight?

the doomsday clock isn't your typical clock.

set by a team of scientists, it doesn't mark hours but the perceived likelihood of global catastrophe.

the closer its hands giet to midnight, the closer humanity is to destruction.

as of 2015, the clock stood at three minutes to midnight, with climate change and nuclear apocalypse pushing us toward disaster.

climate change is an existential threat.

melting glaciers are already raising sea levels.

projections show that, unchecked, rising waters are poised to submerge cities like new york and mumbai.

yet international climate agreements fall short, like in 2015 when the us refused to ratify the paris agreement, undermining global efforts to limit warming.

these agreements often rely on voluntary rather than enforceable measures.

nuclear risk is another looming danger.

on multiple occasions, the world has come within milliseconds of nuclear annihilation.

during the cold war, the world narrowly avoided nuclear disaster more than once.

in 1983, for example, soviet officer stanislav petrov ignored a false alarm from the ussr's early warning system, which indicated incoming us missiles.

his decision not to retaliate prevented a potential nuclear war.

today, nuclear proliferation persists, with powers like north korea and others accelerating their arsenals.

as with climate, decisions around nuclear weapons are driven more by power politics than by the security of the global population.

so, who rules the world?

a complex web of nation-states, corporate conglomerates, elite policy makers, and high-net-worth individuals.

who do they rule it for?

certainly not for you or for me.

the world needs to change its course, and it is our responsibility to make sure that it does.

in this chapter to who rules the world by noam chomsky, you've learned that global power lies, for the most part, in the hands of states, organizations, institutions, and corporations.

moreover, as historical example and the current context show, these actors serve their own interests, at times directly contravening popular opinion or the global good.

it is left to an engaged public to challenge the ruling agenda.

in the face of existential threats like climate change and nuclear proliferation, the need for this challenge grows increasingly urgent.

okay, that's it for this chapter.

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see you in the next chapter.