Noam Chomsky Quotes

If I were remaking the United Nations there would only be one permanent representative—the United States because that’s the real reflection of the distribution of power in the world.

I never use the concept, multipolar. I use multilateral. Because we have only one global power: whether you like it or not, this is the United States.

Global conditions are far too complex to be able to imagine that they could ever be really controlled by one power.

Our use of the United Nations as an instrument for opposing Soviet expansion. prior to the conclusion of peace, has strained that institution severely. It has an increasing tendency to alarm smaller nations and to paralyze, rather than stimulate, their will to play an active part in the organization

…the only alternative to the communist World Empire is an American Empire, which will be, if not literally worldwide in formal boundaries, capable of exercising decisive world control.

Those who say that America has to dominate the world, and that you either have to control everything or go home, don't understand the way power is projected.

It’s not a dictatorship in the United States. But it is dictatorial to the rest of the world. Who’s going to say no?

Political and security realities have reduced the scope of American unilateralism.

The U. S. is not the Boss, not the Boss any longer.

In the past, Germany could rely on the French, the British and, especially, the Americans, to assert our interests in the world. We have always criticized the U.S. for being the global police, and it was often appropriate to do so. But we are now seeing what happens when the U.S. pulls back. If the U.S. leaves the room, other powers immediately walk in. In Syria, it's Russia and Iran. In trade policy, it's China. These examples show that, ultimately, we are no longer achieving either - neither the dissemination of our European values nor the advancement of our interests.

The U.S. has the power to block all anti-Israel moves in the Security Council, not just some of them, and to do so without agreeing to unfair, damaging compromises.

I have concluded that the U.N. can do a few things well.

The United States doesn't do what it does in the world for altruistic reasons. Nobody set out to be the world's government.

There is not much danger of the smaller nations if the big nations will behave.

All in all, the League of Nations is not inevitably bound, as some maintain from time to time, to degenerate into an impotent appendage of first one, then another of the competing great powers.

President Obama's consistent agenda has been to weaken the United States and our allies in pursuit of a more 'balanced' global power structure.

Since the end of the Cold War, hegemonism has become increasingly unpopular.

The era when the United States was the dominant global power is steadily coming to an end, and it must find a way of acknowledging this and framing its ambitions and interests accordingly. Instead of claiming the right to continuing primacy in east Asia, for example, it should seek to share that primacy with China.

In the past when a country became as powerful as the United States, other countries would band together to clip its wings. But that isn't happening now and I don't think it's not going to happen, because other countries are not threatened by us, and they secretly appreciate the services that we provide, even if they don't usually say so.

The USSR has emerged from the war in the role of one of most authoritative powers in world. It is now impossible to solve serious questions of international relations without participation of USSR.

the avowed pretension of the United States, to put themselves at the head of the confederacy of all the Americas, and to sway that confederacy against Europe (Great Britain included), is not a pretension identified with our interests, or one that we can countenance or tolerate. It is, however, a pretension which there is no use in contesting in the abstract; but we must not say anything that seems to admit this principle.

The United Nations Security Council is there to protect the interest of the Americans and the British.

Americans tend to go for it all. In international politics you can’t have it all. You have to compromise.

Where is the evidence that Washington's world view sways the multitude of nations? To enlist support for its wars in Korea, Vietnam and in the Gulf, the United States had to resort to a lot of bribery and threats. At the United Nations, the US has, with noteworthy regularity, been on the minority side in voting on resolutions.

It is the evident destiny of the British and Americans, and of course the Russians to rule the world.