The philosopher Noam Chomsky once said his political theory could fit on “on the back of postage stamp”. He meant that he didn’t have much time for fancy formulations by snobby academics. Being a snobby young academic, I emailed: “what would be on that postage stamp, Noam?” 

Chomsky never replied, which was unusual, because he answered all my other questions. In the early 2000s, I had been struggling with an issue I think affects everyone – how “bad” or aggressive is necessary to protect yourself and your society? Although I had always liked Chomsky, I was worried he might be that old cliché – a wishy-washy peacenik who blamed America for everything. 

So, I asked Chomsky if by behaving aggressively – even irrationally, the Western military alliance might deter adversaries. To my surprise, he actually replied to my snotty self. He said:-

“One murderous superpower can deter another. … The most successful case was Russia’s deterrence of a US invasion of Cuba. Another was the Russian-Chinese deterrence of an expanded US war against Vietnam… but these examples do not enter the deterrence literature, for doctrinal reasons.” 

Ah, the old Chomsky switcheroo.

Still, I wondered, no matter how urgently the US needs deterring itself, might a welcome by-product of America’s posture at least be to prevent China from attacking Taiwan? Isn’t some evil inevitable in this world and, when push comes to shove, isn’t it better to have the US as top dog rather than China? At the time, I’d never seen Chomsky talk about this and thought it a great test case. 

Remarkably, the world’s most famous anarchist replied with the standard position – advocating that under the One-China framework, the West should continue to make clear that an invasion of Taiwan would not be tolerated, a position he maintained when he advocated for defensive and “calibrated” resistance against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

So, Chomsky was certainly not advocating “peace at any price”. He saw value in being strong – just not hostile. Actually, a pretty standard, unromantic position. He was also clear we must negotiate “quietly… so as not to reinforce anyone’s credentials as a jingoistic fanatic”. Nancy Pelosi might take note.

Then Chomsky flagged up how narrow-minded I had become with this focus on superpower deterrence. “Lots can be done,” he assured me.

“NATO countries could pay reparations to compensate the victims. The US could reverse its refusal to clear up cluster bombs… It could agree to implement UN Security Council Resolutions. It’s not hard to think of constructive things to do. Just requires a willingness to do them.”   

Chomsky’s work on media was similarly straightforward. It was an article of faith across the US media during the Vietnam War and beyond that American troops had been deployed to “defend South Vietnam” against “aggression” by communists from the North. Chomsky was unique in making the simple observation that the US had “attacked South Vietnam”. He was right, though. As early as 1962, the US flew 2,000 combat missions and stationed 11,000 troops in South Vietnam. But this was scarcely starters. By the end of the war, the US had dropped two-thirds of its bombs – twice the total tonnage detonated in World War II – on the South. In this so-called “Vietnam” War, America also pulverized two neighbouring countries in secret for years, Cambodia and Laos. “We had to destroy the village to save it [from Communism]” became understood as an ironic cipher for the counter-productive nature of US policy, but Chomsky showed it wasn’t just about the odd village – it applied to whole countries.

In Chomsky’s last interview before taking a long and much-needed rest at 94, Piers Morgan pushed him to identify his greatest achievement. “Something you’ve never heard of,” Chomsky replied. In 1975, the Indonesian dictatorship invaded, bombed, and occupied its tiny neighbour, East Timor – engineering famine, forced marriage and sterilisation. US newspaper coverage actually decreased after the invasion and flattened as the atrocities peaked. In 1977, The New York Times devoted a mere five lines to the matter. US diplomatic and military support was vital to Indonesia’s war. Then, in the late 1990s, under pressure from a handful of individuals working with Chomsky, President Bill Clinton ‘phoned Indonesia and they withdrew.

In 2020, Chomsky’s colleagues at Declassified UK discovered that 7,000 British citizens had been operationally involved in the Saudi war on Yemen but, they observed, the term ‘British war in Yemen’ appeared zero times in the newspapers. The UK’s foreign secretary insinuated that by being the second-largest weapons dealer to Saudi Arabia, the UK was well placed to stop the violence. This logic is reminiscent of British opposition leader Angela Reynor, amongst many others, who argued in 2024 that the British Parliament was seeking a ceasefire in Gaza by not calling for one. 

I once asked Chomsky how to measure and rank the factors he laid out in his famous propaganda model. “You can’t,” he said, disregarding standard social science aspirations – and his own seminal contribution to media studies – with a wave of the hand. When I asked about the comparative risks of a multipolar world or a unipolar world, he was similarly refreshing:

“I don’t make any judgments ranking the many possible scenarios… because there is no way to do so. How plausible was it for Vasili Arkhipov [the Soviet soldier who refused orders when told to fire a nuclear torpedo at a US aircraft carrier] to say “No”? That’s the nature of playing games with global destruction.”

As our correspondence developed, I found out more curious information about our Noam. Turns out he hadn’t been to the cinema since the 1950s. I think that the last film he actually saw at the pictures was Marlon Brando’s On the Waterfront in 1954. It came out in the same year as Salt of the Earth. He observed that both films were critically acclaimed; both were about the activity of the unions but the Brando movie was anti – becoming a massive hit, whereas Salt of the Earth was pro – consequently suppressed for decades. 

Just last year, Chomsky clarified to me “one of the most horrible experiences of my life”, when in the early ‘50s he and his wife saw a film called Hiroshima, which they expected they might enjoy. However, when they got to the cinema, it was just war footage being shown as pornography. The audience was “laughing hysterically at people running around with their skin falling off,” he said. 

You can see why Chomsky gave up on the movies. I feel I’ve done something to fill that gap – and I was really pleased to see that way back in 2015 he’d endorsed my film analysis (“interesting, convincing, and instructive” btw, Penguin, if you’re reading). I had evidently been too excited receiving his email to take the compliment at the time.

So, is there a Noam Chomsky political theory? Maybe. What would fit on the back of that postage stamp? Perhaps something as simple as “everything is connected”.

I like to think it’s “love”. I guess that is what has made me a wishy-washy old peacenik.

And how inevitable is evil? Only as inevitable as we allow it to be.  

---