WASHINGTON: Professor Noam Chomsky, a world-renowned philosopher, political analyst, and one of the most outspoken critics of US foreign policy, has dismissed former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan’s claim of a foreign plot, according to media reports on Sunday.
“The US is powerful, but not all-powerful,” Chomsky stated in response to a question from a left-wing blogger with whom he has spoken frequently in the past. Everything that happens in the globe is often attributed to the CIA or some nefarious Western plot. There’s a lot to be critical about. And the United States is a formidable adversary. But it’s not at all what most people think.”
Chomsky went on to say that the cable of Pakistan’s former ambassador to the US, Asad Majeed, did not constitute “strong evidence” of American engagement in the country’s regime transition.
“By that logic, there are regime changes being planned constantly all over the world,” Chomsky noted in response to people who believe that such “threat messages” are usually the way regime transitions occur. He also said it was pointless to use the “threat letter” as proof of a “US-backed coup” against former Prime Minister Imran Khan.
When asked by a blogger what he thought of the cable from Asad Majeed, the former US ambassador, as evidence, Chomsky responded he didn’t think it was “serious evidence.”
Former Prime Minister Imran Khan waved a “secret letter” during a public gathering in Islamabad on March 27, only days before his anticipated departure from power, saying that his government was being overthrown by an international conspiracy.
Despite earlier claims that he couldn’t reveal the interfering country’s name because the results would be detrimental to Pakistan, he called the no-confidence motion against him a “huge foreign conspiracy against Pakistan” and soon after revealed that the US had sent the “threatening letter,” despite earlier claims that he couldn’t reveal the interfering country’s name because the results would be detrimental to Pakistan.
Imran had claimed that the letter warned that if the no-confidence vote failed, Pakistan would face major consequences, and that the letter’s wording was unusually harsh, with the no-trust motion cited multiple times.
The National Security Committee (NSC) ruled on Friday that there was no proof of a “foreign conspiracy” to destabilise Imran Khan’s government.
