Greeting by Noam Chomsky to the European Humanist Forum, "The Strength of Nonviolence"*

I'm sorry that I cannot be with you in person today, but I certainly am with you in spirit.

Since Europe emerged from the wreckage of the second world war, it has had a number of choices of what role to play in world affairs. One choice would be to follow an independent course. The second would be to serve as in effect junior partner of the United States, the dominant force in world affairs by a large margin since war world 2.

In every dimension except military force, the means of violence, Europe is easily comparable to the U.S, even superior. Nevertheless Europe has largely selected the role of junior partner. My own opinion is that this has been a sad choice for Europe, and it has brought a great deal of meaningless suffering to the world, but the choice remains open: Europe can make the decision to take seriously the eloquent rhetoric about democracy and freedom and rights that comes easily to the lips of even the most brutal and harsh actors on the world scene, or it can produce the rhetoric and renounce the actions and remain in the shadow of the world dominant power, which means committing to the rule of violence, almost certainly.

A good place to begin these considerations is with the declaration that was issued by Bertrand Russell, whose picture is over there, jointly with Albert Einstein well over fifty years ago. They issued a call to the world, to the people of the world, in which they said that you, people of the world, face a choice that is historic, and desperate and inescapable. The choice is either to renounce war, or to destroy the human species, and then they where referring primarily of course to the threat of nuclear war, a threat which was serious then, has come dangerously close, ominously close many times since, and a threat that is growing now.

When people like former Defense Secretary Robert MacNamara warns of, in his words, "apocalypse soon", he's not exaggerating, it's a very realistic possibility and Europe has the choice of following blindly as we go over the cliff to destruction of the human species or facing that historic, inescapable choice that Russell and Einstein talked about, and move to renounce war.

That can be done, Europe has opportunities, the Europeans will of course have to decide for themselves which course they want to follow. I can only say that I hope they will make use of the very real opportunities that exist to lead the world by example and by action.