Dismantling the Empire_ America's Last Best Hope - Chalmers Johnson [0]
Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic
The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic
Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire
Peasant Nationalism and Communist Power:
The Emergence of Revolutionary China, 1937–1945
Revolution and the Social System
An Instance of Treason: Ozaki Hotsumi and the Sorge Spy Ring
Revolutionary Change
Change in Communist Systems (editor and contributor)
Conspiracy at Matsukawa
Ideology and Politics in Contemporary China (editor)
Autopsy on People’s War
Japan’s Public Policy Companies
MITI and the Japanese Miracle:
The Growth of Industrial Policy, 1925–1975
The Industrial Policy Debate (editor and contributor)
Politics and Productivity: How Japan’s Development Strategy Works
(with Laura Tyson and John Zysman)
Japan: Who Governs? The Rise of the Developmental State
Okinawa: Cold War Island (editor and contributor)
DISMANTLING THE EMPIRE
DISMANTLING THE EMPIRE
AMERICA’S LAST BEST HOPE
CHALMERS JOHNSON
METROPOLITAN BOOKS HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY NEW YORK
Metropolitan Books
Henry Holt and Company, LLC
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Copyright © 2010 by Chalmers Johnson
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Distributed in Canada by H. B. Fenn and Company Ltd.
The chapter “Blowback World” first appeared in slightly altered form in the London Review of Books in the October 21, 2004, issue (vol. 26, no. 20), pp. 25–28.
“America’s Unwelcome Advances” first appeared August 22, 2008, on MotherJones.com and is used in this book with its permission.
Copyright © 2008 by the Foundation for National Progress.
All other pieces, except the introduction, first appeared on the website TomDispatch.com.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Johnson, Chalmers.
Dismantling the empire : America’s last best hope / Chalmers Johnson.—1st ed.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 978-0-8050-9303-2
1. United States—Foreign relations—1989– 2. United States—Military policy. 3. United States. Dept. of Defense—Appropriations and expenditures. 4. Intervention (International law) 5. Imperialism. I. Title.
E840.J6325 2010
973.92—dc22
2010003167
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First Edition 2010
Designed by Kelly S. Too
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1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
CONTENTS
Introduction: The Suicide Option
PART I: WHAT WE DID
1. Blowback World
2. Empire v. Democracy
3. The Smash of Civilizations
4. Peddling Democracy
PART II: SPIES, ROGUES, AND MERCENARIES
5. Agency of Rogues
6. An Imperialist Comedy
7. Warning: Mercenaries at Work
PART III: BASEWORLD
8. America’s Empire of Bases
9. America’s Unwelcome Advances
10. Baseless Expenditures
PART IV: THE PENTAGON TAKES US DOWN
11. Going Bankrupt
12. The Military-Industrial Man
13. We Have the Money (If Only We Didn’t Waste It on the Defense Budget)
14. Economic Death Spiral at the Pentagon
PART V: HOW TO END IT
15. Dismantling the Empire
Note on Sources
Acknowledgments
Index
DISMANTLING THE EMPIRE
INTRODUCTION
THE SUICIDE OPTION
During the last years of the Clinton administration I was in my mid-sixties, retired from teaching Asian international relations at the University of California and deeply bored by my specialty, Japanese politics. It seemed that Japan would continue forever as a docile satellite of the United States, a safe place to park tens of thousands of American troops, as well as ships and aircraft, all ready to assert American hegemony over the entire Pacific region. I was then in the process of rethinking my research and determining where I should go next.
At the time, one aspect of the Clinton administration especially worried me. In the aftermath of the breakup and disappearance of the Soviet Union, U.S. officials seemed unbearably complacent