DISPATCHES FROM
AMERICA Why Nemesis is at the US's
door By Chalmers Johnson
History tells us that one of the most
unstable political combinations is a country -
like the United States today - that tries to be a
domestic democracy and a foreign imperialist.
Why this is so can be a very abstract
subject. Perhaps the best way to offer my thoughts
on this is to say a few words about my new book,
Nemesis, and explain why I gave it the
subtitle The Last Days of the American
Republic. Nemesis is the third book to have
grown out of my research over the past eight
years. I never set out to write a trilogy on
America's increasingly endangered
democracy, but as I kept
stumbling on ever more evidence of the legacy of
the imperialist pressures we Americans put on many
other countries as well as the nature and size of
our military empire, one book led to another.
Professionally, I am a specialist in the
history and politics of East Asia. In 2000, I
published Blowback: The Costs and Consequences
of American Empire, because my research on
China, Japan and the two Koreas persuaded me that
US policies there would have serious future
consequences. The book was noticed at the time,
but only after September 11, 2001, did the Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA) term I adapted for the
title - "blowback" - become a household word and
my volume a best-seller.
I had set out to
explain how exactly the US government came to be
so hated around the world. As a CIA term of
tradecraft, "blowback" does not just mean
retaliation for things the government has done to,
and in, foreign countries. It refers specifically
to retaliation for illegal operations carried out
abroad that were kept totally secret from the US
public.
These operations have included the
clandestine overthrow of governments various US
administrations did not like, the training of
foreign militaries in the techniques of state
terrorism, the rigging of elections in foreign
countries, and interference with the economic
viability of countries that seemed to threaten the
interests of influential US corporations, as well
as the torture or assassination of selected
foreigners. The fact that these actions were, at
least originally, secret meant that when
retaliation does come - as it did so spectacularly
on September 11, 2001 - the US public is incapable
of putting the events in context. Not
surprisingly, then, Americans tend to support
speedy acts of revenge intended to punish the
actual, or alleged, perpetrators. These moments of
lashing out, of course, only prepare the ground
for yet another cycle of blowback.
A
world of bases As a continuation of my own
analytical odyssey, I then began doing research on
the network of 737 US military bases maintained
around the world (according to the Pentagon's own
2005 official inventory). Not including the Iraq
and Afghanistan conflicts, the US now stations
more than half a million troops, spies,
contractors, dependants and others on military
bases in more than 130 countries, many of them
presided over by dictatorial regimes that have
given their citizens no say in the decision to let
the US in.
As but one striking example of
imperial basing policy: for the past 61 years, the
US military has garrisoned the small Japanese
island of Okinawa with 37 bases. Smaller than
Kauai in the Hawaiian Islands, Okinawa is home to
1.3 million people who live cheek-by-jowl with
17,000 US troops of the 3rd Marine Division and
the largest US installation in East Asia - Kadena
Air Force Base. There have been many Okinawan
protests against the rapes, crimes, accidents and
pollution caused by this sort of concentration of
US troops and weaponry, but so far the US military
- in collusion with the Japanese government - has
ignored them. My research into America's base
world resulted in The Sorrows of Empire:
Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic,
written during the run-up to the invasion of
Iraq.
As the US occupations of Afghanistan
and Iraq turned into major fiascoes, discrediting
America's military leadership, ruining its public
finances, and bringing death and destruction to
hundreds of thousands of civilians in those
countries, I continued to ponder the issue of
empire. In these years, it became ever clearer
that President George W Bush, Vice President Dick
Cheney, and their supporters were claiming, and
actively assuming, powers specifically denied to a
president by the constitution. It became no less
clear that the Congress had almost completely
abdicated its responsibilities to balance the
power of the executive branch. Despite the
Democratic Party's sweep in last year's
congressional election, it remains to be seen
whether these tendencies can, in the long run, be
controlled, let alone reversed.
Until the
2004 presidential election, we ordinary citizens
of the United States could at least claim that our
foreign policy, including our illegal invasion of
Iraq, was the work of George Bush's administration
and that we had not put him in office. After all,
in 2000, Bush lost the popular vote and was
appointed president thanks to the intervention of
the Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision. But in
November 2004, regardless of claims about voter
fraud, Bush actually won the popular vote by more
than 3.5 million ballots, making his regime and
his wars ours.
Whether Americans intended
it or not, we are now seen around the world as
approving the torture of captives at Abu Ghraib
prison in Iraq, at Bagram Air Base in Kabul, at
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and at a global network of
secret CIA prisons, as well as having endorsed
Bush's claim that, as commander-in-chief in
"wartime", he is beyond all constraints of the US
constitution or international law. We are now
saddled with a rigged economy based on
record-setting trade and fiscal deficits, the most
secretive and intrusive government in our
country's memory, and the pursuit of "preventive"
war as a basis for foreign policy. Don't forget as
well the potential epidemic of nuclear
proliferation as other nations
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
