BOOK REVIEW The last American Caesars Dismantling the Empire: America's Last Best Hope by Chalmers
Johnson
Reviewed by Jim Ash
The United States is a country convinced of its own greatness. And while many
would argue this claim, one thing that truly does make America great is its
tradition of free expression, and its corresponding capacity for critical
self-examination. Although other countries also have legal protections on free
speech, none of them have the same anything-goes ethos of pushing the
boundaries artistically, and speaking truth to power politically. Even though
artists and thinkers who challenge the dominant corporate-state worldview are
increasingly sidelined out of
mainstream American culture, they continue to keep this tradition alive, and it
is difficult to imagine them ever being silenced.
But one of these challenging voices was lost in November, when Chalmers Johnson
died at the age of 79. Johnson was a former University of California historian
most famous for a trilogy of books on American militarism and imperialism: Blowback:
the Costs and Consequences of American Empire (2000); Sorrows of Empire:
Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (2004); and Nemesis:
the Last Days of the American Republic (2007). In his latest and last
book, a collection of essays called Dismantling the Empire: America's Last Best
Hope, Johnson encapsulates many of the main themes of his earlier
trilogy in a short and very readable format.
The author argues that the United States has been running an empire that spans
the globe since soon after the end of World War II, and that the clock is
running out on this "American century". Being in the empire business has
destroyed American democracy, Johnson maintains, and is in the process of
bankrupting the nation. There is also the fact that the US hegemon is
constantly creating enemies anew around the world through "blowback", which
Johnson defines in an essay in Dismantling the Empire called "Empire v
Democracy":
I had set out to explain how exactly our government came to
be so hated around the world. As a CIA term of tradecraft, "blowback" does not
just mean retaliation for things our 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 American public. [italics in
original] These operations have included the clandestine overthrow of
governments various administrations did not like, the training of foreign
militaries in the techniques of state terrorism, the rigging of elections in
foreign countries… as well as the torture or assassination of selected
foreigners.
For Johnson, the most pernicious feature of
blowback is not the damage that these retaliatory actions do to the US or its
allies; it is the way in which the public is too ignorant to put them into
context. The September 11, 2001 attack was the classic example of this, with
most Americans incapable of seeing that US policy - both overt and covert - had
filled the pond of hatred which then spawned al-Qaeda. Even worse,
opportunistic American policymakers were then able to fool and frighten the
electorate into backing what had until then been only neo-con fantasies: the
"Bush Doctrine" of pre-emptive warfare; an endlessly expensive Pentagon drive
for "full-spectrum dominance"; and an attempt to remake the Middle East as a
Western-style democracy.
These post-9/11 responses have only exacerbated other side effects of
imperialism that Johnson identifies: the massive constellation of US bases
overseas, which create resentment and potential for blowback around the globe;
and the hijacking of the American economy by runaway military spending, which
Johnson calls "military Keynesianism".
On the base front, Johnson points out that the Pentagon has more than 700 in
130 foreign countries. Some of these bases are the size of small cities, with
their own internal bus systems taking off-duty soldiers to transplanted Burger
King and Starbucks franchises. According to Johnson, most of the locals in the
lands that host these bases take a dim view of having a little America grafted
onto their country. In particular, they resent the Status of Forces Agreements
that the US military forces the host countries to sign.
These agreements generally exempt American servicemen from the laws of the
country they are based in. Thus, when an American soldier rapes a local woman -
something that happens an average of twice per month in Japan, according to
Johnson - the local police can't touch him. In theory, the American offender
will face harsh justice for the crime from the American military, but Johnson
argues that in practice, US soldiers often get only a slap on the wrist for
committing heinous crimes overseas.
In "Peddling Democracy", Johnson examines the dismal US record of promoting
democracy in South Korea, another country that hosts large numbers of US
soldiers. In the author's view, South Korea has become one of the most truly
democratic countries in Asia despite US efforts, not because of them. He
explains how Washington has backed anti-democratic strongmen in Seoul since the
Southern state's founding. In one particularly shameful episode in 1980, the
American ambassador encouraged South Korean dictator Major General Chun
Doo-hwan to crush a student pro-democracy movement, and South Korean troops
under US command were then released to Chun so he could do so. The resulting
massacre at Kwangju killed thousands of demonstrators.
Mainstream Western media largely ignored the incident, Johnson says, a task
that was made easier by the fact that Washington did everything in its power to
stymie a 1989 investigation of the violence by the Korean National Assembly. He
contrasts this Western media indifference to the brutality of a US client state
with its lavish - and damning - coverage of Beijing's 1989 crackdown on the
Tiananmen demonstrators. How, Johnson asks, can Americans have an honest debate
about US imperialism when they aren't even aware of it, or understand its
consequences if it comes back to haunt them in the form of blowback?
All of this base-building and throwing of American weight around abroad has its
cost, which is another of Johnson's key points in Dismantling the Empire:
that the empire business is beggaring the United States, and may lead to the
country's demise. The huge deficits and astronomical debt load that the US
economy is carrying are not supportable, Johnson argues, and things that can't
go on forever won't. Borrowing money to finance its empire is a suicide option
for America, the author argues, and the country must either change course or go
the way of the Roman Empire, which collapsed under a similar mixture of hubris
and unaffordable military adventures.
You might think that with a subtitle like America's Last Best Hope, Johnson's
book would offer some optimism about America's future, but in reality his
prognosis is grim. In the book's final essay, "Dismantling the Empire", he does
offer some concrete solutions, such as getting out of Afghanistan and bringing
the troops home from garrisons around the world, and taking steps to check the
Pentagon's enormous influence on the US economy and political system. But it
seems that at the end of his life, Johnson had little hope that any of this
would actually happen. As he writes in "Empire v. Democracy":
Whatever
future developments may prove to be, my best guess is that the United States
will continue to maintain a facade of constitutional government and drift along
until financial bankruptcy overtakes it. Of course, bankruptcy will not mean
the literal end of the United States any more than it did for Germany in 1923,
China in 1948, or Argentina in 2001-2002. It might, in fact, open the way for
an unexpected restoration of the American system – or for military rule,
revolution, or simply some new development we cannot yet imagine.
Many critics of the US have been predicting for years that its empire would
lead to financial collapse, but the hegemon is still standing for now. Perhaps
Johnson was wrong and imperial America can keep operating indefinitely. US
policymakers had better hope so. They continue to double down on the empire
option, as if the possibility it's a losing hand doesn't even exist. The ruins
of all the empires past point to the folly of such arrogance.
Dismantling the Empire: America's Last Best Hope by Chalmers Johnson.
Metropolitan Books (August 17, 2010). ISBN-10: 0805093036. Price US$25, 224
pages.
Jim Ash is a Canadian writer and editor.
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The author argues that the United States has been running an empire that spans
the globe since soon after the end of World War II, and that the clock is
running out on this "American century". Being in the empire business has
destroyed American democracy, Johnson maintains, and is in the process of
bankrupting the nation. There is also the fact that the US hegemon is
constantly creating enemies anew around the world through "blowback", which
Johnson defines in an essay in Dismantling the Empire called "Empire v
Democracy": 
