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Since September 2001, the United States has "undergone a transformation from republic to empire that may well prove irreversible," writes Chalmers Johnson. Unlike past global powers, however, America has built an empire of bases rather than colonies, creating in the process a government that is obsessed with maintaining absolute military dominance over the world, Johnson claims. The Department of Defense currently lists 725 official U.S. military bases outside of the country and 969 within the 50 states (not to mention numerous secret bases). According to the author, these bases are proof that the "United States prefers to deal with other nations through the use or threat of force rather than negotiations, commerce, or cultural interaction." This rise of American militarism, along with the corresponding layers of bureaucracy and secrecy that are created to circumvent scrutiny, signals a shift in power from the populace to the Pentagon: "A revolution would be required to bring the Pentagon back under democratic control," he writes.
In Sorrows of Empire, Johnson discusses the roots of American militarism, the rise and extent of the military-industrial complex, and the close ties between arms industry executives and high-level politicians. He also looks closely at how the military has extended the boundaries of what constitutes national security in order to centralize intelligence agencies under their control and how statesmen have been replaced by career soldiers on the front lines of foreign policy--a shift that naturally increases the frequency with which we go to war.
Though his conclusions are sure to be controversial, Johnson is a skilled and experienced historian who backs up his claims with copious research and persuasive arguments. His important book adds much to a debate about the realities and direction of U.S. influence in the world. --Shawn Carkonen
From Publishers Weekly
In his prescient 2000 bestseller, Blowback, East Asia scholar Johnson predicted dire consequences for a U.S. foreign policy that had run roughshod over Asia. Now he joins a chorus of Bush critics in this provocative, detailed tour of what he sees as America's entrenched culture of militarism, its "private army" of special forces and its worldwide archipelago of military "colonies." According to Johnson, before a mute public and Congress, oil and arms barons have displaced the State Department, secretly creating "a military juggernaut intent on world domination" and are exercising "preemptive intervention" for "oil, Israel, and... to fulfill our self-perceived destiny as a New Rome." Johnson admits that Bill Clinton, who disguised his policies as globalization, was a "much more effective imperialist," but most of the book assails "the boy emperor" Bush and his cronies with one of the most startling and engrossing accounts of exotic defense capabilities, operations and spending in print, though these assertions are not new and not always assiduously sourced. Fans of Blowback will be pleased despite Johnson's lack of remedies other than "a revolution" in which "the people could retake control of Congress... and cut off the supply of money to the Pentagon."Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com
Once upon a time, the principal business of America was business. In our own time, America's business is the projection of global power. This fact, made abundantly clear by events since Sept. 11, manifests itself in a number of ways. Whereas traditionally the State Department was the lead agency responsible for managing U.S. relations with the rest of the world, real clout these days resides in the Pentagon. Whereas American policymakers once professed to see the use of force as a last resort, today the Bush administration has enshrined a doctrine of preventive war as the centerpiece of U.S. foreign policy. Whereas in earlier times, perceived threats to American security determined the size, configuration and stationing of U.S. forces, today far gauzier and grander purposes -- for Bill Clinton, "shaping" the international environment; for George W. Bush, putting an end to evil -- dictate what sort of military we have and what we expect our soldiers to do. Whereas Americans used to count on those soldiers to defend the homeland, we have now assigned that task to an entirely new cabinet agency, freeing the armed services to focus on their actual post-Cold War mission, which is to coerce, pacify and influence others, everywhere from Kirkuk to Kabul and beyond. All of this, according to Chalmers Johnson in this useful if also overheated and historically muddled book, is evidence of a new American militarism, a lamentable byproduct of an equally lamentable effort to forge a global pax Americana.Johnson describes The Sorrows of Empire as "a guide to the American empire as it begins openly to spread its imperial wings." To be more precise, it provides an introduction to the military precincts of that empire.In surveying those precincts, Johnson highlights several themes. They include the domination of the global arms market by U.S. weapons manufacturers; the increasing reliance on surrogates and mercenaries to conceal the full range of U.S. military activities; the lucrative and privileged status enjoyed by a handful of private contractors in supporting Pentagon activities abroad and the incestuous relationship between those contractors and high-ranking U.S. officials; the quasi-proconsular prerogatives exercised by regional U.S. military commanders; and the frequent antagonism engendered by America's sprawling military presence on every continent except Antarctica. Little of this will strike specialists as new. Indeed, in assembling this account, Johnson draws freely from other published works, not least among them his own Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire, to which the present volume is something of a sequel. His one original and genuinely important insight is to suggest that the several hundred U.S. military and intelligence installations scattered around the world define the boundaries of the present-day American imperium. In Johnson's view, the Pentagon's far-flung "empire of bases" constitutes the latter-day equivalent of the colonies, dominions and protectorates that defined empire in days of old. To plot the U.S. military presence around the world, in other words, is to map the American empire.It is also to plot the locations of tomorrow's trouble spots. Johnson argues that the Pentagon's penchant for planting bases in weak countries governed by unpopular and brittle authoritarian regimes -- U.S. military activities in Central Asia and the Persian Gulf provide recent examples -- only serves to breed greater anti-Americanism and to incite further violence against U.S. interests, leading in turn to more interventionism, which requires still more bases and promotes the ever greater deeper militarization of policy. When it comes to identifying the origins of this self-perpetuating cycle, Johnson is less persuasive. Indeed, he seems himself to be of two minds. On the one hand, he clearly wants to fix the blame for militarism and empire on the jingoists surrounding President Bush, who view the United States as "a new Rome, the greatest colossus in history, no longer bound by international law, the concerns of allies, or any constraints on its use of military force." On the other hand, he confronts a historical record that does not sustain such a summary judgment: The Bush administration did not invent many of the military practices that Johnson deplores. They originated in World War II or even in the aftermath of the Spanish-American War. In short, American militarism, if that's what it is, has deep roots, extending back several decades at the very least. Thus, history considerably complicates the question of assigning responsibility for what Johnson clearly views as a perversion of U.S. policy. Indeed, it suggests the possibility that a militarized policy may not be a perversion at all, but an authentic expression of American statecraft. Such ambiguities in no way reduce Johnson's willingness to declaim the apocalyptic fate that awaits Americans as a consequence of their present-day military infatuations. Likening our situation to that of the Soviet Union in the 1980s, he identifies four "sorrows" that he says "are certain to be visited on the United States." They are first, "a state of perpetual war"; second, "a loss of democracy and constitutional rights as the presidency fully eclipses Congress"; third, the rise of "a system of propaganda, disinformation, and glorification of war, power, and the military legions"; and fourth, national bankruptcy as "we pour our economic resources into ever more grandiose military projects." We are, in short, on a one-way road to perdition.The role of the prophet is an honorable one. When a nation falls into sinful ways, angry words and dire prognostications may be necessary to reawaken the people to the truth. In Chalmers Johnson the American empire has found its Jeremiah. He deserves to be heard; but the proper response to his gloomy message is not despair, but thought followed by action. Reviewed by Andrew J. BacevichCopyright 2004, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved.
From Booklist
Americans worrying about Islamic terrorists should start worrying about their own Pentagonized government. So argues political-scientist Johnson in warning his fellow citizens that their own country's militarism--imperialistic abroad, secretive at home-- threatens their peace, their prosperity, and their freedom far more than does al-Qaeda. Johnson indicts the idealistic Democrat Woodrow Wilson for having first sent the U.S. military on a global crusade for democracy, American style. And he criticizes presidents of both parties for having supported an unnecessarily aggressive and far-flung cold war military buildup in the fight against communism. But he blames the current political crisis chiefly on recent Republican presidents (Reagan and the two Bushes), whom he accuses of having first misinterpreted the internal collapse of the Soviet Union as an American triumph and then claimed the entire world as victors' spoils. As an avowed leftist, Johnson exposes himself to charges of bias--and of geopolitical naivete. Certainly, it will chafe some readers when Johnson partially shifts the blame for the terrorist attacks against the U.S. to America's own arrogant militarists. But irritated readers can hardly dismiss Johnson as just another partisan ideologue when he buttresses his critique with Republican Dwight Eisenhower's cautionary analysis of the "military-industrial complex" and even echoes the long-ignored isolationism of Old Right traditionalists. A provocative summons to the task of reining in a runaway military. Bryce Christensen
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Book Description
From the author of the prophetic national bestseller Blowback, a startling look at militarism, American style, and its consequences abroad and at home
In the years after the Soviet Union imploded, the United States was described first as the globe’s “lone superpower,” then as a “reluctant sheriff,” next as the “indispensable nation,” and now, in the wake of 9/11, as a “New Rome.” Here, Chalmers Johnson thoroughly explores the new militarism that is transforming America and compelling its people to pick up the burden of empire.
Reminding us of the classic warnings against militarism—from George Washington’s farewell address to Dwight Eisenhower’s denunciation of the military-industrial complex—Johnson uncovers its roots deep in our past. Turning to the present, he maps America’s expanding empire of military bases and the vast web of services that supports them. He offers a vivid look at the new caste of professional warriors who have infiltrated multiple branches of government, who classify as “secret” everything they do, and for whom the manipulation of the military budget is of vital interest.
Among Johnson’s provocative conclusions is that American militarism is putting an end to the age of globalization and bankrupting the United States, even as it creates the conditions for a new century of virulent blowback. The Sorrows of Empire suggests that the former American republic has already crossed its Rubicon—with the Pentagon leading the way.
About the Author
Chalmers Johnson, president of the Japan Policy Research Institute and professor emeritus at the University of California, San Diego, is a frequent contributor to the Los Angeles Times and The Nation. His previous books include MITI and the Japanese Miracle. He lives in Southern California.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
From The Sorrows of Empire:
As of September 2001, the Department of Defense acknowledged that at least 725 military bases exist outside the United States. Actually, there are many more, since some bases exist under informal agreements or disguises of various kinds. And others have been created in the years since. This military empire ranges from al-Udeid air base in the desert of Qatar, where several thousand troops live in air-conditioned tents, to expensive, permanent garrisons built in such unlikely places as southeastern Kosovo,
Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan. Much like the British bases in Darjeeling, Kalimpong, and Srinagar—those north Indian hill stations used for the troops’ rest and recreation in the summer heat—U.S. armed forces operate a ski and vacation center at Garmish in the Bavarian Alps, a resort hotel in downtown Seoul, and 234 military golf courses worldwide. Seventy-one Learjets, thirteen Gulfstream IIIs, and seventeen Cessna Citation luxury jets are ready and waiting when U.S. admirals and generals come due for some R&R.
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