Chalmers Johnson

The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic
- By Chalmers Johnson

Your bestselling book, Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire, originally published in March 2000, offered a controversial account of American global policies. How has the world changed since the publication of Blowback?

We are without question in greater danger of terrorist attacks today than we were on September 11 two years ago. Afghanistan has descended into an anarchy comparable to that which prevailed before the rise of the ruthless but religiously motivated Taliban. The propaganda apparatus of the Pentagon claimed a stupendous U.S. victory in Afghanistan, but, in fact, leaders of the Taliban and al-Qaeda escaped and the country quickly became an even more virulent breeding ground for terrorists.

The war with Iraq that followed had even less justification and subverted the system of international cooperation that the U.S. had worked since World War II to create. Immediately following 9/11, American leaders began to fabricate pretexts for an invasion of Iraq. These were then uncritically disseminated by American print and television media, leading a majority of Americans to believe that Saddam Hussein was an immediate threat to their own safety and that he had personally supported al-Qaeda in its attacks of 9/11.

The United States will feel the blowback from this ill-advised and poorly prepared military adventure for decades. The war in Iraq has already had the unintended consequences of seriously fracturing the Western democratic alliance; eliminating any potentiality for British leadership of the European Union; grievously weakening international law, including the Charter of the United Nations; and destroying the credibility of the president, vice president, secretary of state, and other officials as a result of their lying to the international community and the American people. Most important, the unsanctioned military assault on Iraq communicated to the world that the United States was unwilling to seek a modus vivendi with Islamic nations and was therefore an appropriate, even necessary, target for further terrorist attacks.

THE SORROWS OF EMPIRE discusses imperialism and militarism and illustrates how they determine American foreign policy today. Can you explain the difference between the two?

Militarism and imperialism are Siamese twins joined at the hip. Imperialism depends upon large standing armies and the expenditures to sustain them, and the resultant militarism -- meaning not national defense but vested interests in a large and growing military establishment -- is the midwife of new imperialist adventures.
Wars usually begin because political leaders convince a people that the use of armed force is necessary to defend the country or pursue some abstract goal. For a major power, prosecution of any war that is not a defense of the "homeland" usually requires overseas military bases for strategic reasons. After the war is over, it is tempting for the victor to retain such bases and easy to find reasons to do so. Over time, if a nation's aims become imperial, the bases form the skeleton of an empire. In recent centuries, wars launched from such bases have been the primary means through which imperialism has prospered and expanded. Since the end of World War II, American administrations have offered many rationales for the bases they were collecting around the world, including containing Communism, warding off the "domino theory," fighting "ethnic cleansing," and preventing the spread of "weapons of mass destruction."

You say there are at least 725 American military bases in existence outside the United States. What purpose do they serve?

America's empire of military bases is there to garrison the world, to ensure that no nation or combination of nations can exert influence that the president, his advisers, and the Pentagon have not sanctioned.

It is possible to reduce the complex set of purposes and interests that have led to this gargantuan deployment of military power to five post-Cold War missions for our bases. These are:

• maintaining absolute military preponderance over the rest of the world, a task that includes imperial policing to ensure that no part of the empire slips the leash;
• eavesdropping on the communications of citizens, allies, and enemies alike, often apparently just to demonstrate that no realm of privacy is impervious to the technological capabilities of our government;
• attempting to control as many sources of petroleum as possible, both to service America's insatiable demand for fossil fuels and to use it as a bargaining chip with even more oil-dependent regions;
• providing work and income for the military-industrial complex;
• and ensuring that members of the military and their families live comfortably and are well entertained while serving abroad.

No one of these goals or even all of them together, however, can entirely explain our expanding empire of bases. There is something else at work, which I believe is the post-Cold War discovery of our immense power rationalized by the self-glorifying conclusion that because we have it we deserve to have it. The only truly common elements in the totality of America's foreign bases are imperialism and militarism -- an impulse on the part of our elites to dominate other peoples largely because we have the power to do so, followed by the strategic reasoning that, in order to defend these newly acquired outposts and control the regions they are in, we must expand the areas under our control with still more bases. To maintain its empire, the Pentagon must constantly invent new reasons for keeping as many bases as possible long after the wars and crises that led to their creation have evaporated.

How does the Bush administration justify its policy of imperialism?

The Bush administration has sold its policies to the public through an unrelenting propaganda campaign of fear, combined with the direct contradiction of the plain meaning of its acts. After 9/11, the Bush administration exploited the national sense of vulnerability and confusion to implement a private agenda that it has kept hidden from the public at large.

In a speech at West Point, President Bush stated that we had a unilateral right to overthrow any government in the world we deemed a threat to our security. He argued that we must be prepared to wage a "war on terror" in many countries if weapons of mass destruction are to be kept out of terrorists' hands. The president justified his proposed massive military effort in terms of alleged universal values. He made an assertion that is demonstrably untrue but that, in the mouth of the president of the United States on an official occasion, amounted to an announcement of a crusade: "Moral truth is the same in every culture, in every time, in every place." The preamble to the National Security Strategy document that followed claimed that there is "a single sustainable model for national success" -- ours -- that is "right and true for every person in every society. . . . The United States must defend liberty and justice because these principles are right and true for all people everywhere."

How has the administration been able to carry out this policy?

Bush and his administration have worked tirelessly to expand the powers of the presidency at the expense of the other branches of government and the Constitution. Article 1, section 8 of the Constitution says explicitly, "The Congress shall have the power to declare war." It prohibits the president from making that decision. The most influential author of the Constitution, James Madison, wrote in 1793, "In no part of the Constitution is more wisdom to be found than in the clause which confides the question of war or peace to the legislature, and not the executive department. . . . The trust and the temptation would be too great for any one man." Yet, after September 11, 2001, President Bush unilaterally declared that the nation was "at war" more or less forever against terrorism, and a White House spokesman later noted that the president "considers any opposition to his policies to be no less than an act of treason."

During October 3 to 10, 2002, both houses of Congress voted to give the president open-ended authority to wage war against Iraq (296 to 33 in the House and 77 to 23 in the Senate). The president was given the unrestricted power to use any means, including military force and nuclear weapons, in a preventive strike against Iraq whenever he -- and he alone -- deemed "appropriate." There was no debate. In light of this development, it is impossible to claim that the Constitution of the United States is still intact and functioning.

What does the future hold for the United States if U.S. officials continue on this path?

The United States is embarked on a path not so dissimilar from that of the former Soviet Union a little more than a decade ago. The Soviet Union collapsed for three reasons -- internal economic contradictions, imperial overstretch, and an inability to reform. In every sense, we are by far the wealthier of the two Cold War superpowers, so it will certainly take longer for similar afflictions to do their work. But the equivalent of the economic sclerosis of the former USSR is to be found in our corrupt corporations, the regular looting by insiders of workers' pension funds, the revelations that not a single financial institution on Wall Street can be trusted, and the massive drain of manufacturing jobs to other countries. Imperial overstretch is implicit in our empire of 725 military bases abroad, in addition to the 969 separate bases in the fifty states. Mikhail Gorbachev tried to reform the Soviet system before it collapsed but he was stopped by entrenched interests in the Cold War system. The United States is not even trying to reform, but it is certain that vested interests here would be as great or greater an obstacle. It is nowhere written that the United States, in its guise as an empire dominating the world, must go on forever. The blowback from the second half of the twentieth century has only just begun.

Is there any hope for the United States?

The few optimistic trends in the U.S. include the development of the powerful anti-globalization coalition that came into being in Seattle in November 1999 and that has subsequently evolved into an anti-war movement. The percentage of the public that does not get its information from network television but from the Internet and foreign newspapers is growing. Our wholly volunteer armed forces are composed of people who see the military as an opportunity, but they do not expect to be shot at. Now that the president and his advisers are ordering them into savagely dangerous situations, it is likely that many soldiers will not reenlist. And civil society in the United States remains strong and influential. Nonetheless, it is only prudent to estimate that these trends may not be sufficient to counter the forces of militarism and imperialism in the country.

What hope is there for the international community?

The main prospect for the future of the world is that perpetual war waged by the United States against small countries it declares to be "rogue states" will lead to the slow growth of a coalition of enemies of the United States who will seek to weaken it and hasten its inevitable bankruptcy. This is the way the Roman Empire ended.

The chief problem is that the only way an adversary of the United States can even hope to balance or deter the enormous American concentration of military power is through what the Pentagon calls asymmetric warfare ("terrorism") and nuclear weapons. American belligerence has deeply undercut international efforts to control the nuclear weapons that already exist and has rendered the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty more or less moot (the U.S., in particular, has failed to take any actions it contracted to do under article 6, the reduction of stockpiles by the nuclear armed nations).

The only hope for the planet is the isolation and neutralization of the United States by the international community. Policies to do so are underway in every democratic country on earth in quiet, unobtrusive ways. If the United States is not checkmated and nuclear war ensues, civilization as we know it will disappear and the United States will go into the history books along with the Huns and the Nazis as a scourge of human life itself.

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.

"Chalmers Johnson's relentless logic, authoritative scholarship, and elegantly biting prose distinguish The Sorrows of Empire, like all his other work. Anyone who reads it will have a much sharper sense of the costs of America's new world-girdling commitments--and I hope it is widely read." --James Fallows, Author of Breaking the News...

Read Reviews:

"The Sorrows of Empire is a disquieting revelation of the effects of current affairs upon American freedom and democracy...Johnson has given us a polemic, but one soundly grounded in an impressive array of facts and data. --Stanley I Kutler, Los Angeles Times Book Review.

"Every page of The Sorrows of Empire burns with fierce indignation at the sacrifice of American rights, values, and economic well-being in the name of conquest and empire. Chalmers Johnson has produced a blistering critique of the Bush Administration's militaristic foreign policy and its dangerous infatuation with high-tech weaponry. Everyone who cares about the survival of American democracy should read Johnson's stunning indictment." --Michael T. Klare, author of Resource Wars.

"Chalmers Johnson's relentless logic, authoritative scholarship, and elegantly biting prose distinguish The Sorrows of Empire, like all his other work. Anyone who reads it will have a much sharper sense of the costs of America's new world-girdling commitments--and I hope it is widely read." --James Fallows, Author of Breaking the News.

"Chalmers Johnson is a legendary scholar who gave Americans the first deeply authentic understanding of modern Japan's unique economic system. In this cri de couer, he asks us to understand ourselves--to grasp, before it is too late, that America's modern militarist empire threatens to destroy the democratic republic. His analysis is powerful and dreadfully persuasive." --William Greider, author of The Soul of Capitalism: Opening Paths to a Moral Economy.

"For American patriots, there is no more important book to read today than The Sorrows of Empire. Chalmers Johnson reveals the corrupting weight of America's grand architecture of empire, the hundreds of foreign bases and formidable military capacity, maintained not by the enthusiasm of informed citizens but by the ability of the government to shroud its actions and assets in secrecy. Like Rome, the United States today is struggling with the consequences of a permanent global military engagement, from which self-dealing political elites derive great benefits, at the expense and ultimately the survival of America's heretofore resilient republic." --Steven C. Clemons, Executive Vice President, New America Foundation.

"Chalmers Johnson's searing indictment of America's flirtation with an imperial foreign policy should be required reading for all concerned citizens. He describes an array of adverse consequences that add up to nothing less than a betrayal of America's heritage. One need not agree with all of his arguments to conclude that Sorrows of Empire is an extremely important and disturbing book." --Ted Galen Carpenter, Vice President, Defense and Foreign Policy Studies, Cato Institute.

"In Blowback, published before 'September 11,' Chalmers Johnson introduced us to a chilling codeword for our times. The Sorrows of Empire is even more sobering, for it associates the United States with a dynamic most Americans still find unmentionable--our ever-deepening militarism, with all the sorrows of perpetual war and moral as well as political and economic bankruptcy that inevitably accompany this. Here, all of a piece, is a scholar's critique and a patriot's cry of anguish over the relentless erosion of once-cherished ideals--a dark vision presented with unflinching courage." --John W. Dower, author of Embracing Defeat, winner of the Pulitzer Prize.

"Johnson's new book is a stunner. He blows away the Defense department's cover story that our empire of military bases exists to support humanitarian intervention. Along with these bases comes a mania for newer weapons, untested and unneeded . . . Something funny is happening on the way to the American forum: citizens are discovering they have an empire they never wanted--paid for in casualties, with civil liberties the first victim." --Patrick Lloyd Hatcher, U.S. Army Colonel (retired), author of The Suicide of an Elite: American Internationalists and VietnamChalmers 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.

Chalmers Johnson is president of the Japan Policy Research Institute, a non-profit research and public affairs organization devoted to public education concerning Japan and international relations in the Pacific. He taught for thirty years, 1962-1992, at the Berkeley and San Diego campuses of the University of California and held endowed chairs in Asian politics at both of them. At Berkeley he served as chairman of the Center for Chinese Studies and as chairman of the Department of Political Science. His B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees in economics and political science are all from the University of California, Berkeley.

He first visited Japan in 1953 as a U.S. Navy officer and has lived and worked there with his wife, the anthropologist Sheila K. Johnson, virtually every year since 1961. Chalmers Johnson has been honored with fellowships from the Ford Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, and the Guggenheim Foundation; and in 1976 he was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has written numerous articles and reviews and some fifteen books, including Peasant Nationalism and Communist Power on the Chinese revolution, An Instance of Treason on Japan's most famous spy, Revolutionary Change on the theory of violent protest movements, and MITI and the Japanese Miracle on Japanese economic development. This last-named book laid the foundation for the "revisionist" school of writers on Japan, and because of it the Japanese press dubbed him the "Godfather of revisionism."

He was chairman of the academic advisory committee for the PBS television series "The Pacific Century," and he played a prominent role in the PBS "Frontline" documentary "Losing the War with Japan." Both won Emmy awards. His most recent books are, as editor and contributor, Okinawa: Cold War Island (Cardiff, Calif.: Japan Policy Research Institute, 1999); and Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire (New York: Holt Metropolitan Books, 2000). The latter won the 2001 American Book Award of the Before Columbus Foundation. His new book, The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic will be published by Metropolitan in January 2004..

Improve the CIA? Better to abolish it

- By Chalmers Johnson - Sunday, February 22, 2004

San Francisco Chronicle - chronfeedback@sfchronicle.com

Adm. Stansfield Turner, former director of central intelligence from 1977 to 1981, recommended in a New York Times op-ed earlier this month that U. S. intelligence operations could be improved by adding another layer of bureaucracy to what he admits is a flawed system of overlapping spy agencies, interagency rivalries and vested interests.

I have a better idea: Why don't we abolish the CIA and make public, as the Constitution requires, the billions spent by the intelligence agencies under the control of the Department of Defense so that Congress might have a fighting chance in doing oversight?

A few years ago, the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, D-N.Y., suggested that we dismantle the agency that has so often produced catastrophically wrong national intelligence estimates. He was outraged by CIA calculations throughout the Reagan and elder Bush years that overstated the size of the Soviet economy by 50 percent and led our government into a weapons-spending spree that left us the world's largest debtor nation. According to President George W. Bush and his chief weapons inspector, David Kay, the agency has done it again, misleading the nation about the alleged menace posed by the ousted president of Iraq, Saddam Hussein.

Our intelligence apparatus has been flawed from the day it was created. Allegedly intended to prevent a surprise attack on our country comparable to the Dec. 7, 1941, Japanese assault on Pearl Harbor, the agency was supposed to be a central clearinghouse for intelligence collected by many different bodies throughout the government -- including the military services, the signals intercepts of the National Security Agency, counterespionage by the FBI, as well as its own efforts to recruit and run foreign agents.

But in fact, intelligence collecting and analysis would quickly become camouflage for a private secret army at the personal command of the president devoted to dirty tricks, covert overthrows of foreign governments and planting disinformation -- as well as efforts to counter similar operations by the Soviet Union.

According to an internal CIA history, the éminence grise of secret operations in the United States and founder of the CIA's predecessor, the Office of Strategic Services during World War II, Maj. Gen. William J. "Wild Bill" Donovan "saw intelligence analysis as a convenient cover for subversive operations abroad." From our first covert overthrow of a foreign government, the ouster of the prime minister of Iran in 1953 in order to install the young shah Reza Pahlavi, the path to fame and success within the agency was in secret operations, not in writing intelligence estimates. That is certainly the pecking order I observed when I served as an outside consultant to the Office of National Estimates of the CIA from 1967 to 1973.

Since the overthrow of the Iranian government in 1953, the CIA has engaged in similar disguised assaults on the governments of Guatemala (1954); the Congo (1960); Cuba (1961); Brazil (1964); Indonesia (1965); Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia (1961-73); Greece (1967); Chile (1973); Afghanistan (1979 to the present); El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua (1980s); and Iraq (1991 to the present) -- to name only the most obvious cases. These operations have generated numerous terrorist attacks and other forms of retaliation -- what the CIA calls "blowback" -- against the United States by peoples on the receiving end. Because covert operations are secret from the people of the United States (if not their targets), when retaliation hits, as it did so spectacularly on Sept. 11, 2001, Americans do not have the information to put it into context or understand it.

As for the CIA's prewar intelligence on Iraq, the recently appointed commission of prestigious Americans to investigate its shortcomings is unlikely to be able to tell us anything we do not already know. Much of what now is clearly true could have been discovered by talking to experts perfectly willing to be on the public record or simply researched on the Internet. Sam Gardiner, a retired Air Force colonel who taught for years at the National War College and who compiled a "net assessment" of how Iraq would look after a successful U.S. attack, predicted with devastating accuracy the chaos that ensued and did so on the basis of information freely available.

Who needs a CIA that so regularly underperforms in comparison to what is available on the open market? The high-security classifications of national intelligence estimates are not there to protect sources (no sources are ever mentioned in them), but to hide the incompetence and lack of serious effort that goes into producing them.

If Bush had appointed an investigative commission headed by Valerie Plame (the outed CIA wife of Ambassador Joseph Wilson) and composed of such journalists as Seymour Hersh, Jim Fallows, Stephen Kinzer and Paul Krugman, its report would probably be worth reading. Short of that, I propose abolishing the agency and reducing our annual deficit by about $30 billion.

Chalmers Johnson is the author of "The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy and the End of the Republic" (Metropolitan, 2004) and "Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire" (Metropolitan, 2000).