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The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic Hardcover – January 13, 2004
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.
- Print length400 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherMetropolitan Books
- Publication dateJanuary 13, 2004
- Dimensions6.25 x 1 x 9.25 inches
- ISBN-100805070044
- ISBN-13978-0805070040
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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
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constitutes national security in order to centralize intelligence agencies under their control and how statesmen have been replaced by career soldiers on the front lines of foreign policy--a shift that naturally increases the frequency with which we go to war.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
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
"Original and genuinely important . . . The role of the prophet is an honorable one. In Chalmers Johnson the American empire has found its Jeremiah. He deserves to be heard."
-The Washington Post Book World
"Trenchantly argued, comprehensively documented, grimly
eloquent . . . Worthy of the republic it seeks to defend."
-The Boston Globe
About the Author
From The Washington Post
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. Bacevich
Copyright 2004, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
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.
Product details
- Publisher : Metropolitan Books; First Edition (January 13, 2004)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 400 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0805070044
- ISBN-13 : 978-0805070040
- Item Weight : 1.55 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.25 x 1 x 9.25 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #1,116,240 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #655 in Colonialism & Post-Colonialism
- #4,359 in History & Theory of Politics
- #19,638 in U.S. State & Local History
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About the author
Chalmers Johnson, president of the Japan Policy Research Institute, is the author of the bestselling Blowback and The Sorrows of Empire. A frequent contributor to the Los Angeles Times, the London Review of Books, and The Nation, he appeared in the 2005 prizewinning documentary film Why We Fight. He lives near San Diego.
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Johnson suggests that US militarism and imperialism (e.g. military bases
throughout the world) will lead to 4 sorrows:
1) perpetual war - leading to more terrorism against Americans wherever
they may be an a growing reliance on WMD among smaller nations as they try
to object to US imperialism
2) Loss of democracy and constitutional rights as the presidency
skirts Congress and as both are influenced by the Pentagon
3) Truthfulness will increasingly be replaced by a system of propaganda,
disinformation, and glorification of war, power, and the military.
4) Bankruptcy, as we pour our economic resources into every more grandiose
military projects and divert capital from the free market, and shortchange
education, health and safety.
Johnson states that American triumphalists, including Robert Gates, convinced the US public that the demise of the USSR was a great American victory, but the actual collapse of the USSR into the CIS was due to economics (Freidman and Barnett make that same point). The Pentagon, rather than restructuring and demobilizing after their major Cold War enemy folded, has looked for other areas to justify its budgets (e.g. B2 bomber, the Joint Strike Fighter, and nuclear programs). The Pentagon is now involved in the war on drugs, the war on terror, and overt and covert preventive interventions throughout the world. In a change that has nearly been unnoticed, US foreign policy has shifted from civilian control to military policy control, and now the US is acting as a law unto itself, withdrawing from treaties and disparaging international cooperation.
This book was published in 2004, well before the current situation due to the Iraqi war venture could have been predicted, and Johnson's predictions are prescient: he describes the worst case for Iraq as sectarian violence and civil strife.
Johnson makes the case that a revolution in US relations with the 'rest of the world' occurred between 1989 (the fall of the Berlin wall) and 2002. Foreign policy gave way to military expansionism: permanent bases and airfields, espionage listening posts, and strategic enclaves on every continent. This is militarism - because US national security does not depend on this expansion. He states the armed services have put their institutional preservation ahead of national security, and in the first chapter he draws historical parallels with the Roman empire, which fell to barbarians because it couldn't afford to sustain its far-flung outposts.
Johnson states the 4th Amendment should protect the US citizens' right to privacy and prevent unreasonable searches, but that is not the case. He argues the government has systematically been violating our privacy - and this was before the controversy of the Foreign Intel Surveillance Court broke in 2005, before Gen Hayden was appointed to the NSA.
Johnson quotes Jefferson, "that when the government fears the people, there is liberty; when the people fear the government, there is tyranny."
The SoE describes that militarism, going beyond what is needed for national security, damages globalism and international relationships by taking capital resources from the free market forces, reallocating money, talent, and resources to the military which is not responsive to real forces of supply and demand, and which is responsive to crony capitalism and false claims of effectiveness.
Some of Johnson's assertions bear further explanation: e.g. on pg. 287, he cites Immanuel Wallerstein's `world systems theory', but this concept is not described. On pg. 70, he asserts that "Most neocons have their roots on the left, not on the right." I would have liked further explanation of this. Johnson, like Chomsky, is very critical of both Democrats and Republicans - he is describing the systemic forces, larger than politics, that are shaping the future of the US. Certainly many of his assessments are opinions which are quite controversial, but these opinions deserve consideration.
Johnson outlines the United States' imperialistic intentions and its many acquisitions since the 19th century. Most students of history are aware of these early acquisitions, starting with the Spanish American War, and shortly there after, the brutal conquering of the Philippines. These wars were justified with jingoistic rhetoric; at times rationalized in unadulterated propoganda to the American people, and then played down after the colony was established. Johnson goes on to outline the proliferation of militarism throughout the 20th century, particularly since the establishment of NSC 68 after WW2. The problem however, as Johnson points out, is that militarism and the acquisition of foreign lands are becoming less and less justified with euphemistic rhetoric, and are now boldly rendered without the approval of international law and the United States constitution ' as if to say, ''we're going to do it any way, whether you like it or not, because if you disagree, we'll put you on the hit list as well.' In other words, we do it because we can, and you can't stop us. The evidence in this book, in most cases, is irrefutable, because the facts and actions speak for themselves.
A compelling example is the reasons given for the current conquering and occupation of Iraq. The Bush 2 administration defied the United Nations and most of its long-term allies and invaded Iraq, stating they knew best, because the regime had WMD and was ready to unleash them on the 'free' world. There are no weapons of mass destruction, and the administration was told this by expert authorities from the beginning. It has been almost a year since the war began, and nothing has been found. The new party line, then, was a necessary 'regime change' because Hussein was a ruthless dictator and was a potential danger to the region. Granted he was a ruthless dictator, and committed heinous crimes against humanity, but any informed person is aware that countries like Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, which are current 'allies', and play a strategic role in the Middle East, have appalling human rights records and are ruled by quasi dictatorships. Why not impale our moral superiority on them as well? Were we lied to? Johnson writes,
'If so, then it seems that high government officials falsified pretext for the second Iraq war and committed a fraud against the Congress and the American people. In a constitutional republic, these are impeachable offences. The fact that such proceedings have not been mentioned is a further sign of the political decadence brought about by militarism and imperialism.' (P.306)
The trillions of dollars poured into the military-industrial complex in order to maintain close to eight hundred American bases strategically placed around the world cannot last forever. Money is pouring out of the country in the name of 'defence' and nothing of any significance is being done on the domestic front.
In other terms, as usual, the elites are benefiting, while the many are barely keeping up with their rents and paying for food. This is just one issue, but an important one.
In the last chapter of the book, Chalmers asks us to actually take back the reigns of power as the people, and stop the endless supply of money to the Pentagon and the secret intelligence agencies, turning the American economy from a war based one to a peace based economy, thus avoiding another possible 'blowback' like 9/11, and improving the common man's standard of living.
This is an important book and a necessary one to begin positive change away from war towards a lasting peace.
Top reviews from other countries
I couldn't get my head out of the damned book..... until Némésis arrived!