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

The United States is actively seeking more oil and more bases, particularly in West Africa, which appears likely to play a role in the future similar to that of Central Asia today, except that transportation costs from south Atlantic ports are much cheaper. Our military has announced plans to build a naval base on Sao Tomé, a small, desperately poor island in the Gulf of Guinea, which may be sitting on four billion barrels of high-quality crude oil. Exxon Mobil is expected to start drilling offshore by 2004. Sao Tomé’s 160,000 inhabitants are descendants of Angolan slaves, Portuguese political exiles, and Jews who fled the Spanish Inquisition. Nigeria, Angola, and Equatorial Guinea already supply us with about 15 percent of our imported oil, nearly as much as Saudi Arabia; and that figure could grow to 25 percent by 2015. A similar picture emerges in Latin America, where one of the main purposes of our deployment of troops in Colombia is to protect Occidental Petroleum’s oil and gas interests in Arauca province in the northeast. 58

In a particularly audacious sign of our military unilateralism, the Air Force Space Command and the National Reconnaissance Office are now talking openly about denying the use of space for intelligence purposes to any other nation at any time—not just to adversaries but also to allies. In April 2003, at the National Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, air force secretary James Roche said, “If allies don’t like the new paradigm of space dominance, they’ll just have to learn to accept it.” They will be given “no veto power.” 59This new policy, which is scheduled to be put into operation in 2004, implies that we will start destroying or jamming other nations’ communications and intelligence satellites in order to make those countries dependent on us.

There is plenty in the world to occupy our military radicals and empire enthusiasts for the time being. But there can be no doubt that the course on which we are launched will lead us into new versions of the Bay of Pigs and updated, speeded-up replays of Vietnam War scenarios. When such disasters occur, as they—or as-yet-unknown versions of them—certainly will, a world disgusted by the betrayal of the idealism associated with the United States will welcome them, just as most people did when the former USSR came apart. Like other empires of the past century, the United States has chosen to live not prudently, in peace and prosperity, but as a massive military power athwart an angry, resistant globe.

There is one development that could conceivably stop this process of overreaching: the people could retake control of Congress, reform it along with the corrupted elections laws that have made it into a forum for special interests, turn it into a genuine assembly of democratic representatives, and cut off the supply of money to the Pentagon and the secret intelligence agencies. We have a strong civil society that could, in theory, overcome the entrenched interests of the armed forces and the military-industrial complex. At this late date, however, it is difficult to imagine how Congress, much like the Roman senate in the last days of the republic, could be brought back to life and cleansed of its endemic corruption. Failing such a reform, Nemesis, the goddess of retribution and vengeance, the punisher of pride and hubris, waits impatiently for her meeting with us.

NOTES

PROLOGUE: THE UNVEILING OF THE AMERICAN EMPIRE

1. Paul Sperry, “Defense Department Orders 273,000 Bottles of Sunblock,” WorldNetDaily, October 9, 2002, .

2. Arthur Schlesinger Jr., “The Immorality of Preventive War,” History News Network, August 26, 2002. Also see Jimmy Carter, “The Troubling New Face of America,” Washington Post, September 5,2002.

3. “U.S. Soldiers in Prison Handled Well Thanks to SOFA; Even Beefsteak Served; 40 Percent More in Calories Taken by Them than Japanese, with Even Desserts Served at Every Supper,” Asahi Shimbun (Tokyo), October 11, 2002, p. 39.

4. See, e.g., “The Pentagon’s Colonial Pretensions Thrive in Asia,” Los Angeles Times, November 2, 1995; “Fort Okinawa: Go-banken-sama, Go Home!” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 52:4 (July/August 1996), pp. 22–29; “The Okinawan Rape Incident and the End of the Cold War in East Asia,” California Western International Law Journal 27:2 (Spring 1997), pp. 389–97; Okinawa: Cold War Island (Cardiff, Calif.: Japan Policy Research Institute, 1999) (editor and contributor); “Time to Bring the Troops Home: America’s Provocative Military Posture in Asia Makes War with China More Likely,” Nation, May 14, 2001, pp. 20–22; and “Okinawa between the United States and Japan,” in Josef Kreiner, ed., Ryukyu in World History, JapanArchiv 2 (Bonn: Bier’sche Verlagsanstalt, 2001), pp. 365–94.

5. See Chalmers Johnson, “The CIA and Me,” Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars 29:1 (Jan-Mar. 1997), pp. 34–37. Also see Willard C. Matthias, America’s Strategic Blunders: Intelligence Analysis and National Security Policy, 1936–1991 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001), pp. 297–98.

6. Tim Weiner, Blank Check: The Pentagon’s Black Budget (New York: Warner Books, 1990), p. 114.

7. Eric Schmitt and Alison Mitchell, “U.S. Lacks Up-to-Date Review of Iraqi Arms,” New York Times, September 11,2002.

8. Tom Bowman, “Special Forces’ Role May Expand,” Baltimore Sun, August 3, 2002; Lawrence J. Korb and Jonathan D. Tepperman, “Soldiers Should Not Be Spying,” New York Times, August 21,2002; Rowan Scarborough, “Study Urges Wider Authority for Covert Troops vs. Terror,” Washington Times, December 12, 2002; Scarborough, “Rumsfeld Bolsters Special Force,” Washington Times, January 6, 2003; and Douglas Waller, “The CIA’s Secret Army,” Time, January 26, 2003. For an excellent summary of the CIA’s record in running “secret wars,” see “America’s Shadow Warriors,” New York Times, March 3,2003.

9. Max Weber, Economy and Society (1922), in H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, eds. and trans., From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1958), pp. 233–34. Also see William Pfaff, “Governments Don’t Like to Be Accountable,” International Herald Tribune, September 2, 2002; and Daniel P. Moynihan, Secrecy: The American Experience (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999).

1: IMPERIALISMS, OLD AND NEW

1. Manuel Miles, “The USA Is Not an Empire,” .

2. Robert M. Gates, From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider’s Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War (New York: Touchstone Books, 1996), p. 266. Also see John Tirman, “How the Cold War Ended,” Global Dialogue 3:4 (Autumn 2001), pp. 80–90. For the White House’s version, see George Bush and Brent Scowcroft, A World Transformed (New York: Vintage, 1998).

3. Anatoly Dobrynin, In Confidence: Moscow’s Ambassador to America’s Six Cold War Presidents (1962–1986) (New York: Times Books, 1995), p. 620.

4. Quoted by Frances Fitzgerald, Way Out There in the Blue: Reagan, Star Wars and the End of the Cold War (New York: Touchstone Books, 2000), p. 410.

5. Ibid., p. 331.

6. Hans-Hermann Hertle, “The Fall of the Wall: The Unintended Self-Dissolution of East Germany’s Ruling Regime,” in “The End of the Cold War,” Cold War International History Project, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Bulletin, no. 12/13 (Fall/Winter 2001), pp. 133–34.

7. Vladislav M. Zubok, “New Evidence on the ‘Soviet Factor’ in the Peaceful Revolutions of 1989,” in “The End of the Cold War,” p. 6.