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

8. Thomas Blanton, “When Did the Cold War End?” Cold War International History Project, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Bulletin, no. 10 (March 1998), pp. 185,191.

9. See Chalmers Johnson, “The Three Cold Wars,” in Ellen Schrecker and Maurice Isserman, eds., Cold War Triumphalism (New York: New Press, 2004).

10. See Ed A. Hewitt [NSC staff official], “An Idle U.S. Debate about Gorbachev,” New York Times, March 30, 1989; Michael Wines, “CIA Accused of Overestimating Soviet Economy,” New York Times, July 23, 1990; and Colin Hughes, “CIA Is Accused of Crying Wolf on Soviet Economy,” Independent, July 25, 1990. Michael R. Gordon, New York Times, January 31,1990; and National Security Strategy of the United States, March 1990, both quoted by Noam Chomsky, Deterring Democracy (New York: Hill and Wang, 1992), pp. 29–30. My thanks to Professor Chomsky for drawing my attention to these important sources.

11. William A. Galston, “Why a First Strike Will Surely Backfire,” Washington Post, June 16,2002.

12. Alfred Vagts, A History of Militarism (New York: Meridian, 1959), pp. 14–15,41.

13. “Battle of the Boffins,” Sydney Morning Herald, January 4, 2003; and James Dao and Andrew C. Revkin, “Machines Are Filling In for Troops,” New York Times, April 16, 2002. Also see Neil King Jr., “CIA Drones Spotted bin Laden but Couldn’t Shoot,” Wall Street Journal, November 23, 2001; and Eric Schmitt, “Improved U.S. Accuracy Claimed in Afghan Air War,” New York Times, April 9, 2002. On the excessive complexity and numerous errors of the “precision warfare” aerial guidance systems, see David Wood, “Grisly Accidents Call ‘Precision Warfare’ into Question,” Newhouse News Service, February 7, 2003, .

14. Jonathan S. Landay, “Missile Kills Top bin Laden Associate: Unmanned CIA Plane Hits al-Qaeda Target in Yemen,” San Diego Union-Tribune, November 5,2002; Esther Schrader and Henry Weinstein, “U.S. Enters a Legal Gray Zone: Strike in Yemen Raises Thorny Questions of Assassination and the Definition of War,” Los Angeles Times, November 5, 2002; Robert Schroeder, “Tell the Truth about U.S. Assassination Policy,” Baltimore Sun, November 14, 2002; Associated Press, “American al-Qaeda Operatives Can Be Killed: Secret Finding by Bush Gives CIA Authority,” Houston Chronicle, December 3, 2002; Tony Geraghty and David Leigh, “The Name of the Game Is Assassination,” Guardian, December 19,2002; Seymour M. Hersh, “Manhunt,” New Yorker, December 30, 2002, pp. 66–74; and Doyle McManus, “A U.S. License to Kill,” Los Angeles Times, January 11,2003.

15. Sven Lindquist, A History of Bombing (New York: New Press, 2001), s.v. pars. 5, 26.

16. John A. Hobson, Imperialism: A Study (New York: Pott, 1902); quoted by Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Meridian Books, 1958), p. 152. Also see W. G. Beasley, Japanese Imperialism, 1894–1945 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), p. 2.

17. David B. Abernethy, The Dynamics of Global Dominance: European Overseas Empires, 1415–1980 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), p. 382.

18. Cited in “History of U.S. Territorial Acquisitions,” .

19. Abernethy, Dynamics, p. 22.

20. Vagts, History of Militarism, pp. 14–15.

21. Quoted by John Gerassi, Los Angeles Times Book Review, December 16,2001, p. 7.

22. John M. Collins, “Military Bases,” Military Geography for Professionals and the Public (Washington: U.S. National Defense University, Institute for National Strategic Studies, March 1998), ; The Editors, “U.S. Military Bases and Empire,” Monthly Review 53:10 (March 2002); and Diana Johnstone and Ben Cramer, “The Burdens and the Glory: U.S. Bases in Europe,” in Joseph Gerson and Bruce Birchard, eds., The Sun Never Sets: Confronting the Network of Foreign U.S. Military Bases (Boston: South End Press for the American Friends Service Committee, 1991), p. 199.

23. Johnstone and Cramer, “Burdens,” p. 219.

24. Ibid., p. 200. Also see Andrew Alexander, “The Soviet Threat Was Bogus,” Spectator, April 20,2002.

25. DeNeen L. Brown, “Trail of Frozen Tears: The Cold War Is Over but to Native Greenlanders Displaced by It, There’s Still No Peace,” Washington Post, October 22, 2002; and Mike Davis, “Bush’s Ultimate Thule,” March 14,2003, .

26. Patrick Lloyd Hatcher, “’Base-mania’ in Central Asia,” JPRI Critique 9:3 (April 2002).

27. Rachel Cornwell and Andrew Wells, “Deploying Insecurity,” Peace Review 11:3 (1999), p. 410.

28. William Arkin, “U.S. Air Bases Forge Double-Edged Sword,” Los Angeles Times, January 6,2002.

29. See, e.g., “Bush Plays Caligula while Blair Strews His Path with Rose Petals,” Scotsman, September 16,2002.

2: THE ROOTS OF AMERICAN MILITARISM

1. Hyman G. Rickover, How the Battleship Maine Was Destroyed (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1976).

2. Stuart Creighton Miller, “Benevolent Assimilation”: The American Conquest of the Philippines, 1899–1903 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), p. 11.

3. “The Spanish American War,” .

4. “A Gift from the Gods,” .

5. Amy Forliti, “Camp Commander Relieved of Duties,” Associated Press, October 14, 2002; and “‘Too Nice’ Jail Commander Is Fired,” Sydney Morning Herald, October 17,2002.

6. Miller, “Benevolent Assimilation,” p. 1.

7. Cited in Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States (New York: Harper & Row, 1980), p. 306.

8. Quoted by Miller, “Benevolent Assimilation,” p. 26.

9. Joseph Lepgold and Timothy McKeown, “Is American Foreign Policy Exceptional? An Empirical Analysis,” Political Science Quarterly, Fall 1995, .

10. For the fullest details on the “Farewell Address, Washington’s Final Manuscript,” see .

11. Quoted by Ralph Raico, “American Foreign Policy—The Turning Point, 1898–1919: Part I,” .

12. Elihu Root, The Military and Colonial Policy of the United States: Addresses and Reports (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1916), pp. 417–40, .

13. Parameters (U.S. Army War College Quarterly) 31:1 (Spring 2001), inside back cover.

14. Arthur S. Link, “Woodrow Wilson Biography,” .

15. See Peter van den Maas, “The American Tradition in Diplomacy,” .

16. “President Woodrow Wilson’s War Message, April 2, 1917,” .

17. Alistair Cooke, “Letter from America: The Pursuit of Self-Determination,” .

18. Ibid.

19. William Pfaff, Barbarian Sentiments: America in the New Century, rev. ed. (New York: Hill and Wang, 2000), p. 275.

20. James A. Donovan, Militarism U.S.A. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1970), p. 10.

21. James Dunnigan, “A Long American Tradition,” Strategy Page, August 20,2001.

22. United States Civil War Center, “Statistical Summary of America’s Major Wars,” June 13, 2001, .

23. Cordell Hull, The Memoirs of Cordell Hull, (New York: Macmillan, 1948), p. 1111; cited by Alfred Vagts, A History of Militarism (New York: Meridian, 1959), p. 474.

24. Donovan, Militarism U.S.A., pp. 114–15.

25. Quoted by Telford Taylor, Sword and Swastika: Generals and Nazis in the Third Reich (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1952), p. 368.

26. United States Civil War Center, “Statistical Summary.” Also see U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Office of Public Affairs, America’s Wars (Washington, May 2001), , which gives slightly different totals but offers no figures at all on the Confederate side in the Civil War.