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

27. See, in particular, Robert Higgs, “The Cold War: Too Good a Deal to Give Up,” Intervention Magazine Online, March 2002; and Robert Higgs, “The Cold War Is Over, but U.S. Preparation for It Continues,” Independent Review 6:2 (Fall 2001). The totals used here are based on the purchasing power of 2002 dollars. For actual amounts in billions of 1996 dollars, compare Martin Calhoun, Senior Research Analyst, Center for Defense Information, U.S. Military Spending, 1945–1996, . Calhoun places military spending for 1950 at $133.0 billion; for 1953 at $437.0 billion; for 1968 at $388.9 billion; and for 1989 at $376.2 billion.

28. Peter Pae, “Southland Defense Industry Quietly Heeds War’s Drumbeat,” Los Angeles Times, September 27, 2002. Also see Patrick Lloyd Hatcher, Economic Earthquakes: Converting Defense Cuts to Economic Opportunities (Berkeley: Institute of Governmental Studies, University of California, 1994).

29. Jonathan Reingold, “Attack of the Pork Barrel Posse,” AlterNet, April 23, 2002. Also see Julian E. Barnes, Peter Cary, and Christopher H. Schmitt, “Special Investigative Report: War Profiteering,” U.S. News & World Report, May 13,2002, pp. 20–34; Gopal Ratnam and Gail Kaufman, “A New Way to Pay for Weapons? Boeing, U.S. Air Force Eye Third-Party Financing for B-52 Work,” DefenseNews.com, March 31, 2003; Michelle Ciarrocca, “Boeing: ‘Forever New Frontiers’ or ‘The Purse Is Now Open,’” Arms Trade Resource Center, April 4,2003; and Leslie Wayne, “Creative Deal or Highflying Pork?” New York Times, April 20,2003.

30. Kelly Patricia O’Meara, “Rumsfeld Inherits Financial Mess,” Insight-Mag.com, August 2001.

31. See John Dower, War without Mercy (New York: Pantheon, 1987); and Sheila K. Johnson, The Japanese through American Eyes (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991).

32. William Manchester, “The Bloodiest Battle of All,” New York Times Magazine, June 14,1987.

33. See William Rivers Pitt, “Think the Days of the Draft Are Gone? Think Again,” Truthout/Perspective, September 11,2002, .

34. See Tom Engelhardt, The End of Victory Culture: Cold War America and the Disillusioning of a Generation (New York: Basic Books, 1995), particularly part 3: “The Era of Reversals (1962–1975).”

35. Christian G. Appy, Working-Class War: American Combat Soldiers and Vietnam (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993), p. 5.

36. Vagts, History of Militarism, p. 463.

37. See, e.g., Walter V. Robinson, “One-Year Gap in Bush’s National Guard Duty,” Boston Globe, May 23, 2000; Wayne Slater, “Records of Bush’s Alabama Military Duty Can’t Be Found,” Dallas Morning News, June 26, 2000; “G. W. Bush Went AWOL,” New Republic, November 13, 2000; Richard Sisk, “General Raps Plans for Invasion,” New York Daily News, August 27, 2002; James Bamford, “Untested Administration Hawks Clamor for War,” USA Today, September 17,2002; Eric Margolis, “Bush Looks for Buddies in Bad Times,” Toronto Sun, September 29, 2002; George Johnson, “The Chicken Hawks’ War,” TomPaine.com, November 14,2002; and Linda McQuaig, “What Did Dubya Do in the War, Daddy?” Toronto Star, November 17,2002.

38. H. R. McMaster, Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam (New York: Harper Perennial, 1997), p. 329.

39. See Frances Fitzgerald, Way Out There in the Blue: Reagan, Star Wars, and the End of the Cold War (New York: Touchstone, 2000).

40. See Chalmers Johnson, “In Search of a New Cold War,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, September/October 1999, pp. 44–51; and editorial, “China Viewed Narrowly,” New York Times, June 10, 2001.

41. Kurt M. Campbell, “China Watchers Fighting a Turf War of Their Own,” New York Times, May 20, 2000. The Times failed to identify Campbell as a former member of the Pentagon establishment.

42. James Dao, “Signaling Change, Bush Picks 3 Executives for Pentagon Jobs,” New York Times, April 25, 2001.

43. Richard Gardner, “Foreign Policy on the Cheap,” Financial Times, June 8, 2001.

44. Newsweek, June 25, 2001.

45. Ronald Steel, Pax Americana (New York: Viking, 1967), pp. 17–18.

3: TOWARD THE NEW ROME

1. Andrew J. Bacevich, “Different Drummers, Same Drum,” National Interest, Summer 2001, pp. 74–75.

2. Quoted by Matthew Engel, “Iraqmania Grips the U.S.,” Guardian, December 5, 2001.

3. Charles Krauthammer, “The Bush Doctrine,” Time, March 5, 2001. Also see Max Boot, “The Case for American Empire,” Weekly Standard, October 15, 2001; Richard Gwyn, “Imperial Rome Lives in the U.S.,” Toronto Star, December 9, 2001.

4. Robert D. Kaplan, “Supremacy By Stealth,” Atlantic Monthly, July/August 2003, pp. 67–83.

5. See Walter Russell Mead, Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World (New York: Knopf, 2001). Cf. Christopher Layne, “Masters of the Universe,” Washington Post, December 23, 2001.

6. National Security Archive, “State Historians Conclude U.S. Passed Names of Communists to Indonesian Army, Which Killed at Least 105,000 in 1965–66,” July 27, 2001, ; BBC News, “U.S. Blocks Indonesia History Revelations,” July 28, 2001; George Lardner Jr., “Papers Show U.S. Role in Indonesian Purge,” Washington Post, July 28, 2001; Isabel Hilton, “Our Bloody Coup in Indonesia,” Guardian, August 1, 2001; and Jaechun Kim, “U.S. Covert Action in Indonesia in the 1960s,” Journal of International and Area Studies 9:2 (December 2002), pp. 63–85.

7. See Thomas Blanton, “When Did the Cold War End?” and attached documents, in Cold War International History Project, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Bulletin, no. 10 (March 1998), pp. 184–91.

8. Quoted by Emily Eakin, “‘It Takes an Empire,’Say Several U.S. Thinkers,” New York Times, April 2, 2002.

9. A good analysis of the backgrounds of the neocon defense intellectuals is Michael Lind, “How Neoconservatives Conquered Washington—and Launched a War,” New Statesman, April 7, 2003, . Also see Philip Gold, “There Are Some Unflattering Truths to ‘Neocons,’” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, May 11, 2003.

10. Paul Kennedy, “The Perils of Empire,” Washington Post, April 20, 2003.

11. See, e.g., Lewis H. Lapham, “The American Rome: On the Theory of Virtuous Empire,” Harper’s, August 2001, pp. 31–38; Richard Gwyn, “Imperial Rome Lives in the U.S.,” Toronto Star, December 9, 2001; David Chandler, “Imperialism May Be Out, but Aggressive Wars and Colonial Protectorates Are Back,” Observer, April 14, 2002; Samuel Brittan, “Liberal Imperialism Is a Dangerous Temptation,” Financial Times, April 11, 2002; “Building ‘Empire’ Shouldn’t Be Goal,” Jacksonville Daily News, October 15, 2001; Mark Weisbrot, “Should We Police World?” Philadelphia Inquirer, April 13, 2001; William Pfaff, “America’s Imperial Instinct,” International Herald Tribune, April 8, 2002; John Pilger, “Behind the Jargon about Failed States and Humanitarian Interventions Lie Thousands of Dead,” November 23, 2001, ; and Hugo Young, “A New Imperialism Cooked Up over a Texan Barbecue,” Guardian, April 2, 2002.

12. Sebastian Mallaby, “The Reluctant Imperialist: Terrorism, Failed States, and the Case for American Empire,” Foreign Affairs 81:2 (March/April 2002), pp. 2–7.