Chalmers Johnson: Blowback, Second Edition: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire

“The 1990s were kind to the ‘indispensable nation,’ as Madeline Albright has called it. But, as Chalmers Johnson argues in this vital and engaging book, the halcyon days of American ascendancy cannot last: sooner or later, the stock market will fall, a counterbalancing force will emerge, or Washington will be unable to win a war without committing masses of ground troops, something for which the American body politic is utterly unprepared. Then all the latent contradictions in the American global position will emerge. When that happens—and it will—this honest, deeply learned, courageous, provocative, and witty man, Chalmers Johnson, will be your guide. Get hold of this prescient book and keep it for that rainy day.”

—Bruce Cumings, author of The Origins of the Korean War

“This eye-opening account of U.S. imperialist relations in Asia is stunning, disturbing, and very important. Chalmers Johnson warns that our present national security arrangements are mobilizing enemies around the world.”

—Richard J. Barnet, coauthor of Global Dreams

“ Blowback is a powerful warning that the ‘only superpower’ complex is driving the United States into increasingly dangerous conflict with key countries throughout the world. Demolishing the argument that the United States is drifting into a new isolationism, Chalmers Johnson shows that American foreign policy is, in reality, more committed than ever to military intervention abroad and to the perpetuation of obsolete military alliances on terms incompatible with U.S. economic interests. This is original, hard-hitting ‘must’ reading for all those interested in the future U.S. global role.”

—Selig S. Harrison, author of The Widening Gulf: Asian

Nationalism and American Policy

“This brilliant dissection of the security, political, and economic relationships between the United States and Asia offers indispensable reading for anyone interested in the political economy of America’s role in world affairs in the twenty-first century.”

—Glen S. Fukushima, president, American Chamber of Commerce in Japan

“Chalmers Johnson, the brilliant and iconoclastic scholar of China, Japan and the rest of East Asia, has in Blowback written a brilliant and iconoclastic assault on American foreign policy since the end of the Cold War.”

—Anthony Day, Los Angeles Times

“Johnson is on to something. . . . It is indeed a new post-Cold War ballgame, and Johnson’s warning of blowback, if it were heeded in Washington, would help keep America safe from the temptation of untrammeled power.”

—James P. Pinkerton, Newsday

Also by Chalmers Johnson

Peasant Nationalism and Communist Power:

The Emergence of Revolutionary China, 1937-1945

Revolution and the Social System

An Instance of Treason:

Ozaki Hotsumi and the Sorge Spy Ring

Revolutionary Change

Change in Communist Systems

(editor and contributor)

Conspiracy at Matsukawa

Ideology and Politics in Contemporary China

(editor)

Autopsy on People’s War

Japan’s Public Policy Companies

MITI and the Japanse Miracle:

The Growth of Industrial Policy, 1925-1975

The Industrial Policy Debate

(editor and contributor)

Politics and Productivity:

How Japan’s Development Strategy Works

(with Laura Tyson and John Zysman)

Japan: Who Governs ?

The Rise of the Developmental State

BLOWBACK

BLOWBACK

THE

COSTS AND

CONSEQUENCES

OF AMERICAN

EMPIRE

CHALMERS JOHNSON

A Holt Paperback

Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt and Company New York

Holt Paperbacks

Henry Holt and Company LLC,

Publishers since 1866

175 Fifth Avenue

New York, New York 10010

www.henryholt.com

A Holt Paperback ®and ®are registered trademarks of

Henry Holt and Company, LLC.

Copyright © 2000 by Chalmers Johnson

Introduction copyright © 2004 by Chalmers Johnson

All rights reserved.

Distributed in Canada by H. B. Fenn and Company Ltd.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Johnson, Chalmers A.

Blowback : the costs and consequences of American empire/

Chalmers Johnson.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN-13: 978-0-8050-7559-5

ISBN-10: 0-8050-7559-3

1. United States—Foreign relations-1989– 2. United States—Military policy. 3. United States—Foreign relations—Asia. 4. Asia—Foreign relations—United States. 5. Intervention (International law) 6. Imperialism—United States—History—20th century. I. Title.

E840.J63 2000

99-047713

327.73—dc21

Henry Holt books are available for special promotions and premiums.

For details contact: Director, Special Markets.

Originally published in hardcover in 2000 by Metropolitan Books

First Holt Paperbacks Edition 2001

Reissued 2004

Designed by Michelle McMillian

Printed in the United States of America

9 10 8

CONTENTS

Introduction: After 9/11

Prologue: A Spear-Carrier for Empire

1. Blowback

2. Okinawa: Asia’s Last Colony

3. Stealth Imperialism

4. South Korea: Legacy of the Cold War

5. North Korea: Endgame of the Cold War

6. China: The State of the Revolution

7. China: Foreign Policy, Human Rights, and Trade

8. Japan and the Economics of the American Empire

9. Meltdown

10. The Consequences of Empire

Further Reading

Notes

Index

INTRODUCTION:

AFTER 9/11

In a speech to Congress on September 20, 2001, shortly after the terrorist attacks of September 11, President George W. Bush posed this question: “Why do they hate us?” His answer: “They hate our freedoms—our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote.” He commented later that he was amazed “that there’s such misunderstanding of what our country is about that people would hate us. . . . I just can’t believe it because I know how good we are.”

But how “good” are we, really? If we’re so good, why do we inspire such hatred abroad? What have we done to bring so much “blowback” upon ourselves?

This book is a guide to some of the policies during and after the Cold War that generated, and continue to generate, blowback—a term the CIA invented to describe the likelihood that our covert operations in other people’s countries would result in retaliations against Americans, civilian and military, at home and abroad. Blowback was first published in the spring of 2000, some eighteen months before 9/11. My intention in writing it was to warn my fellow Americans about the nature and conduct of U.S. foreign policy over the previous half-century, focusing particularly on the period after the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991. I argued that many aspects of what the American government had done around the world virtually invited retaliatory attacks from nations and peoples on the receiving end. I did not predict the events of 9/11, but I did clearly state that acts of retaliation were coming and should be anticipated. “World politics in the twenty-first century,” I wrote, “will in all likelihood be driven primarily by blowback from the second half of the twentieth century—that is, from the unintended consequences of the Cold War and the crucial American decision to maintain a Cold War posture in a post–Cold War world.”