Chalmers Johnson (1931–2010)

I felt pretty beat up by the end of this book. That it was published in 2004! How is it that I have fond memories of G. W. Bush? Oh, yeah, that's why... that the horrific trends that Johnson outlines could have continued, have accelerated, as they have? Oh, the times!

Johnson runs through a list of foreign bases here, in places like Kosovo and Qatar. The satellite images on Google maps ... I bet I got myself on some CIA watch lists, but wow. Spot-checking Johnson... he's not making this stuff show more up!

It's all bleak until the last paragraph. Can the American people take back their government? From 2004 to 2018, we sure didn't move in any encouraging direction! Well, to fix a problem, surely one should understand the problem. Johnson does a very good job outlining at least a few dimensions of the situation. There's no climate change in here! Whew! show less

Johnson focuses mainly on East Asia: Japan, Korea, and China primarily. There is a bit of discussion of Indonesia and even Guatemala and Brazil. This book was published in 2000 but written in 1999, so clearly it doesn't discuss recent events. But recent events certainly fit into the overall picture that Johnson is drawing.

That the USA is something of a bully was not news to me. A lot of this book though goes into economics and the connection between economics and the projection of military show more power. We let e.g. Japan steal our basic industry in return for them letting us base troops there. Probably Johnson doesn't make it quite that simple, but also I think he doesn't dig very deep into why we do what we do. He does mention that this just the usual way for empires in decline, but doesn't really pursue that pattern very much. The focus is all on history, especially roughly 1989-1999: how after the Cold War ended, the USA kept up its military posture, with no real enemy in sight.

There is a lot of information here. It's not just a lot of speculative bluster. Crucial information for our world today. show less

This book is pretty damned prescient. It’s all about the bad and mostly unintended consequences that have arisen due to American military interference around the world in the past thirty years. Think of it as a rational, national-interest-based argument against American expansionism and empire. It’ll also teach you a few things about Korea and our other activities in Asia over the last fifty years, and about the mostly unintentional, but still very important effects that the behavior of show more our forces stationed all over the world, and the message that the very presence of these forces sends, tend to have on world public opinion of us as a nation. show less

This book has lots of interesting information about how wide-ranging U.S. military committments have become (and how irrelevant to our interests) and about some of the many ways in which the military wastes our money. It also has one big conclusion -- that the United States can no longer afford its massive world wide military committments. But the book is disappointing compared to the same author' "Blowback" and to Bacevich's recent book on the same topic "Washington Rules". The difficulty show more with "Dismantling the Empire" is that it is a series of essays, rather than a structured argument, which weakens the argument. Still, it is worth reading -- the more Americans learn about just what is being done in their name, and about just how much it costs, the better the odds on imposing some sort of limit on the military industrial complex. show less