August 7, 2011
Best of TomDispatch: Chalmers Johnson, Dismantling the Empire
Chalmers Johnson died on
November 20, 2010, but -- for me at least -- his spirit lives on in the most active of ways. In his last years at TomDispatch.com, he regularly
chewed over
the profligacy of the Pentagon, our unbridled urge for military
spending, and our penchant for war-making and war preparations without
end. He was convinced that we had long passed the point at which we
were still a “republic,” that we had decisively opted for empire, and --
long before the U.S. intelligence community
came to that conclusion -- that we were on the downward slide, helped along by what he called a
“military Keynesianism” run amok.
One question he raised regularly in conversation, but never answered in
print, was: What would it mean for the United States -- i.e. a great
military superpower -- to bankrupt itself? After all, we aren't
Argentina. But if there was no obvious model to draw on, he never
doubted one thing: if we didn’t change our ways and reverse course on
empire, we would certainly be a candidate for debtor’s prison and a
wreck of a country. In his last major essay, also
the title of his last (and
still unbearably relevant) book, he turned to the issue of
“dismantling the empire,” knowing full well that it wasn’t on any
imaginable Washington agenda.
Having just lived through one of the more
bizarre months in the history of the former republic -- what I
recently termed
“a psychotic spectacle of American decline” -- it seemed to me that
Johnson’s “dismantling” essay couldn’t be more timely, and so on this
quiet Sunday in August, on the weekend the author of
Blowback
would have turned 80, I’m bringing it back from the TomDispatch
archives. It was first posted on July 30, 2009, and it has only gained
in relevance from the two years of debacle that have followed. If only
I could bring Chalmers back as well. This country could use him right
now. Tom
Three Good Reasons To Liquidate Our Empire
And Ten Steps to Take to Do So
By
Chalmers Johnson
However ambitious President Barack Obama's domestic plans, one
unacknowledged issue has the potential to destroy any reform efforts he
might launch. Think of it as the 800-pound gorilla in the American
living room: our longstanding reliance on imperialism and militarism in
our relations with other countries and the vast, potentially ruinous
global empire of bases that goes with
it./authors/chalmersjohnson">Chalmers Johnson
However ambitious President Barack Obama's domestic plans, one
unacknowledged issue has the potential to destroy any reform efforts he
might launch. Think of it as the 800-pound gorilla in the American
living room: our longstanding reliance on imperialism and militarism in
our relations with other countries and the vast, potentially ruinous
global empire of bases that goes with it. The failure to begin to deal
with our bloated military establishment and the profligate use of it in
missions for which it is hopelessly inappropriate will, sooner rather
than later, condemn the United States to a devastating trio of
consequences: imperial overstretch, perpetual war, and insolvency,
leading to a likely collapse similar to that of the former Soviet Union.
According to the 2008 official Pentagon inventory of our military bases around the world, our empire
consists of
865 facilities in more than 40 countries and overseas U.S. territories.
We deploy over 190,000 troops in 46 countries and territories. In
just one such country, Japan, at the end of March 2008, we still had
99,295 people connected to U.S. military forces living and working
there -- 49,364 members of our armed services, 45,753 dependent family
members, and 4,178 civilian employees. Some 13,975 of these were
crowded into the small island of Okinawa, the largest concentration of
foreign troops anywhere in Japan.
These massive concentrations of American military power outside the
United States are not needed for our defense. They are, if anything, a
prime contributor to our numerous conflicts with other countries. They
are also unimaginably expensive. According to Anita Dancs, an analyst
for the website Foreign Policy in Focus, the United States
spends
approximately $250 billion each year maintaining its global military
presence. The sole purpose of this is to give us hegemony -- that is,
control or dominance -- over as many nations on the planet as possible.
We are like the British at the end of World War II: desperately
trying to shore up an empire that we never needed and can no longer
afford, using methods that often resemble those of failed empires of the
past -- including the Axis powers of World War II and the former
Soviet Union. There is an important lesson for us in the British
decision, starting in 1945, to liquidate their empire relatively
voluntarily, rather than being forced to do so by defeat in war, as
were Japan and Germany, or by debilitating colonial conflicts, as were
the French and Dutch. We should follow the British example. (Alas, they
are currently backsliding and following our example by assisting us in
the war in Afghanistan.)
Here are three basic reasons why we must liquidate our empire or else watch it liquidate us.
Click here to read more of this dispatch.
|
August 07, 2011
Economy Health Living Military Politics Vet News WarZone World ZPicks
