- Hardcover: 288 pages
- Publisher: Little, Brown (6 July 2000)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0316854867
- ISBN-13: 978-0316854863
- Product Dimensions: 23.6 x 16 x 3.3 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,047,742 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
If the 20th century was the American century, the 21st century may be a time of reckoning for the United States. Chalmers Johnson offers a troubling prognosis of what's to come. Blowback--the title refers to a CIA neologism describing the unintended consequences of American activity--is a call for the United States to rethink its position in the world. "The evidence is building up that in the decade following the end of the Cold War, the United States largely abandoned a reliance on diplomacy, economic aid, international law, and multilateral institutions in carrying out its foreign policies and resorted much of the time to bluster, military force, and financial manipulation," writes Johnson. "The world is not a safer place as a result." Individual chapters focus on Okinawa (where American servicemen were accused of raping a 12-year-old girl in "Asia's last colony"), the two Koreas, China, and Japan. The result is a liberal-leaning (and Asia-centric) call for the United States to disengage from many of its global commitments. Critics will call Johnson an isolationist, but friends will say he simply speaks good sense. All will agree he is an earnest voice: "I believe our very hubris ensures our undoing". --John J. Miller
Review
Chalmers Johnson is one of the most influential, brilliant, and provocative intellectuals writing today. He weaves past, present, and future together with extraordinary skill - John Dower, the 1999 winner of the NBCC non-fiction award for WAR WITHOUT MERCY ('Timely, provocative and absorbing’ )
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
19 of 20 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book is famous for prophesying 9/11 within the first few pages. It is difficult to ignore how accurate his predictions have been over the last 4 years.
Johnson is most interesting because of his background. As he recounts in the beginning of this book, he was originally an academic Cold warrior who felt that his work could contribute to the fight against Communism. Now he feels that those early sentiments were incorrect, he believes US "imperial" impulses were (and are) far more destructive in the long term.
If you read this book with an already sceptical view of American foreign policy you will find it far more informative than knee-jerk leftist polemics. Even those who firmly support US aims and ambitions may find these arguments compelling.
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
In this hard-hitting analysis, Chalmers Johnson explains the goals and the hidden (from its inhabitants) functioning of the US hegemon: an empire based on military power and the use of US capital and markets to force global economic integration on US terms at whatever costs to others.
On the military front, the US population forgot G. Washington’s warning: ‘avoid the necessity of those overgrown military establishments, which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to Republican Liberty.’
The US intelligence and military establishment is close to being beyond civilian control and becoming an autonomous system, whose colossal budget with its juicy cost-plus contracts is only controlled by vested ideological and financial interests. This book shows clearly that US presidents, like Carter or Clinton, had not the power to oppose the Pentagon’s designs: perpetuate and develop the Cold War structures in order to consolidate its power. The ends justify all means as numerous intelligence or military interventions in the world show, which sponsored dictatorships, genocidal campaigns, war crimes, state terrorism and paramilitary death-squads. 90 % of all US weapons were sold, not to democracies, but to human right abusers.
On the economic front, globalization US style provoked economic disasters in South-Asia and South-America, throwing millions of people into poverty. However the US still urged its ‘allies’ to buy weapons! This kind of globalization, which provoked still more economic inequality, will not be forgotten for a long time (see W. Bello: Dilemmas of Domination.).
By overstretching its financial means (weapon systems are profligate economic waste), the US risks a long lasting downfall of the dollar.
The US and its population need an industrial not a military or intelligence policy, because a new rival hegemon points at the horizon: China, which will be the superpower of the 21st century. China will not be contained. The US will have to adjust to it.
In a world of hypocritical and gagged media, Chalmers Johnson’s much needed voice proposes human solutions for the world’s problems: ‘bring most overseas land-based forces home and reorient foreign policy to stress leadership through example, economic aid, international law, multilateral institutions and diplomacy, instead of military intervention, economic bullying or financial manipulation.’
With its surprising comparisons, Chalmers Johnson sent a solid warning to the actual US establishment. A nation reaps what its sows. The blowback could be horrendous.
This book is a must read.
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
In summary, this book comprised a good insight of US military colonization especially in east Asia such as Okinawa inland in Japan where sexual abuses were conduct by American soldiers . Also, it tends to examine in details the history of American military interventions such as in the Korean war in the 50s and it's parallel comparison with the soviet union's crushing of the revolt in Hungary and it's would- be repercussions to the American public .
Thereafter, there is an economic analysis of both china and Japan and how Japan the second strongest economic country in the world has taken advantage of entering the American market and selling its products competitively inside us and at the same time making roadblocks for America entering the Japanese market as a financial blowback to us by exporting from Japan and downsizing employees inside by moving large associations to a cheaper labor market.
Hence, this book as the first part of the trilogy of costs and consequences of American empire , shed some lights on rather economic as well as political analysis background of the present and future main Asian adversaries to Us especially the largest growing economy of China.
Needless to say,economically speaking, of course the authur didn't forget to mention the role of IMF( international monetary fund) as an empire asset to us government espiacially in page 219 :"the IMF is essentialy a covert arm of the us treasury yet beyond congressional oversight becaus t is formally an international organisation.its voting rules ensure that it is dominated by us and its allies" or that "IMF is insinuated ino inner sanctms on nearly 75 developing country governments around the world with a comined popultion of 1.4 billion"
Thereafter, there is an economic analysis of both china and Japan and how Japan the second strongest economic country in the world has taken advantage of entering the American market and selling its products competitively inside us and at the same time making roadblocks for America entering the Japanese market as a financial blowback to us by exporting from Japan and downsizing employees inside by moving large associations to a cheaper labor market.
Hence, this book as the first part of the trilogy of costs and consequences of American empire , shed some lights on rather economic as well as political analysis background of the present and future main Asian adversaries to Us especially the largest growing economy of China.
Needless to say,economically speaking, of course the authur didn't forget to mention the role of IMF( international monetary fund) as an empire asset to us government espiacially in page 219 :"the IMF is essentialy a covert arm of the us treasury yet beyond congressional oversight becaus t is formally an international organisation.its voting rules ensure that it is dominated by us and its allies" or that "IMF is insinuated ino inner sanctms on nearly 75 developing country governments around the world with a comined popultion of 1.4 billion"
Most Recent Customer Reviews
Don't judge his book by it's title
I was really disappointed with this book. Both the title and the synopsis on the back made me think it was going to be a global analysis of US foreign policy and covert operations... Read more
Published on 7 Feb 2007 by S. R. Barton
A perfect Thucydides model
"It does not take a Thucydides to imagine the consequences" writes the author in the conclusions. Reality implies the opposite. Read more
Published on 19 Oct 2001
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