Blowback [Paperback]

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 --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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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Blowback' : The baleful consequences of American global policies, described by a supremely well-informed American international commentator.

This provocative & important book, with a new preface by the author written after the momentous events of 11 September, is a powerful account of the consequences of American global policies. The 21st century, Chalmers Johnson tells us, will be a payback world in which the US will reap the global resentments it is now sowing. 'Blowback', a term that officials of the CIA first invented for their internal use, refers to the unintended consequences of American policies and the dangers faced by an overextended empire that insists on projecting its military power to every corner of the earth and using American capital and markets to force global economic integration on its own terms. From America's role in Asia's financial crisis, to its early support for Saddam Hussein and its actions in the Balkans, Johnson reveals the misguided actions of a hugely powerful nation. In the wake of the Cold War, the US has imprudently expanded the commitments it made over the previous forty years. In 'Blowback' Chalmers Johnson issues a warning: it is time for the American empire to demobilize before its bills become due.

CHALMERS JOHNSON, president of the Japan Policy Research Institute and professor emeritus at the University of California, San Diego, has written highly acclaimed books on Japan and Asia.