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Dismantling the Empire: America's Last Best Hope (American Empire Project) Hardcover – August 17, 2010
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The author of the bestselling Blowback Trilogy reflects on America's waning power in a masterful collection of essays
In his prophetic book Blowback, published before 9/11, Chalmers Johnson warned that our secret operations in Iraq and elsewhere around the globe would exact a price at home. Now, in a brilliant series of essays written over the last three years, Johnson measures that price and the resulting dangers America faces. Our reliance on Pentagon economics, a global empire of bases, and war without end is, he declares, nothing short of "a suicide option."
Dismantling the Empire explores the subjects for which Johnson is now famous, from the origins of blowback to Barack Obama's Afghanistan conundrum, including our inept spies, our bad behavior in other countries, our ill-fought wars, and our capitulation to a military that has taken ever more control of the federal budget. There is, he proposes, only one way out: President Obama must begin to dismantle the empire before the Pentagon dismantles the American Dream. If we do not learn from the fates of past empires, he suggests, our decline and fall are foreordained. This is Johnson at his best: delivering both a warning and an urgent prescription for a remedy.
- Print length224 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherMetropolitan Books
- Publication dateAugust 17, 2010
- Dimensions5.71 x 0.87 x 8.55 inches
- ISBN-100805093036
- ISBN-13978-0805093032
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Editorial Reviews
Review
"Stimulating and prescient. . ."
—Times Literary Supplement
"Succinct, hard-hitting attacks on what the author perceives as America's ruinous imperial follies..."
—Publishers Weekly, starred review
"Concise, clear, hard-hitting. . . Dismantling the Empire is a must read for anyone looking for meaningful information concerning the future of the American Empire."
—Foreign Policy Journal
Praise for Chalmers Johnson
“Johnson wants the scales to fall from American eyes so that the nation can see the truth about its role in the world. His is a patriot’s passion: his motive is to save the American republic he loves.”
—Jonathan Freedland, The New York Review of Books
“The role of the prophet is an honorable one. In Chalmers Johnson the American empire has found its Jeremiah. He deserves to be heard.”
—Andrew J. Bacevich, The Washington Post Book World
“Chalmers Johnson’s important new book is something with which everyone who aspires to a worthwhile opinion about this country’s future must contend.”
—The Los Angeles Times (on Nemesis)
“Trenchantly argued, comprehensively documented, grimly eloquent. . . Worthy of the republic it seeks to defend.”
—The Boston Globe (on The Sorrows of Empire)
“Stunning and shocking. . . Blowback is a wake-up call for America.”
—John Dower, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Embracing Defeat
About the Author
Chalmers Johnson, president of the Japan Policy Research Institute, is the author of the bestselling books Blowback, The Sorrows of Empire, and Nemesis, which make up his Blowback Trilogy. He has written for the Los Angeles Times, the London Review of Books, Harper's Magazine, The Nation, and TomDispatch.com.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
INTRODUCTION
THE SUICIDE OPTION
During the last years of the Clinton administration I was in my mid-sixties, retired from teaching Asian international relations at the University of California and deeply bored by my specialty, Japanese politics. It seemed that Japan would continue forever as a docile satellite of the United States, a safe place to park tens of thousands of American troops, as well as ships and aircraft , all ready to assert American hegemony over the entire Pacific region. I was then in the process of rethinking my research and determining where I should go next.
At the time, one aspect of the Clinton administration especially worried me. In the aftermath of the breakup and disappearance of the Soviet Union, U.S. officials seemed unbearably complacent about America's global ascendancy. They were visibly bathed in a glow of post–Cold War triumphalism. It was hard to avoid their high-decibel assertions that our country was "unique" in history, their insistence that we were now, and for the imaginable future, the "lone superpower" or, in the words of Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, "the indispensable nation." The implication was that we would be so for an eternity. If ever there was a self- satisfied country that seemed headed for a rude awakening, it was the United States.
I became concerned as well that we were taking for granted the goodwill of so many nations, even as we incautiously ran up a tab of insults to the rest of the world. What I couldn't quite imagine was that President Clinton's arrogance and his administration's risk taking—the 1998 cruise missile attack on the al- Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum, Sudan, for instance, or the 1999 bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, Serbia, during the Kosovo war—might presage an existential crisis for the nation. Our stance toward the rest of the world certainly seemed reckless to me, but not in itself of overwhelming significance. We were, after all, the world's richest nation, even if we were delusional in assuming that our wealth would be a permanent condition. We were also finally at peace (more or less) after a long period, covering much of the twentieth century, in which we had been engaged in costly, deadly wars.
As I quietly began to worry, it crossed my mind that we in the United States had long taken all of Asia for granted, despite the fact that we had fought three wars there, only one of which we had won. My fears grew that the imperial tab we were running up would come due sooner than any of us had expected, and that payment might be sought in ways both unexpected and deeply unnerving. In this mood, I began to write a book of analysis that was also meant as a warning, and for a title I drew on a term of CIA tradecraft. I called it Blowback.
The book's reception on publication in 2000 might serve as a reasonable gauge of the overconfident mood of the country. It was generally ignored and, where noted and commented upon, rejected as the oddball thoughts of a formerly eminent Japan specialist. I was therefore less shocked than most when, as the Clinton years ended, we Americans made a serious mistake that helped turn what passed for fringe prophecy into stark reality. We let George W. Bush take the White House.
He was a man superficially well enough qualified to be president. The governor of a populous state, he had also been the recipient of one of the best—or, in any case, most expensive—educations available to an American. Yale College and Harvard Business School might have seemed like a guarantee against a sophomoric ignoramus occupying the highest office in the land, but contrary to most expectations that was precisely what we got. The American public did not actually elect him, of course. He was, in the end, appointed to the highest office in the land by a conservative cabal of Supreme Court justices in what certainly qualified as one of the most bizarre moments in the history of American politics.
During his eight reckless years as president, Bush, his vice president Dick Cheney, his secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld, and the other neoconservative and right-wing officials he appointed, war-lovers all, drove the country as close to the precipice as was humanly possible. After the attacks of 9/11, he would have been wise to treat al-Qaeda as the criminal organization it was. Instead, he launched two wars of aggression in close succession against Iraq and Afghanistan. The irony was that had he done absolutely nothing, the political situations in both countries would likely have resolved themselves, given time, in ways tolerable for us and our allies based on the constellation of forces at work in each place. Instead, his policies entrenched Shia Muslims in Iraq, repeated all the mistakes of other foreign invaders—particularly the British and more recently the Russians—in Afghanistan, and enhanced the power of Iran in the Persian Gulf region.
As a result of his ill-informed and bungling strategic moves, President Bush left our armed forces seriously depleted, with worn-out equipment, badly misused human resources, and staggering medical (and thus financial) obligations to thousands of young Americans suffering from disabling wounds, including those inflicted on their minds. Meanwhile, our high command, which went into Afghanistan and Iraq stuck in the land war doctrines of World War II but filled with dreamy, high-tech, "netcentric" fantasies, is now mired in the failed counterinsurgency doctrine of the Vietnam era. That's what evidently passes for progress in the Pentagon these days. Its officials still have hardly a clue as to how to deal with nonstate actors like al-Qaeda.
At the same time, the Bush administration paved the way for, and then presided over, a close to catastrophic economic and financial collapse that skirted national and international insolvency. Fueled by huge tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, profligate spending on two wars (as well as future wars and the weaponry to fight them), the appointment of Republican ideologues to critical positions of trust, and accounting and management practices that exacerbated just about every other problem, the Bush administration plunged us into the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.
As if these failures weren't bad enough, during Bush's tenure the armed forces were authorized to torture Muslims captured virtually anywhere on earth; the Department of Justice turned a blind eye to the clandestine electronic surveillance of the general public; and the Central Intelligence Agency was given carte blanche to kidnap terror suspects in other countries and transfer them to regimes where they could be interrogated under torture, as well as to assassinate supposed terror suspects just about anywhere on the planet. From Afghanistan and Iraq to Lithuania, Thailand, and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, the United States set up an offshore system of (in)justice, including "black sites" (secret CIA prisons) that put many of its most outrageous acts beyond oversight or the reach of the law—any law. In the meantime, the United States also withdrew from many important international treaties, including the one banning the production of antiballistic missiles.
The history books will certainly record that George W. Bush was likely the single worst president in the history of the American republic. Nonetheless, they will also point out that he merely accelerated trends long under way, particularly our devotion to militarism and our dependence on the military-industrial complex.
In 2008, faced with a truly dysfunctional government, the American people unexpectedly demonstrated that they got the message. The presidential candidacy of Barack Obama reignited a long-dormant idealism, particularly among those who believed, on the basis of their own lives, that the political system had been rigged against them. The national outpouring of enthusiasm for this African American presidential candidate led many around the world to believe that the American people were ready to abandon their infatuation with imperialism. They assumed that we were exhibiting a desire for genuine reform before the trends of the Clinton-Bush years became irreversible.
During his campaign Barack Obama promised to close our extrajudicial detention camp at Guantánamo Bay; restore legally sanctioned practices, particularly within the Department of Justice; provide nearly all citizens with health insurance and other life support systems that are routine in most advanced industrial democracies; take global warming seriously; and implement any number of laws that were being honored only in the breach, including those protecting personal privacy. Obama's proposed reform program was massive, long overdue, and popularly welcomed.
Conspicuously absent from this lengthy agenda, however, was one significant sector of American life. Only those of us who had long watched this area noted Obama's silence and were alarmed for what it suggested about his future presidency. This omission concerned the massive apparatus that enables what I have called our global "empire of bases" to exist and function. In the campaign, he said little about the armed forces (other than that he would like to expand the Army and Marines), the military- industrial complex, the Pentagon's failure to account properly for the vast sums it spends, the growing clandestine role of our proliferating intelligence services, or the subcontracting of extremely sensitive national security tasks to the private sector.
Given the degree to which, as this book emphasizes, the Pentagon and the powerful forces that surround it have played such a crucial role in leading this country to the edge, this campaign omission was anything but auspicious. It is undoubtedly true that a presidential candidate determined to take on these forces might have had a difficult time cutting the Pentagon, the "intelligence community," and the military-industrial complex down to size. Unfortunately, Obama did not even try. The evidence already suggests that huge vested interests in the status quo blocked this president from the start—and, no less important, that when it came to our national security state and our global imperial presence he acquiesced.
I have written elsewhere that on his first day in office every president is given a highly secret briefing about the clandestine powers at his disposal and that no president has ever failed to use them. It is increasingly clear that while pursuing his agenda in other areas, Obama, who made James Jones, a retired Marine Corps commandant, the head of his National Security Council and Robert Gates, a former Cold War CIA director and holdover from the Bush years, his secretary of defense, is going along with what the militarist establishment in Washington recommends, while offering little in the way of resistance. As commander in chief, he must be supportive of our armed forces, but nothing obliges him to take pride in American imperialism or to "finish the job" that George Bush began in Afghanistan, as he seems intent on doing.
The essays in this volume were, for the most part, written over the last three years. Although some look back at the recent past, most focus on our limited resources for continuing to behave like an empire and what the likely outcome will be. We are not, of course, the first country to face the choice between republic and empire, nor the first to have our imperial dreams stretch our means to the breaking point and threaten our future. But this book suggests that among the alternatives available to us as a nation, we are choosing what I call the suicide option. It also suggests that it might not have to be this way, that we still could move in a different direction.
We could begin to dismantle our empire of bases. We could, to offer but one example, simply close Futenma, the enormous Marine Corps base on Okinawa much disliked by the new Japanese government that took office in Japan in 2009. Instead, we continue to try to browbeat the Japanese into acting as our docile satellite by forcing them to pay for the transfer of our Marines either to the island of Guam (which can't support such a base either) or to an environmentally sensitive area elsewhere on Okinawa.
Seldom has an incoming president been given greater benefit of the doubt than President-elect Obama. When, for no apparent good reason, he decided to retain President Bush's top military appointment in our war zones, CENTCOM commander General David Petraeus, hang on to Secretary of Defense Gates, and later reinforce the large American expeditionary force already fighting in Afghanistan, Republicans spoke of continuity and some Democrats explained it as a brilliant ploy to shift blame for an all but certain American defeat to Republican holdovers. But Obama certainly had other options. For secretary of defense he might have turned to someone like retired Army lieutenant colonel Andrew Bacevich, author of the best- selling book The Limits of Power. Nor were generals Petraeus and Afghan war commander Stanley McChrystal, who had previously run counterterror operations for Bush in both Iraq and Afghanistan, inevitable choices. But these were the people Obama appointed. They, in turn, have devised policies that have allowed him to continue the war in Afghanistan in the face of grave public doubts, just as they did in Iraq for Obama's predecessor.
Whether or not becoming a war president is what Obama truly intended, the greatest obstacle to his war policies is that the United States cannot afford them. The federal deficit was already spiraling out of control before the Great Recession of 2008. Since then, the government has only gone more deeply into debt to prevent the collapse of critical financial institutions as well as the housing industry. It is not clear that Obama's measures to overcome the Great Recession will do anything more than take resources away from necessary projects and leave the country that much closer to bankruptcy. It is absolutely certain that the estimated trillion dollars a year spent on the defense establishment will make it almost impossible for the United States to avoid the ultimate limit on imperialism: overstretch and insolvency.
In December 2009, the United States had its best and perhaps last chance to avoid the suicide option. After a three-month review of our activities in Afghanistan, when he might have found a way to disengage, Obama instead decided to escalate—at a cost he estimated, in a speech at West Point explaining his decision, at $30 billion per year but certain to go far higher, not to mention the costs in human lives—American, allied, and Afghan. Although by then a majority of our population believed we had done everything we could for a poor central Asian country led by a hopelessly corrupt government, President Obama chose to continue our imperialist project. As Hamlet said, "It is not, nor it cannot come to good."
None of this was inevitable, although it may have been unavoidable given the hubris and arrogance of our national leadership.
Product details
- Publisher : Metropolitan Books; First Edition (August 17, 2010)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 224 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0805093036
- ISBN-13 : 978-0805093032
- Item Weight : 12 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.71 x 0.87 x 8.55 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #1,673,574 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2,957 in Political Commentary & Opinion
- #14,077 in International & World Politics (Books)
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About the author
Chalmers Johnson, president of the Japan Policy Research Institute, is the author of the bestselling Blowback and The Sorrows of Empire. A frequent contributor to the Los Angeles Times, the London Review of Books, and The Nation, he appeared in the 2005 prizewinning documentary film Why We Fight. He lives near San Diego.
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There followed two more books in what became known as the Blowback trilogy. Secondly came The Sorrows of Empire, published in 2004. In it, he cataloged the immense empire of bases--perhaps one thousand in number--which the U.S. occupies across well over one hundred nations throughout the world. These bases are not only costly, siphoning American wealth to rich contractors; they also foment hatred of the United States and its policies. In 2007, Nemesis rounded out the trilogy. Johnson argued that the empire threatens, not only our democracy--which is forever waging wars without the consent of the people--but the economic well-being of all Americans. If we do not change our policies, our empire will collapse, leaving the nation mired in bankruptcy.
Like the Hitchhiker's Guide, the Blowback trilogy now has more than three books. Johnson's most recent contribution is Dismantling the Empire: America's Last Best Hope. Despite the title, he leaves the reader feeling offers little by way of hope. Although he concludes by giving the reader "10 steps toward liquidating the empire", other essays supply ample evidence that the problem may prove intractable. Johnson notes that Obama has expanded the war in Afghanistan and spent more on defense in 2010 than Bush did in his last year in power. The economy may be tanking, but the Department of Defense and its legion of dependencies are still living large.
The book breaks little new ground. In fact, only two of the fifteen essays, as well as the introduction, represent previously unpublished material; the rest were written by Johnson during the last several years. Still, his book offers a reasonably complete criticism of the U.S. empire. The Blowback trilogy is well worth reading, but those who do not desire to tackle the entire thing would do well to start with Dismantling the Empire.
The book is divided into five parts, the last of which offers a program for reform. The first part recounts recent American foreign policy misadventures, from the arming of Afghani militants to fight the Soviets, up through the present Iraqi "conflict". We are reminded that, during the latter, armed forces stood by--and even partook--as ancient artifacts were stolen and buildings were pillaged and burned.
The second part examines the CIA and the ever increasing dependence of the Department of Defense on well-paid mercenaries. The Agency's stunning ineptitude is covered thoroughly. Those who believe that the CIA's mission ought to be accomplished will clamor for reform. Johnson, who finds much of the mission itself abhorrent, advocates abolition. In the third part, Johnson gives us an overview of the empire of bases he dealt with in the trilogy's second book.
The fourth part, "the pentagon takes us down" is the most fascinating. The United States spends more money on defense than the rest of the world combined. Tabulating the costs of empire can be difficult, since so much of it is hidden, but "conservatively calculated", the U.S. spent at least 1.1 trillion in fiscal year 2008. Alas, reducing the defense budget requires herculean political effort. Many thousands of Americans are remunerated lucratively by the racket in munitions.
Moreover, because politicians subscribe to what Johnson calls "military Keynesianism", any reduction in defense spending is seen as bad for the economy. The reality is that destructive spending crowds out private sector development; instead of making cars and televisions, the U.S. economy now produces fighter jets and bombs. Once the leader of the world in manufacturing, China is set to pass the U.S. by next year. These numbers obscure a reality which is direr still: "By 1990, the value of the weapons, equipment, and factories devoted to the Department of Defense was 83 percent of the value of all plants and equipment in American manufacturing." The empire wastes valuable resources, contributing only to the national debt.
Johnson is correct in noting that the empire will speed us toward bankruptcy. But he is wrong in insinuating that liquidating it will solve the problem. The debt crisis threatens to destroy much of the western world. Yet only America is cursed with empire. Eliminating this rope around the neck of the republic is a necessary step towards restoring solvency, but it is an insufficient one. When Johnson advises that the money spent on defense could be used to pay for Social Security and schools, he fails to realize that while the empire is doomed, social democracy is also facing an existential crisis.
One other caveat: twice Johnson reveals his support for abortion, once by bemoaning the fact that women who are impregnated while in the service cannot procure abortions on base. At long last, chalk one up for the empire. The world is not a better place because American women soldiers can kill their unborn children just as easily as they can slaughter an Afghani wedding party. An opposition to aggressive violence requires defending human life in all its forms.
The salient point is that, whatever his viewpoints on other topics, Johnson is completely correct when it comes to the empire. Dismantling it is an integral step in the restoration of the republic. Obama has proven that, like his progressive predecessors--Wilson, FDR, LBJ--Democrats can wage war just like Republicans. Chalmers Johnson proves that they can also offer a cogent critique of profligate defense spending. As a fellow enemy of empire, I heartily recommend Johnson's latest book. If the two parties in Washington can unite to keep the wars going, those of divergent ideological backgrounds can set aside our differences to prevent them from doing so.
Nonetheless, I'm glad I stumbled onto Chalmers Johnson and I may very well go back and read his Blowback trilogy and/or Nemesis. Johnson, who sadly died just a couple weeks ago, was a CIA consultant in the late 60s and early 70s who became a leading expert on contemporary Asian (especially Japanese) policy, and was a co-founder of the Japan Policy Research Institute. Having seen first-hand the effects on U.S. foreign policy on Japan, Johnson became an outspoken critic of U.S. imperialism.
According to the essays in this book, U.S. imperialism takes two basic forms: covert and overt. Johnson spends roughly half the book detailing how, from its inception, presidents have used the CIA as their own private - usually secret - army. Johnson details a number of CIA operations from assassinations (attempted and successful) to arming and training various pro-U.S. militias to overthrow democratically elected leaders and governments. The thing about these operations is that they have been shrouded in secrecy, at least from the U.S. population. Therefore, when "blowback" occurs in response to these operations (for instance, terrorist and other anti-U.S. acts), Americans are left baffled wondering, "Why do they hate us?" Johnson calls for the elimination of the CIA, or at the very least a drastic scaling back of its activities and much greater oversight by Congress or some other accountable entity. I'm with him all the way, but good luck making it happen.
Johnson also talks about imperialism in the more overt and visible form of the network of hundreds of military bases scattered around the world. According to official reports, the U.S. has well over 700 bases in roughly 120 countries, but there are a number of bases not taken into account by these official figures, such as bases in Iraq and Afghanistan and secret CIA facilities. One of the stated purposes of all these bases is so that the U.S. is prepared respond to any threat, anywhere in the world. But Johnson argues that the real purpose is simply to dominate the world to protect U.S. interests. The U.S. uses over 25% of the world's resources, but accounts for only about 4% of the world's population. Our massive military is necessary in that sense in order to secure our excess take against nations who might otherwise want a fair share of the pie.
Included in this massive military dominance is the "military-industrial complex" which, along with the hundreds of worldwide military bases, drives defense spending, making our defense budget about as large as the defense budgets of all other nations combined. Each state is home to military contractors who depend on massive government earmarks to support a large portion of the state's economy. Ever more money is funneled into these defense companies to make ever greater ways to kill ever greater numbers of people. Often these contracts are for weapons and systems which will never - can never - be used, such as highly sophisticated fighter planes that will never be used in aerial combat and are virtually useless for things like reconnaissance which we could actually use. No politician will ever put an end to these earmarks because our economy has become too dependent on military contracting.
But end them, we must, Johnson argues, because the military-industrial complex is bankrupting the country. Because of the amount of money we spend on defense (much of which is hidden in budgets besides the defense budget), we don't have enough left over for domestic social and infrastructure needs. In fact, our whole military presences needs to be scaled back because our republic depends on it. Not only can we not financially afford our empire, but we can't afford it as a nation either. Our dominant military presence in the world has created a growing backlash. People in foreign countries are getting angry at our irresponsible attempts at "regime change". Indigenous people forced to share already overcrowded space with so many American bases chafe when American personnel violate local and international laws, seemingly with impunity. Finally, the very structure of our republican (small r) form of government will erode, as the military force and the structure of laws needed to maintain a global empire are simply not compatible with a domestic democracy.
Johnson predicts that the end of the American empire is coming one way or another, although he does not predict the exact for this end will take. Either the sheer costs will bankrupt the country or threats from other nations, groups of nations, or independent organizations (such as al Qaeda) will simply overwhelm our ability to continue to dominate the world. But Johnson believes there is another way. He argues that the U.S. could voluntarily choose to dismantle its empire in order to save its republic, much like Britain was forced to do after World War II. To do this, we need to dramatically decrease the number of foreign bases we maintain. We need to halt the production of much of our arsenal, especially weapons which serve no functional purpose, but only provoke our enemies. And we need to eliminate all forms of secrecy - including the CIA - in order to give the American people the ability to monitor the government and make it accountable.
I recommend reading Chalmers Johnson's work, whether this book, his other books, or his online articles. One essay in the book really stood out for me as far as the cost of the missteps the U.S. has taken in the past several decades. In an essay entitled "The Smash of Civilizations", Johnson details the looting of the museums in Iraq after the start of the U.S. invasion. Thousands of priceless artifacts from the very earliest civilizations on earth are no lost, possibly forever, for the understanding and knowledge of future generations. The "War on Terror" isn't so much a "Clash of Civilizations" as it is a choice between civilization and destruction. Personally, I hope we can find a way to choose civilization.
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National policies
C. Johnson sees his country ruled by a hollowed out government. Privatization of governmental activities (public services) equals a dismantling of democratic rule and governmental responsibility. Unelected corporate officials (`mercenaries') working for profit-making corporations, have taken over governmental tasks: US governmental spending on defense, national security and social programs are siphoned to large corporations generating costs without oversight.
The US government implemented a Big Brother policy with its `Total Information Awareness Program', which could compile dossiers on 300 million people (credit card purchases, magazine subscriptions, medical prescriptions, web site visits, e-mails, bank deposits, trips, events attended).
Its insane gargantuan defense budget and low taxation levels on the rich are diverting resources from productive use (investments in education, healthcare and the environment).
Moreover, the US population is badly informed by its totally gagged private media conglomerates.
International policies
Internationally, C. Johnson sees an accelerating trend to militarism and dependence on the military-industrial complex. The US dominates the world through its military power (761 bases in 192 countries) and its intelligence personnel. From WW II until 9/11 there were more than 200 overseas military operations.
The US installed an offshore system of injustice: torture, clandestine electronic surveillance, kidnapping, assassinations, secret prisons, rigged elections, support of State terrorism and interference in foreign economies in order to protect US interests.
The results are an erosion of US power (Latin America, Japan, South-Korea) and retaliations (blowbacks) against US interests.
Future
For C. Johnson, the US future is bleak. It will keep a façade of constitutional government and drift along until it collapses under imperial overstretch, perpetual wars and insolvency. Bankruptcy (and concomitantly the dramatic fall of the dollar) will cause a drastic lowering of the standard of living of its population and loss of control over international affairs to the benefit of rising powers (China, India).
For him, the US doesn't have the capacity to remain the global hegemon. Wars will be lost again (against the Pashtun in Afghanistan).
Remedies
C. Johnson's prescriptions are not less than drastic. The US must give up its reliance on military force in order to achieve foreign policy objectives. Moreover, its intelligence agencies should be abolished, because they have outlived any Cold War justification.
The near future will tell us if C. Johnson's outspoken and dramatic calls have been heard and, if not, if his doom scenario will become reality.
A must read.