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July 22
The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic, Chalmers Johnson (2004)
This is the other book I finished while in Mendocino. If I have less to say about it, it's only because that was weeks ago and I didn't write much in my notes, not because I didn't like it. In fact, of the political books I've read this year, I'd recommend it more strongly than any except James Bovard's
Terrorism and Tyranny.
For most readers, Mr Johnson will fight an uphill battle to persuade. His basic premise, that the United States of America pursues a militarist and imperial foreign policy aimed at global hegemony, is still considered pretty radical. As longtime Benzene readers know, I accepted that premise years ago, so for me it's nothing new. I sought out the book because recently I was trying to come up with a list of U.S. military bases overseas, and although I found several partial resources, I never quite came up with a complete picture. I thought this book might help fill in some of the blanks.
And it does, sort of. There wasn't any appendix with a nice tidy list, as I was hoping to find. The main source Johnson cites, the Defense Department's Base Structure Report, I had already found online. The report offers no details on many of the installations and omits some others altogether, but Johnson adds some bits and pieces to that from other sources. There's quite a bit of follow-up references in the footnotes, most of which I won't get around to chasing down, since the book is due soon, and I've got other things I ought to be doing anyway (like finding a job...).
In the penultimate chapter I get a taste of what the book might be like for a skeptical reader. This is where Johnson inveighs against Robert Rubin-style neoliberal global economic policy, which I look favorably upon. Many of my fellow anti-imperialists seem to think that engaging in trade with other countries somehow harms them. I don't see it that way. I think we should stop bombing, invading, and supporting authoritarian regimes in other countries, but I have no problem with selling them things they want to buy or buying things they want to sell.
I'm not quite sure what to make of Johnson's arguments. He clearly states his opposition to "economic globalization" and he seems to oppose "free trade" as well. He offers plenty of examples where organizations like the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization work to screw over third-world economies, but it wasn't clear to me that the connection to free trade is anything more than rhetorical. One may as well declare opposition to "democracy" on grounds that the United States has deposed so many foreign governments in the name of it.
Johnson offers Argentina as a prime example of a once prosperous nation whose economy has collapsed utterly thanks to plundering by WTO and IMF. Argentina's economy is certainly a disaster, but Chile and Uruguay aren't doing so bad. Haven't Argentina's neighbors been participating equally in the global economy? If U.S. economic imperialism is so destructive, why is it that the one country was destroyed and the others weren't? What's the difference? Those aren't just rhetorical questions; I really don't know.
Off the top of my head, I see two possibly significant differences between Argentina and Chile. One is that Argentina's exports are primarily agricultural whereas Chile's are primarily mineral. The other is that, while both nations have experienced both autocratic and democratic rule over the past 30 years, throughout both Chile had a society which pretty much respected the rule of law whereas Argentina had a society which pretty consistently did not.
It seems to me that what bankrupts third-world nations is irresponsible governments which are able to take control of the nation's resources and squander the wealth on something other than the public weal. To the extent that advanced Western nations take advantage of that to sell those governments products that aren't good for them (eg, arms) or defraud them altogether, they are complicit. To the extent that organizations like the IMF make it possible for governments to run up huge debts which they can't repay, then they are complicit.
Still, I don't see this as grounds for condemning economic globalization entirely. If I put money in a retirement fund, and the fund managers proceed to lose all the money on bad investments, I don't think the existence of commerce is what is to blame. Ultimately, the problem is that the managers aren't responsible to the investors. Likewise, in the third world, ultimately the problem is that the governments aren't responsible to the citizens.
But I digress. Near the beginning of the chapter, there was one very powerful argument that gave me pause and still does.
In short, the few successful economies on earth did exactly the opposite of what the gurus of globalization said they should have done.
Allowing for the probable hyperbole with respect to Japanese cars in Korea, this statement is absolutely correct. The implication is clear: whatever the theoretical evidence may suggest, the empirical evidence shows that protectionism works, at least in the early stages of a nation's economic development.
I'd be very interested to know how free-trade enthusiasts -- real or fake -- answer this argument.
I knew that Australia's early settlement was as a prison colony. Johnson mentions in passing that Britain dumped convicts in colonial North America as well. I vaguely recall Georgia being settled by debtors, but beyond that, this is news to me. Can anyone point me to a follow-up?
I noticed that Johnson credits the CIA with primary responsibility for both Ba'ath coups in Iraq (1963 and 1968). This is contrary to what I've believed, based on my study of Iraq history which predated even the first Bush's war, but that doesn't mean it's wrong. The Ba'ath party favored an autocratic state, whereas Gen Qasim was a populist nationalist, and it certainly would be characteristic of American policy at the time to favor the latter.
In the footnotes, Johnson cites several newspaper articles, three of which I found online ([1], [2], [3]). These look reliable enough. The general pattern seems to be that former CIA officials, some anonymous, make the claim while the official CIA denies it, but that would be the case regardless. Still, it troubles me that all of the sources date no earlier than March 2003. I'd find it easier to believe if anyone were on record saying this before we deposed Saddam Hussein.
The four typos I noted are all proper names -- Kosavars, Lili'oukalani, Khamchatka, and Jésus (Silva Herzog) should be Kosovars, Lili'uokalani, Kamchatka, and Jesús -- leading me to believe that the book was thoroughly proofread but by someone without a strong encyclopedic background knowledge.
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