The Sorrows of Empire

Praise for
THE SORROWS OF EMPIRE

“Chalmers Johnson is a legendary scholar....In this cri de coeur, he asks us to grasp, before it is too late, that America’s modern militarist empire threatens to destroy the democratic republic. His analysis is powerful and dreadfully persuasive.”

—William Greider, author of
The Soul of Capitalism: Opening Paths to a Moral Economy

“When a nation falls into sinful ways, angry words and dire prognostications may be necessary to reawaken people to the truth. In Chalmers Johnson, the American empire has found its Jeremiah. He deserves to be heard.”

—Andrew Bacevich,
The Washington Post Book World

“Since the mainstream media have abdicated their responsibility to be watchdogs of government and to serve the public, books like
The Sorrows of Empire
are essential if we are to defend ourselves against the military-industrial-Congressional complex.”

—Janeane Garofalo

“A fine guide to the way empire works ... Chalmers Johnson is particularly instructive on the institutions of American militarism, on the private military contractors who build and run the overseas bases and prisons, on the actual operations of the more than 725 American bases around the world, on the politics of oil and gas in the Caspian Basin and on the dominant political, military and economic presence in the states of the Persian Gulf.”

—Ronald Steel,
The Nation

“Superbly researched.” —
San Francisco Chronicle

“Johnson’s book is a stunner. He blows away the Defense Department’s cover story that our empire of military bases exists to support humanitarian intervention. Something funny is happening on the way to the American forum: citizens are discovering they have an empire they never wanted—paid for in casualties, with civil liberties the first victim.”

—Patrick Lloyd Hatcher, U.S. Army colonel (retired), author of
The Suicide of an Elite: American Internationalists and Vietnam

“Engaging and provocative ...
The Sorrows of Empire’s
warnings are serious, and its arguments should certainly be considered in the ongoing debate over American foreign policy.”

—James D. Fairbanks,
Houston Chronicle

“This isn’t just another left-wing excoriation of George W. Bush. Johnson’s searing indictments of U.S. policy transcend party lines and extend farther back than the 2000 election....Johnson’s keen eye for historical comparisons is the book’s greatest strength.”

—
Seattle Weekly

“There is no more important book to read than
The Sorrows of Empire.
Like Rome, the United States today is struggling with the consequences of a permanent global military engagement, from which self-dealing political elites derive great benefits at the expense and ultimately the survival of America’s heretofore resilient republic.”

—Steven C. Clemons, executive vice president, New America Foundation

“Chalmers Johnson’s searing indictment of America’s flirtation with an imperial foreign policy should be required reading for all concerned citizens.
The Sorrows of Empire
is an extremely important and disturbing book.”

—Ted Galen Carpenter, vice president,
Defense and Foreign Policy Studies, Cato Institute

“Precisely because he’s probably right, Johnson’s
The Sorrows of Empire
is as maddening as it is important.”

—Ted Rall,
The San Diego Union-Tribune

“Chalmers Johnson’s relentless logic, authoritative scholarship, and elegantly biting prose distinguish
The Sorrows of Empire,
like all his other work. Anyone who reads it will have a much sharper sense of the costs of America’s new world-girdling commitments—and I hope it is widely read.”

—James Fallows, author of
Breaking the News

THE
SORROWS OF EMPIRE

ALSO BY CHALMERS JOHNSON

Peasant Nationalism and Communist Power:
The Emergence of Revolutionary China, 1937-1945

Revolution and the Social System

An Instance of Treason: Ozaki Hotsumi and the Sorge Spy Ring

Revolutionary Change

Change in Communist Systems
(editor and contributor)

Conspiracy at Matsukawa

Ideology and Politics in Contemporary China
(editor)

Autopsy on People’s War

Japan’s Public Policy Companies

MITI and the Japanese Miracle: The Growth of Industrial Policy, 1925-1975

The Industrial Policy Debate
(editor and contributor)

Politics and Productivity: How Japan’s Development Strategy Works
(with Laura Tyson and John Zysman)

Japan: Who Governs? The Rise of the Developmental State

Okinawa: Cold War Island
(editor and contributor)

Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire

Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic

CHALMERS JOHNSON

Owl Books

Henry Holt and Company, LLC

Publishers since 1866
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, New York 10010
www.henryholt.com

An Owl Book
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are registered trademarks
of Henry Holt and Company, LLC.

Copyright © 2004 by Chalmers Johnson
All rights reserved.
Distributed in Canada by H. B. Fenn and Company Ltd.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Johnson, Chalmers A.

The sorrows of empire : militarism, secrecy, and the end of the Republic / Chalmers Johnson—1st ed.

       p. cm.

Includes index.

ISBN-13: 978-0-8050-7797-1

ISBN-10: 0-8050-7797-9

  1. Militarism—United States. 2. Military-industrial complex—United States. 3. United States—Military policy. 4. United States—Foreign relations—2001- 5. United States—Politics and government—2001- 6. Civil-military relations—United States. 7. Imperialism. 8. Intervention (International law) 9. Official secrets—United States. I. Title.

 UA23.J5697 2004

2003056214

 355.02’ 13’0973—dc22

Henry Holt books are available for special promotions and
premiums. For details contact: Director, Special Markets.

First published in hardcover in 2004 by Metropolitan Books

First Owl Books Edition 2005
Designed by Fritz Metsch
Maps and graph by James Sinclair
Printed in the United States of America
7     9     10     8     6

Prologue:
The Unveiling of the American Empire

1. Imperialisms, Old and New

2. The Roots of American Militarism

3. Toward the New Rome

4. The Institutions of American Militarism

5. Surrogate Soldiers and Private Mercenaries

6. The Empire of Bases

7. The Spoils of War

8. Iraq Wars

9. Whatever Happened to Globalization?

10. The Sorrows of Empire

Notes

Acknowledgments

Index

THE
SORROWS OF EMPIRE

Our nation is the greatest force for good in history.
P
RESIDENT
G
EORGE
W. B
USH
,
Crawford, Texas, August 31, 2002

As distinct from other peoples on this earth, most Americans do not recognize—or do not want to recognize—that the United States dominates the world through its military power. Due to government secrecy, they are often ignorant of the fact that their government garrisons the globe. They do not realize that a vast network of American military bases on every continent except Antarctica actually constitutes a new form of empire.

Our country deploys well over half a million soldiers, spies, technicians, teachers, dependents, and civilian contractors in other nations and just under a dozen carrier task forces in all the oceans and seas of the world. We operate numerous secret bases outside our territory to monitor what the people of the world, including our own citizens, are saying, faxing, or e-mailing to one another. Our globe-girding military and intelligence installations bring profits to civilian industries, which design and manufacture weapons for the armed forces or undertake contract services to build and maintain our far-flung outposts. One task of such contractors is to keep uniformed members of the imperium housed in comfortable quarters, well fed, amused, and supplied with enjoyable,
affordable vacation facilities. Whole sectors of the American economy have come to rely on the military for sales. On the eve of our second war on Iraq, for example, the Defense Department ordered 273,000 bottles of Native Tan sunblock (SPF 15), almost triple its 1999 order and undoubtedly a boon to the supplier, Control Supply Company of Tulsa, Oklahoma, and its subcontractor, Sun Fun Products of Daytona Beach, Florida.
¹

The new American empire has been a long time in the making. Its roots go back to the early nineteenth century, when the United States declared all of Latin America its sphere of influence and busily enlarged its own territory at the expense of the indigenous people of North America, as well as British, French, and Spanish colonialists, and neighboring Mexico. Much like their contemporaries in Australia, Algeria, and tsarist Russia, Americans devoted much energy to displacing the original inhabitants of the North American continent and turning over their lands to new settlers. Then, at the edge of the twentieth century, a group of self-conscious imperialists in the government—much like a similar group of conservatives who a century later would seek to implement their own expansive agendas under cover of the “war on terrorism”—used the Spanish-American War to seed military bases in Central America, various islands in the Caribbean, Hawaii, Guam, and the Philippines.