Blowback, by Chalmers Johnson, is a book that talks about America's sort of Empire and the Empire's likely costs. The book's conclusion, that America's dominance and power is fragile is insightful and very pertinent, given the disastrous Iraq war and the drastic decline of the dollar over the past year.

Chalmers Johnson was a former professor of Political Science at UC Berkeley who has just written a new book called The Sorrows of Empire and has recently been getting some press and interviews

Blowback is a very impressive book. Written in 2000 it describes how America's Empire is not in the interests of America or the world and the probability that if American policy and the US view of the world does not change then blowback is a probable consequence. Johnson makes the point that a terrorist attack is very likely on US soil in response to US policies. This was written in 2000. Johnson is not unique to have said this, but it is significant.

It is not written from the point of view of the black arm band view of history. Johnson says openly that the US's aims are far better and that it is not an empire as previous empires were.

I do not believe that America's "vast array of strategical commitments" were made in past decades largely as the result of attempts to exploit other nations for economic gain or simply to dominate them politically and militarily. Although the United States has in the past engaged in imperialist exploitation of other nations, particularly in Latin America, it has also tried in various ways to liquidate many such commitments. The roots of American "imperial overstretch" today are not the same as those of past empires. Instead they more closely resemble those that brought down the Soviet Union.

Many Americans do not care to see their country's acts, policies or situations compared with the Soviet Union's; some condemn such a comparison because it commits the fallacy of "moral equivalence". They insist that America's values and institutions are vastly more humane than those of Stalin's Russia. I agree.

But nonetheless, he sees that the US's very expensive global network of military bases as a mistake. He does not believe that the US is the "indispensable nation" as Madeleine Albright does.

The book goes into detail in the area of his expertise, East Asia. He describes how the US system of bases in Japan is problematic and how the economic relationship between the US and East Asia is unstable and undesirable.

He details the deals the deals and awareness the CIA had of Korean massacres and other events and how US support of essentially corrupt politicians in Japan contributed to Japan's problems.

He also points out the problems with Japan and East Asia's growth, which is dependent on the US market while being sympathetic. He makes the point that there are different types of capitalism, he describes the US version as being finance capitalism while Japan had different institutions. He writes about how pure economic analysis ignores the more important role of institutions in different economies.

Johnson describes how the US - East Asian relationship suffered a strong blow in the Asian crash of '97. It is perhaps suffering and about to suffer it's second crash now as the US dollar falls.

Johnson's views on terrorism are very sober and without the awful rhetoric that has arisen since the declaration of the so called 'War on Terrorism'. He writes about how terrorism as a very probable result of the US's push for global dominance.

As Member's of the Defense Science board wrote in a 1997 report to the undersecretary of defense for aquisition and technology, "Historical data shows a strong correlation between US involvement in international situations and an increase in terrorist attacks against the US. In addition, the military asymmetry that denies nation states the ability to engage in over attacks against the US drives the use of transnational actors [that is, terrorists from one country attacking another]

He makes the point more than once too.

The view of the collapse of the Soviet Union is also interesting. He says that the USSR over extended itself in the Afghanistan war and that Gorbachev did not intend for the whole thing to fall apart, merely to change. He also makes the case that the largely US military build up in the 1980s did not cause the USSR's downfall as previous spending was quite sufficient. He writes about how Gorbachev was advised that missile defense projects were highly likely to be ineffective and easy to get around whilst constructing a missile defense system would cost huge amounts of money.

He goes on to say that US spending on Defence today is similar to the USSR's economy and that the US's economic position also has some similarities in that the US has, in order to try and assert it's authority over Pax America, strained itself in ways that will prove deleterious to the US.

He describes how in the US powers that liked the Cold War setup, once Communism had fallen, created the wonderful new threat of 'instability' which the US was required to counter militarily around the World. He also describes how globalisation was used to push capitalism with US style institutions, or not even that and being merely the recommendations of economic fundamentalists from the World Bank in order to co-opt other countries economically into Pax Americana.

In short, 4 years on from when it was written Blowback looks almost prophetic. The situation faced by the US today involves few changes from the one described by Johnson should the US not re-evaluate it's path. It's sad that it looks like it will take more than a change of policy in Washington and instead a disaster in Iraq and a probably economic decline to make the powers that be realise that while the US is a great and powerful country it cannot and should not try to run the world.

The thesis for Chalmers Johnson's book, Nemesis , is that democracy and empire are incompatible. A nation must choose between one or other - as the two cannot co-exist.

He writes:

Over any lengthy period of time, successful imperialism requires that a domestic republic or a domestic democracy change into a domestic tyranny. This is what happened to the Roman Republic; that is what I fear is happening in the United States as the imperial presidency gathers strength at the expense of the constitutional balance of governmental powers as militarism takes even deeper root in the society.

It did not happen in Britain, although it was more likely and altogether less noble than either Arendt or contemporary apologists for British imperialism imply. Nonetheless Britain escaped the transformation into tyranny largely because of a post-World War II resurgence of democracy and popular revulsion at the routine practices of imperialism.

Central to his thesis is that the checks and balances of Madisonian Republicanism cannot exist under the almost permanent state of war an empire finds itself in. This means that the Executive ends up dominating the legislative and judicial. There is ample evidence that the Bush Administration has actively pursued this by claiming that a President in time of war or faced with national security concerns must have absolute power. Vice President Dick Cheney and Attorney-General's lawyer John Yoo have provided the political and legal backing for such a premise even if their arguments directly contradict the US Constitution.

Johnson's use of Britain in his argument is interesting. The British Westminster system has very poor checks and balances. For instance the Executive is embedded in the Legislative, and in the case of Washminster systems like Australia, representatives of the upper house can be a member of the Executive as well - further deteriorating the doctrine of separation of the powers. The London Westminster system, if anything, is know for its complete centralisation which is only now starting to federalise with Scottish and Welsh self-government. It is an Executive dominated form of government.

I used to be of the opinion that the Westminster system was a hack to route around the absolute power of the monarch. The battles between Pitt the elder and King George were as much about monarch or parliamentary dominance of the executive as they were on foreign and military policy. But Britain's checks and balances are poor anyway: plus they were coming from an executive dominated monarchical system or government to an executive dominated parliamentary system. So there wasn't the same checks and balances to be eroded as their are in the US Constitution or the Roman tribune system.

I don't think the erosion of checks and balances stands up under scrutiny with the British Empire. Which is probably why Johnson sticks to discussing Rome as the historical analogy. I can accept however that the end of empire left Britain with an executive dominated form of democracy. I think it is fairly obvious that in battle between branches of government the Executive wins nine times out of ten - and usually with party machine or judicial backing.

The other major issue he raises, that militarism leads to the degrading of democratic governance, I think is correct. President Eisenhower made a speech warning against the military industrial complex in the 1950s. As Johnson points out, it becomes a political economy, not anchored in economic efficiency but in political patronage and corruption. Where the arguments for a weapons system are not how effective it will be, but how many jobs it will create in a representative's district. A state must be able to defend itself from outside coercion, but not past that point, and certainly not where the military industrial complex becomes what Franklin Spinney calls a 'self-licking ice cream cone'.

This may be where Britain kept its domestic democracy - it dropped the militarism. I am reminded of Immanuel Kant's Perpetual Peace where he argues that international peace is impossible until all nations get their internal constitution's in order - that means keeping Executive practice in constitutional bounds.

x-posted on troppo and eurotrib