Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic (American Empire Project)

Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic (American Empire Project) | Chalmers Johnson | Nemesis--an indispensible education

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Nemesis: The Last ...

	Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic (American Empire Project) Chalmers Johnson Holt Paperbacks, 2008 - 368 pages average customer review:based on 70 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

America's constitutional crisis

In this third volume of his "inadvertent trilogy" about the costs and consequences of American empire, Chalmers Johnson predicts our nation's appointment with Nemesis, "the goddess of retribution and vengeance, the punisher of pride and hubris." In Greek, "nemesis" means "to give what is due." Mind you, Johnson has a record of political prophecy.

In Blowback (2000), published eighteen months before the 9/11 attacks and largely ignored at the time, he warned that our global militarism and predatory economic policies virtually assured retaliations for decades to come. Today his warning reads like a diagnosis. In The Sorrows of Empire (2004), he detailed the breadth and depth of American militarism. Unlike ancient empires, our imperial hegemony consists not of conquered territories but of military bases. Today the Department of Defense admits that America deploys 254,788 military personnel (double that number if you include dependents) to at least 725 military bases in 153 countries (there are 189 countries in the United Nations). That does not include numerous secret and officially nonexistent bases, or the tens of thousand of private contractors that do the bidding of the Department of Defense for enormous profits. Our own country is home to 969 separate bases in all fifty states.

Nemesis conducts the autopsy. America's fate, he says, is "probably by now unavoidable." Starting with the end of the Spanish-American war in 1898, and then accelerating rapidly after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, what we have witnessed here in America, says Johnson, is the breakdown of constitutional government. The main culprit is militaristic imperialism. His longer litany of causes is not new, but neither are they less corrosive --the CIA as the president's "private army" that is accountable to no one, the institutionalization of corruption in the legislature, a feckless judiciary, endemic secrecy that renders it impossible to know what parts of the government are doing, renditions to a far-flung network of prisons (eg, "Human Rights Watch has identified at least twenty-four secret detention and interrogation centers worldwide operated by the CIA."), the legalization of torture, domestic spying, flagrant disregard for international treaties, the militarization of space, staggering national debt owed to foreign creditors, and exaggerated claims of executive privilege. Johnson's tone is strident, his arguments polemical. Although he believes the Bush administration is the most egregious example of the problems he details, he is not partisan in the narrow sense; the constitutional crisis is far worse than any single administration.

In an especially instructive chapter Johnson compares the "imperial pathologies" of Rome and Britain, arguing that militarism and imperialism are necessarily enemies of democracy. As "archetypes" of empires that tried to have their cake and eat it too, Rome and Britain tried to foster democracy at home and imperialism around the globe. America now faces a stark choice between the two models. Like Britain, we can forfeit empire and retain democracy, or like Rome we can hold on to empire and lose our democracy. "The likelihood," he believes, "is that the United States will maintain a facade of constitutional government and drift along until financial bankruptcy overtakes it."

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Nemesis--an indispensible education

Nemesis is the last book in a trilogy. I have read them all and believe I am much more aware of what is really going on in our country. The negative way the world sees us finally makes sense. Chalmers Johnson has done an enormous amount of research and explains the issues in a clear and interesting manner. I've had trouble putting the books down.

Nemesis by Chalmers Johnson

All who are interested in the Bush-inspired quagmire that we are in today should read this to understand the psychology and sociology that historically has led to the end of a society. There are some implications and assumptions that are made to compare past "empires" and some political and economic sections are a bit esoteric, but overall it's quite intriguing. If you think this is for you make sure you read "Blowback" before "Nemesis" which was the first of Johnson's trilogy.

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An Imperial America?

Certainly Chalmers Johnson thinks we are an imperial power and at great length provides information to prove that we are. Nemesis is the final book in Johnson's triology and he returns to familiar themes of exalted executive power, a far-reaching military presence, and a sinister, near-independent CIA bent on evil.

Some thoughts. While Johnson notes 700 plus American military bases of some sort throughout the world, most of them are tiny and have other functions than establishing Pax Americana throughout the earth. Johnson is at pains to illustrate misbehaving service personnel, and the problems they create for us and the host country, but exceptions do not prove the rule. The vast majority serve honorably and often helpfully in the host countries where they are located. Many of the major bases as Johnson knows were established primarily as trip wires in the Cold War, to prevent aggression and to bolster in Europe a minimal defense force, NATO, to act as a deterrent and to deal with rogue actors. After WWII, the US provided the only military force flexible [air and naval] and powerful enough to deal with attacks against the world order, e.g., in Korea and Kuwait. Of course, this presents dangers as well, and an administration such as the present one unwisely, to put it kindly, that asserts military power [Iraq] undercuts American ideals and its standing in the rest of the world. No disagreement with Johnson on this point. And no disagreement, either, over the power of the military-industrial complex and the influence it exerts, through a compliant Congress, on pouring money into dubious projects, such as the missile defense system.

Although the Bush-Cheney leadership of this country, and the subversion of rights and secrecy in imposing these measures as necessary to fight the war against terror, has been a black mark on our country, I don't buy the idea that Bush-Cheney have in mind setting up some sort of fascist America. Rather, I think they have, particularly Cheney, an outdated fixation on an assumed erosion of executive power that has to be corrected. A new administration, whether Democrat or Republican, will almost certainly follow a different course.

One can rail as Johnson does about alleged and real CIA operations. Almost all CIA operations are at the instigation of the Executive branch. But there have been many successful and necessary CIA activities, particularly in the murky world of tracking terrorists and their organizations in breaking up terrorist plots before they could be initiated. To do away with the CIA and rely on the State Department for human intelligence ignores the realities of the world.

Nevertheless, the book does pull together many interesting details on issues and incidents often little reported which should be more widely examined and debated, and the writing is often spritely. But in doing so, the author ignores context and facts that counter some of his arguments. Read, but with caution and an open mind as to a differing interpretation of some of the presumed "misdeeds" of Imperial America.

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