Chalmers Johnson - Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic

Praise for Nemesis

Nemesis, the final volume in the remarkable Blowback trilogy, completes a true patriots anguished and devastating critique of the militarism that threatens to destroy the United States from within. In detail and with unflinching candor, Chalmers Johnson decries the discrepancies between what America professes to be and what it has actually becomea global empire of military bases and operations; a secret government increasingly characterized by covert activities, enormous black budgets, and near dictatorial executive power; a misguided republic that has betrayed its noblest ideals and most basic founding principles in pursuit of disastrously conceived notions of security, stability, and progress.

John Dower, author of

Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II

Chalmers Johnson, a patriot who pulls no punches, has emerged as our most prescient critic of American empire and its pretensions. Nemesis is his fiercest bookand his best.

Andrew J. Bacevich, author of The New American Militarism

Johnson s book is a sober reminder that the U.S. has become an empire.... His most searing commentary to date on the current state of U.S. politics.

Financial Times

Nemesis is a stimulating, sweeping study in which Johnson asks a most profound strategic question: Can we maintain the global dominance we now regard as our natural right? His answer is chilling. You do not have to agree with everything Johnson saysI dontbut if you agree with even half of his policy critiques, you will still slam the book down on the table, swearing, We have to change this!

Joseph Cirincione, senior vice president for national security

and international policy, Center for American Progress

Each of Johnsons erudite chapters both enlightens and disturbs.... His writing is often described as epolemic, but that doesnt capture the heartfelt concern that underlies his distress about our country.

In These Times

The three volumes (Blowback, The Sorrows of Empire, Nemesis) constitute a well-written, detailed, and stimulating display of the radical anti-imperialist critique of American foreign policy. Nemesis is particularly good in sounding the alarm. Countervailing reactions are now clearly under way once again, and Johnsons book is a primer on much that needs to be done.

The San Diego Union-Tribune

Nemesis is a five-alarm warning about flaming militarism, burning imperial attitudes, secret armies, and executive arrogance that has torched and consumed the Constitution and brought the American Republic to deaths door. Johnson shares a simple, liberating, and healing path back to worthy republicanism. But the frightening and heartbreaking details contained in Nemesis suggest that the goddess of retribution will not be so easily satisfied before the right order of things is restored.

Karen Kwiatkowski, retired U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel

Last fall a treasonous Congress gave the president license to kidnap, tortureyou name iton an imperial scale. All of us, citizens and noncitizens alike, are fair game. Kudos for not being silent, Chalmers, and for completing your revealing trilogy with undaunted courage.

Ray McGovern, former CIA analyst;

cofounder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)

Before 9/11, when Chalmers Johnson warned us of Blowback, too few listened. When Johnson then urged us to rethink Americas imperial course in The Sorrows of Empire, he went deeper, exploring the wages of global American militarism. Now comes Nemesis, the third in the trilogy, an urgent warning for a country that, in the words of Dwight Eisenhower, risks destroying from within that which it is trying to protect from without. Johnson is a national treasure. Lets hope we listen this time.

Eugene Jarecki, director of Why We Fight,

Grand Jury Prize Winner, Sundance Film Festival

Chalmers Johnsons voice has never been more urgently needed, and in Nemesis it rings with eloquence, clarity, and truth.

James Carroll, author of House of War

NEMESIS

NEMESIS

ALSO BY CHALMERS JOHNSON

The Sorrows of Empire:

Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic

Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire

Peasant Nationalism and Communist Power: The Emergence of Revolutionary

China, 19371945

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 Peoples War

Japans 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 Japans Development Strategy Works

(with Laura DAndrea Tyson and John Zysman)

Japan: Who Governs? The Rise of the Developmental State

Okinawa: Cold War Island

(editor and contributor)

NEMESIS

THE LAST DAYS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC

CHALMERS JOHNSON

Holt Paperbacks

Henry Holt and Company, LLC

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A Holt Paperback and are registered trademarks of

Henry Holt and Company, LLC.

Copyright 2006 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.

Nemesis: the last days of the American Republic / Chalmers Johnson. p. cm.

Includes index.

ISBN-13: 978-0-8050-8728-4

ISBN-10: 0-8050-8728-1

1. United StatesForeign relations1989 2. United StatesMilitary policy. 3. United StatesPolitics and government1989 I. Title.

E840.J633 2007

973.931dc22 2006047200

Henry Holt books are available for special promotions and

premiums. For details contact: Director, Special Markets.

Originally published in hardcover in 2006 by Metropolitan Books

First Holt Paperbacks Edition 2008

Printed in the United States of America

13579 10 8642

NEMESIS

In Greek mythology,

the goddess of retribution,

who punishes human

transgression of the natural,

right order of things and

the arrogance that causes it.

Contents

Prologue: The Blowback Trilogy

1. Militarism and the Breakdown of Constitutional Government

2. Comparative Imperial Pathologies: Rome, Britain, and America

3. Central Intelligence Agency: The Presidents Private Army

4. U.S. Military Bases in Other Peoples Countries

5. How American Imperialism Actually Works: The SOFA in Japan

6. Space: The Ultimate Imperialist Project

7. The Crisis of the American Republic

Notes

Acknowledgments

Index

Prologue: The Blowback Trilogy

Who is Osama bin Laden really? Let me rephrase that. What is Osama bin Laden? Hes Americas family secret. He is the American presidents dark Doppelganger. The savage twin of all that purports to be beautiful and civilized. He has been sculpted from the spare rib of a world laid to waste by Americas foreign policy: its gunboat diplomacy, its nuclear arsenal, its vulgarly stated policy of full-spectrum dominance, its chilling disregard for non-American lives, its barbarous military interventions, its support for despotic and dictatorial regimes, its merciless economic agenda that has munched through the economies of poor countries like a cloud of locusts Now that the family secret has been spilled, the twins are blurring into one another and gradually becoming interchangeable.