The Sorrows of Empire
"The Sorrows of Empire," is authored by Chalmers Johnson, who informs us that America is, indeed, an empire, tells us how we got that way through militarism and globalization, and points out that like all previous empires, our empire is doomed and will lead to lots of sorrows to Americans like you and me.
Johnson claims that America is not an empire in the old sense of having colonies, but in the sense of dominating the world and being the richest country in the world. It dominates the world through militarism. It keeps itself the richest through globalization.
Militarism is necessary to grow and maintain an empire. Many previous presidents, both Democrats and Republicans, have been militaristic. But none were as aggressively militaristic as our current president. His administration announced that America would make sure that it remains a "sole superpower" and that no nation would be allowed to become strong enough to challenge the U.S. We have the biggest and most sophisticated arms industry in the world, we spend more on arms than all other nations combined, we have the fiercest war department in the world. And get this:
America has 725 known military bases spread in nooks and crannies all over the globe. In addition, there are plenty of secret bases.
Why do we need 725 bases? Here's a related question: Why did we attack Iraq? Did it have anything to do with bases? According to Johnson, Jay Bookman, of the Atlanta-Journal Constitution, said this before the Iraq War began:
Why does the administration seem unconcerned about an exit strategy from Iraq once Saddam is toppled? Because we won't be leaving. Having conquered Iraq, the United States will create permanent military bases in that country from which to dominate the Middle East, including neighboring Iran."
Yes, we need bases in order to "dominate the Middle East." You can't run an empire unless you dominate others.
Here in the U.S. we have checks and balances to prevent corruption. However, there are many things the military wants to do that are not proper. How does it do it? Through privatization - let corporations do some of the dirty work. Johnson presents the comments of Colonel Bruce Grant with reference to privatization:
Privatization is a way of going around Congress and not telling the public. Foreign policy is made by default by private military consultants motivated by bottom-line profits.
In addition to dominating the world through militarism, the empire of U.S. uses globalization to grow ever more richer. For this it has a few tools: multinational corporations, the World Bank, the IMF and the World Trade Organization. We have been told that the latter three have been set up to fight poverty. So how come the rich are getting richer and the poor are still struggling? Because this was the plan all along. As Johnson devastatingly points out:
There is no known case in which globalization has led to prosperity in any Third World country, and none of the world's twenty-four reasonably developed capitalist nations, regardless of their ideological explanations, got where they are by following any of the prescriptions contained in globalization doctrine.
Johnson tells us that no good will come of our empire. Here are a few of the "sorrows" we can expect:
- PERPETUAL WAR - Domination cannot be achieved unless you are perpetually at war. There always is someone who does not like your domination and challenges it. Many Americans will die
- POVERTY - Multinational corporations in their pursuit of more profits will reduce wages of employees to the miserable levels they are in the Third World; corporations will be rich but their employees will be poor. Furthermore, war is very expensive, so much so that it will deprive citizens of other needs
- AUTHORITARIANISM - An empire is run by an emperor, of which George W. Bush is a reasonable facsimile. Already we have a Patriot Act, a surveillance act and a torture act. The emperor alone can designate anyone as an "enemy combatant" and put him in a "dungeon" for the rest of his life. Pretty soon the Constitution will be meaningless
In any event, all empires eventually collapse. Like the Roman Empire, the American Empire will collapse too.
Read "The Sorrows of Empire" and weep.
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