Blowback, what's that?
Apr. 20th, 2007 07:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jmc_bksAmy Goodman’s radio/TV program Democracy Now! is inflating my TBR and TBB outrageously. I picked up Chalmers Johnson’s Blowback after he was interviewed last month or the month before.
The full title is Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire. Although I’d heard the term before and understood its general meaning (seems obvious, right?), I didn’t realize that the term was coined originally by the CIA to describe the unintended consequences of policies that were kept secret from the American people. As Johnson puts it,
Admission up front: my knowledge of American foreign policy has been in Central and Latin America primarily. I know little to nothing about East Asia, beyond the basic geography and general facts about the Sino-Russian war and the Japanese invasion of China and Korea before and during World War II. Johnson managed to condense thousands of years of history to the most relevant points for the discussion of their political relationships with the United States and their economic development. And it is fascinating. As I read, I found myself dog-earing pages, so I could come back to them. (I know, bad jmc, defacing books.)
ETA: Johnson's writing style is very readable, geared toward the average reader rather than an academic. The language and the organization of subject matter are straightforward -- little of the doubling back or jargon that often bothers me when I read mass market books written by academics. For example, when I try to read Noam Chomsky, I get a headache; he's brilliant, but his writing style is a disappointment, IMO. FWIW, if I'm reading academically-geared work, I expect technical stuff; it's finding it in mass market stuff that bothers me. This book seems to have been written for an audience interested in reading and learning, and manages to instruct without turning into a textbook.
I suppose more than anything, Blowback made clear to me how the military-industrial complex and the Pentagon drive foreign policy, not America’s diplomatic corps or politicians. Which is profoundly disturbing on a couple of levels. First, because militarism, via occupation (“friendly” or otherwise), only imposes a police state; it doesn’t foster democracy, which can only be successful long-term if it is organic (IMO). Second, because a military response, however well-intentioned, tends to override the humanitarian and lacks the cultural and linguistic components necessary to achieve diplomatic goals.
Johnson examines American good intentions and not-so-good intentions, along with the delusions that superpowers tend to have (such as the belief that their participation in events is always pivotal or essential), along with our selective (inconsistent, hypocritical) application of human rights. His quote of a sociologist’s analysis of HR gave me a lightbulb moment:
Lightbulb for me because my knowledge of human rights is filtered through American constitutional law; we read and discussed the UNHR conventions, but we concentrated more on legal opinions and analyses of war crimes and the like, which lead back to individual rights, rather than societal rights. The western concept rather than the eastern.
Also important is Johnson’s analysis of how America has sacrificed its own industry in order to pay for the empire abroad, along with the brief discussion of trade imbalances and currency valuation, which was particularly timely for me in terms of understanding, since last week the value of the dollar dropped against the British pound and the Euro and probably other currencies as well.
The closing paragraph of Blowback begins
Johnson wrote this first book of his trilogy on American Empire in 2000; since then, the biggest blowback ever on American soil has occurred; more is occurring every day in Iraq and Afghanistan. I’m looking forward to reading The Sorrows of Empire and Nemesis, the second and third books in his trilogy, to see his analysis of blowback in the context of current events.
Random factoid, out of date but still interesting to me: pre-war cost of maintaining access to Persian Gulf = $50 Billion Def. budget; cost of the oil imported = $11 Billion. (4)
I’m out of practice citing anything other than court opinions and I don’t have my copy of The Blue Book or Strunk & White handy, so here are my cites, please forgive stylistic errors and the fact that I couldn't figure out the html for superscripts:
1. Johnson, Chalmers. Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire. (New York, NY: Metropolitan Books, 2000), p. 17.
2. Ibid., p. 167
3. Ibid., p. 229. Original source: Irving Louis Horowitz, Foreward, in Abdul Aziz Said, ed., Human Rights and World Order (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1978), pp. vii-viii.)
4. Ibid., p87
The full title is Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire. Although I’d heard the term before and understood its general meaning (seems obvious, right?), I didn’t realize that the term was coined originally by the CIA to describe the unintended consequences of policies that were kept secret from the American people. As Johnson puts it,
“In a sense, blowback is simply another way of saying that a nation reaps what it sows. Although people usually know what they have sown, our national experience of blowback is seldom imagined in such terms because so much of what the managers of the American empire have sown has been kept secret.” (1)Johnson is a scholar who specializes in East Asia, so Blowback concentrates on the imposition of the American military, government and economic policies on East Asia, specifically China, the Koreas and Japan, from World War II through 2000.
Admission up front: my knowledge of American foreign policy has been in Central and Latin America primarily. I know little to nothing about East Asia, beyond the basic geography and general facts about the Sino-Russian war and the Japanese invasion of China and Korea before and during World War II. Johnson managed to condense thousands of years of history to the most relevant points for the discussion of their political relationships with the United States and their economic development. And it is fascinating. As I read, I found myself dog-earing pages, so I could come back to them. (I know, bad jmc, defacing books.)
ETA: Johnson's writing style is very readable, geared toward the average reader rather than an academic. The language and the organization of subject matter are straightforward -- little of the doubling back or jargon that often bothers me when I read mass market books written by academics. For example, when I try to read Noam Chomsky, I get a headache; he's brilliant, but his writing style is a disappointment, IMO. FWIW, if I'm reading academically-geared work, I expect technical stuff; it's finding it in mass market stuff that bothers me. This book seems to have been written for an audience interested in reading and learning, and manages to instruct without turning into a textbook.
I suppose more than anything, Blowback made clear to me how the military-industrial complex and the Pentagon drive foreign policy, not America’s diplomatic corps or politicians. Which is profoundly disturbing on a couple of levels. First, because militarism, via occupation (“friendly” or otherwise), only imposes a police state; it doesn’t foster democracy, which can only be successful long-term if it is organic (IMO). Second, because a military response, however well-intentioned, tends to override the humanitarian and lacks the cultural and linguistic components necessary to achieve diplomatic goals.
Johnson examines American good intentions and not-so-good intentions, along with the delusions that superpowers tend to have (such as the belief that their participation in events is always pivotal or essential), along with our selective (inconsistent, hypocritical) application of human rights. His quote of a sociologist’s analysis of HR gave me a lightbulb moment:
Politics is a game of vulnerabilities, and the human rights issue is clearly where the “socialist” world has proven most vulnerable, just as the economic rights issue is where the “capitalist” world is most open to criticism…. The debate on human rights can be conceptualized in part as a struggle between eighteenth century libertarian persuasions (the West) and nineteenth century egalitarian beliefs (China) – that is, from a vision of human rights having to do with the right of individual justice before the law to a recognition of the rights of individuals to social security and equitable conditions of word and standards of living.” (2)
Lightbulb for me because my knowledge of human rights is filtered through American constitutional law; we read and discussed the UNHR conventions, but we concentrated more on legal opinions and analyses of war crimes and the like, which lead back to individual rights, rather than societal rights. The western concept rather than the eastern.
Also important is Johnson’s analysis of how America has sacrificed its own industry in order to pay for the empire abroad, along with the brief discussion of trade imbalances and currency valuation, which was particularly timely for me in terms of understanding, since last week the value of the dollar dropped against the British pound and the Euro and probably other currencies as well.
The closing paragraph of Blowback begins
World politics in the twenty-first centuray will in al likelikhood be drivien primarily by blowback from the secondhalf of the twentieth centruary – that is, from the unintended consequences of the Cold War and the crucial American decision to maintain a Cold War posture in a post-Cold War world. (3)p229 Which is quite prophetic, given the state of the world today, although probably not a huge leap to make in terms of predictions.
Johnson wrote this first book of his trilogy on American Empire in 2000; since then, the biggest blowback ever on American soil has occurred; more is occurring every day in Iraq and Afghanistan. I’m looking forward to reading The Sorrows of Empire and Nemesis, the second and third books in his trilogy, to see his analysis of blowback in the context of current events.
Random factoid, out of date but still interesting to me: pre-war cost of maintaining access to Persian Gulf = $50 Billion Def. budget; cost of the oil imported = $11 Billion. (4)
I’m out of practice citing anything other than court opinions and I don’t have my copy of The Blue Book or Strunk & White handy, so here are my cites, please forgive stylistic errors and the fact that I couldn't figure out the html for superscripts:
1. Johnson, Chalmers. Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire. (New York, NY: Metropolitan Books, 2000), p. 17.
2. Ibid., p. 167
3. Ibid., p. 229. Original source: Irving Louis Horowitz, Foreward, in Abdul Aziz Said, ed., Human Rights and World Order (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1978), pp. vii-viii.)
4. Ibid., p87
