U.S. foreign policy: overview and key principles

Blowback

As we begin this discussion of Chalmers Johnson's book, Blowback, it is interesting to note that it was written in 2000, a year before the attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 (9-11). This was not the first attack on the Center, and in articles written after 9-11, Johnson has maintained that the 9-11 attacks fit within the patterns he describes in his book.

Blowback' is shorthand for saying that a nation reaps what it sows, even if it does not fully understand what it has sown." It is a term used in espionage to describe unintended consequences. It can also mean retaliation as the result of actions undertaken by nations. According to Johnson, it is a term first used by the CIA "in March 1954 in a recently declassified report on the 1953 operation to overthrow the government of Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran. It is a metaphor for the unintended consequences of the U.S. government's international activities that have been kept secret from the American people." In his book, Blowback, Johnson uses the term to attempt to show that the evil nature of American foreign policy has consistently resulted in unwelcome consequences. "Military crimes, accidents, and atrocities make up only one category on the debit side of the balance sheet that the United States (U.S.) has been accumulating, especially since the Cold War." central point in Johnson's argument is that America is an empire, but not in the sense that we commonly think of as an empire..

In speaking of an "American Empire," however, I am not using the concept in these traditional senses. I am not talking about the United States' former colony in the Philippines, or about such dependent territories as Puerto Rico; nor when I use the term "imperilism" in this book do I mean the extension of one state's legal domination over another; nor do I even want to imply that imperialism must have primarily economic causes. The modern empires I have in mind normally lie concealed beneath some ideological or judicial concept - commonwealth, alliance, free world, the West, the communist bloc - that disguises the actual relationships among its members.

In Johnson's view this empire is maintained at a very high cost to people both at home and abroad. When he speaks of blowback, the danger is not just to Americans, such as in the attacks on the World Trade Center in 1993, which he attributes to our actions in the first Gulf War and support of Israel. The danger is also to other people around the world, such as the difficulties which took place in Chile after the United States assisted the military coup of Allende in September 1973.

If this incident in Chile seems vague, it is because of another part of Johnson's message, which is that most of the situations in which the U.S. has interfered in a similar clandestine manner have been kept secret from the American people. "No ordinary citizen of the United States knew anything about these machinations. The coup d'etat took place on September 11, 1973, resulting in the suicide of Allende and the seizure of power by General Augusto Pinochet." third argument that Johnson makes in his book and subsequent articles is that the military and CIA actually control the government.

Two of the most influential federal institutions are not in Washington but on the south side of the Potomac River - the Defense Department and the Central Intelligence Agency. Given their influence today, one must conclude that the government outlined in the Constitution of 1787 no longer bears much relationship to the government that actually rules from Washington. Until that is corrected, we should probably stop talking about "democracy" and "human rights."

His premise is that the power and autonomy of the defense establishment has increased in collusion with defense contractors. He points to the elimination of the draft as a contributing factor, calling the armed forces "mercenaries" and proposes that service in the military is the obligation of all citizens.

He points to a number of recent incidents by the military as a sign that it has, lost its relationship to the country because service in it is no longer an obligation of citizenship. Our military operates the biggest arms sales operation on earth; it rapes girls, women and schoolchildren in Okinawa; it cuts ski-lift cables in Italy, killing twenty vacationers, and dismisses what its insubordinate pilots have done as a "training accident"; it allows its nuclear attack submarines to be used for joy rides for wealthy civilian supporters and then covers up the negligence that caused the sinking of a Japanese high school training ship; it propagandizes the nation with Hollywood films glorifying military service (Pearl Harbor); and it manipulates the political process to get more carrier task forces, antimissile missiles, nuclear weapons, stealth bombers and other expensive gadgets for which we have no conceivable use.

He maintains that, as the size and prominence of the forces rise over time, the nation is more likely to use force in situations when other means of foreign policy would be more appropriate.

Johnson makes some interesting points, and certainly there is ample evidence that blowback does exist to some extent. However, his solution to remove U.S. influence from obligations around the world, seem somewhat simplistic. Under his logic, he would have this country withdraw support from long-time ally Israel. The problem in the Middle East may not be that the U.S. has projected too much influence in that region, but rather that we have failed to be engaged enough with the parties. Certainly support for the only democratic state in that region should be considered appropriate.