Rating: 
Summary: Some spurious claims harm important policy critique
Review: The CIA term "blowback" can be reduced to a truism: actions have consequences. Professor Chalmers Johnson has put meat on that skeletal premise, and produced an important foreign policy critique that is, unfortunately, riddled with some spurious analogies and ridiculous assertions.Using East Asia as his primary model, Johnson demonstrates how economic and military imperialism ultimately hurt the United States. The author details the anger directed at US troops deployed overseas, the devastation spawned by American and IMF economic policies, and "stealth imperialism" that destabilizes foreign governments in ways not always apparent. The author is on solid ground when he analyzes how imperial ambitions can harm the United States through such blowback as terrorism and the loss of the nation's industrial base. Professor Johnson weakens his argument, though, with shaky claims and strained analogies. As an example, the author correctly points out that about 3,000 South Koreans were massacred at Kwangju in 1980, something unknown to most Americans. Yet he goes on to draw a moral equivalence between North Korea and South Korea. North Korea has, as official policy, starved to death more than a million people. South Korea would have to commit a Kwangju each day for a year just to catch up with the North's most recent genocidal policy. Professor Johnson also gives a pass to China, which he greatly admires. The professor fails to acknowledge how that emerging power's policies very well may produce blowback similar to that now experienced by the United States. The author does detail China's persecution of Tibet, but he overlooks similar actions taken against the Muslims in the western desert. The latter likely will produce Islamist terrorism in the future. Some of these shortcomings can be attributed to Professor Johnson trying to refight the Cold War to achieve a conclusion more compatible with his leftist perspective. The author is best when he sticks to undeniable truths. Among these are day to day outrages committed on and around overseas bases. From rape to noise pollution, the indignities that emanate from these US military installations incite hatred and anger among civilian populations. Johnson also excels when he explains the meltdown of East Asian economies in 1997. His familiarity with the region and scholarly analysis of this crisis make for thought-provoking reading. The strongest points involve military adventurism. As the author points out, America's elected officials and influential policymakers often have not have experienced the horror of war. On an even more disturbing note, the military establishment has divorced itself from the civilian leadership. Consequently, war often is preferred over diplomacy. This bodes ill for the future. If Professor Johnson had gone lighter on polemics and heavier on facts, this easily would be a five star book. As it is, this is an important work that requires the reader to wade through a lot of foolishness.
Rating: 
Summary: the horrible consequences of empire for Asia
Review: I'm of two minds about Chalmers Johnson's Blowback. On the one hand, it's probably the best critical introduction to US foreign policy in Asia. On the other hand, Johnson too often chooses polemics over nuance and has a somewhat confused approach to imperialism and what to do about it. The first thing to know is that both the title and subtitle are misleading. This is a book almost exclusively about US imperialism in East and Southeast Asia. It rarely explores other regions or what's usually termed blowback. What Johnson does do is much more valuable - he explains America's military and economic policies toward Asia without getting stuck in the stultifying prose of security experts or the bewildering technical jargon of economists. It's not a pretty picture. We see the destructive legacy of American bases in Okinawa and elsewhere, the US complicity in the South Korean military's atrocities on Cheju (after World War II) and Kwangju (1980), the US arming and training of Indonesia's death squad military, the relentless push for a militarized Asia by the American military-industrial complex, and the horrible consequences of American economic priorities. We also learn a good deal about the recent history and politics of the region's major states. Johnson's strength is in recounting the specificities of US foreign policy; he's much weaker at an overall understanding of imperialism. He seems to think that American policymakers have naively built up the economic strength of their Japanese, Korean, and now Chinese competitors by focusing on maintaining their own military power. This is an old critique, resting on the notion that imperialism hurts the imperialists. But Johnson is relying on the idea that "America" is a unitary entity, so that the hollowing out of industry hurts "America", not specific social groups within the country. In reality, US foreign policymakers work to advance the interests not of "America", but of those same business elites that have benefited from turning Asia into the world's sweatshop and undermining the unions that built their strength on American industry. American economic imperialism is not a failed conspiracy against the people of Asia, but an alliance between American elites and their Japanese, Korean, Indonesian, and Chinese counterparts - against the potential power of the working majority in all those countries. But it's more complex than that, too, since the US seeks to prevent the emergence of an independent military challenge (especially China, but also Japan) to its Asia hegemony while seeking to expand the power of American commercial interests in the region, even as it tries to keep Asian elites happy enough with the status quo to prevent their rebellion against it. In other words, the US system in Asia is more complicated than Johnson conveys, and defending America's mythical "national interests" will never address its fundamental injustices. While Johnson seems to have abundant sympathy for the people of Asia, his nationalist framework prevents his from proposing the only real challenge to American hegemony: a popular anti-imperialist movement that crosses the barriers of nation-states.
Rating:
Summary: Blowback
Review: Johnson rightly examines the unintentioned effects of American foreign policy. Keeping in mind that this book was originally written pre-9/11, his observations concerning Osama Bin-Laden are eerie. The book causes the reader to wonder what will be the consequences (blowback) of Bush's current foreign policy and war in Iraq.
Rating:
Summary: Solid and thought-provoking
Review: Johnson gives many of the same critiques of U.S. foreign policy that most left-wing intellectuals have made, but he does so without the polemicism and seeming single-mindedness of other writers, like Chomsky and Herman. Because of his own expertise on East Asia, he goes into topics that haven't received as much treatment elsewhere, including a particularly shrewd overview of North Korea's policy and how and why it has successfully outmaneuvred the United States. Another eye-opener is his chapter on South Korea, revealing the long and shameful U.S. support of the former dictatorial regimes. The one obvious flaw in his argument is that there is not, as yet, any sign of a significant anti-American sentiment in South Korea. And unlike many other writers, Johnson does provide genuine, if poorly detailed, policy prescriptions: withdraw troops from Korea, stop shipping weapons to Taiwan, be consistent on human rights for a change. Unfortunately, he doesn't flesh out these ideas enough to show how they would benefit in the United States. His economic views are essentially correct - that IMF "structural adjustment" programs have done more harm than good - but he doesn't really provide a coherent alternative. He mentions the Japanese malaise of the 1990s, but only cursorily, spending much more time on its golden decades before that. Despite its flaws, this book is a strongly recommended read for anyone interested in U.S.-Asian relations.
Rating:
Summary: Some parts excellent some parts pretty bad
Review: Chalmers Johnson writes about the United States and its involvement in other countries, most notably East Asia. He focuses on the Korean Peninsula and Japan, and has one chapter on the financial crisis that hit Asia in the late 90s. His arguement is that the United States should pull back its troops and make fewer commitments abroad. His foreign policy analysis is quite good. He argues that North Korea and China are not threats to the United States and that the USA should pull its troops out of Korea and Japan. He has quite a lot of evidence backing him up and he makes a very strong arguement. His chapter profiling Okinawa angered me and it is an excellent example of another pointless way the USA is bothering another part of the world. Unfortunately the book also brings up the fiscal policy of the United States and "globalization." Johnson is clearly an opponet of it and is quite against the IMF as well. His criticism of the system lacks in evidence. While he points out how the IMF made the situation worse in Indonesia, he fails to do it with Korea and Thailand, two other countries the IMF bailed out. It makes one wonder what exactly the IMF did wrong in the other two countries. Considering Korea was one of the few (i belive only china was the other) countries in Asia to see positive economic growth in 2001, I'd say the IMF couldn't be THAT bad. It seemed to me that Johnson has a much better grasp with foreign policy than he does with economics. Johnson is so adamament that the IMF is evil that he writes, "Capitals like Jakarta and Seoul smolder with the stort of resentment that the Germans had in the 1920s..." To me, that rings of complete hyperbole. Comparing Jakarta and Seoul is like comparing New York City to Vancouver, Canada. Jakarta (and Indonesia) is certainly not prospering at the moment, but seoul is hardly "smolder[ing]" with resentment.
Rating:
Summary: That Forbidden Word: Empire
Review: For practical purposes the eastern Pacific is an American lake, yet how many readers understand the role an obscure island like Okinawa plays in keeping it so. I didn't. But I do now, thanks to Johnson's valuable little book. Yes, the work's title is misleading; it needs a qualifier like Blowback in East Asia to be more accurate. Nonetheless, the chapters on Japan, and Meltdown, respectively, are little gems. Everyone knows that Japan sells alot to the US, but buys little in return. It doesn't seem fair. Their workers are employed, while ours increasingly aren't, and those who are need food stamps to survive. So should we blame them for taking away good American jobs. Not if Johnson is correct. The primary locus lies in Washington and Wall Street, not in Tokyo, Seoul or Jakarta. Simply put, it's the economics of empire that's to blame, although the term "empire" is never used in polite discourse, nor for that matter does Johnson bother to define it. But, regardless of what the network is called, reality is reality, and problems of imperial maintenance do arise, even for the experienced managers of Washington DC. The challenge lies in strong but dependent economies, like Japan's and South Korea's, who have evolved their own competing form of capitalism, yet still need markets to survive. Hence, to keep dependent Asian economies dependent and their subordinate polities subordinate, markets must be regulated and upstarts punished. The chief tools in this regard are trade policy and capital flows, topics about which the American electorate thankfully knows little. If using these for reasons of empire requires undercutting America's own manufacturing sector and the good wages that go with it, then that's the price of remaining Number One. How long the imperium can continue the juggling act, however, remains to be seen. Not every chapter is the equal of Japan, or Meltdown. The chapter on North Korea is very helpful for understanding the current standoff. The two on China are informative, but have little to do with blowback or empire, while the one on stealth imperialism is sub-Noam Chomsky. Moreover, the final chapter, which should be strong in summation, has little substance beyond the mildly speculative. On the other hand, prologues are often little more than bland introductions. This one however isn't. Johnson's prologue outlines in brief but telling detail a personal journey from empire's unwitting spear-carrier to that of clear-eyed critic. In its own way, it's a rather inspiring odyssey. One can only hope that increasing numbers of Americans make the same journey, because, unfortunately, empires are neither peaceable nor democratic, and rarely if ever self-liquidate.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent Indictment of American Injustices Kept Secret
Review: Chalmers Johnson is an exceptionally intelligent and gifted writer and analyst in foreign affairs. This book is packed with information and statistics, yet reads like a gripping novel...a horror novel. I encourage anyone and everyone to read this book, because it succeeds most notably in bringing to the eyes of the public the tragedies of American Imperialism that have long been buried and kept secret. For all those jingoistic patriots out there...read this, so when you start talking about America you might actually be informed.
Rating:
Summary: A high-quality, but a little one-sided, argument
Review: Johnson's argument is persuasive. He accurately caught the point of the problems East Asian countries have. But he should not only criticize these countries' policies in the postwar era from the viewpoint of man of today, but show a counterplan that these countries had to, or could, adopt from the viewpoint of man of THAT TIME. I think there was few options available for Asian countries in the era to emerge from poverty.
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant Arguments (if a bit one-sided)
Review: "Blowback" has a technical meaning in intelligence: misinformation fed to enemy states which comes back to misinform the country which feeds it. I have found that in my personal experience many American experts of Japan suffer from what the State Department likes to call "localitis." I suppose this happens to many Americans who specialize in a foreign country, but in the case of Japan this seems like an epidemic. They tend to fall head over heels in love with Japan, and then become overcritical of America. Still, the many examples cited by Johnson are certainly persuasive. No doubt many Americans back home have no idea how unpopular (or at least un-loved) their military bases now are in Japan and South Korea, especially among the younger generations. Some sailors truly are bad-mannered, arrogant, stupid, cheap and dirty (and sometimes criminal), in local eyes. But can a few bad apples spoil the whole cart? And by comparison how well did Soviet soldiers behave in East Germany and the Baltic states? Johnson was premature in calling America unilateralist. But ironically time has proven him right. (This book was written in the Clinton years.) This is a wakeup call. Johnson should update and revise this book. He may find support in another new book by a Reagan conservative: Clyde Prestowitz, whose "Rogue Nation" (what an eye-catching title to describe his own USA!) is making headlines and raising more than a few eyebrows. Osama bin Laden is mentioned in this book. He was of course once on the payroll of the CIA (during their common fight against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980's). Johnson could not have predicted 9/11: the ULTIMATE BLOWBACK.
Rating:
Summary: Just what you'd expect from a (former) Berkeley professor
Review: The author uses the term 'blowback' to refer to the unintended consequences of American intervention in foreign markets and governments - such as the anti-American backlash which has swept Japan (expecially Okinawa) and South Korea following some brutal, high-profile rapes and murders committed by American G.I.'s station in those countries - but after discussing these incidents, Johnson devolves into spending so much time talking about the *intended* consequences of U.S. global hegemony that he loses sight of the book's title. His descriptions of: * how the U.S. (read: Clinton) willfully fostered the financial crisis in Indonesia in the late 90's for its own benefit * how the U.S. created the Japanese 'economic miracle' by providing military cover and granting ludicrously favorable trade agreements in order to have a powerful (but subservient) ally in East Asia * how the U.S. Department of Defense overblows the threat of 'rogue states' like North Korea to justify Cold War era budgets and to impel foreign allies to purchase American military hardware could be blown off without further ado as paranoid rambings had they come from Chomsky or Zinn. But, alhough there are plenty of weak spots in his logic and Johnson has a particularly keen sense of selective perception, this book is well written enough to enjoy picking apart. It's just what you'd expect from a (former) Berkeley professor, but not at all what its title implies.
| 
