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Interview with Chalmers Johnson Part 1 An Empire of More Than 725 Military Bases Discussing the books "The Sorrows of Empire" and "Blowback" Cardiff, California Chalmers Johnson Chalmers Johnson.
Perpetual war, loss of the republic, disinformation, bankruptcy The very origins of the republic In Motion Magazine: You say in the Sorrows of Empire that the US mili tary bases around the world represent a new type of imperialism. Chalmers Johnson: The Spanish-American War was the beginning of formal Am erican imperialism on the European model, in which we acquired as coloni es Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Guam, places of this sort. In the same context, we annexed the Hawaiian islands, which were an independent king dom. There was a strong anti- imperialist party in the United States. Theodore Roosevelt, who was the imperialist leader, went out of his way to say, Theres not an imperial ist in the country. And tha ts why I say you could trace this back to the very origins of the repub lic. That is, it wasnt imperialism if you believe the North American co ntinent was empty and you dont regard Native Americans or Mexicans as h uman beings. But no, it was very much like Tsarist imperialism across central Asia, although it was understood then not as imperialism but as expansionism. We didnt n eed colonies for purposes of getting rid of undesirables, as say the Bri tish did, exporting Irishmen and others to Virginia or, after the Americ an revolution, to Australia, or the French exporting people to Algeria, because we had this continent to expand into. And , as I say, one which generates its own opposition very quickly. It became apparent fairly rapidly that the expansion into the Philippines was an unmitigated disaster that would ultimately lead to war with Japa n since the islands are 6,000 miles from Los Angeles and only a couple o f thousand miles from Japan, off the Chinese coast. We were intruding ou rselves into an area where we never had any reason to be. The case of Puerto Rico today remains something very much like Okinawa vi s--vis Japan. Its a possession of the United States where the people h ave anything but full citizenship and are discriminated against in the s tructure of our government. I always want to say today, If you are the least bit interested in American foreign policy toward Cuba , either now under the Castro regime or in the past, youve got to becom e an authority on Florida politics. It was because the state of Florida was worried it would r uin the tourist industry if you could go directly to Havana instead of g oing to hell-holes like Tampa that were in those days full of malaria. N onetheless, we brought Cuba decisively under our control through all sor ts of imperialist devices that essentially made Cuba a protectorate. The unit of our empire is the military base Even so, the unit of the American empire is not the colony, as it was in French and British imperialism. Instead the unit of our empire is the mi litary base -- a separate enclave that originally had a strategic purpos e, but when that strategic purpose no longer existed we didnt give up t he base. We retained it, very creatively inventing some new reasons why we had to do so -- some new alleged strategic development such as, for e xample, the threat to Latin America of Soviet intrusion, which led us to retain the Panama Canal until very late in the Cold War. The Second World War These bases grew as a result of our wars but without doubt the greatest e xpansion of the American empire was not the Spanish American War, but th e Second World War. This is when we developed our military enclaves, par ticularly in the defeated axis countries of Germany, Italy, and Japan. Also, with the development of the Cold War, the British agreed to lease us numerous Royal Air Force bases that are not counted i n the Department of Defenses base structure report, an annual inventory of what the Pentagon owns overseas. In the case of Britain, our bases are disguised as Royal Air Force bases. This was n ever done via an act of Parliament or Congress. It was an administrative agreement between the British government and the American ambassador in the early years of the Cold War to turn over to the US these territor ies that had been built up and often used by the Americans during World War II. Many of them today have become critical espionage bases. RAF Menwith Hill, in Yorkshire, is easily the most important National Sec urity Agency base outside the US It listens to every email, telephone call, and fax across the Atlantic. Its called Echelon: an agreement amo ng the English-speaking countries to exchange intelligence. I go into th is in some detail in The Sorrows of Empire. The Fall of the Shah My definition of empire is this world of bases that has its foundation in World War II. It was expanded by the Korean War and then into the Persi an Gulf after the collapse of the regime of the Shah of Iran in 1979. It was also expanded to places like Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. The actual number i s almost surely another 100 or so -- if you include the espionage bases, the British bases, the three secret bases in Israel, and the bases in K yrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, which are not counted. There are also fourteen bases being built in Iraq right now, and a large number of bases in Afg hanistan. Weve got a very considerable empire, one that combines imperi alism with militarism. New strategic functions The empire of these bases began as the leftover residue of World War II, which then evolved into the Cold War. Bases that were created for strate gic purposes during World War II were given new strategic functions as p art of the Cold War -- for example, the defense of Germany against an al leged ground assault by the Soviet Union through the Fulda Gap. Weve been in Germany and these other countries for all of these years, o ften with not just the troops being based there, but also a huge camp fo llowing of dependents, spies, teachers, contractors, and so forth. Today , about a half million Americans connected with the Pentagon are based a broad, of which half are uniformed troops, and the rest are part of the apparatus that goes with them. The development of empire and militarism It is a moving target to study and to understand, but I think my contribu tion is that Ive uncovered something people didnt know about. But it d oesnt really begin to become an empire, in a sense that you can speak o f a separate self-governing autonomous world, until various other things happened. Professionalization of the Armed Forces The lost Vietnam War began to generate professionalism in the armed force s It is no longer a citizen army. The armed forces are today a way of l ife, and service is not an obligation of citizenship but a career choice . Critical to this, certainly, is the 1973 abandonment of conscription in A merica. Citizens are not required to serve, as was the case when I was i n the Navy back in 1953. We know that a great many people in the armed forces are there as a route of social mobility. They are trying to escape from one or another dead- end in our society. Thats why African-Americans are twice as well repre sented in the Army as they are in the society, and fifty percent of the women in the armed forces come from national minorities. This professionalization of the armed forces together with the growth of the military-industrial complex that Eisenhower so famously warned again st begins to create a military establishment, a corporate entity devot ed to protecting and enlarging the functions of the armed forces and the ir civilian appendages. Im interested, in my book, in militarism, which is not the same thing as defense of the country. Militarism is concerne d with vested interests, with promotion of a particular way of life. Def ense of the country is an obligation of citizenship.
There are some 240 golf co urses around the world run by the Pentagon, and luxury hotels in downtow n Tokyo and Seoul for the use of our troops. Theres a special corner of Disneyland in Orlando, Florida, where American troops and their familie s can visit at cheaper prices. A standing army to defend ...
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