OPINIONSrnAn Empire^ If You Can Bear Itrnby Justin Raimondorn’The mission of the United States is one of benevolent assimilation.”rn—William McKinleyrnBlowback: The Costs andrnConsequences of American Empirernby Chalmers JohnsonrnNew York: MetropoUtan Books;rn268 pp., $26.00rnI n his classic shidy of “isolationism,”rnNot to the Swift, Justus Doeneckerntakes note of a phenomenon called “AsiarnFirstism” — the view of conservativernpoliticians and publicists of the postwarrnera who opposed meddling in Europernbut saw Asia as the equivalent of the longvanishedrnAmerican frontier and the Eastrnas the natural sphere of American expansionism,rnhi the postwar world, the oldrnAmerica Firsters “concentrated less andrnless upon withdrawal from the world’srnpassions and battles, and more and morernu]5on the most hazardous commitmentsrnon the Asian continent.” I’oday, a newcroprnof Asia Firsters opposes U.S. intcrvenhonrnin the Balkans but considers thernmilitarv occupaHon of Japan, South Korea,rnand Okinawa as vital to American interests.rnVladimir Putin is a pussycat, butrnthe “Chicoms,” in these circles, are a ri,singrnchallenge to American hegemon’rnthat must be “contained.”rnIn the 195()’s, as the Cold War deli-rnered the conservative movement to therntender mercies of various ex-communistrnand pseudo-‘lrotskyist charlatans, a hn-rnminority retained the old faith. Doeneckernrecounts that, een at die height ofrnthe Cold War hysteria, “genuine outsiders”rnlike Lawrence l^ennis, Harr-rnElmer Barnes, Caret Carrett, and preciousrnfew odiers “called in vain for a re-rn]ustin Raimondo writes fromrnSan Francisco.rnturn to a more consistent and cautiousrnideologv.” Carrett, wondered aloud;rn”How could we lose China or Europe,rnsince die’ nccr belonged to us?” Thernquestion was drowned out b- the stridentrnCold War chorus and w as not to be askedrnagain for half a century. Now that HiernCold War is oer, Chalmers Johnson hasrnraised this quesHon with renewed urgencrnin a book diat is the perfect antidote forrnpresent-day Asia Firstism.rnhi 1952, Carrett opined that, b therntime we discoer our reprdslic has becomernan empire, “it ma- be ahead}’ toornlate to do anthing about it. That is tornsaw a time comes when Empire finds itselfrna prisoner of histor,” There is thernsanre sense of iron}- and self-inflicted tragedrnin Johnson’s indictment of Americanrnglobalism. “Man ma}, as a start, find itrnhard to beliexe that our place in thernworld e-en adds up to an empire,” hernwrites:rnBut only when we come to see ourrncountry as both profiting from andrntrapped within the structures of anrnempire of its own making will it bernpossible for us to explain a greatrni-i-iany elements of the world thatrnotherwise perplex us.rnJohnson, president of the Japan PolicyrnResearch hisfitute, begins by consideringrnthe ugly spectacle of imperial America inrnOkinawa, painfing a vivid portrait of thernisland as an exploited outpost of empire,rnwhere rape, robbery, and traffic accidentsrnin-olving U.S. military^ personnel surpassrndie crime rates of our own inner cities.rnChapters on Indonesia, the two Koreas,rnChina, and Japan reinforce fiie o-erarchingrntheme of “blowback,” succincth’rnsummed up in the biblical injunctionrnthat “as ‘e sow- so -e shall reap.” “Blowback”rnrefers both to terrorist attacks onrnU.S. militar}- bases and other targetsrnabroad and to the (not so) long-range economicrnand political eonscquences of imperialrnoverstretch. In this ambitiousrnbook, Johnson presents the outlines of arnnon-Marxist theory of American imperialism:rn”.Marx and Lenin were mistakenrnabout the nature of imperialism,” he .says:rnIt is not the contradicfions of capitalismrnthat lead to imperialism butrnimperialism that breeds some ofrnthe more important contradictionsrnof capitalism. When these contradictionsrnripen, as tiiev must, thc}-rncreate devastating economic crises.rnIn fact, the Cold War distorted thernglobal econoni}- and hollowed out America’srnindustrial base, leading to bad in-rnestiiients in our East Asian satellites andrn22/CHRONlCLESrnrnrn