Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic

launching of the invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq. I began to study our continuous military buildup since World War II and the 737 military bases we currently maintain in other people’s countries. This empire of bases is the concrete manifestation of our global hegemony, and many of the blowback-inducing wars we have conducted had as their true purpose the sustaining and expanding of this network. We do not think of these overseas deployments as a form of empire; in fact, most Americans do not give them any thought at all until something truly shocking, such as the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, brings them to our attention. But the people living next door to these bases and dealing with the swaggering soldiers who brawl and sometimes rape their women certainly think of them as imperial enclaves, just as the peoples of ancient Iberia or nineteenth-century India knew that they were victims of foreign colonization.

In Nemesis, I have tried to present historical, political, economic, and philosophical evidence of where our current behavior is likely to lead. Specifically, I believe that to maintain our empire abroad requires resources and commitments that will inevitably undercut our domestic democracy and in the end produce a military dictatorship or its civilian equivalent. The founders of our nation understood this well and tried to create a form of government—a republic—that would prevent this from occurring. But the combination of huge standing armies, almost continuous wars, military Keynesianism, and ruinous military expenses have destroyed our republican structure in favor of an imperial presidency. We are on the cusp of losing our democracy for the sake of keeping our empire. Once a nation is started down that path, the dynamics that apply to all empires come into play—isolation, overstretch, the uniting of forces opposed to imperialism, and bankruptcy. Nemesis stalks our life as a free nation.

History is instructive on this dilemma. If we choose to keep our empire, as the Roman Republic did, we will certainly lose our democracy and grimly await the eventual blowback that imperialism generates. There is an alternative, however. We could, like the British Empire after World War II, keep our democracy by giving up our empire. No more than the French and Dutch, the British did not do a particularly brilliant job of liquidating their empire, and there were several clear cases where British imperialists defied their nation’s commitment to democracy in order to keep their foreign privileges. Kenya in the 1950s is a particularly savage example. But the overall thrust of postwar British history is clear: the people of the British Isles chose democracy over imperialism. For this reason, I can only regard Britain’s willingness to join the United States in its invasion of Iraq as an atavistic response.

Britain’s closing down its empire is one of its more admirable legacies. I do not share the nostalgia of contemporary Anglo-American writers who urge the United States to take up the “white man’s burden” and follow in the footsteps of British imperialists. Instead, I have chosen as my role model a Japanese scholar and journalist, Hotsumi Ozaki, about whom I long ago wrote a biography. Ozaki was born in what was then the Japanese colony of Taiwan, and his early childhood was that of a little colonialist, being taken to school by rickshaw. As an adult, he was a prominent journalist and scholar in China, and he accurately foresaw that Japan’s occupation of China would fail disastrously and lead to the blowback of the Chinese Communist revolution.

Ozaki tried to warn his own government about its misguided ventures. For his troubles he was hanged as a traitor by the Japanese government in the waning days of World War II. I hope not to meet a similar fate, but I am as certain as Ozaki was that my country is launched on a dangerous path that it must abandon or else face the consequences.

Notes

PROLOGUE: THE BLOWBACK TRILOGY

1. The CIA report is entitled Clandestine Service History: Overthrow of Premier Mossadeq of Iran, November 1952-August 1953 (March 1954). The author is Donald N. Wilber. For the original typescript and a history of its declassification and publication, including the CIA’s claim that the document had been destroyed and that no copy remained in existence, see, in particular, Malcolm Byrne, ed., “The Secret History of the Iran Coup, 1953,” National Security Archive, Electronic Briefing Book no. 28, http://www.gwu.edu/nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB28/.

2. Elisabeth Bumiller, “Addressing Cadets, Bush Sees Parallel to World War II,” New York Times, June 3, 2004.

3. “Bin Laden’s Warning: Full Text,” BBC News, October 7, 2001, http://news.bbc.co.uk/l/low/world/south_asia/l585636.stm. For a somewhat different translation, see “Bin Laden’s Statement: ’The Sword Fell,’” New York Times, October 8, 2001.

4. Thomas Friedman, “No Mere Terrorist,” New York Times, March 24, 2002. See also Ervand Abrahamian, “The U.S. Media, Huntington, and September 11,” Third World Quarterly 24, no. 3 (2003), pp. 529-44; and a shorter version of the same essay in Middle East Report, Summer 2002, pp. 62-63.

5. John F. Harris, “God Gave U.S. ’What We Deserve,’ Falwell Says,” Washington Post, September 14, 2001; Oliver Burkeman, “Powell Attacks Christian Right,” Guardian, November 15, 2002; John Sutherland, “God Save America,” Guardian, May 3, 2004.

6. William M. Arkin, “The Pentagon Unleashes a Holy Warrior,” Los Angeles Times, October 16, 2003; “Rumsfeld Defends General Who Commented on War, Satan, “Associated Press, October 17, 2003; Douglas Jehl,”U.S. General Apologizes for Remarks About Islam,” New York Times, October 18, 2003; Editorial, “For Religious Bigotry,” New York Times, August 26, 2004.

7. Simon Jenkins, “Democrats Should Not Fight Fire with Fire,” Times (London), September 12, 2001.

8. Mai Yamani, research fellow at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, “The Rise of Shi’ite ’Petrolistan,’” Straits Times (Singapore), March 5, 2004; Juan Cole, “The United States in Iraq and Shiite Islamic Politics” (speech, San Diego State University, April 19, 2005); Robin Wright, “Iraq Winners Allied with Iran Are the Opposite of U.S. Vision,” Washington Post, February 14, 2005.

9. Army colonel Hy Rothstein, quoted by Seymour M. Hersh, “The Other War,” New Yorker, April 12, 2004, p. 42.

10. Humberto Marquez, “Iraq Invasion the ’Biggest Cultural Disaster Since 1258,’” Antiwar.com, February 16, 2005; Ian Frazier, “Invaders: Destroying Baghdad,” New Yorker, April 25, 2005.

11. Ronald Bruce St. John, “Iraq Blowback Is Global and Growing,” Antiwar.com, December 11, 2004.

12. On the staggering costs of caring for our maimed and psychologically damaged veterans, see Ronald J. Glasser, “A War of Disabilities: Iraq’s Hidden Costs Are Coming Home “ Harper’s Magazine, July 2005, pp. 59-62.