Prescient knowledge

Nemesis
The Last Days of the American Republic
By Chalmers Johnson
METROPOLITAN/HENRY HOLT; 356 PAGES
Reviewed by Troy Jollimore

Nemesis, as Chalmers Johnson reminds us, is the Greek goddess "of divine justice and vengeance," a deity who "punishes human transgression of the natural, right order of things and the arrogance that causes it." Invoked in the final lines of his previous book, Nemesis could be considered the presiding spirit over the three volumes ("Blowback" in 2000, "The Sorrows of Empire" in 2004, and now "Nemesis") he has come to refer to as the "Blowback" trilogy. As in the previous books of the trilogy, Johnson, the president of the Japan Policy Research Institute and a former CIA consultant, continues to insist that we view the tragic events and ominous trends of recent U.S. history -- the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the quagmire in Iraq, the increasingly perilous financial state of the union, various governmental abuses of power -- not as random, isolated or unpredictable happenings, but as the near-inevitable outcomes of decades of American imperialistic misbehavior -- outcomes that may prove to be merely the harbingers of still greater woes:
"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."
This passage, and there are many like it, may suggest that Johnson regards the country's doom as unavoidable. Other comments, however, remind us that Johnson intends the book as a call to arms. "I remain hopeful," he writes at the end of his prologue, "that Americans can still rouse themselves to save our democracy." It is a hope that the reader who makes it all the way through "Nemesis" may struggle to share. The litany of governmental misdeeds, ill-considered policies and ethical failures that makes up the bulk of the book may have a paralyzing effect on many readers, particularly given Johnson's frequent reminders as to how many of our government's most destructive activities lie beyond congressional oversight and are invisible to public scrutiny. (As he makes clear, not only do we not know what the CIA does, we don't even know how much money it spends doing it.)
To read of such things as the National Security Agency's domestic spying programs, the administration's efforts to frustrate and subvert the Freedom of Information Act, the CIA's involvement in the overthrow of various democratically elected leaders, or the same agency's program of "extraordinary rendition" -- in which individuals are flown to various hidden locations to be imprisoned and tortured -- is to be reminded not only of why so few people in the world continue to view the United States as a shining beacon of liberty and democracy, but also of how little power any of us seem to have to do anything about it.
Of course, some readers might try to take heart in the recent electoral backlash against the administration that has promoted many of these programs and the Congress that permitted it. But while these developments are too recent to have been incorporated into "Nemesis," it is doubtful that Johnson would recommend we take any significant comfort in these events.
"I believe that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have led the country into a perilous cul-de-sac," he writes, "but they did not do it alone and removing them from office will not necessarily solve the problem."
Elsewhere he describes his vision of what it would take to save U.S. society -- and, in the process, makes it all too clear just how unlikely such salvation might be: "I believe we will never again know peace, nor in all probability survive very long as a nation, unless we abolish the CIA, restore intelligence collecting to the State Department, and remove all but purely military functions from the Pentagon. Even if we did these things, the mystique of America as a model democracy may have been damaged beyond repair."
Of course, a damaged mystique may be something we can learn to live with. Indeed, one might worry that Johnson's use of the rhetoric of survival might ultimately prove counterproductive. At times, Johnson does write as if it is the very existence of the nation that is at stake. More often, though, it seems what really frightens him is not the possibility the United States might cease to exist as a country, but that it might cease to operate as a republic, becoming instead "a military dictatorship or its civilian equivalent." Such a prospect should be terrifying, but it may fail to terrify a people who are overly preoccupied with questions of survival; to such people, it may appear that anything short of utter social collapse would be acceptable.
The point is there are very good reasons for supporting constitutional government and the separation of powers and opposing militarism, official secrecy and the violation of individual rights, whether or not it is true the latter will literally destroy the nation and the former would preserve it. Painting the situation in excessively stark terms, in other words, risks encouraging certain forms of complacency, in particular an attitude of "I'm OK as long as the country survives and it's not my rights being violated." Indeed, to judge by the general American reaction to Abu Ghraib and the public discussion in this country surrounding the use of torture in the war on terror, this attitude is already a common one.
Regardless of whether Johnson's deepest fear is that the world's leading democracy might continue to exist in name only, or that it might cease to exist altogether, there is no question his pessimism is sincere. When, in the midst of a discussion of historical analogies with the Roman and British empires, he writes, "History teaches us that the capacity for things to get worse is limitless," he clearly means it.
And while it is true the book presents Britain as a counterpoint to Rome -- an example of how a country can save itself by giving up its empire -- it is clear that the parallels with Rome are for Johnson far more compelling. "[i]f we do not awaken soon to the wholesale betrayal of our basic political values and offer our own expression of righteous anger," he predicts, "the American republic will be as doomed as the Roman Republic was after the Ides of March that spring of 44 BC."
Let us hope the historians of whatever future empires may arise, when they look back to compare their experience with our own, will have cause to file Johnson's gloomy prognostications under "admirably intended but erroneous" -- and not, as one fears, under "prophetic and astoundingly prescient."

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