Tirman, John. Spoils of War: The Human Cost of America’s Arms Trade. New York: Free Press, 1997.
If you read no other book on America’s arms trade, read this one. Tirman’s treatment of the U.S. stake in Turkey’s “white genocide” against the Kurds is the best available.
Aspects of American Imperialism
Arrighi, Giovanni. The Long Twentieth Century. London: Verso, 1994. Paperbound.
A masterful treatment of the transfer of hegemony from Britain to the United States. Brilliant on the “dialectic of market and plan” as the leitmotif of the twentieth century.
Aron, Raymond. The Imperial Republic: The United States and the World, 1945–1973. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1974.
A classic defense of American Cold War policy in Europe by an independent French intellectual. Aron gets it right about Europe but has not a clue to American behavior in postwar East Asia.
Cumings, Bruce. Parallax Visions: Making Sense of American–East Asian Relations at the End of the Century. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1999.
Important essays by the country’s leading historian of modern Korea. Cumings’s chapters on North Korea’s nuclear program, “area studies” during and after the Cold War, and American hegemony in East Asia are indispensable.
Engelhardt, Tom. The End of Victory Culture: Cold War America and the Disillusioning of a Generation. New York: Basic Books, 1995. Paperbound.
The best guide to the ideology of American “good intentions” in the world, regardless of costs, and what happened to this ideology after the Vietnam War.
Greene, Graham. The Quiet American. New York: Bantam Books, 1957. Paperbound.
Greene is unsurpassed on Americans as imperialists, “impregnably armoured by . . . good intentions and . . . ignorance.”
Hatcher, Patrick Lloyd. The Suicide of an Elite: American Internationalists and Vietnam. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990.
An insider discusses how the loss of the war in Vietnam was not an accident or the result of a conspiracy but the normal workings of the Cold War national security apparatus.
Lowen, Rebecca S. Creating the Cold War University: The Transformation of Stanford. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.
Why President Eisenhower’s epithet “the military-industrial complex” must be amended to “the military-industrial-university” complex and the blowback from lost intellectual integrity that awaits American institutions of higher learning.
China
Cohen, Warren I. America’s Response to China: A History of Sino-American Relations.
New York: Columbia University Press, 1990. Paperbound.
The best short history of America’s relations with China from the Opium War to the present.
http://www.huaren.org/
The Web site of Huaren, an indispensable source of information on overseas Chinese and a compilation of worldwide articles on attacks against people of Chinese ancestry.
Li, Cheng. Rediscovering China: Dynamics and Dilemmas of Reform. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1997. Paperbound.
The most insightful analysis available, put in personal terms, of the meaning of “reform” in China and why it is anything but threatening to the United States.
Mann, James. About Face: A History of America’s Curious Relationship with China, from Nixon to Clinton. New York: Knopf, 1999.
A Los Angeles Times former Beijing correspondent offers new information and insights into official American thinking on China, from Nixon and Kissinger through the Tiananmen repression and down to Clinton’s inconsistent efforts.
McBeath, Gerald A. Wealth and Freedom: Taiwan’s New Political Economy. Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 1998.
Comprehensive analysis of Taiwan today, including its state-owned enterprises, democracy, and foreign policy after the loss in 1971 of its seat in the United Nations.
Nathan, Andrew J., and Robert S. Ross. The Great Wall and the Empty Fortress: China’s Search for Security. New York: W. W. Norton, 1997.
An analysis by two writers who have studied China about why it is not a threat to other countries but often appears to be.
Economic Meltdown and How to Analyze It
The Asian Crisis. Special issue of Cambridge Journal of Economics, vol. 22, no. 6 (November 1998).
A collection of essays on the causes and consequences of the “globalization crisis” that started in East Asia in 1997. Not the usual Washington consensus.
Fingleton, Eamonn. In Praise of Hard Industries: Why Manufacturing, Not the Information Economy, Is the Key to Future Prosperity. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999.
A seasoned observer of the Japanese economy explains why it is not in the deep trouble that American theorists and triumphalists say it is.
Gray, John. False Dawn: The Delusions of Global Capitalism. New York: New Press, 1999.
A historian demonstrates that global, unregulated markets are inherently unstable. America’s experiment in imperial laissez-faire was the geopolitical expression of a Wall Street bubble.
Greider, William. One World, Ready or Not: The Manic Logic of Global Capitalism. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997.
This is the primer for all who want to understand global capitalism and why it is coming unglued at the end of the twentieth century. Mandatory reading.
Longworth, Richard C. Global Squeeze: The Coming Crisis for First-World Nations. Chicago: Contemporary Books, 1998.
A veteran economics correspondent points out the many ways in which globalization could go wrong.
Weiss, Linda. The Myth of the Powerless State. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998. Paperbound.
A powerful political rejoinder to American economic ideology. Includes chapters on economic growth in postwar Germany and on the limits of globalization.
Woo-Cumings, Meredith, ed. The Developmental State. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999. Paperbound.
The most thorough investigation of the state-guided capitalist systems that were the vehicles for the enrichment of East Asia.
Illegal Activities of the C.I.A. and Other American Police and Intelligence Agencies
Brodeur, Paul. Secrets: A Writer in the Cold War. Boston and London: Faber & Faber, 1997.
Essays by a former staff writer for the New Yorker, focusing on environmental hazards but also on the roles of the C.I.A., the F.B.I., and the State Department in supporting capitalism over communism and in other unauthorized activities during the Cold War.
Cockburn, Alexander, and Jeffrey St. Clair. Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs and the Press. London: Verso, 1998.
The cover-up of the C.I.A.’s support for the Nicaraguan Contras through drug sales in the United States.
MacKenzie, Angus. Secrets: The CIA’s War at Home. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.
A posthumously published classic study of numerous U.S. government campaigns to suppress controversial ideas and information within the United States.
Schlesinger, Stephen, and Stephen Kinzer. Bitter Fruit: The Story of the American Coup in Guatemala. Expanded ed. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999. Paperbound.
The best book on America’s repression of a poor Central American country. The 1999 edition includes a foreword by Richard Nuccio, the former State Department official who sacrificed his career to help expose the cover-up of the C.I.A.’s involvement in the murder of an American citizen in Guatemala.
Japan
Arase, David. Buying Power: The Political Economy of Japan’s Foreign Aid. Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1995.
This is the best analysis of Japan’s foreign policy and how it uses its wealth to achieve its objectives.
Dower, John. Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II. New York: W. W. Norton, 1999.
The single most important book on the critical years of the Allied occupation, when the United States forged and Japan accepted its postwar status as America’s most valuable satellite.
Hall, Ivan P. Cartels of the Mind: Japan’s Intellec
tual Closed Shop. New York: W. W. Norton, 1998.
The most serious study by a genuine “Japan hand” of why the assumptions of political and economic convergence between Japan and the United States are nonsense. A graceful, well-written statement of what a foreigner must know if he or she plans to deal with Japan.
http://www.jpri.org/
Web site of the Japan Policy Research Institute. Contains over a hundred research reports, including papers on Japan’s discrimination against foreigners teaching in its universities, the problems of Okinawa, and Japan’s industrial policies, among many different subjects.
McVeigh, Brian J. The Nature of the Japanese State: Rationality and Rituality. London: Routledge, 1998.
An anthropologist analyzes the bureaucratization of Japanese life and offers an exciting essay on why Japanese politics will never resemble American politics.
Schaller, Michael. Altered States: The United States and Japan Since the Occupation. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.
Diplomatic history at its best by a seasoned hand. Includes details on the decisions by Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson to give secret financial help to Japan’s conservative politicians.
Smith, Patrick. Japan: A Reinterpretation. New York: Vintage Books, 1998. Paperbound.
For readers looking for an introduction to Japan, this is the best there is. Smith takes Japanese culture seriously. A beautifully written book.
Korea
Amsden, Alice. Asia’s Next Giant: South Korea and Late Industrialization. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989.
The classic study of how South Korea got rich and the crisis it caused for orthodox American economic theory.
Bandow, Doug. Tripwire: Korea and U.S. Foreign Policy in a Changed World. Washington, D.C.: Cato Institute, 1996.
A prescient analysis by a former special assistant to President Reagan on why we have stayed too long in Korea and what we ought to do about it.
Cumings, Bruce. The Origins of the Korean War. 2 vols. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981, 1990.
A tour de force on the era in Korean history that Americans know nothing about and would prefer to ignore: 1945 to 1950. Cumings’s meticulous research has altered the “received wisdom” on the Korean War.
Hart-Landsberg, Martin. Korea: Division, Reunification, and U.S. Foreign Policy. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1998. Paperbound.
An excellent, evenhanded account of why Korea remains divided. Includes chapters on the relevance of the German experience of reunification to Korea.
http://www.kimsoft.com/korea.htm
The indispensable Web site for materials on the role of the United States in Korea, including archives on the Cheju uprising of 1948 and Tim Shorrock’s U.S. government documents on the Kwangju massacre, which he obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.
Lee, Jae-eui. Kwangju Diary: Beyond Death, Beyond the Darkness of the Age. Los Angeles: UCLA Asian Pacific Monograph Series, 1999.
A translation into English of the most important Korean book on the Kwangju massacre, by a participant who was taken prisoner and tortured by the Republic of Korea army. With additional essays by Bruce Cumings and Tim Shorrock.
Oberdorfer, Don. The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1997.
A seasoned Washington Post journalist on the two Koreas. Oberdorfer is outstanding on the 1994 crisis over North Korean nuclear experiments.
Shapiro, Michael. The Shadow in the Sun. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1990.
Powerful observations of South Korea in the last years of Chun Doo-hwan, including details on the legacy of the Kwangju massacre.
Okinawa
Field, Norma. In the Realm of a Dying Emperor. New York: Pantheon Books, 1991.
Field’s chapter on Shoichi Chibana, pp. 33–104, is the best introduction in English to the injustices inflicted on Okinawa by Japan and the United States.
Johnson, Chalmers, ed. Okinawa: Cold War Island. Cardiff, Calif.: Japan Policy Research Institute, 1999.
A collection of essays on Okinawa by such authorities as Masahide Ota, Kozy Amemiya, Koji Taira, Steve Rabson, Michael Millard, Patrick Smith, Carolyn Bowen Francis, Shunji Taoka, Masayuki Sasaki, and Gavan McCormack. It can be acquired on-line from http://www.nmjc.org/okinawa_cold_war_island.html.
Ota, Masahide. “The U.S. Occupation of Okinawa and Postwar Reforms in Japan Proper,” in Robert E. Ward and Yoshikazu Sakamoto, eds., Democratizing Japan: The Allied Occupation. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1987, pp. 284–305.
An authoritative treatment of Okinawa under American rule by the scholar who became governor of Okinawa Prefecture from 1990 to 1998.
Yahara, Colonel Hiromichi. The Battle for Okinawa. New York: Wiley, 1995. Introduction and commentary by Frank B. Gibney.
Yahara was the highest-ranking Japanese officer to survive the Battle of Okinawa; this is the battle seen from the Japanese side. Gibney, who as a combat translator debriefed Yahara, reprints his original prisoner-of-war interrogation reports.
Overseas American Military Bases and Their Problems
Moon, Katharine H. S. Sex Among Allies: Military Prostitution in U.S.-Korea Relations.
New York: Columbia University Press, 1997. Paperbound.
A brilliant doctoral dissertation on how the American and South Korean governments collaborate to provide prostitutes for the 37,000 American troops based in South Korea.
Sturdevant, Saundra Pollock, and Brenda Stoltzfus. Let the Good Times Roll: Prostitution and the U.S. Military in Asia. New York: New Press, 1992. Paperbound.
The standard work on the subject, it is extensively illustrated with photographs by the authors. Included are essays by Walden Bello, Bruce Cumings, and Cynthia Enloe.
NOTES
Introduction: After 9/11
1. Foreign Affairs 79.5 (September–October 2000), pp. 138–39.
2. “Die Rolle eines Ersatz-Rom,” Der Spiegel, November 6, 2000, pp. 252–56.
3. James Risen, “ABCs of Coups,” New York Times, June 18, 2000.
4. Robert Michael Gates, From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider’s Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), pp. 146–47.
5. Zbigniew Brzezinski, “Les Révélations d’un Ancien Conseiller de Carter: ‘Oui, la CIA est Entrée en Afghanistan avant les Russes . . . ,’ ” Le Nouvel Observateur, January 15–21, 1998; translated by William Blum and David D. Gibbs and published in David D. Gibbs, “Afghanistan: The Soviet Invasion in Retrospect,” International Politics, vol. 37, June 2000, pp. 233–46.
6. Los Angeles Times, June 28, 1996.
7. H. Edward Price, Jr., “The Strategy and Tactics of Revolutionary Terrorism,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 19, no. 1 (January 1977), p. 53.
8. Quoted in Robert Moss, Urban Guerrillas: The New Face of Political Violence (London: Maurice Temple Smith, 1972), p. 13.
9. Simon Jaffrey, “War May Have Killed 10,000 Civilians, Researchers Say,” Guardian, June 13, 2003.
10. Eduardo Galeano, “The Finest Liars in the World,” August 14, 2003, http://www.nationinstitute.org/tomdispatch/.
11. Meredith Woo-Cumings, “South Korean Anti-Americanism,” Japan Policy Research Institute Working Paper, no. 93, July 2003.
12. Jane Perlez, “Saudis Quietly Promote Strict Islam in Indonesia,” New York Times, July 5, 2003.
13. See Antiwar.com’s continuously updated tally of casualties in Iraq, http://www.antiwar.com/ewens/casualties.html.
Prologue: A Spear-Carrier for Empire
1. Stanford University Press, 1962.
2. See Chalmers Johnson, “Civilian Loyalties and Guerrilla Conflict,” World Politics 14.4 (July 1962), pp. 646–61.
3. “Lin Piao’s Army and Its Role in Chinese Society,” Parts I and II, Current Scene (American Consulate General, Hong Kong) 4.13 and 4.14 (July 1 and 15, 1966).
1: Blowback
1. “Some Aid Canceled fo
r Gondola Deaths,” Los Angeles Times, May 15, 1999.
2. Department of Defense, “U.S. Military Installations” (updated to July 17, 1998), DefenseLINK, on-line at http://www.defenselink.mil/pubs/installations/foreignsummary.html; and John Lindsay-Poland and Nick Morgan, “Overseas Military Bases and Environment,” Foreign Policy in Focus 3.15 (June 1998), on-line at http://www.foreignpolicy-infocus.org/briefs/voll3/v3n15mil.html. According to one report, when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the United States had 375 military bases scattered around the globe staffed by more than a half million personnel. Joel Brinkley, “U.S. Looking for a New Path as Superpower Conflict Ends,” New York Times, February 2, 1992.
3. Charles Krauthammer, “What Caused Our Economic Boom?” San Diego Union-Tribune, January 5, 1998.
4. For documentary evidence, including Oliver North’s notebooks, see “The Contras, Cocaine, and Covert Operations,” National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book, no. 2, on-line at http://www.seas.gwu.edu/nsarchive. Also see James Risen, “C.I.A. Said to Ignore Charges of Contra Drug Dealing in ‘80’s,” New York Times, October 10, 1998.
5. Quoted in Ivan Eland, “Protecting the Homeland: The Best Defense Is to Give No Offense,” Policy Analysis (Cato Institute), no. 306 (May 5, 1998), P. 3.
6. Tim Weiner, “U.S. Spied on Iraq Under U.N. Cover, Officials Now Say,” New York Times, January 7, 1999; Philip Shenon, “C.I.A. Was with U.N. in Iraq for Years, Ex-Inspector Says,” February 23, 1999; and Seymour M. Hersh, “Saddam’s Best Friend,” New Yorker, April 5, 1999.
7. Tim Weiner and James Risen, “Decision to Strike Factory in Sudan Based on Surmise,” New York Times, September 21, 1998; and Seymour M. Hersh, “The Missiles of August,” New Yorker, October 12, 1998.
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