Blowback, Second Edition: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire

by Chalmers Johnson

  8. Mireya Navarro, “Guatemala Study Accuses the Army and Cites U.S. Role,” New York Times, February 26, 1999; Larry Rohter, “Searing Indictment,” New York Times, February 27, 1999; Michael Shifter, “Can Genocide End in Forgiveness?” Los Angeles Times, March 7, 1999; “Coming Clean on Guatemala,” editorial, Los Angeles Times, March 10, 1999; and Michael Stetz, “Clinton’s Words on Guatemala Called ‘Too Little, Too Late,’ ” San Diego Union-Tribune, March 16, 1999.

  9. José Pertierra, “For Guatemala, Words Are Not Enough,” San Diego Union-Tribune, March 5, 1999.

  10. John M. Broder, “Clinton Offers His Apologies to Guatemala,” New York Times, March 11, 1999. Also see Broder, “Clinton Visit in Honduras Dramatizes New Attitude,” New York Times, March 10, 1999; and Francisco Goldman, “Murder Comes for the Bishop,” New Yorker, March 15, 1999.

  11. Peter W. Galbraith, “How the Turks Helped Their Enemies,” New York Times, February 20, 1999.

  12. John Tirman, Spoils of War: The Human Cost of America’s Arms Trade (New York: Free Press, 1997), p. 236.

  13. John Diamond, “CIA Thwarts Terrorists with ‘Disruption’; It’s Prevention by Proxy,” San Diego Union-Tribune, March 5, 1999; and Tim Weiner, “U.S. Helped Turkey Find and Capture Kurd Rebel,” New York Times, February 20, 1999.

  14. Jon Lee Anderson, “The Dictator,” New Yorker, October 19, 1998; Peter Kronbluth, “Chile and the United States: Declassified Documents Relating to the Military Coup,” National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book, no. 8, on-line at http://www.seas.gwu.edu/nsarchive; and Philip Shenon, “U.S. Releases Files on Abuses in Pinochet Era,” New York Times, July 1, 1999.

  15. Michael Ratner, “The Pinochet Precedent,” Progressive Response 3.3 (January 28, 1999).

  16. Milovan Djilas, Conversations with Stalin (London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1962), p. 105.

  17. Tim Golden, “C.I.A. Says It Knew of Honduran Abuses,” New York Times, October 24, 1998. See also James Risen, “C.I.A. Said to Ignore Charges of Contra Drug Dealing in ‘80’s,” New York Times, October 10, 1998; National Security Archive, “Secret CIA Report Admits ‘Honduran Military Committed Hundreds of Human Rights Abuses’ and ‘Inaccurate’ Reporting to Congress,” on-line at http://www.seas.gwu.edu/nsarchive; and Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting, “Snow Job: The Establishment’s Papers Do Damage Control for the CIA,” Extra! January–February 1997, on-line at http://www.fair.org/extra/9701/contra-crack.html.

  18. Barbara Conry, “The Futility of U.S. Intervention in Regional Conflicts,” Policy Analysis (Cato Institute), no. 209 (May 19, 1994), p. 7. Also see Barbara Conry, “U.S. ‘Global Leadership’: A Euphemism for World Policeman,” Policy Analysis, no. 267, February 5, 1997.

  19. Ronald Steel, Pax Americana (New York: Viking, 1967), p. 13.

  20. Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000 (London: Unwin Hyman, 1988), pp. 514–15.

  21. Giovanni Arrighi and Beverly Silver, Chaos and Governance in the Modern World System (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), pp. 288–89.

  2: Okinawa: Asia’s Last Colony

  1. Los Angeles Times, December 28, 1995.

  2. Robert Burns, Associated Press, San Diego Union-Tribune, November 18, 1995.

  3. Katharine H. S. Moon, Sex Among Allies: Military Prostitution in U.S. Korea Relations (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), p. 7.

  4. New York Times, November 2, 1995.

  5. Letter to the San Diego Union-Tribune, July 20, 1996.

  6. Los Angeles Times, December 2, 1996.

  7. “Proposal for a New Okinawa—the Voice of Women,” Ryukyuanist (The International Society for Ryukyuan Studies), Newsletter no. 37, Summer 1997, p. 2.

  8. New York Times, editorial, October 29, 1995.

  9. Time, November 29, 1949; and Nicholas E. Sarantakes, “Keystone: The American Occupation of Okinawa and U.S.-Japanese Relations, 1945–1972,” unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Southern California.

  10. Japan Times, December 8, 1995.

  11. Nikkei Weekly, October 9, 1995.

  12. The full report by Russell Carollo, Jeff Nesmith, and Carol Hernandez is available from Investigative Reporters and Editors, Inc., 138 Neff Annex, Missouri School of Journalism, Columbia, MO 65211; $19.65, 64 pp.

  13. Nation, July 1, 1996.

  14. Los Angeles Times, October 8, 1995.

  15. Newsweek, October 14, 1996.

  16. Okinawa Times, March 9, 1996.

  17. Japan Times, April 21, 1996.

  18. Newsweek, October 14, 1996.

  19. Washington Post, December 8, 1995.

  20. Okinawa Times, April 27, 1998.

  21. General Accounting Office, Overseas Presence: Issues Involved in Reducing the Impact of the U.S. Military Presence on Okinawa: Report to the Honorable Duncan Hunter, House of Representatives (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, March 1998), p. 47.

  22. See, e.g., Bill Mesler, “Pentagon Poison: The Great Radioactive Ammo Cover-up,” Nation, May 26, 1997.

  23. Bill Gertz, “U.S. Slow to Inform Japan of Accident; Hundreds of Radioactive Bullets Were Fired in Training Exercise Near Okinawa,” Washington Times, February 10, 1997.

  24. Mainichi Shimbun, June 25, 1997.

  25. “The Okinawan Charade,” Japan Policy Research Institute Working Paper, no. 28, January 1997.

  26. Nikkei Weekly, May 5, 1997.

  27. Ryukyu Shimpo, December 22, 1995, evening edition.

  28. Kozy K. Amemiya, “The Bolivian Connection: U.S. Bases and Okinawan Emigration,” Japan Policy Research Institute Working Paper, no. 25, October 1996; Asia Times, October 21, 22, 1996.

  29. Los Angeles Times, October 26, 1995.

  30. Aera (Tokyo), October 9, 1995; Asahi Evening News, May 6, 1997; Asahi Shimbun, May 17, 1997; Japan Press Weekly, no. 2040, May 24, 1997, p. 7; and Nikkei Weekly, August 11, 1997.

  31. Pacific Stars and Stripes, July 23, 1998.

  32. Asahi Evening News, June 28, 1998.

  33. New York Times, April 2, 1994.

  34. Morihiro Hosokawa, “Are U.S. Troops in Japan Needed?” Foreign Affairs 77.4 (July–August 1998), pp. 2–6.

  35. Shunji Taoka, “The Japanese-American Security Treaty Without a U.S. Military Presence,” Japan Policy Research Institute Working Paper, no. 31, March 1997; and Taoka, “The Way to Save the U.S. Japan Alliance,” NIRA Review, Summer 1997, pp. 3–8.

  36. Washington Post, March 27, 1990.

  37. Mary Jordan and Kevin Sullivan, Washington Post, March 7, 1996.

  38. Asahi Shimbun, March 19, 1999.

  39. Asahi Shimbun, April 18, 1996; see also Morihiro Hosokawa, “A De Facto Treaty Revision,” Japan Times International, June 1–15, 1999.

  40. “Interview with Governor Ota: Japanese Democracy on Trial,” Japan Echo, Autumn 1996, p. 43 (from Sekai, July 1996).

  41. Joseph S. Nye Jr., “The Case for Deep Engagement,” Foreign Affairs 74.4 (July–August 1995), pp. 90–102.

  42. Washington Post, December 8, 1995.

  43. Department of Defense, United States Security Strategy for the East Asia—Pacific Region (Washington, D.C.: Department of Defense, Office of International Security Affairs, February 1995), pp. 23–24.

  44. Reuters, Tokyo, March 24, 1997.

  45. Reuters, Washington, July 9, 1998.

  46. Japan Times, July 25, 1998.

  47. Defense Monitor 19.6 (1990), p. 3.

  48. Camp Foster USO, Exploring Okinawa Travel Guide, 4th ed. (Naha: Barclay Publishing, 1996), pp. 62, 64, 68.

  3: Stealth Imperialism

  1. Rudolph J. Rummel, Death by Government (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books, 1994).

  2. Michael P. Scharf, “Results of the Rome Conference for an International Criminal Court,” American Society of International Law Insight, August 1998, on-line at http://www.asil.org/insigh23.htm.

  3. New York Times, October 11, 1997, and December 3, 1997.

  4.
See the report in the mainstream Korean newspaper Chosun Ilbo, November 12, 1997.

  5. “Australia a Key Player in Global Landmine Removal,” Australia Report, June 1998, p. 1.

  6. New York Times, December 3, 1997, and October 11, 1997.

  7. Washington Post, July 12, 1998.

  8. See Dana Priest, “Free of Oversight, U.S. Military Trains Foreign Troops,” Washington Post, July 12, 1998; Douglas Farah, “A Tutor to Every Army in Latin America,” Washington Post, July 13, 1998; Dana Priest, “Special Forces Training Review Sought,” Washington Post, July 15, 1998; Mary McGrory, “In Joint Training, a Singular Failure,” Washington Post, July 26, 1998; and Lee Siew Hua, “U.S. to Review Training of Foreign Troops,” Singapore Straits Times, August 13, 1998.

  9. Washington Post, July 12, 1998.

  10. New York Times, July 20, 1998.

  11. Nation, June 15–22, 1998. See also Tim Weiner, “A Tale of Torture from an Indonesian Dissident,” New York Times, May 8, 1998.

  12. New York Times, November 4, 1998.

  13. New York Times, August 1, 1998. See also David E. Sanger, “U.S. Backs Indonesian Loans but Cancels Military Exercise,” New York Times, May 9, 1998.

  14. “Indonesian Special Ops Force Praised for Protecting National Security,” Special Warfare 10.2, Spring 1997. (This journal was formerly available online from http://leav-www.army.mil/fmso/lic/sfindex2.htm, but the army seems to have pulled it from the Internet.)

  15. For details, see Allan Nairn’s reports in the Nation, March 30, April 6, June 8, and June 15, 1998. On March 18, 1998, the Indonesian military expelled Nairn from the country, but he continued to file his articles from Singapore.

  16. Business Week, Asia ed., August 3, 1998. See also David Lamb, “6 Students in Jakarta Protest Killed by Police,” Los Angeles Times, May 13, 1998.

  17. New Republic, July 13, 1998.

  18. George Hicks, “Indonesian Mayhem and American Imperialism,” unpublished manuscript dated July 26, 1998, supplied by Hicks to the author.

  19. Jakarta Post, reprinted in the Straits Times, July 20, 1998.

  20. Asiaweek, July 24, 1998, p. 30.

  21. William McGurn, in Asian Wall Street Journal, July 10–11, 1998.

  22. Nation, June 15–22, 1998.

  23. Washington Post, July 25, 1998.

  24. Philip Shenon (New York Times), “U.S. Delegation Puts Emphasis on Human Rights in Indonesia,” San Diego Union-Tribune, August 2, 1998.

  25. International Herald Tribune, July 21, 1998.

  26. Ken Silverstein, “Privatizing War, How Affairs of State Are Outsourced to Corporations Beyond Public Control,” Nation, July 28—August 4, 1997.

  27. See the Arms Control and Disarmament’s Web site at http://www.acda.gov/factshee/conwpn/wmeatfs.htm.

  28. Center for Defense Information, Weekly Defense Monitor 2:24 (June 18, 1998), on-line at http://www.cdi.org/weekly/1998/issue24/index.html#1.

  29. For details, see the SIPRI Web site at http://www.sipri.se.

  30. Press release on Presidential Decision Directive (PDD) 34 of February 17, 1995.

  31. Quoted by Lora Lumpe in the Nonviolent Activist, May—June 1995.

  32. Quoted in “Clinton’s Conventional Arms Export Policy: So Little Change,” Arms Control Today, May 1995, available from the Federation of American Scientists at http://www.fas.org/asmp/library/articles/actmay95.html.

  33. For details on these sales to Taiwan, see Associated Press, August 27, 1998.

  34. Oscar Arias, “Stopping America’s Most Lethal Export,” New York Times, June 23, 1999.

  35. Mary McGrory, in the Washington Post, July 26, 1998.

  36. Los Angeles Times, June 28, 1996.

  37. Jimmy Carter, “Have We Forgotten the Path to Peace?” New York Times, May 27, 1999.

  4: South Korea: Legacy of the Cold War

  1. Raymond Aron, “The Impact of Marxism in the Twentieth Century,” in Milorad M. Drachkovitch, ed., Marxism in the Modern World (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1965), p. 17.

  2. The main sources concerning the Cheju uprising are cataloged on-line on the Korea Web Weekly at http://www.kimsoft.com/1997/cheju.htm. The most important of these are a) the memoirs of Gen. Kim Ik-ruhl, the commander of the 9th Regiment, during the early phase of the Cheju massacre; b) Wolcott Wheeler, “The 1948 Cheju-do Civil War”; c) Huh Sang-soo, “On Properly Assessing the Cheju April 3rd Popular Uprising”; d) Yang Hankwon, “The Truth About the Cheju April 3rd Insurrection”; e) Oh Gun-sook, “Violation of Women’s Rights and the Cheju April 3rd Massacre”; f) Kang Chung-ku, professor of sociology, Dong-Gook University, “The US Korea Policy, Division of Korea, and the April 3rd Insurrection”; and g) James West, “Cheju April 3rd Martial Law: Was It Legal?” Also see Bruce Cumings (history, University of Chicago), “The Question of American Responsibility for the Suppression of the Cheju-do Uprising,” paper presented at the Fiftieth Anniversary Conference of the Cheju Rebellion, Tokyo, March 14, 1998, and available on-line at http://www.kimsoft.com/1997/cheju98.htm. Muccio is quoted by Cumings.

  3. Los Angeles Times, April 16, 1996; and Lee Wha-rang, August 14, 1998, at http://www.kimsoft.com/1997/nkclinto.htm.

  4. Korea Times, May 13, 1998.

  5. United Nations General Assembly, Report of the Special Committee on the Problem of Hungary (New York: United Nations, 1957), p. 6.

  6. Ibid., p. 25.

  7. Ibid., p. 10.

  8. London Review of Books, October 17, 1996.

  9. Jungang Ilbo, September 27, 1997.

  10. See Nucleonics Week, January 7, 1998.

  11. Shorrock’s analyses have been published in Korean and English primarily on the Internet. See http://www.kimsoft.com/korea/kwangju3.htm and http://www.kimsoft.com/korea/shorrok.htm. In February 1997 the Seoul High Court ordered these documents released to the Korean public despite protests from the U.S. government. See Chosun Ilbo, February 21, 1997. See also Tim Shorrock, “U.S. Knew of South Korea Crackdown,” Journal of Commerce, February 27, 1996; and “Debacle in Kwangju,” Nation, December 9, 1996.

  12. See http://www.kimsoft.com/korea/kwangju3.htm.

  13. For an authoritative account, see Bruce Cumings, Korea’s Place in the Sun (New York: W. W. Norton, 1997), p. 377.

  14. Donald N. Clark, “U.S. Role in Kwangju and Beyond,” Los Angeles Times, August 29, 1996.

  15. These details are from Sam Jameson, former Los Angeles Times bureau chief in Tokyo and Seoul, in an unpublished paper entitled “Reflections on Kwangju,” April 7, 1997.

  16. New York Times, January 21, 1998.

  17. Asian Wall Street Journal, October 8, 1996.

  18. Tim Shorrock, “Debacle in Kwangju,” Nation, December 9, 1996.

  5: North Korea: Endgame of the Cold War

  1. U.S. News & World Report, July 25, 1994.

  2. Daniel Burstein, Privileged Information 1.3 (March 1995).

  3. Associated Press, September 1, 1994.

  4. Tokyo Insideline, no. 34 (November 30, 1994).

  5. Agence France-Press, March 5, 1999.

  6. On the seven hundred thousand Koreans in Japan, see George Hicks, Japan’s Hidden Apartheid: The Korean Minority and the Japanese (Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 1998).

  7. Bungei Shunju staff, eds., “Seifu naibu bunsho o nyushu, Kita Chosen wa ko ugoku” (Internal Government Document: How North Korea Will Act), Bungei Shunju, July 1994.

  8. Bruce Cumings, Korea’s Place in the Sun (New York: W. W. Norton, 1997), p. 476.

  9. Aviation Week and Space Technology, September 14, 1998, p. 58f, and September 21, 1998, pp. 30–31.

  10. “Successful Launch of First Satellite in DPRK [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea],” http://fas.org/news/dprk/1998/980904-kcna.htm.

  11. Gilman’s statement at hearings of the House International Relations Committee, February 25, 1999; Tenet, New York Times, February 3, 1999. See also “Opening Statement from Benjamin A. Gilman, Chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives International Relati
ons Committee, at Hearings Regarding U.S. Policy Toward the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea,” Northeast Asia Peace and Security “Special Report,” March 24, 1999, from NAPSNet@nautilus.org.

  12. Washington Post, August 27, 1997.

  13. New York Times, August 28, 1997.

  14. “Special State Department Briefing,” U.S. Information Agency Transcript, August 26, 1997.