Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic
by Chalmers Johnson
Metropolitan, HK$234
'Fire, Aim, Ready.' Those words, applied by a scientist to President George W. Bush's Star Wars drive to militarise space, convey the outlook of the US administration, as Chalmers Johnson sees it. The critic casts the government as a loose cannon defined by a gung-ho human rights attitude that endangers the future of the country and rampant military expenditure. The US supposedly spends more on its armed forces than the rest of the world combined.
Johnson compares the belligerent, overstretched empire to those lost by Britain and ancient Rome. Curiously, the comparison proves to have a statistical basis: whereas America has 38 military bases scattered around the globe, at its 1898 imperial peak Britain boasted 36. Likewise, at its AD117 zenith Rome had 37 to police its realm, which ran from Britain to Armenia.
Johnson also likens Congress to the Roman senate, which became 'a social club' for aristocrats determined to toady to the autocrat Augustus Caesar. He even claims that, like Augustus, Bush might eventually declare a dictatorship.
Bush would do better to embrace the British empire model of devolution and so give democracy a chance to survive, the author writes. He warns that democracy is already tottering, pointing to the abuses conducted by American troops at Camp Gitmo and Abu Ghraib.