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

In the long run, the people of the United States are neither militaristic enough nor rich enough to engage in the perpetual police actions, wars, and bailouts their government’s hegemonic policies will require. Moreover, in Asia the United States now faces a renascent China, not only the world’s oldest continuously existent civilization but the product of the biggest revolution among all historical cases. Today, China is both the world’s most populous society and its fastest-growing economy. The United States cannot hope to “contain” China; it can only adjust to it. But our policies of global hegemony leave us unprepared and far too clumsy in even our limited attempts to arrive at such an adjustment. Meanwhile, the Chinese are very much aware of the large American expeditionary force deployed within striking distance of their borders and the naval units permanently off their coastline. It does not take a Thucydides to predict that this developing situation portends conflict.

The indispensable instrument for maintaining the American empire is its huge military establishment. Despite the money lavished on it, the endless praise for it in the media, and the overstretch and blowback it generates, the military always demands more. In the decade following the end of the Cold War, military budgets consistently gave priority to an arms race that had no other participants. For example, the Pentagon’s budget for the fiscal year 2000 called for replacing the F-15, “the world’s most advanced aircraft,” with the F-22, also “the world’s most advanced aircraft.” The air force wanted 339 F-22s at $188 million each, three times the cost of the airplane it is replacing. The United States already has 1,094 F-15s, against which there is no equal or more capable aircraft on earth. The last Clinton defense budget included funds for yet more nuclear-attack submarines, for which there is no conceivable use or contingency. They merely provide work for local defense contractors and will join the fleet of America’s “floating Chernobyls,” along with its nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, cruising the seas waiting for an accident to occur.

The American military at the end of the century is becoming an autonomous system. We no longer have a draft army based on the obligation of citizens to serve their nation. When the Vietnam War exposed the inequities of the draft—for example, the ease with which college students could gain deferments—Congress decided to abolish conscription rather than enforce it in an equitable manner. Today, the military is an entirely mercenary force, made up of volunteers paid salaries by the Pentagon. Although the military still tries to invoke the public’s support for a force made up of fellow citizens, this force is increasingly separated from civilian interests and devoted to military ones.

Equipped with the most advanced precision-guided munitions, high-performance aircraft, and intercontinental-range missiles, the American armed forces can unquestionably deliver death and destruction to any target on earth and expect little in the way of retaliation. Even so, these forces voraciously demand more and newer equipment, while the Pentagon now more or less sets its own agenda. Accustomed to life in a half-century-old, well-established empire, the corporate interests of the armed forces have begun to take precedence over the older idea that the military is only one of several means that a democratic government might employ to implement its policies. As their size and prominence grow over time, the armed forces of an empire tend to displace other instruments of foreign policy implementation. What also grows is militarism, “a vast array of customs, interests, prestige, actions, and thought associated with armies and wars and yet transcending true military purpose”—and certainly a reasonable description of the American military ethos today.⁷