r.i.p. Chalmers Johnson

He died on Saturday. 

He was someone I looked up to, from an academic distance.  I quoted his essay, "American Militarism and Blowback: The Costs of Letting the Pentagon Dominate Foreign Policy" in my thesis: 

• "The United States is currently the most powerful country in the world, boasting a large, technologically-advanced, and widely stretched military with 800 Department of Defense installations overseas (2002, 25)" and
• "Johnson, for example, aptly describes the reinforcement of American imperialism through the culture of militarism (2002, 29)" and
• "Johnson uses the 800 Department of Defense installations the United States has built abroad to argue that the United States has created 'a new form of imperialism' (2002, 25, 28)", and
• [quoting Johnson directly], "[empire in Japan] was costly to the United States in terms of lost American jobs, destroyed American manufacturing industries […] The American government continued to accept these costs as the price of keeping its empire together" (2002, 27)" and
• "As Johnson writes, the United States operates 'on the wrong side of history' (2002, 28)."

But by then he was already influential to me, and that alone doesn't describe how much.  He was one of the very few political scientists that felt like "my kind of people" - a security specialist concerned about empire and expansion and militarism (it started with his post-Cold War observations on Okinawa).  When I first read him, I remember thinking "finally!"  Professor Cooley recommended him - and especially his theory of blowback - to everyone.  Johnson on the theory:

"In Blowback, I set out to explain why we are hated around the world. The concept "blowback" does not just mean retaliation for things our government has done to and in foreign countries. It refers to retaliation for the numerous illegal operations we have carried out abroad that were kept totally secret from the American public. This means that when the retaliation comes - as it did so spectacularly on September 11, 2001 - the American public is unable to put the events in context. So they tend to support acts intended to lash out against the perpetrators, thereby most commonly preparing the ground for yet another cycle of blowback."

R.I.P., Chalmers Johnson.