This provocative and important book is a powerful account of the consequences of American global policies. The twenty-first century, Chalmers Johnson tells us, will be a payback world in which the United States will reap the global resentments it is now sowing.
'Blowback', a term that officials of the CIA first invented for their internal use, refers to the unintended consequences of American policies, and the dangers faced by an overextended empire that insists on projecting its military power to every corner of the earth and using American capital and markets to force global economic integration on its own terms. From America's role in Asia's financial crisis, to its early support for Saddam Hussein and its actions in the Balkans, Johnson reveals the misguided actions of a nation basking in its own triumphalism. In the wake of the Cold War, the United States has imprudently expanded the commitments it made over the previous forty years. In 'Blowback' Chalmers Johnson issues a warning: it is time for the American empire to demobilize before its bills become due.