Review

This book was written in 2000 and focuses mostly on blowback of US policies in East Asia, and only peripherally on policies in the Arab world. The term ‘Blowback’ is now pretty widely known: the longterm unintended consequences of policy decisions and covert actions.

Johnson begins by making the case that the US has been an imperialist power since the end of World War II. What other country has troops stationed in over 100 countries? How many of those countries have troops stationed in the US? The US since 1945 has routinely executed covert actions to bring down democracies and prop up dictatorships. Often, these ‘covert’ operations have been hidden mostly from the US people, while citizens of the target countries have understood very well what was happening. And then we wonder why there is so much animosity towards the US, sometimes expressing itself in terrorist acts against US citizens.

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