Chalmers Johnson's Blow-Back Case

Chalmers Johnson's Blow-back: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire is a hard-hitting investigation which divulges top secret operations orchestrated by the American government. Johnson alleges that the operations are coordinated in the country's capital city (Washington). The US administration is in pursuit of imposing globalization on other countries, controlling most of the global market operations and building up its military supremacy by all possible means with the aim of maintaining its super power status. He posits that the US secret service is being manipulated by partisan profiteers whose aim is to turn it into a self-governing institution.

According to Johnson, the US administration led by former president Clinton was unable to prevent the secret Cold War plans orchestrated by egoists in the pentagon whose intention was to devastate the US public. Johnson contends that expansionist efforts advanced by the American regime set-off a series of economic blows throughout the world. Surprisingly, the US still supported the purchase of ammunition by nations it considered allies despite causing unparalleled paucity in those economies.

According to Johnson, the American regime went as far as providing monetary backing to friendly nations regardless of the evident possibility of destabilizing its economy in the process. He proposes that the US ought to concentrate on increasing its production power as opposed to focusing on the perilous military policy. He warns the US to be particularly cautious when dealing with industrious economies like China, which has exhibited signs of becoming a superpower.

Johnson's fundamental point is on the brink of losing democracy for the sake of power. He argues that the US should stop its underhanded tactics of attaining super-power status and overstretching its focus on improving its industrial capacity and reducing its detractors by improving its democracy

Johnson deliberately adopts the term blow-back, which refers to reprisal. The term was used to describe the vicious, inadvertent effects of clandestine intelligence activities by the Criminal investigations Agency (Johnson, 2000, p. 8). His intention is to show that the sporadic attacks against the US have been brought about by its use of covert tactics and imperialism. He uses well thought-out evidence backed up by unambiguous opinions to strengthen his message.

Johnson takes a swipe at America' misconceived involvement with Afghan militia (the Mujahidin) in the 1980's. He argues that the US laid the foundation for disaster when it entered into an alliance the Islamic fundamentalists. The CIA wanted the militant group to help fight the Russians. The move however backfired because the Soviet Union retaliated by attacking the Afghanistan. The attack devastated and destabilized the Afghani regime. Instead of helping to restore Afghanistan, the US in turn attempted to control the country