The focus of this book is on the Japanese economic bureaucracy, particularly on the famous Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI), as the leading state actor in the economy. Although MITI was not the only important agent affecting the economy, nor was the state as a whole always predominant, I do not want to be overly modest about the importance of this subject. The particular speed, form, and consequences of Japanese economic growth are not intelligible without reference to the contributions of MITI. Collaboration between the state and big business has long been acknowledged as the defining characteristic of the Japanese economic system, but for too long the state's role in this collaboration has been either condemned as overweening or dismissed as merely supportive, without anyone's ever analyzing the matter. The history of MITI is central to the economic and political history of modern Japan. Equally important, however, the methods and achievements of the Japanese economic bureaucracy are central to the continuing debate between advocates of the communist-type command economies and advocates of the Western-type mixed market economies. The fully bureaucratized command economies misallocate resources and stifle initiative; in order to function at all, they must lock up their populations behind iron curtains or other more or less impermeable barriers. The mixed market economies struggle to find ways to intrude politically determined priorities into their market systems without catching a bad case of the "English disease" or being frustrated by the American-type legal sprawl. The Japanese, of course, do not have all the answers. But given the fact that virtually all solutions to any of the critical problems of the late twentieth century-energy supply, environmental protection, technological innovation, and so forth-involve an expansion of official bureaucracy, the particular Japanese priorities and procedures are instructive. At the very least they should forewarn a foreign observer that the Japanese achievements were not won without a price being paid.

A classic study by a leading theorist of revolution, Revolutionary Change has gone through eleven printings since its appearance in 1966 and been translated into German, French, and Korean. This carefully revised edition not only brings the original analysis up to date but adds two entirely new chapters: one on terrorism, the most celebrated form of political violence throughout the 1970s, and one on theories of revolution from Brinton to the present day.

From the author of the bestselling Blowback Trilogy, an urgent call to confront America's waning power

In his prophetic book "Blowback," published before 9/11, Chalmers Johnson warned that our secret operations in Iraq and elsewhere around the globe would exact a price at home. Now, in a brilliant series of essays written over the last three years, Johnson measures that price and the resulting dangers America faces. Our reliance on Pentagon economics, a global empire of bases, and war without end is, he declares, nothing short of "a suicide option."

"Dismantling the Empire" explores the subjects for which Johnson is now famous, from the origins of blowback to Barack Obama's Afghanistan conundrum, including our inept spies, bad behavior in other countries, ill-fought wars, and capitulation to a military that has taken ever more control of the federal budget. There is, he proposes, only one way out: President Obama must begin to dismantle America's empire of bases before the Pentagon dismantles the American dream. If we do not learn from the fates of past empires, he suggests, our decline and fall are foreordained. This is Johnson at his best: delivering both a warning and a crucial prescription for a remedy.

Known as the graveyard of empires, Afghanistan has now been singled out as Obama's "just war," the destination for an additional thirty thousand US troops in an effort to shore up an increasingly desperate occupation. Nick Turse brings together a range of leading commentators, politicians, and military strategists to analyze America's real motives and likely prospects. Through on-the-spot reporting, clear-headed analysis and historical comparisons with Afghanistan's previous occupiers-Britain and the Soviet Union, who also argued that they were fighting a just and winnable war-The Case for Withdrawal From Afghanistan carefully examines the current US strategy and offers sobering conclusions. This timely and focused collection aims at the heart of Obama's foreign policy and shows why it is so unlikely to succeed.

Tomdisaptch.com has established itself as the go-to blog for contemporary US politics, and the favored web platform for radical commentators from Noam Chomsky to Howard Zinn. Its powerful, no-holds-barred features draw a huge response from the public and resonate throughout the global media, acting as a touchpaper for debates which subsequently become headline news. This comprehensive volume offers readers a chance to catch up on some of the finest political analysis of our age, including trenchant accounts of the two Bush administrations' catastrophic imperial adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq; Guantanamo, extraordinary rendition and its apologists; and Hurricane Katrina, global warming, black gold and the rise of Hugo Chavez.Introduced, arranged and with additional commentary throughout by the blog's founder Tom Engelhardt, The World According to Tomdispatch is the essential primer for anyone seeking illumination and guidance along the highways and byways of our post-9/11 world.

This provocative & important book, with a new preface by the author written after the momentous events of 11 September, is a powerful account of the consequences of American global policies. The 21st century, Chalmers Johnson tells us, will be a payback world in which the US 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 hugely powerful nation. In the wake of the Cold War, the US 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.

Chalmers Johnson long has been America s most penetrating, provocative analyst of Japan s political economy. . . . The scholarship is superb, and the analysis persuasive and enlightening. . . . An accessible, handy compilation of insights that undergird revisionism the view that Japan s politico-economic system differs far more from the Western model than most Westerners realize]. . . . Juicy insights, such as Johnson s explanation of structural corruption as it s revealed by the career of the late Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka, provide more than enough meat to chew on and relish. Robert Neff, Business Week"