Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic (American Empire Project)
Like ancient Rome, America is saddled with an empire that is fatally  undermining its republican government, argues Johnson (The Sorrows of Empire), in this bleak jeremiad. He  surveys the trappings of empire: the brutal war of choice in Iraq and other  foreign interventions going back decades; the militarization of space; the  hundreds of overseas U.S. military bases full of "swaggering soldiers who brawl  and sometimes rape." At home, the growth of an "imperial presidency," with the  CIA as its "private army," has culminated in the Bush administration's resort  to warrantless wiretaps, torture, a "gulag" of secret CIA prisons and an  unconstitutional arrogation of "dictatorial" powers, while a corrupt Congress  bows like the Roman Senate to Caesar. Retribution looms, the author warns, as  the American economy, dependent on a bloated military-industrial complex and  foreign borrowing, staggers toward bankruptcy, maybe a military coup. Johnson's  is a biting, often effective indictment of some ugly and troubling features of  America's foreign policy and domestic politics. But his doom-laden trope of  empire ("the capacity for things to get worse is limitless.... the American  republic may be coming to its end") seems overstated. With Bush a lame duck,  not a Caesar, and his military adventures repudiated by the electorate, the  Republic seems more robust than Johnson allows.(Feb.)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.