Blowback : the costs and consequences of American empire

I thought this was going to be another book about the Us's globe-spanning, century-long escapade of war crimes and their consequences. It was actually just about East Asian countries (Japan, Korea, China, etc) and mostly about economic dominance and the evil IMF.

Okinawa
If the majority of the citizens of a sovereign nation want an occupying military to leave their nation, then the right thing to do is to leave. Right? If, say, the hundreds of thousands of US troops and personnel in Okinawa Japan are incredibly unpopular, due to the high cases of drunkenness, violence, car accidents, and rape all caused by US military folk, then the US should respect the wishes of these occupied people and leave. That's what moral, ethical countries do. We're not at war with Japan anymore. We're simply maintaining our forward operating base within a satellite of the empire.

Reading 20-year old books about international politics is a mixed bag. In some aspects, it's interesting to see how little things change and how predictions can be so spot on.

For example: “An excessive reliance on a militarized foreign policy and an indifference to the distinction between national interests and national values in deciding where the United States should intervene abroad have actually made the country less secure in ways that will become only more apparent in the years to come”

THAT was written in 1999, in the first edition. Holy moly. He could not be more right.

Not only that, the guy pretty much exactly predicts China's Belt & Road initiative to rival the IMF and US Hegemony: “It is only a matter of time until the small nations of East Asia get tired of this American bullying and find a suitable leader to create an anti-American coalition.” Virtually every southeast Asian country has signed up for it, along with most of the rest of the world. I really want to read a book about it.

On the other hand, there is also a lot of stuff that is now simply out of date and wrong in this book. Mostly about China. Including “Hong Kong is indeed no longer at issue”. Whoops. Can't always get it right.

Then there was the issue I found most intriguing, the “Asian concept of human rights”. I have been a big supporter of the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights. I still am. But I'm now coming around to the fact that they are a concept created by Western Liberal empires, and come with the hyper-individualistic, anti-community bias that such empires push for.

“The selective way the U.S. government has wielded the human rights issue has had an unintended consequence. It has stimulated Asians of many different persuasions to develop an “Asian concept of human rights” and to attack the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights as not “universal” at all but only another manifestation of Western cultural imperialism. [...][Quoting Lee Kuan Yew] ‘Americans believe their ideas are universal—the supremacy of the individual and free, unfettered expression. But they are not. Never were [...] The ideas of individual supremacy and the right to free expression, when carried to excess, have not worked. They have made it difficult to keep American society cohesive. Asia can see it is not working.'”

This is an interesting point of view that I want to learn more about.