Sawicky says "There's a fair amount of overlap with Chomsky," which is true in a superficial sense, but there is a world of difference. Chomsky is a messianic paranoid. Johnson is an old fashioned gent who kept careful notes on what he was taught in Sunday School. There's a tiny genre of these guys who extrude out of the mainstream--Clyde Prestowitz would be another, or Andrew Bacevich, maybe James Webb (and just in general, it is remarkable how the list of conservative dissidents grows longer every day).
Sawicky does find one interesting point of disagreement with Johnson—on the place of money in imperial overstretch. Says Sawicky:
I tend to discount the money aspect -- what's $450 billion in a $13 trillion economy? To me the ideology -- the thirst for influence, control, and dominance -- is most important.
Sawicky’s view is curious pendant to the view of another with whom he would have little in common: TigerHawk, who just a few days ago was exulting in the fact that the military was “only”3.9 percent of GDP (link here). Sawicky seems closer to right, but both miss the central point: 3.9 percent of a GDP as large as ours may be plenty enough to enhance, rather than to reduce, insecurity in the world.
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