Chalmers Johnson: The Sorrows of Empire, Militarism, Secrecy, and The End of The Republic

Chalmers Ashby Johnson (August 6, 1931 – November 20, 2010) was an American political scientist and Professor Emeritus at the University of California, San Diego. He served in the Korean War, was a consultant to the Office of National Estimates of the CIA from 1967 to 1973 and chaired the Center for Chinese Studies at the University of California, Berkeley from 1967 to 1972. He was also President and co-founder with Steven Clemons of the Japan Policy Research Institute (now based at the University of San Francisco), an organization that promotes public education about Japan and Asia.

Johnson wrote numerous books, including a trilogy on the consequences of what he called the American Empire: Blowback, The Sorrows of Empire, and Nemesis; The Last Days of the American Republic. A former Cold Warrior, he notably stated, "A nation can be one or the other, a democracy or an imperialist, but it can't be both. If it sticks to imperialism, it will, like the old Roman Republic on which so much of our system was modeled, lose its democracy to a domestic dictatorship."

Johnson was born in 1931 in Phoenix, Arizona. He earned a BA in Economics in 1953 and an MA and a PhD in Political Science in 1957 and 1961, respectively. Both of his advanced degrees were from the University of California, Berkeley.

During the Korean War, Johnson served as a naval officer in Japan. He was a communications officer on the USS La Moure County, which ferried Chinese prisoners of war from South Korea back to ports in North Korea. He taught political science at the University of California from 1962 until he retired from teaching in 1992. He was best known early in his career for his scholarship on the subjects of China and Japan. Johnson was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1976.