Is it time for the United States to withdraw from its empire? "America," "withdrawal," "empire": three words, three controversies. Tell me how you define these three words, and I'll tell you how you will answer Chalmers Johnson's question.
Just to pick this book off the shelf is to feel one's skepticism stiffen. Most Americans, for example, do not believe that they possess an empire to withdraw from. Most Japanese, by contrast, are wholly indifferent to the intellectual wrangle over whether or not the U.S. possesses an empire.
Nevertheless, the Japanese reader provides the litmus test. Empire or not, the thoughtful Japanese snaps to attention at any suggestion that Washington might sound a military retreat from the Western Pacific.