Chalmers Johnson, one of the sharpest critics and analysts of US imperialism today across the globe — much of it involving some oppression of the world’s non-European peoples–died Saturday at age 79. Those who work to try to understand US imperialism will greatly miss him.
As one analyst put it over at commondreams.org:

Before 9/11, Johnson wrote the book Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire. After the terrorist attacks in 2001 in New York and Washington, Blowback became the hottest book in the market. …. He then wrote Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy and the End of the Republic, Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic, and most recently Dismantling the Empire: America’s Last Best Hope. …. Johnson was the more serious, the most empirical, the most informed about the nooks and crannies of every political position as he had journeyed the length of the spectrum. . . . Many of Johnson’s followers and Chal himself think that American democracy is lost, that the republic has been destroyed by an embrace of empire and that the American public is unaware and unconscious of the fix.

Here is a link to his last book, a blockbuster laying out one major way out of this imperial mess and hubris.

All these books are sharp and well-argued. He will be missed.