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Chalmers Ashby Johnson is an author and professor emeritus of the University of California, San Diego. He is also president and co-founder of the Japan Policy Research Institute, an organization promoting public education about Japan and Asia. He has written numerous books including, most recently, three examinations of the consequences of American Empire, Blowback, The Sorrows of Empire, and Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic.

Johnson was born in 1931 in Phoenix, Arizona. He earned a B.A. degree in Economics in 1953 and a M.A. and a Ph.D. in political science in 1957 and 1961 respectively. All of his degrees were from the University of California, Berkeley. During the Korean War, Johnson served as a naval officer in Japan. He taught political science at the University of California from 1962 until he retired in 1992. He was best known early in his career for scholarship about Japan.

From 1967 until 1973, Johnson was a consultant to the Office of National Estimates (O.N.E.) within the CIA. He largely dealt with issues involving communist China and Maoism. From 1967 until 1972, he also served as chairman of the Center for Chinese Studies at Berkeley.

His book Blowback won an American Book Award in 2001 from the Before Columbus Foundation, and was re-issued in an updated version in 2004. Sorrows of Empire, published in 2004, updated the evidence and argument from Blowback for the post-9/11 environment and Nemesis concludes the trilogy. Johnson was featured in the Eugene Jarecki-directed film Why We Fight, which won the 2005 Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival.

Johnson believes the enforcement of American hegemony over the world constitutes a new form of global empire. Whereas traditional empires maintained control over subject peoples via colonies, since World War II the US has developed a vast system of hundreds of military bases around the world where it has strategic interests. A long-time Cold Warrior, Johnson experienced a political awakening after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, noting that instead of demobilizing its massive armed forces, the US accelerated its reliance on military solutions to problems both economic and political. The result of this militarism (as distinct from actual domestic defense) is more terrorism against the US and its allies, the loss of core democratic values at home, and an eventual disaster for the American economy.

• Conspiracy at Matsukawa (1972)
• Peasant Nationalism and Communist Power (ISBN 0-8047-0074-5)
• Revolutionary Change (1982) ISBN 0-316-46730-8
• MITI and the Japanese Miracle (1982)
• An Instance of Treason: Ozaki Hotsumi and the Sorge Spy Ring (1990)
• Japan: Who Governs? -- The Rise of the Developmental State (1995)
• Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire (2000, rev. 2004) ISBN 0-8050-6239-4
• The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (2004) ISBN 0-8050-7004-4
• Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic (2007) ISBN 0-8050-7911-4

• The American Empire Project

• Articles by Chalmers Johnson
• A National Intelligence Estimate on the United States by Chalmers Johnson (from Harper's Magazine)
• Empire v. Democracy: Why Nemesis Is at Our Door by Chalmers Johnson
• Blowback Chalmers Johnson essay from The Nation
• Cold Warrior in a Strange Land Tom Engelhardt interviews Chalmers Johnson
• Antiwar Radio: Charles Goyette Interviews Chalmers Johnson
• Chalmers Johnson on Democracy Now! February 27 2007