Blowback Reaction

Chalmers Johnson 's essay blowback was very interesting to me. I valued reading this essay because I had always been aware of the retaliation terrorist attacks, but had never been able to put a name to it. Blowback, a term created by the Central Intelligence Agency, is meant to describe the side effects of American Foreign Policy that was kept secret from the American populace. The article highlights a series of incidents including an incident at a Northern Italian sking resort, the 1988 bombing of a PanAm flight in retaliation to a 1986 US bombing, and the 1998 bombings of Osama bin Laden. The last case is particularly interesting as the book says, "Blowback itself can lead to more blowback, in a spiral of destructive behavior. While the US attempt to justify it's response, the result is usually an increase in fighting. In short, blowback describes a retaliation for X in terms of act Y.

A Reaction to Joseph Nye's "Soft Power"

Joseph Nye focuses his essay on the nature of power and how it had developed since John Quincy Adams. Critical to his essay is the division between "hard" and "soft" power. While the former is concerned more with military and economic might, the latter is centered around getting other nations to desire the same outcomes and solutions to problems that you want. Nye credits three sources of soft power: A country's culture, its political values, and its foreign policies. When examing culture, Nye brings up an interesting point with German Editor Josef Joffe who states, " U.S culture ,low-brow or high, radiates outward with a novel twist. Rome's and Soviet Russia's cultural sway stopped exactly at their military borders. America'ssoft power,though, rules over an empire on which the sun never sets."

617-627 reaction

When reading the first few pages I thought I was reading my US American History book from sophmore year. The pages went over how the government began monitoring big business in the form of antitrust policies or "trust busting" which broke up monopolies into smaller businessess that were forced to become more competitive. Examples of these policies include the Interstate Commerce act of1887, the sherman antitrust act, and the Federal Trade Act (1914), which set up the the FTC (watches for price discrimination and pooling agreements). The book then began to focus on what role the government played in shaping the economy, primarily through regulation as seen with the airline industry in the 1970s. The latter half of the reading was a more in depth detail of how the Federal Reserve System Works. Designed to integrate private banks together into one, the system is comprised of 12 reserve banks located in a commercial city.
From a personal standpoint I was a little shocked. While I knew that the government played a role in shaping the economy primarily through trust busting, I did not realize the full impact it could make. The Federal Reserve System I had never quite understood, but after the reading it makes it clear that the system acts as the brakes and gas to slow down or accelerate the economy respectively.