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The Gaggle Book Club: "The Politics Of War: The World And United States Foreign Policy, 1943–1945," By Gabriel Kolko

Each week, the Gaggle Book Club recommends a book for Gagglers to read and—most important—uploads a pdf version of it.

Our practice is that we do not vouch for the reliability or accuracy of any book we recommend. Still less, do we necessarily agree with a recommended book's central arguments. However, any book we recommend will be of undoubted interest and intellectual importance.

Today's book club selection is Gabriel Kolko's "The Politics of War: The World and United States Foreign Policy, 1943–1945." Published in 1968, Kolko's book is a seminal work of historical revisionism on the origins of the Cold War. Kolko had been a prominent figure among the so-called New Left historians who challenged the prevailing accounts of the origins of the post-World War II rift between the Soviet Union and the West.

Kolko's background was in economic and social history, not military or diplomatic history. His earlier works, such as "The Triumph of Conservatism" (1963), offered a critique the Progressive Era, arguing that the regulatory reforms that it instituted in reality served corporate interests. "The Politics of War" was in a sense a continuation of this argument.

Kolko examined the final years of World War II, asserting that U.S. foreign policy was predominantly driven by economic imperatives and a desire to shape a global order conducive to American capitalist interests. Kolko argued that the most important priority for U.S. policymakers was the establishment of a world order that favored free-market capitalism, one that ensured that U.S. businesses had access to markets and natural resources.

Kolko also contended that the United States worked to suppress leftist and communist movements globally, viewing them as threats to capitalist expansion. Thus, according to Kolko, the origins of the Cold War lay not in Soviet aggression or fear of a supposed Soviet threat. No, the Cold War was a consequence of U.S. efforts to dominate the postwar world economically and politically.

Kolko's work was groundbreaking in combining economic analysis with diplomatic history. Also original was his emphasis on the continuity between U.S. wartime policies and postwar objectives.

Kolko examined the Allied delay in opening a Western front in Europe, something the Soviet Union had been demanding since 1941 in order to alleviate Wehrmacht pressure on its forces. According to Kolko, the postponement until 1944 was not due not so much to logistical challenges as to the U.S. desire to see Soviet power degraded, and Soviet influence in postwar Europe diminished.

Kolko detailed the myriad ways the United States worked to suppress leftist and communist movements in Europe and Asia during and after the war. U.S. support for conservative and often authoritarian regimes, according to him, was driven by fear of the spread of socialism and by concern over threats to American economic interests.

Gabriel Kolko's "The Politics of War: The World and United States Foreign Policy, 1943–1945" was an important and influential work. There are obvious weaknesses in the argument, and the crude Marxist scheme can be a little tiresome at times. However, it inspired a slew of revisionist historians who undermined the cozy, self-flattering myths of the Cold War. If you want to get a balanced understanding of the origins of the Cold War, this book is a must-read.

Gabriel_Kolko_-_The_Politics_of_War__The_World_and_United_States_Foreign_Policy,_1943-1945-Pantheon_(1990).pdf
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More Leftie Than Thou
"Jacobin" Magazine Celebrates A Strike Against Ol' Blue Eyes

Here at "The Gaggle" we have very little time for the "more Leftie than thou" school of thought--that's the approach to life according to which the only thing that matters is whether you take the right position on every issue under the sun from Abortion to Zelensky. No one in the world meets the exacting standards of this school of thought; any Leftie leader anywhere is always selling out to the bankers and the capitalists. The perfect exemplar of this is the unreadable Jacobin magazine. 

The other day I came across this article from 2021. It's a celebration of trade union power. And not simply trade union power, but the use of trade union power to secure political goals. Of course (and this is always the case with the "more Leftie than thou" crowd), this glorious, never-to-be-forgotten moment on the history of organized labor took place many years ago--in the summer of 1974 to be exact. Yes, almost half a century has gone by since that thrilling moment when the working-class movement of Australia mobilized and prepared to seize the means of production, distribution and exchange. 

Well, not quite. Organized labor went into action against...Ol' Blue Eyes, the Chairman of the Board, the Voice; yes, Frank Sinatra. Why? What had Sinatra done? Sinatra was certainly very rich, and he owned a variety of properties and businesses. But if the Australian trade union movement were, understandably, searching for the bright, incandescent spark that would finally awaken the working class from its slumber there were surely richer, greedier, more dishonest, more decadent, above all more Australian individuals it could have discovered. Australia was never short of them. Rupert Murdoch immediately springs to mind. Why Sinatra?

 

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