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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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The Gaggle Music Club: Mussorgsky's "Night on Bald Mountain"

This week's selection for The Gaggle Music Club is "Night on Bald Mountain" by Modest Mussorgsky.

Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky (1839–1881), one of the most distinctive voices in 19th-century Russian music, was a member of the “Mighty Handful” that also included Mily Balakirev, César Cui, Alexander Borodin and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. The Five’s mission was to break from Western European models and forge an authentically Russian style, drawing on folk melody, native idioms and Orthodox liturgy. Mussorgsky was perhaps the least conventional of the group, and the one whose music most strongly resisted later academic tidying up. His rejection of Western compositional norms, favoring speech-like vocal lines, abrupt modulations and stark orchestral colors, made him seem unrefined to contemporaries, but visionary to later composers.

The piece that is now called "Night on Bald Mountain" was not a single, straightforward composition. The piece audiences are most familiar with is Rimsky-Korsakov’s 1886 orchestration ...

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TG 1948: Ukraine Cuts Off Hungary's Oil Supply; Trump Steps In

George Szamuely and Peter Lavelle discuss Ukraine's repeated attacks on the Druzhba oil pipeline that lead to cutoffs in Hungary's oil supply, and wonder what Kiev's motives may be in launching such attacks.

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TG 1947: NATO's Deceit Over The Ukraine "Security Guarantees"

George Szamuely discusses NATO's attempt to fool the world over the "robust security guarantees" that President Trump and Russia have supposedly signed on to.

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August 20, 2025

https://www.rt.com/news/623339-netanyahu-macron-france-antisemitism/

This guy is pure fucking evil!! If that is antisemitic, then I’m damn proud of it. Netanyahu is a poster child for antisemitism .

Why doesn’t Trump and idiot wife write a letter to this scumbag about the children of Gaza. History will not take kindly to the inaction of the US, Europe or Russia to stop Israel and this cretin

August 20, 2025

Obama's NATO Ambassador Admits to British Lords: Trump Just Ended 80 Years of Global Control

Promethean Updates

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Aug 20, 2025 The Midweek Update

Get our FREE newsletter at https://www.PrometheanAction.com — In this episode, Susan Kokinda from Promethean Action reveals crucial insights into the recent shift in US foreign and economic policy under President Donald Trump. Highlighting the testimony of Ivo Daalder, former NATO ambassador, before the British House of Lords, Kokinda discusses how Trump's administration is challenging the post-war rules-based order that has guided Western policies for decades. The video outlines Trump's success in resolving global conflicts, reestablishing national economic sovereignty, and dismantling the strategies of imperial global elites. Subscribe for a deeper understanding of these monumental developments and their global repercussions.

4 hours ago

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/abrego-garcia-released-from-jail-returned-maryland-await

THIS IS A JOKE!! So much for Trumps tough on illegal immigrants. This mother -fucker is released from jail, and is protected by a judges order not to be taken into ICE custody after release from Tenn. custody. This enrages me, he is in the US illegally and is protected by US judges from deportation.

And I have a relative who cannot get a US visa to visit, when they have a home, family and business in their country of origin, and I have provided my financial records to guarantee that they would not over stay their welcome. It makes me sick. I hope this scumbag gets deported to South Sudan.

Thank you for your attention to this matter!

January 21, 2023
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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