More Imperialism 101

Gabriel Kolko was one of the heavyweight New Left historians of my generation. On the basis of strong recommendations from Perry Anderson, in American Foreign Policy and Its Thinkers, I’m reading Kolko’s The Politics of War, which is about maneuvering among the U.S., the U.K., and the U.S.S.R. between 1943 and 1945. The book received some prestigious endorsements. Kolko was a pretty big deal in his day, much more than a New Left celebrity.

I’ve finally gotten through half of this book. It’s 700 pages, in what looks like nine-point type. Rather than hold this up until I finish, I’m posting now. (I write these little by little as I read.)

After reading several foreign policy histories, the supreme takeaway for me is that “human rights” and “free trade” are just standard covers for whatever grubby, narrow, national interest is being pursued, including for the U.S.A. Anybody talking these clichés is just pulling your leg. More recently in the same vein, we have “the Global War on Terror.”

This incidentally renders the standard econ textbook treatments of comparative advantage not merely idiotic but insulting. It’s not that the theory itself is illogical, but that it leaves out the fundamental features of context, namely the pursuit of national interest.

I was reminded of the magnum opus by Niall Ferguson (a.k.a. ‘vile Niall’), The War of the World that I read some time ago. Here as well, consideration of the principles of free trade are consistently junked in favor of root questions of nations’ command of raw materials and industrial capacities.

Getting back to Kolko, by 1943 apparently it was already obvious the Axis powers would be defeated, so those seeking geopolitical sway were much engrossed in conniving for postwar influence and power. Many years back, I was struck by the same preoccupations in the U.S. recounted by Henry Wallace in his diary.

The timeline to me is instructive. D-Day did not jump off until June of 1944. Russia had been in a life-and-death struggle with the Nazis. After stopping their advance, the Red Army commenced to chewing them up. They came to be the biggest land army in Europe. Opening the Western Front in France was motivated in no small part by the U.S.-U.K. need to get to Berlin before the Russians.

One thing I was insufficiently aware of was the competition between the U.S. and the U.K. The latter hoped to maintain as much of its former imperial reach as possible. The U.S. supported decolonization within the British, French, and Dutch empires under the rubric of trade liberalization. The real interest was in clearing the way for U.S. exports, the better to support domestic employment and disposal of excess productive capacity.

Kolko argues that the U.S. fixation on anti-communism prevented a flexible approach to the disposition of Eastern European countries, which inflexibility led to their complete absorption by the Soviets. American stupidity built the Warsaw Pact. By the way, FDR was no less focused on U.S. global power than anyone else. There was no New Deal in foreign policy. The Four Freedoms was a crock. (See “human rights” above.)

By Kolko, Stalin was not much interested in socialism in the nations bordering Russia, but primarily with their vulnerability to Russian influence. Tito in Yugoslavia led a kick-ass, authentically popular and independent communist movement about which Stalin was less than enthused. Stalin’s relations with Mao’s massive insurgency were similarly chilly. In neither case could the Russians get the clients they desired.

By contrast, Stalin was able to shut down left insurgency in France, Belgium, Italy, and Greece for the sake of continental stability, incidentally providing endless fuel for Trotskyist agitation. All traces of militancy and independence were sacrificed for the sake, first of the war effort, and afterwards, to avoid any provocations of the U.S. Stalin in particular hoped for postwar economic aid from the U.S. It is not obvious to me that U.S. reaction and anti-Sovietism was at all attenuated by virtue of the surrender of Western European communists to the Allies’ military occupation. No economic support from the U.S. was forthcoming.

In this light, the present-day Russian assault on Ukraine makes a bit of sense. The legacy of World War II, for which Russia bore a great burden, promotes sensitivity to foreign hostility at their border. This in my view does not justify the invasion, but it does help to explain it.