In the front cover blurb, Noam Chomsky writes that "Gabriel Kolko's review of this century's 'tragic monumental experiences' provides sharp insight into the conflicts of these terrible years, their social setting, and their legacy. It's lessons are both sobering and invaluable."

Far from being a didactic review of 20th Century warfare, the lessons that Kolko proffers in "Century of War" amount to nothing more than adhering to the spirit and principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was unanimously adopted by the UN soon after WWII. Here's a taste of some of Gabriel Kolko's sober and invaluabe insights into how an era of tranquility might be constructed and the forces (liberal economics/modern state-capitalism) that are ultimately responsible for this century of destruction:

g...there is nothing in the current momentary hegemony of the ideology of market economics in the ex-Communist world and formerly statist Third World countries that can create permanent tranquility. So-called liberal economics caters exclusively to the needs of individuals rather than to common interests and shared group relations in a civil society that poses essential restraints on peoplefs freedom to exploit and asserts public over private interests. Liberal economicsf devotion to personal egotism and avarice as the fundamental basis of social organization has been a persistent source of misery and societal instability since the school of thought was founded two hundred years ago. Economic liberals have no inherent commitment to political freedom and human rights, and suffer from the stigma of having repeatedly abandoned civil liberties... in order to preserve their individual privileges... g

gThe future of mankind and the very existence of rational civilization and human relations are hostage to this state of affairs, and the morality and desirability of todayfs dominant social systems are linked directly to the issue of war and peace.h

gRadical opposition will inevitably reemerge as long as the political and economic crises so characteristic of the nations of the world as they now exist continue... But the basic premise that while society owes everyone a reasonable material minimum, individuals in turn also have to have a constant duty to weave significant networks of social cooperation and interaction, is no less vital. Social responsibility that operates reciprocally between a society and its members has hardly been considered in the general socialist literature, but it remains a precondition for the emergence of a more rational human organization, and above all of truly radical politics based on changing both society and people-and thereby the world.h

"Century of War" is a superb analysis of the causes and effects of modern warfare and its effects on rational civilization. An invaluable contribution to the history of human civilization.

In this fascinating look at the U.S. economy, Kolko reveals the names of the families that really run America. While the author is not high on capitalism, valuable knowledge about its workings can bee gleened from this history classic. It is somewhat dated now that the names have changed to people like Bill Gates, but the book remains a memorable treasure.

Kolko gives us a useful perspective on the way the world currently works. Read it and think.

It's easy to dismiss this book as a "military history." That view is too limited in scope. What Kolko describes is the American propensity use military thinking in the development of that nation's foreign policies. In a tightly written analysis, he shows how the United States is confronting a vast arc - reaching from the Persian Gulf to Southeast Asia. The inhabitants of that extensive area have been watching the world's sole superpower stumbling about ineptly. He declares American foreign policies in this critical area confused and self-contradictory, based on superficial morality and military adventurism. The roots of their thinking, he contends, is the uneradicable notion held by the American military that technology reduces the duration of wars. No amount of practical experience has been able to dispel that faith.

In Kolko's view, the worst event in American foreign policy history was the collapse of the Soviet Union and the elimination of communism. No matter how badly the United States dealt with the misconceived idea that Moscow dominated the politics of discontent, it was at least a point of focus. With the Cold War over, America is floundering about seeking ways to assert its unilateral power over the same group of nations. After spending enormous sums to shore up Afghan resistance to the Soviet Union, America launched a war to demolish its government. Right next door, Pakistan's resentment of American restoration of the Afghan Alliance and warlord governments is palpable, leaving the current government teetering.

Nor is Pakistan the only internally threatened state in the "arc." Thousands of American troops reside in Saudi Arabia. That nation's internal "containment" policy led it to send hordes of disaffected young men to Afghanistan and funded the Al Queda movement. Now, many of those young men, militarily experienced, have returned or are secluded and training others. Kolko argues this situation has rendered Saudi Arabia vulnerable to an Islamic uprising. Such an event would spread to many places, leaving American military forces isolated and surrounded.

America's interventions in foreign countries, ranging from supplying and training police forces to outright occupations, have been based on the belief that military solutions are quick and final. Kolko demonstrates that fifty years of adventurism have shown they are neither. The wars, such as Viet Nam and Kosovo, have shown them to be neither. The human costs are simply ignored or dismissed by American policy makers. The result is that now the United States has been directly assaulted and will remain a combat zone for years. Clearly, his purpose in writing this book is to alert Americans to their danger. Even if the American voting public forces administrations to abstain from ad hoc interventions in other nations, the time it will take for foreign resentments to subside will be a duration of generations.
However, the start must be made, and made now. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

In these days of flag-waving incoherence and jingoism, it's nice to see a new book from Kolko, especially one written in a succinct style highly-accessible to all. Mr. Quinn's review really covers the work well so I don't have a lot of additional information to add. Kolko's seminal CENTURY OF WAR will offer a great deal of background information, and anyone who thinks Kolko is out of his mind with the assertions he makes in this book should check it out, along with his finest work, POLITICS OF WAR. The latter is by far the best work I have ever read on the formation of postwar U.S. foreign policy, all the more so due to its almost total reliance on primary documents instead of secondary sources, which were practically non-existent at the time (mid 1960's). What's refreshing about ANOTHER CENTURY OF WAR? is its reluctance to pull any punches in the face of 9-11, its refusal to perhaps go a little easy on the architects of U.S. foreign policy and recite the childish idiotic sentiment that those responsible for the tragedy are just "jealous" of the United States. Instead, Kolko pinpoints the active role of the post-WWII West in fostering an atmosphere of instability in the Middle East and its justifications for doing so, not all of which are oil related. The examples are plentiful and the research meticulous. After reading his work, it's a mystery to me why Kolko isn't better known in this country, even among the Left. Perhaps it's because he keeps a relatively low profile and focuses mainly upon war and its impact upon social dynamics.

Anyone without a firm grip of economic theory and, more importantly, economic vocabularly will struggle with this rather turgid book. However, if you can deal with the writing style, and are interested in progressivism, Kolko certainly gives a good negative reference point at the extreme end of the historiographical spectrum.

No book details the historical relationship between big business and the Federal government better than this one. Though confined merely to the so-called Progressive Era in American history (1901-1914), Kolko manages to overturn all the misconceptions about the formation of government regulation in America. Instead of accepting the standard view that federal regulation of business was inspired by the Progressive intellectuals and activist political leaders eager to put a check on the rising power of big business, Kolko shows that it was really inspired by the drive of businessman to limit competition and bring "stability" into the market. The result is what Kolko calls, appropriately enough, "political capitalism." Some earlier reviews have attempted to draw an ideological lesson from this book. This is a mistake. If there is a lesson to be drawn from Kolko's work, it is the failure of all ideologies (whether from the right, left, or center) to adequately explain the rise of political capitalism in America. Both the right and the left share the common assumption that government regulation hurts big business. Kolko proves that this isn't the case, that Big Business is in favor of regulation and the throttling of competition. Kolko's book is a must read for anyone who wants to understand what capitalism and politics is really all about.

In this reinterpretation of the Progressive Era, Gabriel Kolko marshalls a host of historical sources from the National Archives, the Library of Congress and other great outposts of scholarship to advance a bold thesis: that the Progressive Era was a "triumph of conservatism," the business reforms of the time having been fought for and shaped by not only the reformers but also the very business interests that were to be regulated. Kolko is a socialist, and his case is actually more radical than I have indicated. But it is his dispelling of many widely believed myths that I find the most enticing.

Take the "merger movement" at the turn of last century. It was and is popularly believed that competition was at an all-time low, monopoly an all-time high and Theodore Roosevelt's trust-busting the necessary and proper response. But Kolko proves this conventional belief false. In case studies of the big powerhouse industries of the time, he shows that, in spite of (or because of) the merger movement, they were more competitive than they had ever been. Whether the industry was steel, oil, automobiles, agricultural machinery, telephones, copper or meat-packing--Kolko's conclusion is the same: mergers, if anything, decreased companies' efficiency relative to their competitors. In the new century's first decade, the total number of competing firms in each industry grew; market shares of the dominant players, meanwhile, shrunk. As Kolko states, "There was *more* competition, and profits, if anything, declined. Most contemporary economists and many smaller businessmen failed to appreciate this fact, and historians have probably failed to recognize it altogether" (emphasis Kolko's).

The stage thus set by the failure of the merger movement, Kolko moves on to the myth that Progressive Era reforms were uniformly or even predominantly opposed by their affected industries. The key is to realize that, economic strategies like corporate consolidation having failed, companies turned to political strategies to freeze the status quo or to gain new competitive advantages. As Kolko states, "the essential purpose and goal of any measure of importance in the Progressive Era was not merely endorsed by key representatives of businesses involved; rather such bills were first proposed by them." Food companies, for example, wanted the Food and Drug Act so that they could turn its regulations against their competitors (e.g., oleo versus butter). Big meat packers desired to save their industry from tainted meat, which hurt business, but were unable to ensure the quality of small packers' meat and unwilling to pay for independent meat inspection--so they themselves initiated the meat inspection movement, lobbied for and won passage of the Meat Inspection Act, thereby forcing inspection onto the industry and its costs onto the federal government. As for the Federal Reserve Act, it was the product of a banking reform movement "initiated and sustained" by big bankers who sought to protect themselves from small bank competition. The Clayton Antitrust Act and the Federal Reserve Act? Most businessmen supported them to better protect themselves from antitrust prosecution under the Sherman Act's vague provisions or (among smaller businesses) to gain such advantages as enforced "fair trade price-fixing." Thus, Kolko shows that whether for protection from competition or from the government, businesses themselves initiated or shaped these Progressive Era reforms and others that most Americans regard as being part of an anti-business (or at least not pro-business) reform movement.

This book will fascinate students of American business and reform history. Ironically, given Kolko's philosophical disposition, even ardent pro-capitalists should relish it. That audience will likely be reminded of Burton W. Folsom's distinction, in his eye-opening *Myth of the Robber Barons*, between "market entrepreneurs" and "political entrepreneurs." Dominick Armentano's *Antitrust and Monopoly: Anatomy of a Policy Failure*, a work of heavier scholarship, may also be recalled to mind. His thesis that antitrust laws, even when not passed unequivocally to benefit special business interests, have "solved" nonexistent problems (and caused a few real ones) and should be repealed is entirely confirmed by Kolko's *Triumph of Conservatism*, which Armentano even cites in support (in addition to another of Kolko's works, on railroad regulations).

Another brillant work of Scholorship by Kolko. His material on N. Vietnam motivation is particulary interesting

In "Anatomy of a War" author Gabriel Kolko has done an impeccable job of revealing the truth behind America's involvement in Indochina. Kolko lucidly illustrates how by 1948 the US has recognized that the Viet Minh, the anti-French resistance led by Ho Chi Minh, was not only the national movement of Vietnam, but that the Viet Minh favored independent development and ignored the interests of foreign investors and was therefor deemed "the enemy" by US policy planners.

Kolko adroitly elucidates how the US blocked all attempts at political settlement of the conflict, installed a Latin American-style terror state in South Vietnam, and blocked free, democratic elections in Vietnam because it was obvious the Viet Minh was going to win. "Anatomy of a War" illustrates how American war planners escalated the attack against South Vietnam from massive state terror to outright aggression and expanded the war to all of Indochina. A compelling and chilling account of one America's more depraved acts this century.

Kolko writes from the point of view of the Vietnamese, the real victims and the real heroes of the Indochina anticolonial wars. This is a perspective unavailable in any other volume. It is an excellent antidote for the rampant revisionism now afoot regarding this disgraceful episode in our history.