Confronting the Third World

This book is absolutely essential for any radical understanding of US policies towards the third world. I highly recommend this over other books attempting to approach the subject, such as William Blum's _Killing Hope_, as that one tends to oversimplify, offer interventions in a format that does not give any sense of continuity or coherence to US policies, which were not as simple as simply opposing communism. Kolko's book, in contrast, outline major themes and gives a more coherent understanding of the US's treatment of the third world by letting the reader in on the motivations of America's policymakers, with references to internal documents. Highly recommended.

Compared to Kolko's usual dense work (e.g. 1400 pages of original research in 2 volumes on "The US & the World" between 1943 and 1954), this book is a model of brevity, the plain style and focus on the main trends and themes in the United State's relationship with the 3rd World between 1945-1980. I read it when it was first published in 1988, but did not appreciate its prophetic brilliance until a second reading this year, in the long wake of 9/11. If one eschews the ahistorical and deceitful diagnosis of the terrible events of 9/11/01 as a Good vs. Evil Hollywood epic, then Kolko's analysis belongs on your short list of books offering a deeply informed account of American policy and practice in the 3rd World. Another such volume is Chalmers Johnson's "Blowback", published a decade after Kolko's "Confronting the Third World." In the "Conclusion", written two years before the collapse of the Soviet Union, Kolko writes: "Whether our future will be as crisis-ridden as the past depends on whether the United States can live in a pluralist world and cease to confront and fight most of the movements and developments that have emerged in the postwar era and have become more relevant since the irreversible collapse of Soviet and Chinese pretensions to lead international socialism." And, as of this note, written in October 2003, does the following have a prophetic ring? "Ultimately, the major inhibitions on the United States remain its incapacity either to fight successfully or to pay for the potentially unlimited costs of attaining its goals in the Third World, and these constraints have grown far more quickly that the process of reason among the leaders of both parties on the grave issues of war and change today. That America's policies and goals have increasingly failed on their own terms, eroding the quality of its domestic life and international strength in the process, has yet to penetrate seriously their thnking, much less their visions of alternatives and readiness to live with the dominant realities of our era." This book was originally published by Pantheon under the leadership of Andre Schiffren. He went on to found the New Press and has republished some of Noam Chomsky's early classic works. This great book likewise deserves republication with an updated Conclusion.