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From International Socialism (1st series), No.31,Winter 1967/68, p.38.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
From Yalta to Vietnam
David Horowitz
Penguin, 10s6d
The Cold War as History
Louis J. Halle
Chatto & Windus, 50s
The United States, with 6 per cent of the world’s population, owns 60 per cent of its wealth. Since this vast inequality was not God-created, it must have been man-made and man-maintained. Indeed, after reading Mr Horowitz’s exciting book, one reaches the inescapable conclusion that American foreign policy is designed to preserve the vast wealth accruing to US businessmen from the exploitation of others. Cause of the world’s troubles is primarily the United States.
Mr Horowitz shows the communist bogy is often used by the State Department as camouflage, a useful cover under which to intervene militarily in other countries’ affairs and to install its own stooges. He also shows how America’s aggressive foreign policy dovetails with its domestic requirements. The allocation of gigantic sums to military expenditure – rising by a staggering 46 per cent in the six years 1960 to 1966 – has been a factor in stabilising the American economy.
Mr Horowitz’s book is well-written, well-documented, and will be a valuable asset to people in the struggle for peace. Every reader of this journal should definitely have a copy.
But, alas, I cannot speak so highly for Mr Halle’s efforts. He attempts to write a Thucydides-like account of the cold war. But instead of the cool, impartial view from Mount Olympus, what emerges is a picture of how things appear from the top of Capitol Hill. The American leaders have ‘the highest endowments of humankind’ with not a trace of napalm on their fingers. Since 1945, they have repeatedly saved ‘the honor of mankind.’
Before anybody suggest Mr Halle should stop writing and revert to his previous occupation, let me inform them he was a policy planner in the US State Department.
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Last updated: 28.12.2007