Nicholas Mulder is an Assistant Professor of Modern European History at Cornell University. His previous book is The Economic Weapon: The Rise of Sanctions as a Tool of Modern War and he is currently close to completion on a book entitled The Age of Confiscation: Making and Taking Property in the Creation of the Modern World. He also started a Substack last year which contains some of the best commentary on the geo-economic conflicts unfolding before our eyes, often with very useful historical analogies for thinking about sanctions, embargoes and tariffs. It is called WeltinnenPolitik. 

It is hard to imagine a book being published at a more perfect time than Nicholas Mulder’s 2022 book The Economic Weapon: The Rise of Sanctions as a Tool of Modern War. After the start of the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine and subsequent announcements of massive US-NATO sanctions against Russia, many of us turned to Mulder’s book to try to make sense of our period of great power tensions, economic and technological competition, and major war in Europe. The Economic Weapon brought readers a fresh and technical analysis for interpreting the breakdown of peace in the interwar period and the dashing of liberal visions of international cooperation. Most importantly, Mulder’s book did not just reaffirm the well-known cliches of liberal orthodoxy about free societies versus totalitarianism, but situated economic sanctions as a paradoxical tool of coercion and warfare - sometimes conceived as preventing war, while other times as precipitating it. 

His story begins with the efforts of British naval officials and financial authorities during WWI to leverage British naval power to enforce a blockade against the Central Powers: Germany, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire. The central paradox of his narrative is how a tool originally designed to escalate a total war strategy and coerce civilian populations would come to be thought of as a tool in preventing aggression in the League of Nations. While sometimes effective, Mulder also shows how diplomatic wrangling, ideological competition and the Great Depression often blunted multilateral commitment to use the economic weapon properly. And fear of sanctions by the late 1930s itself became a driver of strategic visions that saw territorial expansion as the only way to secure the energy, food and extractive resources that could maintain the viability of revisionist states. While far from any kind of apologia for the actions taken by the Axis powers, there is something in your account of the spirit of AJP Taylor’s Origins of the Second World War in which the Allied Powers are not absolved of some blame. 

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Dear Subscribers, 

We have a YouTube channel at last: https://www.youtube.com/@HawksandSparrowsPodcast

Please subscribe, like and share. Below we've shared the latest. 

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Hawks and Sparrows discuss the best tweets comprising the situation in Venezuela on day 1 of the US's attack. 

-Cravenness of Sanders and the NYT's long history of hating Maduro 
-Hopes for anti-war revival in the US
-Balance of forces across Latin America
-RIP Asad Haider

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Hawks and Sparrows is a research collective that has been publishing and podcasting about international relations, marxist and conservative political philosophy, history and aesthetics since 2020. Our primary page and archive can be found at the Patreon page for the After the End of History podcast https://www.patreon.com/c/afterhistory/ where you can also subscribe and support our work. 
Follow this Yt channel for deep dives on major events in geo-politics and interviews with thinkers across the spectrum wrestling with issues like the history of espionage, transformations in the use and nature of propaganda, and populist or non-partisan orientations towards socialism and anti-imperialism. 
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After the End of History pod
https://patreon.com/c/afterhistory

ATEOH on X
https://x.com/after_history

Hawks and Sparrows Substack
https://www.substack.com/@hawksandsparrows

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Interest in Karl Marx is surging amidst current debates on economic inequality. Join us as we sit down with historian Andrew Hartman to discuss his fascinating new book, Karl Marx in America, a comprehensive account of how Marx's writings have been used and interpreted in the United States from the late 19th century through the modern era.

Professor Hartman explores the century-plus evolution of Marxism in America, including how early socialists navigated the unique social and cultural conditions that underpin ideas of "American exceptionalism." We delve into Marx's own surprising views on American economic and political life, including his writings for the New York Daily Tribune and his thoughts on the Civil War.

Our discussion also illuminates the critical debates surrounding W.E.B. Du Bois's Black Reconstruction, analyzing whether Du Bois was adapting Marx to the American racial order or revealing something essential that others had overlooked. The episode also explores the chilling effect of the Cold War on the reception of Marx's thought, the complexities of Cold War liberalism, and the long-term influence of Trotskyism and the New York Intellectuals. Finally, we consider the legacy of the New Left's focus on cultural criticism and how future historians might judge their contributions. Don't miss this essential deep dive into a powerful, enduring, and often contradictory intellectual history.

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One of the most striking developments in recent intellectual life has been the convergence of critics from both the conservative and Marxist traditions, united in their skepticism toward the excesses of progressive liberalism. Few outlets embody this shift as much as Compact magazine, where unlikely allies have found common ground in challenging America’s domestic administrative state, its global reach, and the pressures of cultural conformity. The intellectual touchstones of this post-liberal moment are names like René Girard, Christopher Lasch, and above all, Alasdair MacIntyre.

Our guest, Nathan Pinkoski, has been central to this conversation. He’s the translator of Emile Perreau-Saussine’s new biography of MacIntyre, and the author of “Actually Existing Postliberalism,” an article that reframed the post–Cold War transformation not as a triumph of globalization, but as the rise of new hierarchies shaped by finance and the fusion of state and society.

In our conversation, we ask him what first drew him into philosophy and political theory, why MacIntyre remains essential reading today, and how thinkers like Judith Shklar and Samuel Moyn fit into this broader debate. We’ll also explore his analysis of globalization’s hidden architecture, the late Cold War’s imprint on U.S. foreign policy, and what the 1990s really meant for the world we inhabit now.

This is a wide-ranging discussion about the erosion of liberal order, the paradoxes of American power, and the uncertain horizons of our post-liberal age.

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In this episode, we sit down with historian Greg Grandin to discuss his new book America, América, which reimagines the hemisphere’s intertwined republican traditions and confronts the United States’ monopolization of the very idea of “America.” Known for landmark works such as The Empire of Necessity and The End of the Myth, Grandin has long illuminated Latin America’s central role in the making of the modern world.

We explore how Latin American thinkers used immanent critique to measure U.S. democracy against its own ideals, and why common republican foundations led to divergent political paths across the hemisphere. We also ask how his earlier prediction of a more repressive United States after the closing of the frontier has held up, and whether America, América offers an alternative diplomatic and intellectual horizon.

Along the way, we consider the Catholic and scholastic legacies in Latin American thought, comparisons of racial orders across the Americas, the contested meaning of independence for the dispossessed, and the enduring tensions of social democracy in the region. 

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On this episode, we're excited to present an interview Pat recorded on July 10th with the author and researcher Aaron Good. As with other upcoming interviews, this was a great opportunity to break out of the inherent insolation of social media and inform our positions on the interstate order by engaging with one of the brightest perspectives in the political science discipline. In addition to offering an invaluable backstory to the phenomenon of 'the deep state' and its progeny like Jeffrey Epstein, the discussion ranges broadly around the means and methods of narrative control, as well as how would-be knowledge producers can navigate the modern prison-house.

Aaron Good hosts the American Exception podcast, appears regularly on Youtube in discussion with major figures like Jeff Sachs, Oliver Stone, and Daniele Ganser, and has taken the torch of counter-intelligence research from mentors like Peter Dale Scott and David Talbot. In this hour, they address what the JFK assassination signified for those authors, and what Aaron has contributed since, to our understanding of involvement by the mob, teamsters, and Mossad. Pat also asks him to describe his intellectual journey, the state of academia in the empire, his top 5 podcasts, reflections on the relationship between literature and espionage, and the way our institutions are promoting narrative capture, even as they are falling in credibility.

More about the author:

Aaron is host of the American Exception Podcast and author of 'American Exception: Empire and the Deep State,' which you can check out here.

You can find more of Aaron's work on his engaging, provocative and regularly updated Substack where he covers a host of topics related to the Deep State: 

• The Gray Alliance and JFK's Assassination
• The Lansky-Teamster Syndicate and the Deep State Global Drug Connection
• The Gray Alliance: How Ultra-Zionist Neoconservatism Took Over the American Deep State

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[Recorded on 26 April 2025]

After the End of History discusses The Grayzone's interview with Andres Duran. 

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[Recorded on 14 April 2025]

In this week's discussion, ATEOH take a look at the New York Times long read, "The Secret History of the War in Ukraine." What "revelations" has the article surfaced, and how does this all bode for the broader implications of the war? Is NATO headed for collapse? What are the strategic lessons for future conflicts, particularly with China?

Our conversation concludes with reflections on the US's declining global influence and the limitations of proxy wars.

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[Recorded 31 January 2025]

A continuation of our discussion on Marx's "forgotten text," Herr Vogt: A Spy in the Workers' Movement. 

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We sat down to discuss Karl Marx's scattered writings on Latin America, where he considers the Incan communitarian societies, the War of Independence, and the modern states' 'weak' geopolitical stature. Pat helps unpack the controversy touched off by Marx's attack on Simón Bolívar, putting it into context alongside writings on the American Civil War and the anthropological turn in the Late Marx. Along the way, we gloss major figures in Latin American Marxism from the last two centuries, such as Mariátegui, Aricó, and García Linera. Abandon all hope, and smash ye the play button!

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