Is it just me who is sad for the early demise of what could've been a flourishing democracy in the Middle east (inplace of the silly regime that is now in power) ?
Thanks, very interesting read (as usual with Adam's writing). It's to be expected that playing with fireworks is liable to get one burned, unfortunately intelligence services have a very hard time understanding this sort of thing.
Now all we need to see for the other side of the story are the Soviet archives. Given that the Soviets were behind most worldwide communist revolutions (including the Cuban, North Korean, Ethiopian, etc.), did they plan to do something with/to Mossadegh via their Tudeh puppets in Iran like they did in neighboring Afghanistan later on?
No. Stalin died in March '53, leaving a directionless power vacuum until September, when Khrushchev took over. This was almost certainly a factor in the timing of the coup, as the US wanted to seize the opportunity of the USSR's disorganisation to carry out a coup on their doorstep with nominal at worst repercussions.
Iranian history is a complicated story. There's a free 2008ish audio podcast series of lectures about their history.
You could consider that Mosaddegh was doomed to fall, given that, the only question is who gets his job, and Pahlavi, at least initially, looked "better" than the previous Qajar Turks or any of the other competitors, we knew that at least some of the Qajar in the past were completely nuts, whereas Pahlavi didn't start going nuts until later. Perhaps he literally developed a severe mental illness in the 60s as some suspect, which would explain a lot about his behavior. Anyway, its one of those monday morning quarterbacking things where in retrospect everyone involved might have done better going back to the Qajar dynasty, but of course predictions are difficult, especially about the future. Currently, looking back to 1970, he looked like an epic disaster in 1970, insert lots of whining about decisions made in 1950, but in 1950 he didn't look so bad.
One big problem with talking Iranian politics is all of it resonates to present day fights, so the only people talking about it almost by definition have an economic or religious or nationalistic axe to grind, so discerning the truth (if any) is kind of hard when almost no one says anything but PR. Its a political confuseopoly. Whats better, coke or pepsi, well, good luck figuring that out from TV commercials and astroturfing.
My opinion based on some study, it seems Iran is relatively cursed with poor leaders on average. I'm talking about centuries not last month timescale. Once in awhile they'll have a (poor) leader who resonates (at least superficially, temporarily) with some western-ish values, or once in a while they'll have a (poor) leader who anti-resonates with us when they nationalize their oil wells, etc, but the common theme seems to be be relatively poor at government leading to turmoil and general misery of everyone involved. Which is probably how they ended up ruled by Turks for so long, and other imperialist issues.
Its a pity, aside from the politics and the extremists 99% of the country and people are pretty cool with a nice enough culture and interesting history. Although, I suppose that's a universal truth around the whole world that if you go anywhere and get rid of the politicians and extremists, pretty much everywhere ends up a paradise...
Amen. Reminds me of Rabindranath Tagore's essay on Nationalism. Its really sad how the political interests (and madness) of the minority, governs the lives of common people for centuries afterwards.
No. US foreign policy, when viewed from a perspective other than that of the US, is one heartbreak after another. They take promise, dreams, progress and hope and crush them, in order to preserve hegemonistic power at any cost.
The US would happily turn this planet into a barren rock, and all "foreigners" (and likely their own populace) into ash, so long as they can claim dominance.
How does one even go about disagreeing with a comment like this? I guess I'll go for the obvious: If the U.S. wanted to "claim dominance" at any expense, we certainly would have felt much less constrained in the use of nuclear weapons in past conflicts.
What you are describing is a mythology. One no better, and probably less accurate, than the mythology that the U.S. is an angel of hope and freedom on the world stage.
Anyway, the hn'er below who made the comparison to /r/worldnews is spot on. New historical information is uncovered/declassified every day. This was only posted and upvoted because it's Exhibit A in the case for "The Evils of American Foreign Policy since WWII." There's a good discussion to be had about the pros and cons of America's role in the world since 1945. It's not going to be had here.
hn is going downhill faster than I'd ever imagined possible.
> I guess I'll go for the obvious: If the U.S. wanted to "claim dominance" at any expense, we certainly would have felt much less constrained in the use of nuclear weapons in past conflicts.
Nuclear weapons are defensive devices. The assurance of mutual destruction in case of an open conflict drove the cold war, and secures Israel's border, for example (not really mutual in that case).
Using nukes offensively would completely alienate the US from the rest of the world. The US govt. needs sheepish allies to play along.
It would also be unpopular at home (even though that could be spun around).
> What you are describing is a mythology. One no better, and probably less accurate, than the mythology that the U.S. is an angel of hope and freedom on the world stage.
The US, as any hegemonic nation before it, has been as bullish as politically and diplomatically possible.
It doesn't mean that US citizen are bad people. Most of us are short-sighted when it comes to politics, and politicians and other policy makers take advantage of it.
I think that the average US cit is fundamentally good, but so poorly informed as to the world around them due to the media, educational and, frankly, thought control in the state in which they reside that they end up playing straight into the hands of those who would do both them and other nations harm.
I wouldn't say the U.S. is obsessed with dominance. Rather, the U.S. foreign policy is characterized by the brutal and unprincipled service of U.S. business interests. The coup in Iran was motivated by lust for oil, and that's just one tiny example of many!
One interesting observation is when it fails, out comes the moralists and ethicist explaining the game plan is wrong. When its a success, as in we put up a guy who doesn't turn out to be a raving lunatic, silence descends on the moralists and ethicist camp. Therefore by definition all criticism of foreign policy will 100% be backed up by a subcollection of truthful, highly public, epic fail. This makes it look like a universal fail for all time, although the actual ratio of success to fail is not only non-discussed, its probably not possibly to calculate legally with non-classified sources.
This is why an apparently 100% epic fail is none the less stable and constant for multiple generations.
Its reminiscent of TV news coverage of airline operations. The only coverage is of crashes. Therefore all airliners crash all the time. Not so... Doesn't mean the few crashes are good, or the system is inherently good, or perfect, but it doesn't mean its ineffective.
"Success" would have been a dictatorship, just with a different guy in charge. I'm sorry, but the U.S. doesn't get a pass on that just because some democracies also suit their business interests. The coup in Iran was rotten by design.
Yes it was rotten by design but this turns into word games.
If you're convinced the current strong man is going to fall, then you push for the least rotten of the remaining set of strong men to take over. I'd argue thats pretty much what they did. Doing your best doesn't mean automatic success, it just means better than the other likely outcomes.
Yeah, I agree, I probably sound ridiculously apologist. But I'm not generally like that. The recent regime change in neighboring Iraq was just an idiotic decision, for example.
Yes the coup in Iran sucked in an absolute sense. Yes the outcome was awful in an absolute sense and remains awful for all involved. And the alternative course would have been ... and no fair promising balloons, unicorns, and santa claus, try to be realistic ... I'm saying all the realistic unmentioned alternatives would have been worse.
For example, US goes hard core isolationist. Well, thats all very well and good for us, but a disaster for the Iranian people, better have them alive and hating us than dead. How bout we let the Russians take over and create Afghanistan the 2nd, nothing could possibly go wrong there. Give it back to the Turks, uh, the ottoman empire fell awhile before the coup..
>This was only posted and upvoted because it's Exhibit A in the case for "The Evils of American Foreign Policy since WWII."
This was only posted because it was a seminal event that was largely responsible for the current situation in the Middle East, and it was denied for half a century while everyone knew it to be true.
>hn is going downhill faster than I'd ever imagined possible.
>How does one even go about disagreeing with a comment like this?
preferably by ignoring it and then moving on. Argument or refutation is merely encouragement. Best to give the impression they're nothing more than a mere annoyance to be ignored.
Nobody rational. Were you to evaluate the actions of any given nation state as those of an individual, you would probably decide that the individual was psychotic, psychopathic, deranged, and suffering from a bevy of learning disabilities. Our governments are insane, and we're all along for the ride.
> How does one even go about disagreeing with a comment like this? I guess I'll go for the obvious: If the U.S. wanted to "claim dominance" at any expense, we certainly would have felt much less constrained in the use of nuclear weapons in past conflicts.
You're the only nation to have ever used nuclear weapons in anger. Next?
> What you are describing is a mythology. One no better, and probably less accurate, than the mythology that the U.S. is an angel of hope and freedom on the world stage.
It's an objective reality. Point at ONE positive thing the US has done on the world stage since 1945. It's all coups, black ops, war, more war, war, and war.
> hn is going downhill faster than I'd ever imagined possible.
HN is diversifying and taking a particular political bent because global politics and US foreign policy are suddenly at the core of what we all do. The Iranian coup is just another data-point in a big, long, ugly picture.
You can bury your head in the sand if you like, and just talk about the best sorting algos until the cows come home, but the very medium through which HN operates is being threatened, and if we don't discuss said threat, and the history and background surrounding it, we are doomed to succumb.
> It's an objective reality. Point at ONE positive thing the US has done on the world stage since 1945. It's all coups, black ops, war, more war, war, and war.
Marshall plan. Defense of South Korea. Support for Taiwan. Public and private responses to natural disasters throughout the world.
Argument by hyperbole isn't very interesting or useful and analysis of historical events is always difficult because the alternatives not taken are hard to evaluate against the actual choices that were made.
Little to do with reconstruction, lots to do with ensuring economic dependence. Why not talk about the Dawes and Young plans?
>Defense of South Korea.
Again, not doing objective good, protecting American interests, and a direct result of USAMGIK.
>Support for Taiwan
This is solely to piss off PRC, and always has been, and again can't really be seen as "good" as the principle mode of this support is in selling them lots and lots of guns.
>Public and private responses to natural disasters throughout the world.
Public responses good, yes, but the government responses to natural disasters - not so much. Lots of ODA, but that's just an economic shackle, rather than helpful aid.
>Argument by hyperbole isn't very interesting or useful and analysis of historical events is always difficult because the alternatives not taken are hard to evaluate against the actual choices that were made.
This is true, and it's hard to condense decades of thinking into a single post, but I stand by my assertion that US foreign policy sucks.
You seem to be arguing that there is some sort of utopian national policy mechanism that would benefit its receipent(s) but would be independent of the sponsor's national interests, would provide economic assistance but not create economic shackles, provide assistance without creating dependence, and so on. Obviously you don't think US foreign policy satisfies any of those criteria.
I'd be interested in knowing what such a policy would look like or even if you've got any historical examples.
It was wildly successful in getting European economies rolling again, but the hook was that it ensured penetration into and possession of European markets by American business interests. It also served as a cultural hook, by massively upping the volume of American goods exported to Europe. Either way, it was pretty successful in its publicised goals, but also very successful in the less spoken about goals of US hegemony.
D&Y were overtly intended to make Germany dependent on the US, and the great depression pretty much directly precipitated the fall of the Weimar republic and the rise of National Socialism, as it absolutely buggered their economy and caused huge resentment.
Dawes of course got the Nobel Peace Prize, even though his work would ultimately set the stage for the bloodiest conflict the world has ever known.
