DECLINE AND FALL

...It would have incited a long guerrilla war, drained away American resources that are already strained, generated domestic turmoil in the United States, and perhaps sparked World War III...

...Adequate and suitable material for this kind of war...

...Furthermore, it would release us from the burden of exercising control over other nations to assure us of access to their resources and markets...

...oil companies replaced the British as dominant exploiters of Iranian petroleum...

...pressure...

...options in insurgency situations": "1...

...In the years that followed, U.S...

...Presumably, the threat of nuclear war would suffice to persuade Moscow to stay out even if Washington were to intervene on a massive scale...

...If necessary, direct support by U.S...

...Iran tells us that the old ways of doing business are bankrupt...

...the worst recession since 1937...

...Yet the Carter Administration made no serious effort at military intervention, because any such effort would have failed...

...From the American Establishment's point of view, it wasn't supposed to happen this way — and if it did happen, Washington was supposed to reverse it...

...This was, after all, precisely the sort of situation for which the U.S...

...By traditional standards, this should have been a sure formula for long-term, if not permanent, stability...

...operations against the insurgents...

...At the same time, monopoly industries have been shielded from the effects of their own inefficiency and waste...

...Iran is at the very crossroads of empire, guardian of the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz through which flows much of the Western world's oil...

...The economy falters because it rests on a mountain of debt, occasioned mostly by military spending, but also required by an irresponsible capitalist society that must mortgage the future to ease persistent economic stagnation today...

...the oil embargo and higher petroleum prices after the Yom Kippur War...

...A second transitional step would be the dissolution of the huge monopolies that administer prices in such industries as auto manufacture, steel, rubber, and cereal grains...

...The British were, of course, unhappy, but it was the United States that reacted most fiercely to nationalization of Iran's oil...

...If ever there was an occasion to flex American military muscle, therefore, this was it...

...His SAVAK had imprisoned thousands of dissidents and had tortured and killed many...

...The nation slides from crisis to crisis — divorce of the dollar from gold...

...If members of the American Establishment can't learn anything from what has happened in Iran, they can't learn anything...

...Whatever course Khomeini ultimately takes — and this is still a matter of deep concern — he has provided leadership for a true revolution, not just a palace revolt...

...A militaristic foreign policy has enervated and weakened the United States to a point none of its leaders anticipated only a few years ago...

...in 1974, it did not dare take similar steps against the Saudis or the Iranians or the 'A militaristic foreign policy has enervated and weakened the United States...' Venezuelans or the Nigerians...

...This, along with monopolistic price-fixing in the auto, steel, rubber, oil, cereal, and other industries, is the main cause of inflation...

...In his proposed budget, the President has simply put another military chip in the pot — $11 billion more for "defense" spending, and such new wonder weapons as the M-X missile, the air-launched cruise missile, the neutron bomb — while curtailing expenditures for social services and doing absolutely nothing to introduce a degree of sanity into the economy...

...guns and military aid — such states as Brazil, Paraguay, South Korea, Thailand, Indonesia, Chile...

...wage and price controls in 1971...

...That is why we have nationalized it — so that the profits from our oil fields stay at home rather than fly off to London...

...We now must ask ourselves, is this what is in store for other American vassal states artificially kept in power by U.S...

...The other two pillars of empire, goods and arms, have suffered a similar erosion...

...now an inflation again approaching double-digit levels and wage-price "guidelines" that almost surely will be followed by controls...

...And the United States was the primary supplier of weapons and military training...

...The kind of economy envisioned by Beard and Dewey could not be created overnight: It would require, for one thing, an extended period of popular education...

...Since Iran was, in a sense, the pearl of the American empire, the policeman guarding the precious oil for Pax Americana, the collapse of our client regime sheds even greater light on the fallacies of U.S...

...The only resource from which we can earn the money for such a reform, however, is petroleum...

...What makes the question so pertinent is the depth of the Iranian upheaval...

...The Shah is again in exile (this time probably forever), SAVAK has been forcibly dismantled, the military machine has been wrecked, American influence has virtually vanished, and the man who headed Mossadegh's National Oil Company, Mehdi Bazargan, is the temporary prime minister chosen by the Ayatollah Khomeini to rule the nation...

...But U.S...

...And it provided proof that American power was virtually unchallengeable...

...defeat in Indochina prompted less developed nations to lose faith in American "protection" and to take liberties with the colossus of the West that they would not have dared risk before...

...Real take-home pay of ninety-five million American workers averages about what it was six or seven years ago, but for many individuals it is declining...

...policy than did the 1975 collapse of the Thieu regime in Vietnam...

...military machine, with its thousands of foreign bases and a stockpile of 31,000 nuclear weapons, was created...

...At the peak of the New Deal, the national debt was $19.5 billion, or $156 per person...

...Draw up an estimate, they advised, of what we can realistically expect to buy from other nations and what we can sell to them, and create an economy to meet that estimate...

...All this made for power...

...The lack of a stable currency by which to measure costs and values has unhinged the world trade market...

...But it was predictable — and some of us predicted it — in 1953...

...The OPEC countries, for instance, quadrupled the price of oil five years ago without fear of what Washington might do in retaliation...

...weapons failed to save the fascist regimes of Portugal and Spain, to keep Haile Selassie on the throne in Ethiopia, to preserve the Portuguese colonies in Angola and Mozambique, or to save the Shah in Iran...

...To be sure, this utter repudiation of American policy took a quarter of a century, a whole generation...

...That is where matters stand today...

...Moreover, at a time when Europe is flooded with between $270 billion and $500 billion in "Eurodollars" backed by nothing but Washington's best wishes, the United States is hardly in a position to offer large dollar loans as inducements for political allegiance...

...The empire flourished for a couple of decades, but by the mid-1960s it became apparent that there were cracks in the foundations on which it had been built...

...One Vietnam was more than enough...

...America's high standard of living is not yet in serious decline, but it is faltering, sustained only by mounting debt...

...The United States was the main supplier of capital goods, its heavy industry plants having doubled their capacity during the war...

...It seemed, in 1953, to be a brilliant stroke of U.S...

...Other nations lost faith in the dollar, just as any creditor will lose faith in the IOUs of an incorrigible wastrel...

...his army, and particularly his imperial guards, were fiercely loyal...

...Our goal is to give each one a piece of land and to provide the equipment and credits to make land reform workable...

...The French and Italian governments were forced to oust the Communists from their cabinets or lose Marshall Plan aid...

...If that is the case, why can't the Government nationalize the petroleum industry, as Woodrow Wilson nationalized the railroads in World War I? In war, every sector must serve the national purpose, but it is obvious that the oil giants serve no cause but their own profits, which they channel into such new acquisitions as department stores, motels, and farm lands...

...Yet there was no immunity against the virus of rebellion...

...But important transitional steps could be taken right now...

...The Shah, armed to the teeth, was better prepared to prevent a revolution than the leader of any non-industrialized state...

...And, of course, in a world tailored to its own measure, the United States prospered immensely...

...Some years ago, a Pentagon spokesman listed four "U.S...

...But American strategy was specifically designed to counteract Soviet power...

...Banks and multinational firms began to unload dollars for other currencies, and by August 1971 the United States could no longer pledge gold for dollars, lest the American gold hoard slump to precarious levels...

...The Prime Minister was a forlorn figure that day, not knowing where to turn for help and perhaps anticipating what lay in store for him...

...the setback in Iran only punctuates that mood...

...Today it is $774 billion, more than $3,500 per person...

...In 1953, America could overthrow Mossadegh for nationalizing the oil fields...

...The pattern of imperialism reversed itself, and Washington could only curse the winds...

...Once it became evident that the Shah could not hold out, American military intervention should have been automatic...

...In fluent French he explained why his government had nationalized the British-controlled oil industry: "Most of our people," he said, "are landless peasants...

...Training by American officers and enlisted men...

...If the Soviets or a hostile Iranian government were to cut off that oil, the crisis in the West would be incalculable...

...Most significantly, the U.S...

...As has become traditional with American Presidents, he defines "national security" as the military capability to impose America's will on people abroad, rather than as a solid economy capable of providing for the needs of our people at home...

...forces of combat missions launched by government troops, and unilateral U.S...

...The destabilization of the dollar — it is now worth, in terms of gold, one-seventh of what it was worth in 1971 — has resulted, in turn, in a substantial increase in the cost of U.S...

...An economy founded on meeting the needs of Americans rather than feeding the greed of corporations would provide us with the economic stability and security we now lack...

...When Britain proposed to nationalize the Ruhr industries in its German zone of occupation, Washington vetoed the suggestion — and the veto stood...

...America has lost the productivity race: From 1950 through 1965, industrial output per hour of work increased at an annual rate of 2.5 per cent...

...The Carter Administration's response to this debilitating state of affairs is to conduct business as usual...

...West Germany and Japan, among other nations, can now undersell the United States on many items, and Germany actually exports more manufactured goods than the United States...

...The dollar was, therefore, divorced from gold, and its value fell sharply...

...As a garrison state, the United States has applied its best brainpower and the bulk of its research and development funds to military purposes at the expense of domestic industry...

...strategy — immoral, certainly, but effective...

...Emphasis added...

...Yet, within the last half year it has all fallen apart...

...Military advice and assistance to the country's military establishment...

...From its inception in the aftermath of World War II, that empire has been anchored on three foundations: The United States was the world's banker, its dollar established by the Bretton Woods agreement as the international medium of exchange...

...A mood of stagnation permeates the United States...

...A few months later Sidney Lens, a veteran labor leader and peace activist, is a contributing editor of The Progressive...

...We would not need to keep armies on foreign soil to buttress an empire that, in any event, can not be buttressed any more...

...Washington dropped the other shoe: the CIA organized a coup against the Mossadegh regime and reinstalled the exiled — and despised — Shah...

...At the end of World War II, it was $256 billion, or $1,800 per person...

...If conditions pointed to a shortage of oil, we could plan for conservation at home (by rebuilding the inner cities, for example, rather than encouraging an exodus to the suburbs), or a socially-owned energy industry could provide alternative sources...

...We have just witnessed a revolution unparalleled since the Russian Revolution of 1917...

...Iran, obviously, is not Angola or Afghanistan or Ethiopia — nations off the beaten path and of only peripheral strategic importance...

...Mossadegh told me he could not rent a tanker anywhere, and a deal he was arranging with another country — I think it was Italy — collapsed because of U.S...

...The United States was banker to the world, but the dollar foundered, burdened by recurring bal-ance-of-payments deficits attributable in large part to militarism overseas...

...Washington could impose discipline on what it 'From the American Establishment's point of view, it wasn't supposed to happen this way...' called the "free world" just by threatening to withhold loans, goods, or arms...

...Because he suffered from an ear ailment that affected his balance, Mossadegh often received visitors while in bed — a cause of endless amusement in the Western press...

...The entire Western world was forced to honor America's embargo on the sale of strategic goods and technology to the Soviet Union...

...imports, contributing to our rate of inflation...

...For the first time, poor nations selling oil were able to drain away substantial wealth from rich nations buying oil...

...The mountains of arms the United States has peddled around the world have entrenched many dictatorships — in Brazil, Chile, Thailand, Paraguay, and more...

...Admittedly, Iran shares a long border with the Soviet Union...

...In the early 1930s, Charles Beard and John Dewey, among others, suggested that the Government of the United States try its hand at democratic socialist planning...

...And the ancient land of Persia, now a bastion of the American empire in the Middle East, was encouraged to arm itself with the most modern weaponry and to forge an "impregnable" secret police, SAVAK, and an equally "impregnable" 430,000-member military force...

...Clearly all three of these conditions were met in Iran, yet the "insurgency" continued, thereby calling for the final option.] "4...

...And a third would be to reduce the Federal deficit not by curbing programs for America's needy but by severely reducing military expenditures and eliminating corporate subsidies and tax giveaways...

...Iran's revolution illustrates more forcefully than any other event of recent years the severe disarray of the American empire...

...But Mossadegh was no buffoon...

...Millions of Iranians were in the streets, willing to die for their cause — one estimate is that 5,000 were killed — and in the end they simply overwhelmed the old order...

...Decline and fall Iran's revolution marks a turning point for the American empire Sidney Lens In 1953 I had a long talk with Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh in the bedroom of his home in Teheran...

...So a thirty-year-old strategy that had been designed and held in readiness for precisely such a situation as Iran had to be scrapped as useless...

...Early in his Presidency, for example, Jimmy Carter described the energy crisis as "the moral equivalent of war...

...from 1965 to 1975, 2 per cent, and since 1973 less than 1 per cent...

...The Shah introduced a phony program of reform called the "white revolution," under which his family managed to accumulate fantastic wealth (one estimate puts his own worth today at $10 billion...

...instead of dispersing the corporate power that had sustained Hitler's Reich, the United States compelled Britain to reinstate it...

...Washington enforced a world-wide boycott against Iran, cutting off its access to both customers and tankers...

...During 1978, total consumer debt increased by a staggering 19.1 per cent (to $275 billion), causing "many economists," as the Associated Press reported, to conclude that "consumers may be borrowing more money than they can pay back...

...We would not be caught in a bind where OPEC nations squeeze us from the outside and greedy corporations like Exxon from the inside...