Time - Man of the Year/Time_Man_of_the_Year_Compact_Publishing_3YX-Disc-1_Compact_Publishing_1993.iso/moy/moyfiles/1951moy.001

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                                                                              ╚January 7, 1952

Man of the Year:Mohammed Mossadegh

Challenge of the East



    Once upon a time, in a mountainous land between Baghdad and
the Sea of Caviar, there lived a nobleman. This nobleman, after a
lifetime of carping at the way the kingdom was run, became Chief
Minister of the realm. In a few months he had the whole world
hanging on his words and deeds, his jokes, his tears, his
tantrums. Behind his grotesque antics lay great issues of peace
or war, progress or decline, which would affect many lands far
beyond his mountains.

    His methods of government were peculiar. For example, when
he decided to shift his governors, he dropped into a bowl slips
of paper with the names of provinces; each governor stepped
forward and drew a new province. Like all ministers, the old
nobleman was plagued with friends, men-of-influence, patriots and
toadies who came to him with one proposal or another. His duty
bade him say no to these schemes, but he was such a kindly fellow
(in some respects) that he could not bear to speak the word. He
would call in his two-year-old granddaughter and repeat the
proposal to her, in front of the visitor. Since she was a well-
brought-up little girl, to all these propositions she would
unhesitatingly say no. "How can I go against her?" the old
gentleman would ask. After a while, the granddaughter, bored
with the routine, began to answer yes occasionally. This saddened
the old man, for it ruined his favorite joke, and might even have
made the administration of the country more inefficient than it
was already.

    In foreign affairs, the minister pursued a very active
policy -- so active that in the chancelleries of nations thousand
of miles away, lamps burned late into the night as other
governments tried to find a way of satisfying his demands without
ruining themselves. Not that he ever threatened war. His weapon
was the threat of his own political suicide, as a willful little
boy might say, "If you don't give me what I want I'll hold my
breath until I'm blue in the face. Then you'll be sorry."

    In this way, the old nobleman became the most world-renowned
man his ancient race had produced for centuries. In this way,
too, he increased the danger of a general war among nations,
impoverished his country and brought it and some neighboring
lands to the very brink of disaster.

    Yet his people loved all that he did, and cheered him to the
echo whenever he appeared in the streets.

    The New Menace. In the year of his rise to power, he was in
some ways the most noteworthy figure on the world scene. Not that
he was the best or the worst or the strongest, but because his
rapid advance from obscurity was attended by the greatest stir.
The stir was not only on the surface of events: in his strange
way, this strange old man represented one of the most profound
problems of his time. Around this dizzy old wizard swirled a
crisis of human destiny.

    He was Mohammed Mossadegh, Premier of Iran in the year 1951.
He was the Man of the Year. He put Scheherazade in the petroleum
business and oiled the wheels of chaos. His acid tears dissolved
one of the remaining pillars of a once great empire. In his
plaintive, singsong voice he gabbled a defiant challenge that
sprang out of a hatred and envy almost incomprehensible to the
West.

    There were millions inside and outside of Iran whom
Mossadegh symbolized and spike for, and whose fanatical state of
mind he had helped to create. They would rather see their own
nations fall apart than continue their present relations with the
West. Communism encouraged this state of mind, and stood to
profit hugely from it. But Communism did not create it. The split
between the West and the non-Communist East was a peril all its
own to world order, quite apart from Communism. Through 1951 the
Communist threat to the world continued; but nothing new was
added -- and little substracted. The news of 1951 was this other
danger in the Near and Middle East. In the center of that
spreading web of news was Mohammed Mossadegh.

    A Matter of Conscience. The West's military strength to
resist Communism grew in 1951. But Mossadegh's challenge could
not be met by force. For all its power, the West in 1951 failed
to cope with a weeping, fainting leader of a helpless country;
the West had not yet developed the moral muscle to define its own
goals and responsibilities in the Middle East. Until the West did
develop that moral muscle, it had no chance with the millions
represented by Mossadegh. In Iran, in Egypt, in a dozen other
countries, when people asked: "Who are you? What are you doing
here?" the West's only answer was an unintelligible mutter.
Charles Malik, Lebanon's great delegate to the U.N., put it
tersely: "Do you know why there are problems in the Near East?
Because the West is not sure of itself." The East would be in
turmoil until the West achieved enough moral clarity to construct
a just and fruitful policy toward the East.

    In the U.S., the core of the West, the moral climate was
foggy. Scandal chased scandal across the year's headlines.
Senator Estes Kefauver revived the Middle ages morality play, on
television. Kefauver's reluctant mummers were followed by
basketball players who rarely threw games -- just points, and
West Pointers who were taught a rigid code of honor which did not
seem to apply when the football squad took academic examinations.

    None of 1951's scandals indicated thoroughgoing moral
depravity, or even idiocy -- just an inability to tell right from
wrong if the question was put (as it usually was) in fine print.
This uneducated moral sense led congressional committees through
a sordid trail of mink coats and other gifts to Government
officials. Casuistry reached a high point with the official whose
conscience told him that it was proper to accept a ham under
twelve pounds, but not a bigger one. Democratic Chairman William
Boyle resigned his job under a cumulus cloud of influence
peddling, and his successor was hardly in office before clouds
gathered over him too. The public worked up quite a head of
indignant steam over scandals in the Bureau of Internal Revenue,
which was taking more of its money than ever before. This
indignation fell like a load of hay on Harry Truman. Perhaps it
would be the understatement of the year to say that 1951 was not
Truman's year.

    Other Men of 1951. Nor was it Dean Acheson's year -- except
in the sense that he survived it. By his firm and skillful
handling of the Japanese Treaty conference his forepaws out of
the public's dog-house, and proved once again that he would be a
masterful Secretary of State if all the U.S.'s enemies could be
disposed of with a gavel. Yet all through 1951, Acheson's State
Department was still caught as tight as Brer Rabbit in Tar Baby.
The useless and impossible effort to justify its past mistakes
consumed its energies. In this year-long waste of time, Senator
Joe McCarthy, the poor man's Torquemada, played Tar Baby.

    Credit for the big diplomatic achievement of the year goes
not to the State Department but to a Republican -- John Foster
Dulles, who, step by careful step, won nearly all of the free
world to accept the Japanese Peace Treaty, and thereby handed
Communism a stunning diplomatic defeat. But the Japanese Treaty
was more a beginning than an end. Whether it became the keystone
of a more successful U.S. policy in the Far East would depend on
how well U.S.-Japanese relations were handled in the future.

    Matthew Ridgway and his valiant men in Korea did all that
men could be expected to do -- and more. But the Korean war had
been in an uneasy stalemate since May.

    France's General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny turned the tide
against the Communist advance in Indo-China. At year's end,
however, De Lattre lay ill in Paris, and the Indo-China war was
far from won.

    In 1951's first months, it looked as if Eisenhower would
certainly be the Man of the Year. Never in recent history has
Europe experienced such a lifting of heart as it got from Ike's
inspiring presence and his skillful, patient incubation of the
North Atlantic Treaty Organization. In December 1950, NATO seemed
just another paper plan doomed to failure. By April 1951 it was a
psychological reality: Europeans began to believe that Europe
could and would be defended. By year's end, NATO was a military
reality, with six U.S. and twelve European divisions in the
field. Defeatism faded, neutralism began to fade, because arms
came into being; and the fading of defeatism made more arms
possible. Europe, for a change, was moving in a virtuous circle.

    Through no fault of Ike's, the heart-lift and the arming
both slowed down. At year's end, Britain and France were in bad
economic trouble. Headway had been made on the German problem,
but the Germans, with the tragic consistency of their character,
were again pushing and shoving into a bargaining position.

    Ike in Europe registered a big net gain, although Europe was
still in no position to beat off a Russian attack. Ike in the
U.S. was a fascinating political riddle, and, to millions, the
best hope in 18 years of replacing the New-Fair Deal. On the
record, Ike was not the Man of 1951; 1952 might be his year. Or
Robert Taft's. Or, in spite of 1951's scandals, Harry Truman's.

    The outstanding comeback of 1951 was Winston Churchill's. In
his first two months of office he moved with the utmost caution,
apparently trying to prove that he could be almost as colorless
as a Socialist. This might be good politics, but it did not make
big news.

    The Old Soldier. Many thought Douglas MacArthur the logical
choice for Man of the Year. The arguments were impressive: I) he
was winning the Korean war, in so far as he was permitted to win
it, when he was fired; 2) his speech before Congress breathed a
sense of high public duty long absent from U.S. affairs; 3) the
Japanese Treaty was a monument to his bold and generous effort to
find a new U.S. relationship with Asian peoples; 4) to millions
of Americans, he remained the No. I U.S. hero, by no means faded
away.

    However, by year's end MacArthur had abdicated a position of
national leadership to become spokesman for a particular group.
Some passages in his later speeches were ambiguous and
inconsistent with his own basic line of thought and action. These
ambiguities, plus the distortion of MacArthur by his friends of
the Hearst and McCormick press, led some to conclude that
MacArthur was an isolationist; others, that he was an
imperialist. Both tags were absurd, yet the figure of MacArthur
in U.S. life was neither as clear nor as large in December as it
had been in April.

    Nevertheless, his Congress speech still sang in the nation's
conscience. It contained a brilliant passage applicable to 1951's
biggest news -- the turmoil in the Middle East. Asian peoples,
MacArthur said, would continue to drive for independence from the
West and for material progress, and this drive "may not be
stopped." The U.S. must "orient its policies in consonance with
this basic evolutionary condition, rather than pursue a course
blind to the reality that the colonial era is now past and the
Asian peoples covet the right to shape their own destiny. What
they seek now is friendly guidance, understanding and support,
not imperious direction; the dignity of equality, and not the
shame of subjugation."

    No George Washington. The U.S. vaguely agreed with
MacArthur's plea: it wanted to feel sympathy toward the
aspirations of Asian peoples. After all, material progress and
national independence are both classic American doctrines, and
the U.S. could envision itself as playing Lafayette to Asian
George Washingtons. But in terms of Asian realities, the
Lafayette-Washington picture was sheer sentimentality, and, like
all sentimentality, led to bad morals. MacArthur knew the
discouraging facts of Asian politics. He wanted the U.S. to face
the facts and build a policy upon them. The U.S. -- or at least
its official leadership -- was appalled by the facts. Just as it
had recoiled from Nationalist China, crying "Corruption," so in
1951 the U.S. recoiled from the corruption, hatred, fanaticism
and disorganization of the Middle East.

    Mossadegh, by Western standards an appalling caricature of a
statesman, was a fair sample of what the West would have to work
with in the Middle East. To sit back and deplore him was to run
away from the issue. For a long time, relations with the Middle
East would mean relations with men such as Mossadegh, some
better, some much worse.

    The Iranian George Washington was probably born in 1879 (he
fibs about his age). His mother was a princess of the Kajar
dynasty then ruling Persia; his father was for 30 years Finance
Minister of the country. Mohammed Mossadegh entered politics in
1906. An obstinate oppositionist, he was usually out of favor and
several times exiled. In 1919, horrified by a colonial-style
treaty between Britain and Persia, he hardened his policy into a
simple Persia-for-the-Persians slogan. While the rest of the
world went through Versailles, Manchuria, the Reichstag fire,
Spain, Ethiopia and a World War, Mossadegh kept hammering away at
his single note. Nobody in the West heard him.

    They heard him in 1951, however. On March 8, the day after
Ali Razmara, Iran's able, pro-Western Premier, was assassinated,
Mossadegh submitted to the Iranian Majilis his proposal to
nationalize Iran's oil. In a few weeks a wave of anti-foreign
feeling, assisted by organized terrorism, swept him into the
premiership.

    The Anglo-Iranian Oil Co., most of whose stock is owned by
the British government, had been paying Iran much less than the
British Government took from the company in taxes. The U.S. State
Department warned Britain that Iran might explode unless it got a
better deal, but the U.S. did not press the issue firmly enough
to make London listen. Mossadegh's nationalization bill scared
the company into concessions that were made too late. The
Premier, whose mind runs in a deep single track, was committed to
nationalization -- and much to the surprise of the British, he
went through with it, right down to the expulsion of the British
technicians without whom the Iranians cannot run the Abadan
refinery.

    Results: I) the West lost the Iranian oil supply; 2) the
Iranian government lost the oil payments; 3) this loss stopped
all hope of economic progress in Iran and disrupted the political
life of the country; 4) in the ensuing confusion, Iran's Tudeh
(Communist) Party made great gains which it hoped to see
reflected in the national elections, due to begin this week.

    Tears & Laughter. Mossadegh does not promise his country a
way out of this nearly hopeless situation. He would rather see
the ruin of Iran than give in to the British, who, in his
opinion, corrupted and exploited his country. He is not in any
sense pro-Russian, but he intends to stick to his policies even
though he knows they might lead to control of Iran by the
Kremlin.

    The suicidal quality of this fanaticism can be seen in the
two men closest to Mosadegh in politics. Ayatulla Kashani is a
zealot of Islam who has spent his life fighting the infidel
British in Iraq and Iran. He controls the Teheran mobs (except
those controlled by the Communists), and his terrorist
organization assassinated Razmara. Hussein Makki controls the
oil-rich province of Khuzistan, in which the Abadan refinery
lies. When the British got out, Mossadegh put Makki in charge of
the oil installations. Makki's view on oil: close up the wells,
pull down the refinery and forget about it. Neither Makki,
Kashani nor Mossadegh has ever shown any interest in rational
plans for the economic reform and development of their country.

    Sometimes the crisis through which Iran is passing depresses
Mossadegh to the point of tears and fainting spells. Just as
often, he seems to regard the state of affairs with a light
heart. When he came to the U.S. to plead his cause, mercurial
Mossadegh was so ready with quips, anecdotes and laughter that
Secretary Achseon thought the visitor should be reminded of the
gravity of the situation. At a Blair House luncheon where
Mossadegh was guest of honor, Acheson told a story: a wagon
train, crossing the American West, was attacked by Indians. A
rescue party found the wagons burned, and the corpses of the
pioneers lying around them. The only man still alive lay under a
wagon, with an arrow through his back. "Does it hurt?" he was
asked. The dying man whispered: "Only when I laugh." Acheson
looked pointedly at Mossadegh -- who just doubled up with
appreciative laughter.

    Before he left the U.S., empty-handed, Mossadegh's name was
thoroughly familiar knew just what the News meant when it
reported his return to the Iranian Majilis and his victory there,
under the headline:

                   MOSSY WINS,
                   90 TO 0, ON
                   A WET FIELD.

    Five Grim Conclusions. The fact that Iranians accept
Mossadegh's suicidal policy is a measure of the hatred of the
West -- and especially the hatred of Britain -- in the Near and
Middle East. The Iranian crisis was still bubbling when Egypt
exploded with the announcement that it was abrogating its 1936
treaty with Britain. The Egyptian government demanded that
British troops get off the soil of Egypt. Since the British
were guarding the Suez Canal, they refused. The Egyptians rioted,
perhaps in the belief that the U.S., which had opposed any use of
force in Iran, would take the same line in Egypt. The U.S.,
however, backed the British, and the troops stayed. But now they
can only stay in Egypt as an armed occupation of enemy territory.
Throughout the East, that kind of occupation may soon cost more
than it is worth.

    Since Mossadegh's rise, U.S. correspondents have been
swarming over the Near and Middle East. Their general consensus
is that:

    1) The British position in the whole area is hopeless. They
are hated and distrusted almost everywhere. The old colonial
relationship is finished, and no other power can replace Britain.

    2) If left to "work out their own destiny" without help, the
countries of the Middle East will disintegrate. The living
standard will drop and political life become even more chaotic.
(Half a dozen important political leaders in the Near and Middle
East were assassinated during 1951.)

    3) Left to themselves, these countries will reach the point
where they will welcome Communism.

    4) The U.S., which will have to make the West's policy in
the Middle East, whether it wants to or not, as yet has no
policy there. The U.S. pants along behind each crisis, tossing a
handful of money here, a political concession there. At the
height of the Egyptian crisis (the worst possible moment), the
U.S., Britain, France and Turkey invited Egypt to join a defense
pact. The invitation was promptly rejected.

    5) Americans and Britons in the Near and Middle East spend a
large part of their energies fighting each other. No effective
Western policy is possible without Western unity.

    The word "American" no longer has a good sound in that part
of the world. To catch the Jewish vote in the U.S., President
Truman in 1946 demanded that the British admit 100,000 Jewish
refugees to Palestine, in violation of British promises to the
Arabs. Since then, the Arab nations surrounding Israel have
regarded that state as a U.S. creation, and the U.S., therefore,
as an enemy. The Israeli-Arab war created nearly a million Arab
refugees, who have been huddled for three years in wretched
camps. These refugees, for whom neither the U.S. nor Israel will
take the slightest responsibility, keep alive the hatred of U.S.
perfidy.

    No enmity for the Arabs, no selfish national design
motivated the clumsy U.S. support of Israel. The American crime
was not to help the Jews, but to help them at the expense of the
Arabs. Today, the Arab world fears and expects a further Israeli
expansion. The Arabs are well aware that Alben Barkley, Vice
President of the U.S., tours his country making speeches for the
half-billion-dollar Israeli bond issue, the largest ever offered
to the U.S. public. Nobody, they note bitterly, is raising that
kind of money for them.

    The Deep Problem. What is the right answer to the seething
problem of the Middle East? It is much easier to see past U.S.
mistakes, sins of omission and commission, than to plot a wise
and firm future course. The U.S. success in Turkey, gratifying as
it is, does not give much guidance on Western policy in the Arab
countries and in Iran. Turkey had passed through a drastic
process of modernization which in most of the Moslem world is
still to come. But the U.S. cannot wait for Kemal Ataturks who
are not in sight.

    The West's new relationship with the East must start at a
much deeper level than efforts at economic help or military
alliance. Economic and military cooperation will be of little use
unless they are part of a Western approach that involves the
whole range of culture -- especially religion and law.

    In the current issue of Foreign Affairs, Lebanon's Malik
brilliantly lays the groundwork for such a change in Western
attitude. Malik sums up:

    "The disturbing rise of fanaticism in the Near East in
recent years is a reaction to the thoughtlessness and
superficiality of the West . . . In all this we are really
touching on the great present crisis in Western culture. We are
saying when that culture mends its own spiritual fences, all will
be well with the Near East, and not with the Near East alone. The
deep problem of the Near East must await the spiritual recovery
of the West. And he does not know the truth who thinks that the
West does not have in its own tradition the means and the power
wherewith it can once again be true to itself."

    In its leadership of the non-Communist world, the U.S. has
some dire responsibilities to shoulder. One of them is to meet
the fundamental moral challenge posed by the strange old wizard
who lives in a mountainous land and who is, sad to relate, the
Man of 1951.