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70 years ago, an Anglo-US coup condemned Iran to decades of oppression

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Re: 70 years ago, an Anglo-US coup condemned Iran to decades of oppression

#101

Post by Kamq »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #27
labster wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> stealing other countries' shit at gunpoint, which went out of fashion after WW2 It didn’t go out of fashion. Industrialization made wars of conquest unprofitable by 1890-1910 or so, and it took the world that long to get a clue. (Russia, notably, still hasn’t figured it out.) If you build one factory, you make money; if you build an army to steal your neighbor’s factory, most likely you both get zero factories.

You never start a war to gain some bombed-to-shit factories or barren deserts, you start wars to gain control of valuable land with resources and more easily defensible borders, get control of lucrative trade routes, and gain workers(slaves) and natural resources for your own factories. Of course, it's much easier and cheaper these days to use your intelligence services to stage a coup in that country so that your co…

You're forgetting eliminating a potential threat.

Which tends to have effects similar to what you've described. Land that isn't near a potential threat can be invested in much more heavily. Borders are easier to defend, etc.

But improvement to existing resources tends to be more attractive to those with the most resources already.

Re: 70 years ago, an Anglo-US coup condemned Iran to decades of oppression

#102

Post by basilgohar »

loeg wrote: post #88
tacocataco wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like the US can coup anyone it wants then and just wait 70 years! No worries all good!

Do you blame modern Germans for WW2? Why?

US foreign policy has not deviated from this same kind of practice one iota as Freedom of Information Act releases continue to confirm. We only find out long after the guilty administrations have moved on, except if leaked by Snowdens, Mannings, or Winners sooner.

Re: 70 years ago, an Anglo-US coup condemned Iran to decades of oppression

#104

Post by boringuser2 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #43
boringuser2 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not happy with your explanation because I feel it demonstrates that even an ostensibly smart, reflective person isn't outside their own cultural bias. I can disprove your conception in about a half of a second by citing the economic, social, political and technological miracle , that no democracy has even come close to replication thereof, that was ... 1930s Germany. FDR was also inspired himself by similar autar…

> the economic, social, political and technological miracle, that no democracy has even come close to replication thereof, that was ... 1930s Germany And then what happened? It’s almost a given that autocracies outperform in the short run, given a good leader. Across history, balanced political systems have been at the core of great civilisations. In the West, but also in China (oligarchies), the Indus Valley (actual…

I was hoping you weren't going to step on this landmine, the fallacy that literal might makes right.

The "inevitability of the defeated" is very provincial. Its tempting as you become a great sage and prognosticator simply because you can look at any historical event and say "this was a predictable nd inherently just outcome".

History was on the razor's edge as WW2 Germany blitzed through the defenses of most of Europe single-handedly. It was a feat enabled by fierce technical superiority, organizational superiority, even ideological superiority as the people were souped up on national identity. The autarchic form of government in play was a powerful cocktail that enabled Germany to accomplish outsize things in a very short period of time. A similar argument can be made for FDR"s America, as a lesser for would have been defeated at Pearl Harbor.

Note that I am not interested in a moral discussion of their government because that is a quick way to cut off critical thought. Obviously, I don't support the murders of any government.

Re: 70 years ago, an Anglo-US coup condemned Iran to decades of oppression

#105

Post by labster »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #27
labster wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> stealing other countries' shit at gunpoint, which went out of fashion after WW2 It didn’t go out of fashion. Industrialization made wars of conquest unprofitable by 1890-1910 or so, and it took the world that long to get a clue. (Russia, notably, still hasn’t figured it out.) If you build one factory, you make money; if you build an army to steal your neighbor’s factory, most likely you both get zero factories.

You never start a war to gain some bombed-to-shit factories or barren deserts, you start wars to gain control of valuable land with resources and more easily defensible borders, get control of lucrative trade routes, and gain workers(slaves) and natural resources for your own factories. Of course, it's much easier and cheaper these days to use your intelligence services to stage a coup in that country so that your co…

Other sibling comments have answered this one better, but I’ll just add: one TSMC fab is worth more than the entire natural resources of some countries. And those “slaves” you mention are also called an insurgency, which is very expensive to deal with.

Re: 70 years ago, an Anglo-US coup condemned Iran to decades of oppression

#106

Post by CMay »

boringuser2 wrote: post #19
joemazerino wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You didn't know? Everything bad is the West's fault. Meanwhile Iran's secular base disintegrates rapidly while the fundamentalist Islamists increase their stranglehold on their people.

The people clearly support the Iranian government. Whether or not you or I have anything to say about that is pretty irrelevant as I am not an Iranian citizen, and you are unlikely to be one. von Mises once said that every government is fundamentally democratic because even the most autarchic government requires the governing consent of its people. This is clearly true. This whole "people in the West get to decide wh…

Western countries are not run on direct democracy, because it is known to fail quicker. They're representative systems.

What you are essentially talking about is mob rule (direct democracy) which is a risk for any government, but for it to really manifest in a way that threatens the state it has to fail to balance the basic needs of the people and also become out of touch with any of their strong expectations which go beyond the basic needs.

If people have low expectations and have adapted to their environment, then it's not that much of a threat. This gets further solidified by punishing anyone that goes against the state and censoring any information that is inconvenient.

Many authoritarian governments have failed to be comprehensive in handling those aspects, but increasingly the oppression and control of people is becoming perfected.

The assumption that all people everywhere have sufficient opportunity, free communication, education and numbers to successfully push back against their government and thus it is always their fault that their government exists seems like a result of overlooking the very long study of imbalances in power between people and government. You cannot leave this to an assumption as an uncontestable law, which is precisely why the United States is setup the way it is to make sure the people have power and communication in order to check the government.

Re: 70 years ago, an Anglo-US coup condemned Iran to decades of oppression

#108

Post by api »

WalterBright wrote: post #103

I've never seen any analysis of why the US was able to install stable, successful democratic governments in Japan and Germany, and generally failed to elsewhere.

The US also came into those countries with massive reconstruction funds. Injecting tons of money buys a certain amount of loyalty, especially from anyone in those countries who did not support the previous regime or had fallen out of love with it.

We also promised them protection and trade and for some reason generally made good on that.

We didn’t do that with Iran or any of those other countries we messed with during the Cold War. In fact we seemed to not even really care much what happened after the coup. The only objective was to contain communism, so as long as whatever thing took power was not communist it was fine. It didn’t matter if they were monsters or even if they were even more anti-American than the previous regime as long as there wasn’t a hint of Soviet ideology.

We totally overreacted to communism to the point of actually building up more determined and ideologically consistent enemies.

Re: 70 years ago, an Anglo-US coup condemned Iran to decades of oppression

#109

Post by WalterBright »

api wrote: post #108
WalterBright wrote: post #103

I've never seen any analysis of why the US was able to install stable, successful democratic governments in Japan and Germany, and generally failed to elsewhere.

The US also came into those countries with massive reconstruction funds. Injecting tons of money buys a certain amount of loyalty, especially from anyone in those countries who did not support the previous regime or had fallen out of love with it. We also promised them protection and trade and for some reason generally made good on that. We didn’t do that with Iran or any of those other countries we messed with durin…

We "injected" incredible amounts of money into Iraq and Afghanistan.

Re: 70 years ago, an Anglo-US coup condemned Iran to decades of oppression

#110

Post by rendang »

WalterBright wrote: post #103

I've never seen any analysis of why the US was able to install stable, successful democratic governments in Japan and Germany, and generally failed to elsewhere.

Failed at installing democracies elsewhere? Aside from Afghanistan where has the US done that? More often the US has installed or propped up autocrats w/ varying degrees of success
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