[lbo-talk] The Idea of the Third World (was Re: Iran andLatinAmerica)

[Marvin Gandall]

Yoshie wrote:

Qaddafi didn't come into power through social revolution, like the one
that convulsed Iran from bottom up. Instead, he won state power
through a bloodless coup d'état. It's easier for Washington to deal
with a dictator who rules the passive population, whether to depose
him (as in Iraq) or work with him (as in Libya), than with the
collectivist leadership who lead the historically revolutionary and
still very much politically active population like Iran's.

Let's say Washington offers a deal, and Khamenei, et al. take it.
Washington can't rule out that the people of Iran won't, sooner or
later, undo it, either restoring the status quo ante or even taking
their revolution to a new, higher stage.
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The Iranians, of course, are not the only people to have made a revolution.
The Soviet and Chinese revolutions of the past century - which were both
more thoroughgoing than Iran's in that capitalism was eliminated -
demonstrate revolutions are more easily reversible than we could have
imagined.

It's theoretically possible that the people of Iran can become the exception
and prevent any similar accomodation by their leaders under the pressure of
the capitalist world economy. They might even one day take "their revolution
to a new, higher stage". So might the the Chinese, Russian, and other
peoples of the world, for that matter. But that's hardly the basis for
analysis and concluding that the foreign policy of Iran was substantially
different from that of Libya in the two decades leading up to the Iraq war -
the provision of fighter places by the Soviets to the Libyans
notwithstanding.

The USSR and PRC commonly sold arms to countries like Libya, India, and
Pakistan, who were not part the "Soviet bloc" - except, that is, in the
minds of US Cold War propagandists. No more than the Islamic Republic of
Iran became part of the "Western bloc" when the US supplied it with arms
through Israel for use against Iraq.