Abstract
In the autumn of 1931, aged just 15 years, a precociously talented student named Walt Whitman Rostow enrolled at the venerable Yale University. The son of Russian Jewish immigrant intellectuals, Rostow was named after the revered American poet Walt Whitman. While he would go on to complete his PhD at Yale, as well as spend a year at Oxford University’s Balliol College as a Rhodes Scholar, Rostow later claimed that it was during his undergraduate days that he decided to write a “non-communist manifesto” to compete with that of Karl Marx’s socialist Das Kapital.1 The young economist firmly rejected Marx’s version of history and turned his attention to formulating an explanatory model of the economic development of society to counter the appeal of Leninist communism.
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Notes
David Milne, America’s Rasputin: Walt Rostow and the Vietnam War (New York: Hill and Wang, 2008), pp. 25–26.
Max Millikan, and W. W. Rostow, A Proposal: Key to an Effective Foreign Policy (New York: Harper & Bros, 1957); Walt Whitman Rostow, The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990; 1960).
For accounts that date development issues in US foreign relations to the pre-Cold War era, David Ekbladh, The Great American Mission; Ian Tyrrell, Reforming the World: The Creation of America’s Moral Empire (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010).
Chester J. Pachs, Jr., “Thinking Globally and Acting Locally,” in Kathryn C. Statler, and Andrew L. Johns, Eds., The Eisenhower Administration, the Third World, and the Globalization of the Cold War (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2006), p. xv; Gabriel Kolko, Confronting the Third World: United States Foreign Policy, 1945–1980 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1988); H. W. Brands, The Specter of Neutralism: The United States and the Emergence of the Third World, 1945–1960 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989).
Bevan Sewell, “Early Modernisation Theory?: The Eisenhower Administration and the Foreign Policy of Development in Brazil,” English Historical Review, CXXV.517 (2010), pp. 1449–1480. Indeed, the US had a long history of engagement with the modernization of Latin American countries; William O. Walker III, “Crucible for Peace: Herbert Hoover, Modernization, and Economic Growth in Latin America,” Diplomatic History, 30.1 (Jan., 2006), pp. 83–117.
David Ekbladh, “‘Mr TVA’: Grass-Roots Development, David Lilienthal, and the Rise and Fall of the Tennessee Valley Authority as a Symbol for U.S. Overseas Development, 1933–1973,” Diplomatic History, 26.3 (Summer, 2002), pp. 335–374.
Kamyar Ghaneabassiri, “U.S. Foreign Policy and Persia, 1856–1921,” Iranian Studies, 35.1 (Winter – Summer, 2002), p. 151.
Michael P. Zirinsky, “Render Therefore Unto Caesar the Things Which Are Caesar’s: American Presbyterian Educators and Reza Shah,” Iranian Studies, 26.3 (Summer – Autumn, 1993), p. 337.
Nikkie Keddie, Roots of Revolution: An Interpretive History of Modern Iran (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981), p. 85–89; Arthur C. Millspaugh, Americans in Persia (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1946).
Michael A. Rubin, “Stumbling through the “Open Door”: The U.S. in Persia and the Standard-Sinclair Oil Dispute, 1920–1925,” Iranian Studies, 28.3 (Summer, 1995), pp. 203–229; Michael P. Zirinsky, “Blood, Power, and Hypocrisy: The Murder of Robert Imbrie and American Relations with Pahlavi Iran, 1924,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, 18.3 (Aug., 1986), pp. 275–292.
Touraj Atabaki and Erik J. Zurcher, Eds., Men of Order: Authoritarian Modernization under Ataturk and Reza Shah (London: I. B. Tauris, 2004); Ghoncheh Tazmini, Revolution and Reform in Russia and Iran: Modernisation and Politics in Revolutionary States (London: I. B. Tauris, 2012); Gavin R. G. Hambly, “The Pahlavi Autocracy: Riza Shah, 1921–1941,” in Peter Avery, Gavin Hambly and Charles Melville, The Cambridge History of Iran, Volume 7: From Nadir Shah to the Islamic Republic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 213–243; Houchang E. Chehabi, “Staging the Emperor’s New Clothes: Dress Codes and Nation-Building under Reza Shah,” Iranian Studies, 26.3 (Summer, 1993), pp. 209–229; Stephanie Cronin, “Modernity, Change and Dictatorship in Iran: The New Order and Its Opponents, 1927–29,” Middle Eastern Studies, 39.2 (Apr., 2003), pp. 1–36; M. Reza Ghods, “Iranian Nationalism and Reza Shah,” Middle Eastern Studies, 27.1 (Jan., 1991), pp. 35–45; Talin Grigor, “Recultivating “Good Taste”: The Early Pahlavi Modernists and Their Society for National Heritage,” Iranian Studies, 37.1 (Mar., 2004), pp. 17–45; Camron Michael Amin, “Propaganda and Remembrance: Gender, Education, and ‘The Women’s Awakening’ of 1936,” Iranian Studies, 32.3 (Summer, 1999), pp. 351–386; Patrick Clawson, “Knitting Iran Together: The Land Transport Revolution, 1920–1940,” Iranian Studies, 26.3 (Summer, 1993), pp. 235–250.
Stephanie Cronin, “Opposition to Reza Khan within the Iranian Army, 1921– 26,” Middle Eastern Studies, 30.4 (Oct., 1994), pp. 724–750. On earlier efforts to modernize Iran’s military see Idem., “An Experiment in Military Modernization: Constitutionalism, Political Reform and the Iranian Gendarmerie, 1910–21,” Middle Eastern Studies, 32.3 (Jul., 1996), pp. 106–138.
Ali Ansari, Modern Iran Since 1921: The Pahlavis and After (Harlow: Pearson Education Limited, 2003), p. 39.
David Engerman, “The Romance of Economic Development and New Histories of the Cold War,” Diplomatic History, 28.1 (Jan., 2004), pp. 29–30.
Linda Wills Qaimmaqami, “The Catalyst of Nationalization: Max Thornburg and the Failure of Private Sector Developmentalism in Iran, 1947–1951,” Diplomatic History, 19.1 (Jan., 1995), pp. 1–31.
Christopher T. Fisher, “‘Moral Purpose is the Important Thing’: David Lilienthal, Iran, and the Meaning of Development in the US, 1956–63,” The International History Review, 33.3 (Sep., 2011), p. 431–451.
Victor V. Nemchenok, “‘That So Fair a Thing Should Be So Frail’: The Ford Foundation and the Failure of Rural Development in Iran, 1953–1964,” The Middle East Journal, 63.2 (Spring, 2009), pp. 261–284.
Keddie, Roots of Revolution, pp. 75–82. On early British policy in Iran, see Houshang Sabahi, British Policy in Persia, 1918–1925 (London: Frank Cass and Company Limited, 1990); Michael P. Zirinsky, “Imperial Power and Dictatorship: Britain and the Rise of Reza Shah, 1921–1926,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, 24.4 (Nov., 1992), pp. 639–663.
Ansari, Modern Iran Since 1921, p. 72; F. Eshraghi, “Anglo-Soviet Occupation of Iran in August 1941,” Middle Eastern Studies, 20.1 (Jan., 1984), pp. 27–52.
Mark Lytle, The Origins of the Iranian-American Alliance, 1941–1953 (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1987), p. 16.
Abbas Milani, The Shah (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), p. 89.
Galia Golan, Soviet Policies in the Middle East from World War Two to Gorbachev (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), p. 30.
Ronald D. McLaurin, The Middle East in Soviet Policy (Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath and Company, 1975), p. 7.
Malcolm Yapp, “Soviet Relations with Countries of the Northern Tier,” in Adeed Dawisha, and Karen Dawisha, Eds., The Soviet Union in the Middle East: Policies and Perspectives (London: Heinemann Educational Books, 1982), pp. 24–44.
Farhad Diba, Mohammad Mossadegh: A Political Biography (London: Croom Helm, 1986); Homa Katouzian, Musaddiq and the Struggle for Power in Iran (London: I. B. Tauris Publishers, 1990; 1999).
Heiss, Empire and Nationhood, p. 45. On the legacy of Mossadeq’s time in office on US foreign policy, see Goode, The United States and Iran. Reza Ghasimi has argued that the coup d’état that toppled Mossadeq in 1953, which was a response to his nationalization of the oil industry, ended the prospects of genuine democracy in Iran; Reza Ghasimi, “Iran’s Oil Nationalization and Mossadegh’s Involvement with the World Bank,” Middle East Journal, 65.3 (Summer, 2011), pp. 442–456.
In contrast, Francis J. Gavin argues that the Truman administration had already begun to adopt a more assertive policy towards Iran and that Eisenhower’s comparative aggression merely represented a continuation of this pattern; Francis J. Gavin, “Politics, Power, and U.S. Policy in Iran, 1950– 1953,” Journal of Cold War Studies 1.1 (1999), pp. 56–89.
Melvyn P. Leffler, For the Soul of Mankind: The United States, the Soviet Union, and the Cold War (New York: Hill and Wang, 2007), pp. 98–100; Walter LaFeber, America, Russia, and the Cold War, 1945–1996 (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1997; 1967), pp. 148–157; Richard Crockatt, The Fifty Years War: The United States and the Soviet Union in World Politics, 1941–1991 (Oxon: Routledge, 1995), pp. 123–125; Peter Grose, Operation Rollback: America’s Secret War Behind the Iron Curtain (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2000), pp. 211–222; Robert A. Divine, Eisenhower and the Cold War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981). On Eisenhower’s approach to the Third World, see Kathryn C. Statler, and Andrew L. Johns, Eds., The Eisenhower Administration, the Third World, and the Globalization of the Cold War (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2006).
Saki Dockrill, Eisenhower’s New-Look National Security Policy, 1953–61 (Basingstoke: Macmillan Press Ltd., 1996), p. 2.
In reality, the threat posed by communists in Iran was much lower than Washington feared; Maziar Behrooz, “Tudeh Factionalism and the 1953 Coup in Iran,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, 33.3 (Aug., 2001), pp. 363–382. On the history of Iranian communism see M. Reza Ghods, “The Iranian Communist Movement under Reza Shah,” Middle Eastern Studies, 26.4 (Oct., 1990), pp. 506–513; Fred Halliday, “The Iranian Left in International Perspective,” in Stephanie Cronin, Ed., Reformers and Revolutionaries in Modern Iran: New Perspectives on the Iranian Left (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004), pp. 19–36; Osamu Miyata, “The Tudeh Military Network during the Oil Nationalization Period,” Middle Eastern Studies, 23.3 (Jul., 1987), pp. 313–328.
Gasiorowski, “The 1953 Coup D’etat in Iran,” pp. 251–256.
Kinzer, All the Shah’s Men, pp. 209–210; Lytle, Origins of the Iranian-American Alliance, p. 213. Dulles offered Kermit Roosevelt the opportunity to head the CIA’s covert operation to overthrow the democratic government of Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala. Ironically, Roosevelt declined on the grounds that the situation in Guatemala was not suited to a coup d’etat. For a discussion of the legacy of the 1953 coup and its impact on the workings of the CIA, see Douglas Little, “Mission Impossible: The CIA and the Cult of Covert Action in the Middle East,” Diplomatic History, 28.5 (Nov., 2004), pp. 663–701.
Rouhollah K. Ramazani, Iran’s Foreign Policy, 1941–1973: A Study of Foreign Policy in Modernizing Nations (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1975), pp. 260–261.
Mark J. Gasiorowski, U.S. Foreign Policy and the Shah: Building a Client State in Iran (London: Cornell University Press, 1991), pp. 90–92.
Ibid., pp. 165–166; Goode, The United States and Iran, pp. 138–153.
Kristen Blake, The U.S.-Soviet Confrontation in Iran, 1945–1962: A Case in the Annals of the Cold War (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2009), p. 105.
SAVAK’s Persian name, Saˉzemaˉne Ettelaˉ’aˉt va Amniyate Keshvar, translates as Organization of Intelligence and National Security.
Stephen McGlinchey, “Building a Client State: American Arms Policies Towards Iran, 1950–1963,” The Central European Journal of International and Security Studies, 6.2 (2012), p. 21.
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Offiler, B. (2015). Modernization Theory and the United States Meets Iran. In: US Foreign Policy and the Modernization of Iran. Security, Conflict and Cooperation in the Contemporary World. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137482211_2
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