The Catalyst of Nationalization: Max Thornburg and the Failure of Private Sector Developmentalism in Iran, 1947?1951

Abstract

During the early years of the Cold War, developing nations outside Europe approached the United States for large aid programs similar to the Marshall Plan to promote postwar reconstruction. In uncertain times, such requests for massive economic aid forced the Truman administration to determine whether or not large government-sponsored programs, as requested by these peripheral nations, were suitable and desirable for nonindustrialized areas and whether or not, in a broader context, such programs enhanced America's national security. The answer, at first, was a definite no, yet by 1951 that decision was reversed. An examination of the administration's decision and its later reversal provides an insight into the relationship between foreign policy and Cold War strategy; into the dynamic relationship between the U.S. government and the American private sector, developing nations, and wartime ally England; and into the changing nature of postwar American interventionism. The question of aid was of particular concern in Iranian-American relations. No other issue so exercised diplomatic energies and patience as the question of how much aid should go to Iran, when it should be given, and for what purpose. Most historians of Iran rightly perceive this period as a time of missed opportunities and agree that within this period lay the seeds of future revolution. The main reasons they cite for these missed opportunities generally fall within the overall framework established by Bruce Kuniholm, who asserts that Cold War considerations overrode all others. James Goode argues, for example, that because of the demands of the Cold War the United States missed a chance to establish a constitutional democracy in Iran during this period of possible Iranian democratic rebirth, while Mark Lytle argues that the United States missed an opportunity to encourage Iranian neutrality in the Cold War, being more interested in a Middle Eastern version of the Monroe Doctrine. Two eminent historians of Iran likewise criticize the American response to Iran during the early Cold War: James Bill posits the inauguration of the long-term policy of support for Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlevi here, and Richard Cottam writes that in the Cold War battle for influence in the political affairs of strategically important Third World nations, the United States became allied with local conservative elites who favored slow, controlled change and a strengthened monarchy. A contrasting view is presented by Stephen McFarland, who argues that it was the Iranians who sucked the United States into involvement in Iran by persuading it that the Soviet threat to Iran was real.1