The Silk Roads: A New History of the World

by Frankopan, Peter

  Tidal waves of military pressure in Asia had caused a series of Dunkirks in the east – cases of shambolic retreat that served as poignant markers of the end of Britain’s golden era. Hundreds of thousands fled from Burma as Japanese forces fanned out across South-East Asia, seeking to take advantage of British and French preoccupations with problems closer to home to expand into regions that had long been of strategic and economic interest to Tokyo. Germany’s allies in the east were quick to realise that an opportunity had presented itself that enabled Japan to advance its own imperial credentials over a wide region. As the Japanese forces pushed forward, many suffered as a result. Some 80,000 died of starvation and disease. Scenes in the Malay peninsula were equally dramatic as thousands fell back on Penang and Singapore – with the lucky ones making it out before the city fell. One unmarried woman who was evacuated just in time wrote a few weeks later that the chaos of the British withdrawal was ‘a thing which I am sure will never be forgotten or forgiven’ by those who witnessed or took part in it.15

  The recoil continued as hostilities in Europe and the Pacific came to an end. The decision to pull out of India altogether came after three decades of concessions and promises that had raised expectations about self-governance, autonomy and ultimately independence. By the end of the war, British authority was fading fast and threatened to spiral out of control as months of disturbances, anti-imperial demonstrations and strikes set in that brought cities across the north of the subcontinent to a standstill. Initial plans to make a ‘phased withdrawal’ from India which also sought to provide protection for the Muslim minorities were rejected by London as too costly and too lengthy.16 Instead, the announcement was made in early 1947 that Britain would withdraw within sixteen months, creating panic as a result. It was a disastrous decision, as Winston Churchill, voted out of office after the war, told the House of Commons. ‘Will it not be a terrible disgrace to our name and record if . . . we allow one fifth of the population of the globe . . . to fall into chaos and into carnage?’17

  When these warnings were not heeded, pandemonium broke loose in the subcontinent. Communities that had been stable for so long erupted with violence as families that had lived in towns and villages for centuries embarked on one of the largest mass migrations in human history. At least 11 million people moved across the new borders of the Punjab and Bengal.18 The British in the meantime drew up detailed evacuation plans to try to limit the number of their own nationals likely to be caught up in the fighting.19 This concern did not extend to the local population.

  It was a similar story elsewhere as Britain stumbled from one crisis to another. In a bid to preserve the balance of the delicate situation in Palestine, so as to retain control of the refinery and port of Haifa, keep Suez secure and maintain friendly relations with leading figures in the Arabic world, active steps were taken to try to curb Jewish emigration from Europe. After plans had been drawn up by British intelligence to sabotage ships bringing refugees to Palestine – and pin blame on an apparently powerful but non-existent Arab terrorist organisation – the British took more direct action.20

  The low point came in the summer of 1947, after ships on their way to load Jewish émigrés in French ports had been harassed. One vessel carrying more than 4,000 Jews, including pregnant women, children and many elderly, was rammed by British destroyers as it made its way east – even though the decision had already been taken to refuse entry to the passengers when they reached Palestine.21 Treating those who had survived concentration camps or lost family in the Holocaust in this way was a public relations disaster: it was clear that Britain would stop at nothing to maintain its interests abroad – and think nothing of others in the process.

  The clumsiness was apparent in dealings with Abdullāh, the ruler of Transjordan, who was now lavished with attention and promised British military support, set out in secret agreements, for his regime after it became independent in 1946. He took advantage of this promise to embark on a plan to extend his frontiers to include all of Palestine once the British withdrew – obtaining a green light, albeit qualified, from London.22 ‘It seems the obvious thing to do,’ his Prime Minister was supposedly told by Ernest Bevin, the Foreign Secretary; ‘but do not go and invade the areas allotted to the Jews.’23 Whatever steer was given, the chaos that descended on yet another part of the world where Britain was pulling back was compelling evidence of the malign effects of imperial European power. The Arab–Israeli War of 1948 may not have been the result of policy being conducted through nods, nudges and winks, but it did represent a void opening up as a result of the changing of the guard.24

  Things were little better in Iraq, where there was turmoil after the Prime Minister, Ṣāli Jabr, agreed terms with Britain in 1948 that extended the latter’s use of airbases in the country for a further twenty-five years. News of the agreement led to strikes, riots and eventually Jabr’s resignation as he was hounded from office by an angry mob.25 Animosity towards Britain had been stoked by a range of issues, including the occupation of Baghdad during the Second World War and the perceived failure of the British to support the Arabs in Palestine, especially when set against the attempts of London to retain a permanent military foothold in Iraq. This was all made worse by rampant inflation and food shortages that followed poor harvests – with the result that one astute observer recognised that the ‘internal situation in Iraq was dangerous’.26 Britain therefore took steps to help the ‘Iraqi Prime Minister . . . resist popular agitation by giving him concessions’. This included offering to share the airbase at Habbaniyah; the Iraqis should be happy with this ‘first-class example of co-operation’, policymakers in London asserted. Britain would ‘not be prepared to make [this offer] to any other state’ – and the Iraqis should be very grateful for being allowed to feel ‘superior to other states in the Middle East’.27

  Compounding all this was the fact that, as was the case with other countries, Iraq had little to show for the oil that was pumped from its soil. In 1950, some 90 per cent of the population were still illiterate. Worse, Britain was held responsible for exerting too strong a grip on the country: when it came to borrowing funds to build and extend the railway network, for example, Britain demanded Iraq’s reserves as security. This raised the prospect that the oilfields would be taken over in the event of default – much as had happened with Suez in the nineteenth century when control of the vitally important canal and of its finances was seized by the British.28 Britain found itself in a lose–lose situation: it had spent all its political capital and was trusted by no one. Such was the suspicion that even agencies like the Middle East Anti-Locust Unit (MEALU), which had enjoyed considerable success after being established during the war, were wound down – removing technical expertise that was helpful both in dealing with damaging swarms and in protecting the food supply.29 The states of the Middle East were flexing their muscles and turning against the west.

  In the meantime, the Soviet Union was also resurgent. A new narrative had emerged in the USSR following the defeat of Germany – one where Stalin’s role in the genesis of the war as Hitler’s ally was quietly forgotten, and replaced with a story of triumph and of destiny being fulfilled.30 The Revolution of 1917 had failed to deliver the global transformation anticipated by Marx and his disciples; thirty years later, however, it seemed that the time had come for Communism to sweep across the world and dominate Asia just as Islam had done in the seventh century. It had already begun to diffuse through China, where the promises of equality, of justice and above all of land reform brought support for the Communist party and enabled it to drive government forces back and eventually off the mainland altogether.

  Similar patterns were starting to be seen elsewhere, as left-wing parties began to attract increasing support in Europe and in the United States. Many were persuaded by an ideal that promised a harmony in sharp contrast to the horrors of a war that had culminated in two atomic bombs being dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki – including some who had worked on the nuclear
programme – and were disillusioned by the fact that two titanic struggles between European nations in little more than three decades had wrought devastating results across the world.

  Stalin fanned these flames astutely in a speech that was widely reported around the world in the spring of 1946. The Second World War had been inevitable, he declared, ‘because of the emergence of global economic and political factors that were implicit in the concept of modern monopolistic capitalism’.31 The speech was a statement of intent: capitalism had dominated the world for too long, and was responsible for the suffering, mass murder and horrors of the wars of the twentieth century. Communism was a logical reaction to a political system that had proved itself to be flawed and dangerous. It was a new system that accentuated similarities rather than differences, that replaced hierarchies with equality. It was not just an attractive vision, in other words, but a viable alternative.

  Not long before, Churchill had gambled the future of the countries lying west of the Soviet Union’s borders. ‘Poor Neville Chamberlain believed he could trust Hitler,’ Churchill told a junior member of his staff immediately after the negotiations at Yalta about what the post-war world would look like. ‘He was wrong. But I don’t think I’m wrong about Stalin.’32 Chamberlain had indeed been wrong; but so too was Churchill – as he soon recognised. Nobody knows, he said on 5 March 1946 in his speech in Fulton, Missouri, ‘what Soviet Russia . . . intends to do in the immediate future’. However, the fact that its philosophy was expansive and evangelical, he noted, meant that it represented a threat to the west. ‘From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an Iron Curtain has descended across the continent.’33

  The fate of the centre of the world hung in the balance. Iran was the fulcrum. US strategists were convinced that the Soviets wanted complete domination of Iran because of its oil, but also because of its naval bases and its location in the middle of a web of international air routes. The Iranian government had awarded the concession for the oil in the north of the country to the US only thanks to assurances from the American ambassador that the US would, if necessary, provide military support in the event of Soviet forces entering the country following fierce opposition from Moscow to the agreement.34

  In the summer of 1946, tensions rose as strike action took hold across Iran. With rumour and counter-rumour swirling through the streets of Teheran, the country’s immediate future seemed to be at stake. Despite its strong desire to keep hold of its assets, it was painfully clear that Britain could do little to influence events where it mattered. Intelligence reports painted a gloomy picture of imminent military action by Moscow against Iran and Iraq, reporting detailed invasion plans which included information on the likely focal point of the ‘powerful Soviet cavalry and motorised forces’ in the event of an attack. The Soviet General Staff were reported to have reached bullish conclusions about occupying Mosul and were ready to set up a ‘popular Iranian Government’ once the Shah had been overthrown. Reprisals would then be taken, according to the British, against the previous regime whose leading figures would be branded as ‘traitors and collaborators’. Soviet paratroopers were ready to be dropped close to Teheran to lead an assault that would quickly be over.35

  A sense of real alarm gripped Washington. The Americans had been watching Iran closely since December 1942, when the first of 20,000 US troops arrived in Khoramshahr in the Gulf to set to work on improving Iran’s transportation system. In order to oversee the logistics, a large American camp was built in Teheran itself, which became the headquarters of the US Persian Gulf Command as a whole.36 The British and the Soviets were putting their own interests first in Iran, and as a result were constantly undermining the war effort and the state of Iran at the same time. Iran was being pulled dangerously in every direction, General Patrick Hurley reported to President Roosevelt.37

  The Americans who were deployed to Iran to support and monitor supply lines during the war initially experienced something of a culture shock. The Iranian army, found Major-General Clarence Ridley, was poorly trained, under-resourced and essentially useless. If it was to hold its own with hostile neighbours, heavy investment would be needed to train a new generation of officers and to buy good equipment. This was music to the new Shah’s ears, as he was desperate to make his mark on Iran by a programme of modernisation. The problem, as his (American) budget adviser told him bluntly, was that it was not possible to build an army along the lines of those in the west: if funds were diverted to military expenditure, he was told, ‘there would be little if anything for agriculture, education or public health’.38

  Under-prepared, disorganised and weak, Iran seemed to have little chance of seeing off the Soviet Union at a time when Stalin’s posturing and behaviour were a matter of profound concern in the United States. Some who heard Stalin’s speech concluded that this was nothing other than the ‘declaration of World War III’.39 George Kennan, chargé d’affaires at the US embassy in Moscow who had witnessed Stalin’s purges at first hand, drew a similar conclusion, warning in early 1946 of a major global struggle ahead. ‘At the bottom of the Kremlin’s neurotic view of world affairs’, he wrote, is the ‘traditional and instinctive Russian sense of insecurity’. The Soviet Union, he concluded, was ‘a political force committed fanatically’ to engage in competition with the United States to the point that its aim was to ensure that ‘the internal harmony of our state be disrupted, our traditional way of life be destroyed [and] the international authority of our state be broken’.40

  Iran’s political and strategic importance now propelled it to the forefront of US foreign policy. Systematic efforts were made to help bolster the country. In 1949, the Voice of America radio station began broadcasting in Farsi to the local population, with the first programme featuring President Truman commenting on ‘the historic bond of friendship’ between Iran and the United States, and promising assistance to help create a ‘prosperous and . . . peaceful world’ that was free from oppression.41 By the time war broke out in the Korean peninsula a year later, more direct help was being offered. As a State Department briefing put it, while the declining economy had ‘not yet reached catastrophic conditions’, if strong support was not now given there was a risk of ‘the complete disintegration of the country and its absorption immediately or eventually into the Soviet bloc’.42 Truman himself needed no convincing. ‘If we stand by,’ he observed, ‘[the Soviets will] move into Iran and they’ll take over the whole Middle East.’43

  Radio broadcasts became increasingly pointed as Iranians were told that ‘free nations must stand together’, that ‘US security is bound up with the security of other nations,’ and that the ‘strength of the free world’ was continuing to grow. This went hand in hand with reports which emphasised the threat posed by the Soviet Union to world peace, which stated that ‘the aim of communist leaders is the universal suppression of human freedom’ and which even went so far as to claim that ‘Soviet teachers make their homes in broken-down freight cars which had been condemned as unfit to transport cattle’ and lacked heat, basic sanitary facilities and clean water.44

  Financial aid began to pour into the country, rising nearly five times over the course of three years from $11.8 million in 1950 to $52.5 million in 1953. The aim was to encourage economic development in Iran, to stabilise its political culture and to lay the basis for reform, but also to provide military and technical assistance for its self-defence. These were the first stages in the building of an American client state in the Middle East.45

  The motivation for doing so was based in part on the realisation that Britain was no longer able to prop up regimes in the way that it had done in the past, and in part on a frank recognition that Soviet expansionism required a response. Nevertheless, this was not the only reason for the close attention paid to Iran. In 1943, for example, during the major conference held by Allied leaders in Teheran, neither Winston Churchill nor President Roosevelt had bothered even to meet with the Shah. Put simply, both thought it would have been
a waste of time to do so.46 Likewise, the following year, Saudi Arabia was dismissed by the US as a country of limited consequence, whose requests for economic help could be easily swatted away by President Roosevelt as being ‘a little far afield for us’; Roosevelt added that it would be better for Saudi concerns and requests to be directed to Britain than to the US.47 By the time the war ended, things were very different, with Saudi Arabia alone being considered to be ‘more important to American diplomacy than almost any other small nation’.48 The reason for this was oil.

  During the war, a gritty oilman named Everette Lee DeGolyer, who had made his money in the American petroleum industry after studying geology in Oklahoma, visited the Middle East to assess the region’s existing oilfields and to advise on the long-term potential and significance of the resources of the region in its own right, and in relation to those of the Gulf of Mexico, Venezuela and the United States itself. His report, even though laced with conservative estimates and caveats, was astounding. ‘The center of gravity of world oil production is shifting from the Gulf-Caribbean area to the Middle East – to the Persian Gulf area – and is likely to continue to shift until it is firmly established in the area.’49 One of those who travelled with him put it more bluntly when reporting back to the State Department: ‘The oil in this region is the greatest single prize in all history.’50

  This was not lost on the British, who reacted jealously to the prospect of the US paying greater attention to the region as a whole. The Americans should be told to stay out of the Middle East and away from the strong position Britain had built, Churchill was told by a leading industrialist; ‘oil is the single greatest post-war asset remaining to us. We should refuse to divide our last asset with the Americans.’51 This was articulated forcefully by Lord Halifax, the British ambassador to Washington, who took umbrage at the way officials at the State Department had tried to deflect him. British policymakers were also concerned about what was going on, fearing that ‘the United States is intending to divest us of our oil assets in the Middle East’.52 The Prime Minister himself got directly involved, sending a telegram to President Roosevelt stating, ‘I have been watching with some misgivings’ how the negotiations had been going on; ‘you may be sure I should only wish to arrive at what is fair and just between our two countries’.53