IRAN: The Crescent of Crisis

IRAN COVER STORIES

Iran and a region of rising instability

“An arc of crisis stretches along the shores of the Indian Ocean, with fragile social and political structures in a region of vital importance to us threatened with fragmentation. The resulting political chaos could well be filled by elements hostile to our values and sympathetic to our adversaries.” —Zbigniew Brzezinski

In the broadest and grandest of measurements, this crisis crescent envisioned by President Carter’s National Security Adviser reaches all the way from Indochina to southern Africa. In practical terms, however, what Brzezinski is really speaking of are the nations that stretch across the southern flank of the Soviet Union from the Indian subcontinent to Turkey, and southward through the Arabian Peninsula to the Horn of Africa. The center of gravity of this arc is Iran, the world’s fourth largest oil producer and for more than two decades a citadel of U.S. military and economic strength in the Middle East. Now it appears that the 37-year reign of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi is almost over, ended by months of rising civil unrest and revolution (see following story). Regardless of what kind of government comes to power in this immensely strategic land, the politics of the region, and indeed the geopolitics of the entire world, will be affected.

The crisis area is vast. It includes India, once again the world’s most populous democracy, but a politically divided and troubled nation with a squabbling, ineffective government; impoverished Bangladesh; unstable Pakistan, where an inept military regime is currently considering the execution of deposed Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the autocratic but brilliant politician who rebuilt his country after its disastrous defeat by India in 1971. To the northeast is Afghanistan, where a pro-Soviet junta that seized power last year is trying to rule over one of the world’s most ungovernable tribal societies. In the west is Turkey, torn by religious unrest and social instability to the point that martial law had to be declared in 13 provinces two weeks ago.

Directly south of Iran across the Persian Gulf is Saudi Arabia, whose traditional monarchic system remains intact but which is nevertheless highly vulnerable: only 8 million people live in a land one-fourth the size of the U.S. that possesses the world’s largest proven oil reserves.

Egypt, kept from bankruptcy by infusions of cash from Saudi Arabia, faces urban unrest and overpopulation; a moderate regime in Sudan, to the south, has barely survived two attempted coups inspired by radical Libya. On Saudi Arabia’s southern flank lies the pro-Soviet South Yemen, whose radical government has been fomenting guerrilla warfare in neighboring Oman. Across the Red Sea, in the Horn of Africa, the Ethiopian junta of Lieutenant Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam is being held together by Soviet military aid and the presence of some 17,000 Cuban soldiers. Pondering the complexities of the Indian Ocean region last week, Brzezinski concluded: “I’d have to be blind or Pollyannish not to recognize that there are dark clouds on the horizon.”

The nature of the clouds varies surprisingly from country to country. Some oil-rich lands, such as Iran, Saudi Arabia and even Iraq, are made more difficult to govern by their oil wealth. Others are desperately poor, overpopulated and undeveloped, like most of the Third World. What the entire region has in common is an innate fragility, a vulnerability borne of being located at the center of so strategic a territory. The Persian Gulf provides fully 71% of the oil presently consumed by Western Europe; yet geographically, and perhaps also socially and politically, it is a perfect target of opportunity for Soviet expansionism. There is no convincing evidence that the Russians have been subversively operating to get rid of the Shah in Iran or that they are presently working to overthrow other regimes along the crescent. But within a decade, according to intelligence reports, the Soviet Union will be running short of the oil it needs to fuel an expanding economy. Thus the region could easily become the fulcrum of world conflict in the 1980s.

The U.S. at the moment seems unprepared to meet such a challenge. After weeks of indecision and disbelief, the Carter Administration finally realized last month that the Shah’s days as an absolute monarch were ending. From the very beginning of the cold war, the Shah’s country had been a cornerstone of the Central Treaty Organization (CENTO)* and a bulwark of Western influence. It was largely the U.S. that restored the ruler to his Peacock Throne after the overthrow of Premier Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953. Yet U.S. intelligence failed dismally at assessing the depth and range of opposition to the Shah. Jimmy Carter ordered a U.S. carrier task force to steam from the Philippines to the Persian Gulf as a gesture of support. Three days later, on the advice of his foreign policy aides, Carter changed his mind and ordered the ships to remain on station in the South China Sea. Seldom have the limits of American power or the lack of a strong policy been so obvious. In the acid phrase of Conservative Columnist William Safire, the whole exercise was “the first example of no-gunboat gunboat diplomacy: we showed a naked flagpole.”

In fairness, the dilemma created by Iran is one that would have tested any American President. The Carter Administration inherited a relationship with the Shah that could hardly have been more cozy. In 1972 Richard Nixon decided to lift all restrictions on arms sales to the Shah. Soon billions of dollars’ worth of the most sophisticated weaponry and aircraft in the U.S. arsenal began pouring into Iran. America’s decision to depend on the Shah as its surrogate policeman in the Persian Gulf was perceived as even more crucial in the aftermath of the 1973 Arab oil embargo, when Iran disregarded the boycott and continued to sell vital petroleum to the West. In retrospect, one top U.S. policymaker of that period reflects: “We let the arms sales get out of control, and we failed to press the Shah to establish the roots of democratic institutions.”

Until recently, the Shah was believed by practically all Western observers to have a base of support that included the peasantry, the middle classes who were supposed to benefit from the Shah’s heady campaign of modernization, and the armed forces. Exactly what happened to that support will be debated for a long time. Without doubt the answer is more complex than the pat view of some American journalists who today try to argue that the Shah never enjoyed much support at home and was largely an invention of the CIA.

Certainly he was a man possessed by an impossible dream: to create as quickly as possible a modern industrial nation in the ancient sands of Persia. It was his advantage, but perhaps also his undoing, that he had the petrodollars to pursue that goal. He carried out some land reform, but the big money went to such projects as petrochemical factories and nuclear plants. Hundreds of thousands of peasant farmers moved to the cities to get jobs. Skyscrapers soared, as did inflation—to an estimated 50% last year.

In his unbridled pursuit of industrial growth, technological progress and military development, the Shah sent tens of thousands of young Iranians overseas for advanced education. Many of them stayed abroad as embittered exiles. The Shah did not seem to realize that the middle classes, which in time came to constitute about 25% of the Iranian population, wanted increased political rights and freedom of expression as well as a share in the country’s new wealth. According to the University of Texas’ James A. Bill, one of the ranking experts on Iran in the U.S., the Shah’s tactics broke down in the early ’70s with the rise of a “frightening secret police apparatus.” Writes Bill in the current issue of Foreign Affairs: “A period of un-Persian rule by repression set in and a group of hard-liners in the intelligence organization took charge.” Though Iran was hardly ready for Western-style democracy, the Shah introduced a period of liberalization two years ago, but Iran remained an autocratic state. Iranian dissidents took heart from the election of Jimmy Carter and his strong human rights policy. But when Carter visited Tehran a year ago, he scarcely mentioned human rights and instead heaped praise on his imperial host. The dissidents were bitterly disappointed.

A resurgence of Islamic fundamentalism, which has profoundly affected other countries in the Middle East, also swept through Iran, where the Shi’ite mullahs have traditionally served as the conscience of the people. The mullahs were scandalized by growing corruption that clearly involved the royal family, by the jet-setting Western ways of Iran’s new rich, by the Shah’s apparent contempt for the faith to which most of his people belonged. Beyond that, the mullahs were infuriated early last year when the then Premier, Jamshid Amuzegar, canceled the $80 million annual subsidy that they had formerly received from the Palace to spend on mosques, scholarships and travel. In addition, in an effort to curb inflation, Amuzegar imposed price controls, and this angered the influential bazaar people.

What happened to the Shah’s once very real support? Sums up a senior American businessman with many years’ experience in Iran: “He lost contact with the peasants. He lost control of inflation. He lost contact with the mullahs. He lost control of SAVAK [the secret police]. He lost control of his own family and all the outrageous deals they made for personal profit. All he had left was the army.”

Political demonstrations began in January 1978 and have continued ever since. They were supported by the political left, including the banned Tudeh Communist Party, but led by the Shi’ite Muslims, and the exiled Ayatullah Khomeini became the embodiment of that protest. Nonetheless, as Professor Bill notes, it was “the educated, professional middle class” that came to constitute “the greatest danger to the 2,500-year-old absolute monarchy of Iran.”

There is evidence that the introspective Shah recently began to realize that the end was coming, though he remained immobilized and unable to accept the fact that his grand scheme had failed. When TIME Correspondent Dean Brelis asked him in late November what he felt had been his biggest mistake, the Shah answered sadly: “Being born.” On another occasion, he wondered aloud how many of his people would go into the streets to cheer and support him as a million Frenchmen once did for Charles de Gaulle during his hour of need. Says a Western diplomat in Tehran: “I doubt that a thousand Iranians would be willing to go into the streets for the Shah today.”

The conditions that make for instability along the arc vary greatly from country to country, and it would be imprudent to apply the cold war domino theory to the area. “There may be a bunch of dominoes,” says a Western diplomat, “but they’re not leaning against each other, end on end.” Nonetheless, it is also apparent that what happens next in Iran could have an important effect on the whole region. The international rivalry that Rudyard Kipling once described as “the great game” for control of the warm-weather ports and lucrative trade routes between Suez and the Bay of Bengal is still being played, except that the chief contestants today are not imperial Britain and czarist Russia but the U.S. and the Soviet Union, and the big prize is not trade but oil. Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger (see interview) long has argued that in a situation of what he called “rough parity” between Moscow and Washington, the global balance could be profoundly affected by events at the regional level—and, in recent years, the tide throughout the crescent of crisis could be construed to have been running in Moscow’s favor.

To be sure, Egypt threw out the Russians in 1972 and established close ties with Washington. India, in a stunning demonstration of the democratic process two years ago, defeated Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, thereby bringing an end to both her authoritarian rule and her Soviet-leaning foreign policy. The Russians lost their special relationship with Somalia, as well as their excellent port at Berbera, because they got too greedy and tried at the same time to reach an accommodation with Somalia’s neighbor and ancient enemy, Ethiopia.

On the other hand, governments that were strongly pro-Western have either fallen or been weakened in Iran, Turkey and Pakistan. Pro-Moscow regimes have come to power in Ethiopia, Afghanistan and South Yemen. The collapse of the Portuguese colonial empire gave the Russians new opportunities in southern Africa. Soviet naval vessels now call at ports from Mozambique to Viet Nam.

In the early 1970s, with more than 300,000 U.S. troops in Viet Nam, the Nixon Doctrine enabled Washington to speed up sales and gifts of weapons to important allies, without also sending troops. Iran was one of the chief beneficiaries, receiving $14 billion worth of military goods between 1972 and 1978. The Carter Administration continued the policy of supplying arms to “regional influentials,” including Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. Turkey has the largest standing army of any NATO country apart from the U.S., and at one time had more than 20 U.S. military bases on its soil. Then came the invasion of Cyprus, the U.S. arms embargo (revoked last September), and Turkey’s present view that it can no longer rely on a “single source” (i.e. the U.S.) for its arms.

That the Soviet Union is anxious to extend its influence throughout the crisis area is beyond dispute.* What is less certain is how boldly it is pursuing this goal. Moscow’s view of Iran under the Shah appears to have been highly ambiguous. Some experts believe Iran’s Tudeh Communists played a direct role in the well-organized strikes of the oil workers and in the mass demonstrations against the Shah. Russian radio stations broadcast anti-American and anti-Shah propaganda. Yet the Soviets also became the Shah’s third largest arms supplier and entered into several commercial ventures with him, including the purchase of natural gas. A widely held view among foreign observers is that Moscow preferred the Shah’s rule to the uncertainty of what might follow.

Most Western diplomats believe the Soviets are simply exploiting targets of opportunity as these present themselves. “The Russians are great opportunists who will readily take advantage of a situation that presents strategic gain with the minimum of risk,” says a senior British official. But he adds that the conservative Soviet leadership should be credited with properly understanding the serious risks involved in actively seeking to overthrow the Shah and deny Persian Gulf oil to the Western world. He concludes: “There is no concrete evidence suggesting that the Russians have been masterminding or in any way been directly involved in the drastic changes taking place in Iran.”

But instability itself is contagious, and the opportunities for exploitation are increasing. A complicating factor is that the U.S. is no longer widely recognized as the strategically dominant power in the region, making local leaders less inclined to look to the U.S. for their security. A case in point is Pakistan. Already annoyed by Washington’s new pro-India tilt, by U.S. refusal to sell it arms and by attempts to block a nuclear-plant deal with France, Pakistani leaders were shocked by the Administration’s ho-hum reaction to the coup in Afghanistan. Once a solid U.S. ally, Pakistan has moved to patch up relations with Moscow.

Perhaps the greatest single fear of U.S. strategists is that the troubles in Iran could have a direct effect on Saudi Arabia. The rulers in Riyadh place a high priority on both Arab solidarity and socioeconomic stability in the region, and thus their interests tend to parallel those of the U.S. Saudi leaders have worked actively to counter Soviet influence in northeast Africa and the Middle East—notably by helping keep Egypt afloat financially, by offering aid to Somalia’s regime after it broke with Moscow, and by giving moderate counsel at Arab summits.

Now, however, the Saudis are upset that the U.S. has not taken a more active role in combating Soviet influence in Africa, especially in Ethiopia and Angola. The Saudis themselves feel encircled by hostile regimes: to the southwest by Ethiopia, with its Cuban troops; to the south by Marxist South Yemen; to the north by the new leftist regime in Afghanistan; and now by the instability in Iran across the gulf. The Saudi fear is that unfriendly neighbors could throttle Saudi Arabia by controlling its sea outlets (the entrances to the gulf and the Red Sea) and threatening its oil installations. Says a Saudi security official: “We are not worried about internal upheavals. Our public is calm. What worries us is all those Cubans on our periphery.”

The difference between conditions in Saudi Arabia and Iran helps explain why the entire crescent can be so difficult to understand and predict. Unlike the Shah, a stern, remote and isolated figure, the huge Saudi ruling family, with its estimated 5,000 princes, has its roots in the lives of its people. Its members are married into the families of commoners all over the country. They take their places in the chain of command below nonroyal superiors in the civil service. Saudi rulers take their “desert democracy” seriously: even the lowliest citizen can approach King Khalid or Crown Prince Fahd with a complaint at their daily majlis (council).

Another important difference between Iran and Saudi Arabia is that Saudi rulers maintain tight links with the country’s religious leaders. Since the early 19th century the House of Saud has had close contacts with the puritanical Wahhabi sect of Sunni Muslims who dominate the country’s religious life. Opinions of the ulema, the leading religious authorities, are sought on major issues. Their power was demonstrated last year when they successfully demanded the razing of an entire modern city that had been built for pilgrims near Mecca on the sacred Hill of Arafat. The ulema ordered it destroyed because it desecrated a holy place, and the government reluctantly agreed. The royal family also endorses the ulema’s determination to enforce strict Koranic law on Saudi citizens. Two Britons recently were arrested and deported after being found with a lone woman at a seaside picnic. In September, three Saudi men were beheaded after being caught having sexual relations with a woman in a tent. Thus, with the Islamic law so rigidly enforced, it is most unlikely that the religious leaders would ever lead a resistance movement against the House of Saud.

To protect as well as they can their oasis of stability, the Saudi leaders have used the power of petrodollars to help shore up moderate regimes around them. They yearn for consensus rather than polarization and try to soften up radical Arab regimes rather than fight them. They annoyed the U.S. and Egypt by going along with a condemnation of the Camp David agreements at the Baghdad summit meeting of Arab states; but they did so in return for an easing of radical Arab retaliation against Egypt. The West was disappointed at the Saudi performance at last month’s OPEC meeting, where they went along with a price increase that will reach 14.5% by year’s end. To some extent the Saudis appeared to be caving in to pressure from radicals, but the Saudis argued that with the dollar plummeting and eroding the real income of OPEC countries, it was hard for them to make a convincing argument for another price freeze.

Recent disagreements with the West notwithstanding, Saudi policy remains as anti-Communist and anti-Soviet as ever. There appears to be no basis for recent reports that the Saudis are thinking of establishing diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union, although Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev may well have written the Saudi leadership proposing such a step. The Saudis recently turned down a similar offer from China, reports TIME Correspondent Wilton Wynn. The Chinese are trying a second time and have asked Egyptian President Anwar Sadat to support their case. So far there is no sign that the Saudis are interested.

What do other principal countries in the crescent have in common? Fragility, the Islamic faith, a strong sense of nationalism, but not much else. Curiously, the closest real parallels would appear to be between Egypt and Iran, even though the one country is the perennial sick man of the Middle East, while the other—despite the current turmoil—has the economic potential to remain a regional superpower. Two years ago, Cairo exploded in riots after the government raised the prices of staple foods; calm was restored when the increases were rescinded. President Sadat has a strong popular following and widespread support for his peace initiative with Israel. Still, as in Iran, the poverty of Egypt’s urban masses stands in bleak contrast to the wealth of a small upper class. Sadat has done much to improve the lot of Egypt’s landowning peasants, but he has neglected the needs of landless millions who pour into Cairo and other cities in a vain search for a better life.

Iraq, whose oil reserves are fourth largest in the Middle East, has much in common with Iran besides a 700-mile border: a Shi’ite Muslim majority, an ambitious development program and strong police control. But the Iraqis have little chance of demonstrating their disapproval of their repressive government. The Baghdad regime remains friendly with Moscow, though the force of Iraqi nationalism prevents the Russian bear hug from becoming too oppressive. To limit Soviet influence in the region, the Iraqis have cooperated quietly with the conservative Saudis. The Baghdad summit conference was ostensibly called to denounce the Camp David accords. In reality, it was a Saudi-Iraqi ploy to give some support to Syria, one of the Arab states on the “front line” against Israel, and to prevent the Damascus regime from becoming totally dependent on the Soviet Union for backing against the Israelis. In other triumphs of pragmatism over ideology, Iraq sought Iran’s cooperation in order to crush the Kurdish rebellion in its northern sector, and though its foreign policy is resolutely anti-Israel and anti-U.S., Iraq is quite willing to deal commercially with American firms.

The new government in Afghanistan of President Noor Mohammed Taraki is commonly thought to be in Moscow’s pocket, especially since it recently signed a friendship treaty with the Soviets. There are signs, however, that this too may be an exaggeration. During Taraki’s visit to Moscow last month, President Brezhnev reportedly chided him for behaving too obsequiously before the Russians, which he felt made the Afghan leader look bad. As soon as they got back to Kabul, Afghan officials began to drop hints that they would welcome more Western aid. Apparently, the Russians are not altogether satisfied with their new client regime in Kabul. Moreover, they may be trying to avoid frightening Pakistan, which the Taraki government has already alarmed unnecessarily with its pro-Soviet rhetoric and its ineptness in dealing with Pathan and Baluch tribesmen in the border areas.

Pakistan is nothing if not unstable. It is ruled by a Muslim purist, General Mohammed Zia ul-Haq, who is currently trying to decide whether he can strengthen his hold on the country by executing his predecessor. He has talked a lot about holding free elections but now seems reluctant to do so. “What worries me,” say a Western diplomat, “is that there is another [Colonel Muammar] Gaddafi down there, some radical major or colonel in the Pakistani army. We could wake up and find him in Zia’s place one morning and believe me, Pakistan wouldn’t be the only place that would be destabilized.”

The long night of remorse and recrimination over Iran has already begun in Washington. “There’s been blood on the floor in some of the policy debates,” admitted one State Department insider. ‘Some people have been accused of virtual insubordination.” The department and the White House were at odds over the issue, and the Administration imposed a virtual gag on Government Iran specialists in an effort to prevent them from talking to the press. In fact, there have been so many mistakes in U.S. policy that almost anyone involved in the subject in at least three previous Administrations probably deserves a bit of blame. The badly weakened CIA, which had only a handful of operatives in Tehran who spoke Persian, has once more been revealed as utterly inadequate. The U.S. embassy myopically refused to let members of the mission make friends with the opposition, lest this seem to undermine the Shah. Policymakers in Washington were guilty of the classic blunder of confusing a nation with its leader, however intelligent, well briefed and even intimidating he might be.

As for the Carter Administration, its own record revealed at least the appearance of confusion and paralysis. The Administration was so preoccupied with the Egyptian-Israeli negotiations that it practically forgot about Iran. Then the White House brought in an outsider, former Under Secretary of State George Ball, to do a crash study. Ball was appalled at the confusion. Even as Brzezinski was urging wholehearted support for the Shah, the President told reporters, “I don’t know, I hope so,” when asked if he thought the Shah could survive. U.S. dependents in Iran were told to stay there; then they were advised to leave through airports that were often closed and on airlines that were not operating. Whether valid or not, the appearance of such indecisiveness is a dangerous one for the U.S. to project to the world. A veteran American diplomat concludes from the whole Iran affair: “It’s been a goddam disaster.”

Regardless of whether the Shah leaves Iran, or whether Premier-designate Shahpour Bakhtiar succeeds in forming a government, the U.S. needs to establish a working relationship with whatever regime comes to power in Tehran. Some U.S. officials argue that Iran need not be a client state and perhaps should not be one. They point out that the U.S. does business with Algeria, Libya and Iraq, all of which have governments that are far more radical than the next regime in Tehran is likely to be. Iran will still need Western technology and Western markets for its oil.

For the entire crescent of crisis, the U.S. needs a variety of strategies. No single approach can be applied to a group of countries as disparate as these. One problem: the very nations that cry for U.S. leadership denounce U.S. “interference” if Washington’s policies do no suit their own local politics and passions. Foreign policy first aid seems necessary in at least two places, Turkey and Pakistan. Policymakers perhaps need to be more aware that the “Marxism” of some of these countries is as fragile as the regimes themselves. Even Ethiopia’s strongman, Lieut. Colonel Mengistu, is said to have turned down Soviet demands that he set up a political party, and he is carefully watching over his country’s dealings with the Russians.

In much of the Third World, nationalism has already been shown to be the best antidote to Soviet expansionism. It is possible that CENTO has outlived its usefulness. A State Department official argues that CENTO is cited in Washington these days as “exactly the sort of thing the U.S. should not do in the Middle East today.” In the 1950s a ranking U.S. ambassador in the Middle East, Raymond Hare, summed up the U.S.’s minimum interests in the region as “right of transit, access to petroleum, and absence of Soviet military bases.” That probably remains the bottom line today. Toward that end, the U.S. may have to step up technical, economic and (very selectively) military aid. Already the U.S. has a potential “archipelago of allies” that aid each other in opposing Moscow-supported internal subversion and provide selective arms support to nations in need. Two examples: even though it maintains, officially, a nonaligned foreign policy, India has quietly tried to moderate Soviet influence in Afghanistan. The U.S. and Saudi Arabia have sought to reinforce North Yemen by providing it with some arms to defend itself against encroachment from South Yemen and thus thwart any Soviet designs of gaining full control over Red Sea access routes.

In the long run there may even be targets of opportunity for the West created by ferment within the crescent. Islam is undoubtedly compatible with socialism, but it is inimical to atheistic Communism. The Soviet Union is already the world’s fifth largest Muslim nation. By the year 2000, the huge Islamic populations in the border republics may outnumber Russia’s now dominant Slavs. From Islamic democracies on Russia’s southern tier, a zealous Koranic evangelism might sweep across the border into these politically repressed Soviet states, creating problems for the Kremlin.

A more immediate question is what impact the turmoil in Iran will have on U.S. efforts to bring about a Middle East peace. Both Egyptian and Israeli officials indicated last week that they were willing to resume the stalled treaty negotiations. Government sources in Jerusalem predicted that the remaining problems on the document could be worked out by March at the latest. Meanwhile, Anwar Sadat remains committed to a proposal he has made to Washington before: lean on Israel enough to get a comprehensive settlement, then build up Egypt with a multibillion dollar Marshall Plan and use it as a policeman of the Arab world. A more modest version of that grandiose scheme could fit in with a plan for a trilateral power structure in the Middle East that some Americans and many Israelis have proposed: the development of the entire area using Israel’s technology, Egypt’s manpower and Saudi Arabia’s money.

Whatever the solution, there is a clear need for the U.S. to recapture what Kissinger calls “the geopolitical momentum.” That more than anything else will help maintain order in the crescent of crisis.

* Full members are Iran, Pakistan, Turkey and Britain; the U.S. is an associate member. * Things have not changed much since czarist times. In 1775 the “will” of Peter the Great was published, in which he advised future Russian rulers: “Approach as near as possible to Constantinople and India. Whoever governs there will be the true sovereign of the world. Consequently, excite continual wars, not only in Turkey but in Persia. Establish dockyards on the Black Sea . . . In the decadence of Persia, penetrate as far as the Persian Gulf, re-establish if it be possible the ancient commerce with the Levant, advance as far as India, which is the depot of the world. Arrived at this point, we shall no longer have need of England’s gold.” Or, one might add today, of anyone else’s.