The Foreign Service Journal, September 2007

S E P T E M B E R 2 0 0 7 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 61 Navy had been overwhelmingly defeated by the Japanese off the Yalu River in 1894, yet the money meant to reconstitute it went into rebuilding the Summer Palace. These military and natural disasters (and others) combined to highlight the corruption and incompetence of the imperial court itself, giving it a powerful incentive to turn the focus elsewhere — such as to the “foreign devils.” Beware of Unintended Consequences I would be remiss if I failed to point out one key distinction between the two episodes. Those of us taken hostage in Tehran had no foreign settlements, no treaty port base on the coast from which a relief expedi- tion might be mounted. Still, our release on Jan. 20, 1981, was no less the result of military action — but not, as in 1900, on the part of the West. Rather, we owe our release in large measure to the invasion of Iran by Iraq, under President Saddam Hussein, in the fall of 1980, a military venture that would be strongly assisted by the Reagan and first Bush administrations. Jimmy Carter’s outgoing adminis- tration then took advantage of Iran’s weakness to negotiate our way out. Both episodes were associated with a failure of imperial and dicta- torial rule. Iran and China were both astir with the need for reform and democratic rule. The Chinese Re- public was proclaimed in 1911. Still, one should recall that in both countries, early promising democratic aspirations led only to dictatorship. Iran still is governed by mullahs; indeed, some of the shah’s torturers went to work for them, as we knew first-hand. For its part, China is still governed by the absolutist Commun- ist Party. Most importantly, both episodes were a reaction against Western imperialism — a lesson I still hope the United States will one day take to heart. Both incidents were tipping points in the acceleration of change and in relations with the West, including the United States.