American in Decline: The Foreign Policy of "Maturity"

Robert W. Tucker

From Foreign Affairs, America and the World 1979

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Summary:  The last year of the 1970s confirmed and carried measurably forward the major trends of a decade. Viewed from an American perspective, the principal developments of 1979 registered the continued decline in the nation?s international position. The decline was most apparent in the Middle East, the area that apart from Western Europe and Japan represents the center of America?s strategic interests.

Robert W. Tucker is Professor of Political Science at The Johns Hopkins University, co-director of studies of The Lehrman Institute, and the author of The Inequality of Nations and other works.

Things and actions are what they are, and the consequences of them will be what they will be; why then should we desire to be deceived?

-Bishop Joseph Butler

Fifteen Sermons (1726)

No. 7, para. 16

The last year of the 1970s confirmed and carried measurably forward the major trends of a decade. Viewed from an American perspective, the principal developments of 1979 registered the continued decline in the nation's international position. The decline was most apparent in the Middle East, the area that apart from Western Europe and Japan represents the center of America's strategic interests.

The revolution in Iran destroyed what had been throughout the decade the principal pillar of American policy in the region. The local power on which the United States had relied for maintaining security of access to the oil of the Persian Gulf was transformed overnight into a determined adversary. Whatever radicalizing influence the Iranian revolution might have on the other states of the region, one thing was virtually certain: the revolution had dramatically increased the instability of the Persian Gulf while markedly reducing Washington's ability to cope with this rising instability by normal diplomatic methods. Whereas the new Iranian regime had no apparent interest in the stability and security of the Gulf-at any rate, none that could be defined in terms compatible with American and Western interest-there was no satisfactory local substitute with the power and will to provide the functions Iran once provided.

Nor is this the only problem created by the Iranian revolution. For a brief period during the winter of this past year Iranian oil production fell to nearly zero. For the entire year it was substantially below normal output. One consequence of this drastic cutback was to set the stage for the sharp increase in oil prices by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries in June, and further major increases in December. These evoked anew the question insistently asked at the outset of the oil crisis in 1974: How can the world pay for OPEC oil?

The Iranian cutback in production relieved the OPEC states, at least for the time being, of dealing with the difficult problems of allocation. More important, the events in Iran pointed up a lesson to the principal members of the cartel that they may well be expected to heed in the future. Short of pushing the West and Japan into sheer economic chaos, and thus bringing the entire international system down, their best course of action is to produce only so much petroleum as they need for sound development, to stretch out the life of their reserves, and to operate on the assumption that oil kept in the ground is a better, and safer, investment than dollar deposits. It is quite likely that this lesson was measurably reinforced by the November action of the Carter Administration in freezing Iranian assets. Whatever the rationale-and, indeed, justification-of this move, it necessarily prompts other holders of large petrodollar surpluses to consider that what was done to ...

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