IRAN OIL _ The New Middle East Challenge to America
Like an individual who suffers sudden and unexpected misfortune, great powers can decline and fall with a rapid, even dramatic speed. Although the influence and prestige of many great empires has seeped away gradually and imperceptibly over many decades, or even centuries, in the way that was true of the British Empire or what Edward Gibbon called the âslow decayâ 1 of the Roman, the sudden demise of others can some-times elicit as much surprise among contemporaries as the historian. Such a startling transformation eventuates most obviously after military defeat, of the sort that befell ancient Persia, or as a result of political turmoil and revolution, similar in scale to the upheavals that brought a tumultuous end to tsarist Russia.
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