The line is attributed to Franklin D. Roosevelt, speaking of Nicaragua's dictator Somoza: "He's a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch." The attribution is historically disputed. The attitude it describes is not.
In a handful of words the line contains the entire foreign policy of the great powers since 1945. Realpolitik does not ask whether someone is a son of a bitch. It asks whether he is our son of a bitch. As long as the answer is yes, the weapons, loans, intelligence and diplomatic cover keep flowing. As soon as the answer is no, the partner becomes an enemy and the ally a threat.
I. Selecting vassals — the criteria of the people inside the Megamachine
The Megamachine does not select — it emerges. Structures and patterns arise from the interplay of countless individual actions without anyone having planned those structures or even having an overview of them. Selecting requires intelligence. In most areas the Megamachine has none — it is blind, it does not respond to goals, it has no intention. Only where AI fuses with it — autonomous trading systems, algorithmic decision processes, kill chains — do the first beginnings of something resembling selection appear. But that is the exception, not the rule.
It is still people — CIA analysts, foreign ministers, corporate boards — who make the concrete decisions. But they make these decisions according to criteria that have emerged from the system and that the system rewards. That is the difference between a conspiracy and the Megamachine: in a conspiracy, evil people with an evil plan decide. In the Megamachine, ordinary people decide according to criteria that nobody ever resolved upon — criteria that are simply there because they have proved themselves. The result is the same. The responsibility is harder to assign.
A vassal that functions within the Megamachine meets four criteria — not because anyone drew up these criteria, but because people who act according to them are rewarded by the system and people who do not, fail.
First: he controls a strategic resource — oil, trade routes, military bases, raw materials. The Shah controlled Iranian oil and the border with the Soviet Union. Saddam controlled access to the Persian Gulf. No control of resources, no vassal status.
Second: he is predictable and can be bought. He buys weapons from the right supplier. He opens his country to foreign capital. He votes accordingly in international bodies. He is no moral authority who might stand in the way. Democratically elected prime ministers such as Mossadegh or Allende fall through this net — they have voters to whom they are accountable, and those voters want their oil or their copper for themselves.
Third: he is weak enough to remain controllable. Too strong, and he becomes a threat — Saddam after Kuwait in 1990. Too weak, and he is worthless. The Megamachine seeks the optimum: dependent enough to obey, strong enough to be useful.
Fourth: he suppresses internal alternatives. A vassal who permits democracy, a free press and an independent judiciary runs the risk of being replaced by his own population — by someone who wants the oil for the people. So repression is not merely tolerated; it is a systemic necessity. SAVAK was no accident. It was a condition.
↓ Install or stabilise the vassal
↓ Tolerate / equip the repression
↓ Vassal becomes inconvenient or too strong
↓ Vassal is removed
↓ Country destabilised — next vassal sought
↻ 73 years of Iran in a single cycle
II. Tehran 1953 — the Big Bang
On 15 March 1951 the Iranian parliament voted unanimously to nationalise the Iranian oil industry. Mossadegh was not revolution — he was democracy. A parliament decides, a head of government carries it out.
But Mossadegh did not meet criterion two. He could not be bought. He had voters. He wanted Iranian oil for Iran. That was his death sentence. Operation Ajax, August 1953: paid gangs of thugs, bribed officers, bought newspaper editors. Mossadegh overthrown. The Shah installed. Our son of a bitch.
For 26 years the calculation worked. The oil flowed. SAVAK tortured. In Washington this was considered regrettable, necessary, and in any case not obstructive enough to halt the arms deliveries. Every dollar the Shah spent on weapons was a dollar he did not invest in schools or democratic institutions. That was no failure. That was the business model.
III. The boomerang
The Islamic Revolution of 1979 was no accident. It was the result. Khomeini came to power not in spite of the Shah — but because of him. The revolution was not directed for Islam — it was directed against the West. Against the power that had overthrown Mossadegh. The anti-American fury was not irrational. It was the answer to 26 years of humiliation.
Then: Saddam Hussein as the next vassal — useful because he was waging war against Iran. Armed, supported, tolerated. Until Kuwait in 1990 — and overnight the ally became an enemy. The destruction of Iraq in 2003 was the greatest gift anyone could have given Iran: it eliminated the only serious regional rival and left a power vacuum that Iran filled. Shiite militias, Hezbollah, the Houthis — all consequences. All foreseeable. All foretold.
73 years. From Mossadegh to Operation Epic Fury in 2026. A single unbroken chain of decisions, each of which produced the next catastrophe. Realpolitik wins every day and loses every century. The costs are always borne by the same people: the populations. The people who sit in none of the planning rooms. Who die, flee, starve, mourn — while the next strategic partnership is sealed.
IV. The pattern — and who lives off it
Guatemala 1954, Chile 1973, Congo 1961, Afghanistan 1979–2021, Libya 2011 — everywhere the same: an elected or at least stable leader is removed because he is not our leader. A vassal is installed. The vassal becomes inconvenient. The country is destroyed. A new vassal is sought.
Why does it not stop? Not because the actors are stupid. Because the pattern works — for them. The arms industry profits at every stage: arming the vassal, arming his opponents, the war against him, the reconstruction afterwards. The intelligence services justify their budgets — every failed vassal proves that the world is dangerous. Politicians win election campaigns — a president who topples a dictator is a strong president. That the country lies in ruins ten years later is his successor's problem.
Nobody in this chain has any interest in asking: what if we simply left it alone? What if Mossadegh had been allowed to govern? The question is not asked, because the answer would destroy the business model.