When the Bolsheviks said ‘nyet’

THE landmark talks hosted last week by Pakistan between Iran and the US came at the head of a meandering colonial trail straddling two World Wars, game-changing assassinations, and countless coups, coupled with botched military campaigns to occupy foreign lands. Mountstuart Elphinstone, Rudyard Kipling, and Lawrence of Arabia, in that order, plied Britain’s colonial time zones over a varied geographical stretch. But all three were on the same page with a singular mission of plunder, occasionally...