Needstrat: The Baghdad pact collapses

On 24 February 1955 Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, the UK and Turkey sign the Baghdad Pact. This was part of a US plan to contain the Soviet Union. The idea was to prevent communist intrusions and support peace in the region, as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) did. Turkey was the easternmost country of NATO, and Pakistan was the westernmost country of SEATO defence pact. The Baghdad Pact was to fill the gap between them. The US didn’t become a member, but an observer and made bilateral agreements with each country. The Suez Crisis in 1956 led to fall in the UK’s position in the Middle East and its leadership of CENTO. After a revolution in Iraq in 1958, the new leadership took the country out of the pact the year after, and moved closer to the Soviet Union.

The pact was renamed Central Treaty Organization (CENTO), and the headquarters moved from Baghdad to Ankara. The UK had aircrafts with nuclear arms stationed in Cyprus, but CENTO didn’t create a permanent military command and armed forces. And the alliance never gave the members means of collective defence. Pakistan tried in vain to get CENTO’s support in the wars against India in 1965 and 1971. But CENTO worked as a conduit for economic and technical cooperation. The Soviet Union gained influence in Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Libya and Algeria. The Iranian revolution of 1979 led Khomeini to power and Iran withdrew from CENTO. Pakistan seeing no use of it anymore withdrew from the organization the same year and it collapsed in 1979.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6b/F-4Es_50th_TFW_in_Iran_1977.JPEG

F-4 Phantom II aircraft in Iran during a Cento exercise

The Cold War focus provided little support to democratization and human rights in the member countries. They remained led by autocratic elites, and revolutions in two of them showed the failing military focus of the organization. I think more support to other pronounced US goals: free elections and freedom of organization, speech and press, would have led these countries and the region in a very different direction and situation today. I find these lessons relevant today, as there are still many regimes in the Middle East, asking for and getting US military support, with little focus on freedom and justice. A change in US strategy will help many people.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/df/Cento_zoom.svg

The member countries of CENTO in green

Background

After World War II, the Middle East got the superpowers attention for the first time. Europe was a more central arena in the Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union, and East and South East Asia with the Korea and Vietnam wars was hotter. Still the Middle East was an important Cold War arena. In 1946, George Kennan, a US diplomat in Moscow wrote an article in Foreign Affairs “The Sources of Soviet Conduct”. The popularized thesis of it grew over the years into the idea to construct a chain of military alliances around the Soviet Union. NATO became the first and most important one, followed by the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) and Baghdad Pact in 1955.