2024-04-04 04:40:59
It is now one of the oldest military alliances in the world. NATO, born from the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty on April 4, 1949, celebrates its 75th anniversary this Thursday. Initially composed of twelve founding members (Belgium, Canada, Denmark, United States, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, Norway, Netherlands, Portugal, United Kingdom), the Atlantic alliance now has 32 States since accession of Sweden in March 2024.
Created to counter the strategic threat posed by the Soviet Union, NATO not only survived the end of the Cold War but is even expected to continue its expansion. Bosnia-Herzegovina, Georgia and Ukraine have in fact declared their desire to join. This is an exception for military alliances born at the same period and which have since disappeared.
► Warsaw Pact: the counterweight to NATO
While the United States and its European allies constitute the Atlantic alliance, the Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellite states signed the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Peace on May 14, 1955. mutual assistance, better known as the Warsaw Pact.
The military alliance brings together the Soviet Union, Albania (until 1968), East Germany, Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Czechoslovakia. Warsaw Pact troops were notably deployed during the Prague Spring in 1968 to put an end to the political liberalization reforms of the Czechoslovak Communist Party,
The Warsaw Pact organization disappeared shortly after the fall of the Wall and the reunification of Germany in October 1990. Hungary, Poland and Czechoslovakia announced their desire to withdraw from the treaty in January 1991. Its dismantling was formalized on 1st of July.
► SEATO: NATO of South-East Asia
The Southeast Asian Treaty Organization (Otase) was born in September 1954 on the model of the Atlantic alliance. Its creation is part of the American policy of containment to fight against communist influence in Southeast Asia, following the Indochina War (1946-1954).
Despite its name, only two states in the region (Thailand, Philippines) are part of the military alliance, with the rest of the member states being Australia, the United States, France, New Zealand, from the United Kingdom and Pakistan.
Otase’s influence on the geopolitics of Southeast Asia, however, remains marginal. It does not intervene in conflicts involving its member states or the region (Indo-Pakistani wars, Vietnam War, Laotian civil war). . France, opposed to American intervention in Vietnam, suspended its military participation in April 1965.
Pakistan left the organization in 1972 following Otase’s non-intervention in its wars with India. The alliance was finally dissolved on June 30, 1977 after the end of the Vietnam War.
► Baghdad Pact: the extension of the Otase
The Middle East Organization Treaty – more commonly known as the “Baghdad Pact” – was created in 1955 to contain Soviet influence in the region. It also aims to serve as a link between NATO and the newly created Otase.
This regional alliance brings together the Kingdom of Iraq, the Imperial State of Iran, the United Kingdom, Pakistan and Turkey. The United States is only part of the military committee of the pact, so as not to deteriorate its relations with Saudi Arabia or Egypt, the creation of the alliance being hotly contested in Arab countries. In 1959, Iraq withdrew from the alliance after the fall of its monarchy. The pact was then renamed the Central Alliance Organization.
Like Otase, the organization proved ineffective: Pakistan also failed to obtain help from its Baghdad Pact allies in its wars against India. The cohesion of the pact was undermined in 1974 by the Turkish invasion of Cyprus, which became independent from the United Kingdom in 1960. The Iranian revolution of 1979 dealt the fatal blow, leading to the withdrawal of Iran, Pakistan and the Turkey. The alliance dissolved the same year.
► The Sino-Soviet pact
In February 1950, the USSR of Joseph Stalin and the Chinese communist regime of Mao Zedong concluded a treaty of friendship, alliance and mutual assistance, in the hope of countering hand in hand the influence of the United States. United in Asia. China, then only recognized by communist countries, acquired significant military and economic assistance from Moscow thanks to the pact.
Relations between the two countries, however, deteriorated after the death of Stalin in 1953, and the coming to power of Nikita Khrushchev at the initiative of the process of de-Stalinization of the USSR. The two states oppose each other over the interpretation of socialist doctrine and control of the international communist movement, but also because of their divergent national interests. The breakdown in their relations was recorded in 1963, after Soviet support for India during the Sino-Indian War in 1962.
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