CENTO: A Tattered Alliance

Twenty-three years ago Iran, along with Pakistan and Turkey, became America's Southwest Asian ally in the Central Treaty Organization (CENTO). Today these nations on the southern flank of the Soviet Union are more than ever distressed about the growing political instability in their midst--and the potential that this creates for Kremlin mischief. Last week, after touring the volatile CENTO countries, TIME Diplomatic Correspondent Strobe Talbott wrote this assessment from Tehran:

When the Shah of Iran looks at a map of his region he has a nightmare vision. He sees a Communist pincer movement closing in on him from South Yemen in the south and Afghanistan in the east. He once remarked, "Whenever I get up in the morning, I always ask what happened the night before on the Arabian peninsula and in Afghanistan." The Shah is convinced that the crisis facing his nation is the result of a cunningly executed master plan conceived years ago by the Soviet Union.

In Washington, when U.S. policymakers look at the same map, they do not see a Kremlin blueprint taking form, but they are nonetheless deeply concerned. They can imagine a "Finlandized" or neutralized Turkey, a Sovietized Afghanistan, a Balkanized Pakistan and an Iran in some still unpredictable state of disarray. Politically tenuous and strategically crucial, this band of non-Arab Islamic countries stretches from the Bosporus in the west to the Hindu Kush in the east--nearly 3,000 miles of buffer between Russia and the warm waters of the Mediterranean, the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea. It is potentially a geopolitical disaster area, in which the strategic balance is shifting in favor of the U.S.S.R., and Washington has no clear idea of what to do about it.

Since czarist times, the rulers of Russia have probed southward, seeking access to the southern sea lanes that are now major oil routes and thus the lifeline of the industrialized world. So far, the Western powers have succeeded in thwarting the Russians. In the 19th century the British Empire, from such places as Ottoman Turkey, Persia and the frontiers of India, intrigued and battled against Russian expansion. Britain's Prime Minister Lord Palmerston seemed to delight in all the machinations; to him, in a phrase first attributed to Rudyard Kipling, it was "the great game." In the 20th century the game has continued, with somewhat different rules and different players. The Soviets have replaced the czars, and the U.S. has supplanted Britain.

Washington entered the game in 1955 with the creation of the Baghdad pact, a virtual invention of Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, who envisioned the alliance as a Southwest Asian counterpart of NATO. The original members, in addition to Turkey, Iran and Pakistan, were Iraq and Britain; the U.S. was an associate member. Iraq was dropped after a radical leftist government came to power in 1958, and the alliance moved its headquarters from Baghdad to Ankara. The diplomats and generals who renamed the organization CENTO presumably never bothered to check the dictionary, which defines "cento" as "a patchwork of incongruous parts"--hardly the most desirable connotation for a regional military alliance.

Today the patchwork is in shreds. At every level its members are beset by serious, interrelated troubles, and some leaders fear the great game is in danger of being lost. Iran, for all its pretensions to being a modern arsenal, is torn by internal dissent. Insofar as the nation is able to look outward, it is the only regional CENTO power that regards the Soviet Union as its principal enemy.

Turkey is preoccupied by its enmity with Greece. Pakistan is distracted by its fear and hatred of India. At the same time, Turkey and Pakistan both face their own versions of the resurgent Islamic anti-Westernism and conservatism that now threaten the Shah. Pakistani mullahs last year played a key role in bringing down the government of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and precipitating martial law. In Turkey, politically active Muslims could hold the balance in the next government crisis.

These factors have all served to erode any feeling of collective security in CENTO. In Islamabad, officials fear that the Shah's troubles might spill over into Pakistan, and in Tehran it is the other way around. Says one Pakistani official: "If the Shah, with all his might and wealth, can't keep the lid on, that will only encourage elements here who would like to see us come apart at the seams." Warns a high-ranking Iranian: "If the Pakistanis start to have really serious trouble with Baluchistan [a province in the west of the country whose tribal population is demanding autonomy], you mark my words, we're going to have trouble with our own Baluch minority on our side of the border."

CENTO was conceived as a mutual security pact, but at least two of its members, Iran and Pakistan, are undergoing paroxysms of mutual insecurity. Hence the decision of Pakistan's chief martial law administrator, General Mohammed Zia ul-Haq, to visit Tehran for consultations with the Shah last weekend. "It promises to be a most melancholy conversation," commented an official of the Iranian imperial court.

Contributing to the anxiety of Iran and Pakistan is the recent shift leftward of their common neighbor Afghanistan. In April a leftist junta overthrew and killed President Mohammad Daoud. American policymakers are reserving judgment on the nature and course of the new regime, but in Tehran and Islamabad the judgment is in, and it is thoroughly pessimistic, if somewhat alarmist. Iranian and Pakistani officials are certain that the coup was instigated by Moscow. After more than a century as a neutral buffer state in the great game, Afghanistan, they say, is now a Soviet satellite. "We, Pakistan, are now the buffer state," argues a foreign office man in Islamabad.

Tehran authorities are further convinced that the Soviet KGB has for years been patiently pursuing a plot to use Afghanistan as a base for stirring up trouble in the Baluch areas of Iran and Pakistan. These observers claim that they have seen a map, drawn in Moscow and secured by the Iranian intelligence service, showing a Greater Baluchistan that would connect the U.S.S.R. with the Arabian Sea. Similarly, an Islamabad diplomat refers darkly to the "Moscow-Kabul-Delhi axis." The Russians, he insists, "are now at the Khyber Pass." Certainly this is an exaggeration if not a delusion. It is also self-serving. The Pakistanis would like nothing better than to receive large-scale U.S. aid both to shore up the crumbling southern tier and to bolster their own security.

But the alarmism may be self-fulfilling. Iranians and Pakistanis are convinced that Afghanistan is a dagger pointed at their hearts, and they are deeply annoyed by Washington's cautious, wait-and-see attitude toward the regime of President Noor Mohammad Taraki in Kabul. An official of the new Iranian Cabinet argues that it is "naive" of the U.S. not to recognize Afghanistan as the Russian bear's paw in the region.

When asked what they think the U.S. should have done to stop the April coup or what the U.S. should do now about Afghanistan, Iranian and Pakistani critics merely lapse into vague expressions of frustration; they have few recommendations. But that, too, is part of the problem with CENTO: it is afflicted with a profound, inarticulate discontent with American policy, which is viewed as "retreat," "withdrawal," "failure of will" or "abandonment."

In Rawalpindi last week, General Zia told TIME: "I have a feeling that the U.S. has given up its claims and interests in this region." As for CENTO, he called it "a treaty on paper with no significance whatsoever--no teeth, no backing." Among other CENTO leaders there is mounting impatience with the vagaries of U.S. public opinion as reflected in such congressional actions as the Turkish arms embargo and aid cuts for countries that try to acquire a nuclear capability. They also regard Carter Administration policies as quixotic and punitive. Pakistan, for example, is furious over Washington's jawboning nuclear nonproliferation activities, which recently led France to cancel a contract to provide Pakistan with a nuclear reprocessing plant. The result, says Zia, is that "this is perhaps the lowest point the [U.S.-Pakistani] relationship has reached."

Iranians, meanwhile, complain bitterly about the Carter human rights campaign, which they feel has spurred on the opposition that now threatens the survival of the Shah. There is scarce evidence that the human rights policy significantly influenced the outbreak of dissent in Iran, but the official perception--and resentment--is very real.

The subject of Turkey comes up continually in Tehran and Islamabad. "Turkey is entering much more into talks with the Soviet Union than it has in the past," says Zia. "This is understandable because they've found that their so-called traditional allies have let them down."

Pakistan is doing a little bridge building of its own with the Russians, despite its traditionally close ties with China. Earlier this year Zia dispatched a high-level delegation to Moscow. The ostensible purpose was to secure an additional $250 million in credits to finish a steel mill in Karachi that the Pakistanis are building with Soviet help. But in an interview with TIME, Zia made clear that another purpose of the mission was to warn the U.S. that "I must have my own opening--I must have our options open."

The Pakistanis and Turks also resent, and reject, what they have privately dubbed "the Brzezinski Doctrine." That describes the Carter Administration's policy of relying on "regional influentials" --Zbigniew Brzezinski's term--to shoulder much of the burden of maintaining security in their area. The "influentials" in this case are Iran and India--and the concept annoys Turkey and terrifies Pakistan. Says Zia angrily: "If the U.S. is thinking of aligning with pillars of strength in this region, then I'm not having any part of it. Instead of turning to Tehran and New Delhi, why can't Pakistan turn somewhere else?"

Zia wants the CENTO charter rewritten so that Pakistan could call for alliance help if threatened by an "indirect" Soviet attack. Washington interprets this as an unwarranted commitment to defend Zia in the event of another Indo-Pakistani war, and will have none of it. In response, the Pakistanis talk about the advantages of withdrawing from CENTO and joining the nonaligned movement. Says Zia: "CENTO is becoming a hindrance to Pakistan's security." Besides, he adds, "in the current day, it's better to be nonaligned than aligned. Look at India and Afghanistan. Both under the Soviet Union, yet they're supposed to be non-aligned countries. Look at Cuba--a nonaligned country. Today there are countries that are nonaligned yet are much more secure than those that are aligned under the CENTO pact."

Indeed, both Pakistan and Turkey seem to be veering toward the "nonaligned movement." Pakistan has already achieved "guest status" in the group, and Turkey is applying for the same.

Like the Pakistanis, the Turks feel betrayed by the U.S. They provoked the wrath and sanctions of the U.S. Congress by using American weapons to invade Cyprus in 1974. The embargo was partly lifted this summer, but the government of Premier Buelent Ecevit in Ankara believes with some justification that the strength of the Greek-American lobby in the U.S. has tilted Washington's policy permanently against Turkey. As for the Shah, he has called CENTO "a nice club," although these days it is not all that nice and not all that clubby.

For that matter, Washington also has long been disillusioned with CENTO. Henry Kissinger used to regard his yearly visits to CENTO ministerial meetings as little more than nuisances of protocol, redeemed only by the opportunity to discuss Cyprus with the Turks. An American diplomat stationed in the region dismisses the alliance as "little more than a symbol, and not a very shining one at that." His colleagues joke grimly that the telecommunication system linking Ankara, Tehran and Rawalpindi, installed by the U.S. in 1964, is so often out of order that phone calls are frequently routed from Tehran to Pakistan via New York.

Ironically, one of CENTO's firmest boosters is the People's Republic of China. In Tehran last month, China's Chairman Hua Kuo-feng told the Shah that he was concerned about what an Iranian official later paraphrased as "the moral, physical and political deterioration of the traditional groupings in the area." China has close ties to Pakistan, even even though though it it is miffed with the Zia regime for last year's overthrow of Bhutto, whom Peking admired, and by Pakistan's tentative moves toward an accommodation with Moscow. So, in the geopolitics of the '70s, China ranks as a sort of honorary member of CENTO.

The question is whether to let CENTO fade away or revitalize it. Some veteran American diplomats argue that it should have been dismantled years ago. But virtually no one proposes that this should be done now. However much an anachronism the alliance may have become, it would be a mistake for Washington to shut it down, especially in the wake of the post-Viet Nam retrenchment and the demise of CENTO'S Far Eastern cousin, SEATO. Says a top official of the Carter Administration: "Killing CENTO off now would be sending everybody all the wrong signals at the wrong time."

Still, no one in Washington or elsewhere has been able to devise a plan for breathing life into the organization. Thus the U.S. and its mistrustful and divided friends continue to hold on to a tattered alliance as they play the great game. .

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.