Page 469 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

466 Arabia, the Gulf and the West

survived. Forma! expression was given to the prolongation of the system by the
inauguration in 1955 of the Baghdad Pact, a defensive alliance linking Turkey,
Persia, Iraq and Pakistan. While Britain adhered to the pact as a full member,

the United States deemed it prudent only to ‘associate’ herself with the
alliance, so as not to offer too great a provocation to the Soviet Union. Iraq
withdrew from the pact after the revolution of 1958, the alliance thereafter

being reconstituted as the Central Treaty Organization in i960. Meanwhile the
United States had acted to counter the weakening of the ‘northern tier’ caused
by Iraq's defection by entering into bilateral defence agreements with Turkey,
Persia and Pakistan in March 1959.

While the Soviet Union objected strongly to the creation of the Baghdad Pact
she did not try to break it up by direct means but set out rather to undermine it
from behind and within. The Russians were greatly assisted in their aim by the
activities of Gamal Abdul Nasser, the president of Egypt, whose capacity for

spreading disruption in the Middle East, like that of Mehemet Ali Pasha a
century earlier, created opportunities for rich political pickings for the
Russians. The Russo-Egyptian entente, initiated by the arms agreement
between the two countries in 1955, enabled the Soviet Union to hurdle the

‘northern tier’ in the same year as it was erected, and to effect a lodgement not
only in Egypt but also, in the course of the next decade, in Syria, Iraq and
Algeria. Further lodgements were made in the succeeding decade in South
Yemen, Somalia and Ethiopia, placing the Russians, for the first time in their

history, in a position to exert pressure upon the Middle East from its southern
as well as its northern perimeter.

softer"9™had been achie‘ ? 'he Middle East in the twen'V >"ears °r
’
governments againstTe W Y P°HCy °f supporting Arab nationalist

Soviet commuX pa'ty theT ‘^r
fundamental and indispensableelenJl d°C‘r‘ne of the class stru«8le as the
the countries of Asia was played down c’" ‘he progress,on to communism tn
the Dossihilirv nf H.rr P j down. Cautious approval was given instead to
±e Xn of rhe^ ent.aud nOn’vio!ent paths to socialism, as well as to

wZsmrn irnle t naUOna. bourSeoisie’ as an ally in both the struggle against
Traditionall g3 ’.Sm and tbe v*ctory of the national liberation movement.
£ « • . ’ oviet 1 eology regarded the ‘national bourgeoisie’ in the states
rh • IndT UroPean dominion as necessary only at the stage of winning
• , Pen ence rom the powers of Europe. Thereafter, so the dogma had
{ , e nationa ourgeoisie was bound to become unstable, would lose its
progressive character and would compromise with its late imperial masters. It

wou t ere ore become the task of the proletariat, after initially supporting
t e national bourgeoisie in the struggle for independence, to turn upon it in
ue course, and, under the leadership of the local communist parties and with
the backing of the Soviet Union and other socialist states, overthrow the