Soroor Ahmed
When President Donald Trump has virtually reduced NATO to a caricature by calling it a paper tiger and threatening to pull out, it would not be appropriate to associate any new military alliance elsewhere in the world with North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Some experts are informally dubbing tri-nation Mecca Joint Defence Agreement of August 7 and the proposed Jeddah-headquartered 15-member Multi-National Maritime Defence Coalition (MMDC)as ’Muslim’ NATO.
It is a well-known fact that Trump is claiming Canada, one of the 12 original members of NATO as 51st state of the US, threatening to snatch Greenland from another ally, Denmark, and repeatedly bullying some other countries of this western military alliance, especially Spain. In such an uncertain situation one needs to dispassionately study the real achievements and failures of this trans-Atlantic security collective.
If attack on one member-country was considered as attack on all the other signatories of North Atlantic Treaty Organization then it had hardly achieved any significant objective. In contrast two important NATO members Turkey and Greece fought a bloody battle in Cyprus in its 25th year of existence in July-August 1974 with other allies looking helplessly.
Fortress Against Soviet Union
NATO came up on April 4, 1949 as a bulwark against the then Soviet Union, which the West feared, had been emerging powerful after the World War-II in which the then Communist power lost 2.70 crores of its citizens. The truth was that the Soviet Union was still struggling to revive and was not even a nuclear power—it detonated its first atomic bomb five months later on August 29 the same year. There was no Warsaw Pact alliance of East European countries then. It was actually formed on May 14, 1955 after West Germany joined NATO.
But West European and North American countries interpreted the Communist take over of Czechoslovakia in 1948 as a precursor to Soviet expansionism. Thus, they formed a security alliance of their own. However, there is no dearth of political scientists who call NATO as another effort to revive imperialism, rather than take on the Soviet Union.
Main Enemy
It is not yet clear whether the main enemy of the ‘Muslim’ NATO is Iran or Israel yet the truth is that the western NATO had never directly confronted with the then Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact countries till the latter was dissolved on July 1, 1991 on the eve of the dismemberment of the Communist Empire and end of Cold War. The only time the two blocs came close to any showdown was in October 1962 in Cuba. But that ‘Missile Crisis’– as it was named–was soon resolved.
Curiously, NATO’s first operation started in 1990-91 after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. This was followed by joint air strikes in Kosovo against Yugoslavia, interventions in Afghanistan, Libya and Syria.
Actually, by 1991 NATO should have followed Warsaw Pact, which dissolved itself. Instead, it expanded its area of influence and several former Warsaw Pact countries became its members. Today its number stands at 32, with Finland and Sweden joining it in 2023 and 2024, respectively. The war in Eurasia started on February 24, 2022, after NATO planned to include Ukraine as its member. So, NATO’s first confrontation with Moscow came more than three decades after the collapse of ‘godless’ ideology of Communism. Perhaps the war between the two countries following the Eastern Orthodox Church, Russia and Ukraine, would not have started had NATO not made a bid to tighten the noose around Vladimir Putin’s neck.
Ironically Turkey, which has numerically the second strongest army among NATO members after the United States, is also the member of the so-called Muslim NATO—considered as a brainchild of Saudi Arabia. If NATO can not achieve any of its real goal, it is doubtful whether the ‘Muslim’ NATO would succeed. If the lone Super Power of the planet and Israel can not save their own bases in these Gulf monarchies from devastating Iranian counter-attacks how would Turkey or Pakistan come to the rescue of Riyadh. Or, is Iran really interested in invading Saudi Arabia after the American withdrawal from the region?
As there are so many contradictions within the core group of the ‘Muslim’ NATO there is hardly any possibility of one nation coming to help other when attacked. After all, Pakistan never came to help Saudi Arabia in latter’s war with Ansar-Allah or Houthis of Yemen and Riyadh remained neutral during Operation Sindoor of May 2025 when there already existed security cooperation between Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.
CENTO and SEATO
May be a paper tiger NATO is surviving and expanding. The other two anti-Communist alliances established in 1950s, Central Treaty Organization (CENTO) came to an end on March 16, 1979 a month after the Iranian Revolution and South East Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) breath its last on June 30, 1977 two years after the fall of Saigon (capital of South Vietnam) to North Vietnam and humiliating retreat of the United States from the region on April 30, 1975. Cambodia too became a Communist country on April 17 the same year. These two anti-Communist defence coalitions were formed in 1955 and 1954 respectively with full backing and blessing of the US and western powers.
CENTO started showing cracks after Iraq, where the actual Bagdad Pact was signed in 1955, withdrew in 1959 after a military coup a year earlier overthrowing western puppet monarchy. The other members were the United Kingdom, Iran, Turkey and Pakistan. True, the then Shah of Iran materially and diplomatically supported Pakistan in its wars with India in 1965 and 1971.
However, CENTO was dissolved after the Islamic Revolution in Iran, which withdrew itself. A year later on September 22, 1980 Iraq attacked Iran and the two former CENTO members fought bloody war for the next eight years.
In the same way, the eight-member SEATO became irrelevant by 1977. It has hardly anything to do with South-East Asia as only two countries of the region, Thailand and Philippines, were its members, The rest were the US, Britain, France, Australia, New Zealand and Pakistan (Bangladesh was then called East Pakistan). Bangladesh withdrew in 1972 just after it came into existence in December 1971.
With such a poor record of these western-led defence alliances it would be wrong to expect something miraculous from ‘Muslim’ NATO, a misnomer in itself.
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(Soroor Ahmed, an independent journalist formerly associated with the Times of India and Asian Age, is the author of the book The Jewish Obsession published in 2004.)
