Why did Collective Security fail?

Why were the non-NATO US-sponsored collective security agreements so unsuccessful? Both SEATO and CENTO totally fell apart without actually doing what they were supposed to (namely, preventing the spread of Communism). Obviously, SEATO didn't prevent Cambodia, Laos, or Vietnam from becoming Communist, nor did it prevent Burma from becoming...odd. CENTO didn't prevent any of the Muslim states in the area from becoming Communist-aligned at points (though they always marched more to their own drummer than anything else). Glibly, one might say that because they actually had wars happen in their area their underlying weaknesses were exposed, but that doesn't seem quite adequate.
 
To be honest, I think part of the problem is background. The US really did believe in the domino effect theory, which is why 55,000 Americans lost their lives in Vietnam. They did not take cultural aspects into account. The various countries of Southeast Asia and the Middle East don't really like each other too much. CENTO was doomed when Pakistan tried to use it to get US help in its wars with India, and the US was not willing to respond.
 
To be honest, I think part of the problem is background. The US really did believe in the domino effect theory, which is why 55,000 Americans lost their lives in Vietnam. They did not take cultural aspects into account. The various countries of Southeast Asia and the Middle East don't really like each other too much. CENTO was doomed when Pakistan tried to use it to get US help in its wars with India, and the US was not willing to respond.

So you're saying that if:
a. The provisions were stronger in the first place (eg., Article 5 universal)
b. The US had somehow taken into account the fact that Turkey (a secular "republic"), Iran (an absolute monarchy) and Pakistan (an Islamic "republic") might not like each other all that much for CENTO, or that ex-colonies and former colonialists might not be too willing to help each other for SEATO, to say nothing of whatever non-CENTO or SEATO interests the participants might have

then they might have been more successful?

(When you look at the Middle East, American diplomacy there looks doomed by Israel and Iran. I mean, seriously.)
 

Larrikin

Banned
SEATO

Why were the non-NATO US-sponsored collective security agreements so unsuccessful? Both SEATO and CENTO totally fell apart without actually doing what they were supposed to (namely, preventing the spread of Communism). Obviously, SEATO didn't prevent Cambodia, Laos, or Vietnam from becoming Communist, nor did it prevent Burma from becoming...odd. CENTO didn't prevent any of the Muslim states in the area from becoming Communist-aligned at points (though they always marched more to their own drummer than anything else). Glibly, one might say that because they actually had wars happen in their area their underlying weaknesses were exposed, but that doesn't seem quite adequate.

SEATO succeeded in it's intent, in that the countries involved did not fall to communism, even though Malaysia went through a 20 year communist insurgency at moderate to high levels, and another 20 years of lower level policing.
 
SEATO succeeded in it's intent, in that the countries involved did not fall to communism, even though Malaysia went through a 20 year communist insurgency at moderate to high levels, and another 20 years of lower level policing.

But it was dissolved in 1977 after just 23 years of existence. It never actually helped defend anyone (despite the US trying to get Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia in). And it didn't really prevent anything from falling to Communism in of itself (Malaysia was famously done by the Brits, and besides, Malaysia wasn't actually part of SEATO). Actually, the only countries in SEATO which could even plausibly fall to the Communists were the Philippines and Thailand (and to a lesser extent Pakistan and France). Neither of them did, but not because of SEATO.

Basically, you look at NATO: It was successful. It deterred Soviet attack, it provided support to European militaries, it provided a useful diplomatic forum. None of the NATO states "defected" to the Warsaw Pact or neutrality. It's still around. Then you look at CENTO or SEATO and you see--nothing. They dissolved before 30 years passed. They didn't really help the involved militaries at all. Of the major wars in their area--the Vietnam War for SEATO, the Israeli-Arab or Indo-Pakistan for CENTO--they did nothing. CENTO didn't help prevent Soviet influence in other Persian Gulf, Arabic, and North African states. Some of their members upped and left in the middle.
 
Gonna take a crack at this one buy summing it up this way.

SEATO failed due to the fact that the regimes that we supported were not that much better if at all to the ones the communists were trying to supplant.

In the Middle East.. Communism was not a good fit nor is it a good fit with Islam. They can lean toward Moscow.. but to actually go all commie will get one jihad-ed into oblivion. They just don't mesh.

The Middle East suffers from a bit Africa problem in that Colonial powers tried to redraw and rearrange the political spectrum after the ottomans and you wind up with a mess. So in no way could the United States an ally to Israel manage to satisfy all the parties of the region from Libya and Egypt to Baghdad and Tehran to Riyadh and Damascus. Just a screwed up no win situation that taking sides in gets a target painted on you.


Lets not even discuss Pakistan and Afghanistan


We always look like Idiots in those regions since we time after time make deals with the devils to serve our own needs and our needs alone or we find someone o replace the old devil that will play nice.
 

Thande

Donor
I think the idea was doomed to failure from the start. Unlike NATO and ANZUS, you're talking about countries which have only just got out from under either colonialism or at least deep influence by colonial powers, and in many cases ruled by regimes which are seriously unpopular with the people specifically because they collaborated with those powers for years to survive (extreme case for Exhibit A: Iran). Alternatively many of those regimes were installed by the departing colonial powers to ensure they kept influence and thus were also unpopular and prone to popular revolutions (Exhibits B and C: Egypt and Iraq, among others).

Really you can argue the American strategy was rather counterproductive - while communism would appeal as a generic revolutionary ideology anyway, by backing the existing regimes (out of necessity) to web their alliance structures together the Americans were pouring petrol on the fires of communism sentiment in those countries (rulers bad, US backs rulers, therefore US bad, USSR against US, therefore Communism good). Mind you I'm guessing a hand's-off approach would have been politically impossible at home, so yeah.
 
I think the idea was doomed to failure from the start. Unlike NATO and ANZUS, you're talking about countries which have only just got out from under either colonialism or at least deep influence by colonial powers, and in many cases ruled by regimes which are seriously unpopular with the people specifically because they collaborated with those powers for years to survive (extreme case for Exhibit A: Iran). Alternatively many of those regimes were installed by the departing colonial powers to ensure they kept influence and thus were also unpopular and prone to popular revolutions (Exhibits B and C: Egypt and Iraq, among others).

Really you can argue the American strategy was rather counterproductive - while communism would appeal as a generic revolutionary ideology anyway, by backing the existing regimes (out of necessity) to web their alliance structures together the Americans were pouring petrol on the fires of communism sentiment in those countries (rulers bad, US backs rulers, therefore US bad, USSR against US, therefore Communism good). Mind you I'm guessing a hand's-off approach would have been politically impossible at home, so yeah.



Damn you .. you repeated what I said but more elegantly :)

My Russo-German Heritage needs a whip :) or less vodka.. Think i am going to go and plan an invasion of myself
 
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I think the idea was doomed to failure from the start. Unlike NATO and ANZUS, you're talking about countries which have only just got out from under either colonialism or at least deep influence by colonial powers, and in many cases ruled by regimes which are seriously unpopular with the people specifically because they collaborated with those powers for years to survive (extreme case for Exhibit A: Iran). Alternatively many of those regimes were installed by the departing colonial powers to ensure they kept influence and thus were also unpopular and prone to popular revolutions (Exhibits B and C: Egypt and Iraq, among others).

Really you can argue the American strategy was rather counterproductive - while communism would appeal as a generic revolutionary ideology anyway, by backing the existing regimes (out of necessity) to web their alliance structures together the Americans were pouring petrol on the fires of communism sentiment in those countries (rulers bad, US backs rulers, therefore US bad, USSR against US, therefore Communism good). Mind you I'm guessing a hand's-off approach would have been politically impossible at home, so yeah.

Hand's off wouldn't have worked out (exhibit A: China), yeah, but there was latitude in what the US did. More individual arrangements, or using more credentialed people as the long poles in our tents. Eg., Indonesia and India as the central part of SEATO. Mind you, Nehru would never ever have stood for an alliance with the US, but there might have been scope to increase ties after 1962. We blew it continuing to support Pakistan, though. Sukarno maybe, depending on how much the US doesn't support colonial powers, but it's kind of iffy. Suharto is a better bet, but by then the thing has crystallized a bit, and collective security might not be on the US agenda anymore.
 
If you want India allied with the US, have Morarji Desai elected Prime Minister in the INC leadership ballots of either 1964 or 1966. He's a pro-American economic neoliberal (like PVN Rao, Singh and Rajiv to a degree), unlike the socialists Nehru and Indira Gandhi.
 

Thande

Donor
The trouble is that in order to woo India, the US would have to alienate just about everyone else.
 
If you want India allied with the US, have Morarji Desai elected Prime Minister in the INC leadership ballots of either 1964 or 1966. He's a pro-American economic neoliberal (like PVN Rao, Singh and Rajiv to a degree), unlike the socialists Nehru and Indira Gandhi.

Well, there's an easier way than that (since Desai, to put it politely, lost very badly both times), which is to simply get rid of Nehru. Have him die before he can become a dynast (say in '48). That weakens the socialist consensus in Congress, since Nehru was *really* popular. Am I working on a TL involving this...? Maybe, maybe not ;) Either way, I won't say for a while.
 
So you can have Patel (who was quite similar to Desai politically) become PM instead. Apparently he was willing to tacitly ally with the RSS in order to wipe out the Indian Commies. Something tells me that would work out about as well as GMA's OTL tacit alliance with the Ampatuans and their paramilitary ilk.
 
So you can have Patel (who was quite similar to Desai politically) become PM instead. Apparently he was willing to tacitly ally with the RSS in order to wipe out the Indian Commies. Something tells me that would work out about as well as GMA's OTL tacit alliance with the Ampatuans and their paramilitary ilk.

Remember that Patel died in 1950 from heart attacks. The increased stress from actually being PM (and the two other major leaders dying in close succession--his first heart attack came two months after Gandhi died) is likely to accelerate that somewhat. He's really not going to have much time to do anything.
 
IIUC CENTO was tied up with Nasser, Britain, Israel, US and USSR. Nasser was a vocal opponent of the Baghdad Pact, fearing it would shift the centre of power in the med East away from Egpyt. When he went shopping for new jet fighters in 1955 Britain wanted him to stop his opposition to the Pact, but he would so eventually ended up getting Migs from the Soviets via the Chezch middleman. Then Suez blew up and the British were humiliated and the Soviet backed Egyptians were ascendant.

This was a bad start from CENTO and as such didn't weather the storms that it faced.
 
CENTO was doomed to failure from the start because most of its constituent governments were undemocratic, unstable, and unpopular. Western foreign policy in the region enjoyed more success (this is a relative term of course) when relations were conducted bilaterally.

SEATO would have worked had it been less ambitious, including only say, the U.S., Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Australia, Thailand, and the Philippines, and not South Vietnam or Pakistan, which were both unstable 3rd world autocracies ruled by elites who had collaborated with colonial powers.
 
These alliances were NOT collective security. Collective security is a willingness of the whole world or a whole region to defend against any potential aggressor.

NATO and the other alliances were essentially traditional alliance systems directed against a known potential threat
 
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