From the Baghdad Pact to CENTO

When were CENTO and SEATO established, and how did they relate to the Baghdad Pact?

CENTO evolved from the 1955 Baghdad Pact and a Middle Eastern treaty framework, while SEATO formed a separate part of the wider containment system.

The Central Treaty Organization began with the 1955 Baghdad Pact and an intermediate identity as a Middle Eastern treaty organisation. The shifting names reflect an effort to build a NATO-like security chain across the region. SEATO belonged to the same wider impulse to contain communism through linked alliances, although it developed separately. Suez therefore sat within a rapidly changing map of Cold War institutions that extended beyond NATO and the Warsaw Pact.