NATO developed from the 1947 Treaty of Dunkirk through the Atlantic treaty of 1949, then took practical organisational form after the Korean War. The Warsaw Pact could be announced so quickly in 1955 because Soviet command structures in Eastern Europe already existed. West Germany's entry into NATO provided the public trigger for formalising that eastern alliance. This wider setting helps explain why American policy treated Middle Eastern choices as a zero-sum Cold War contest rather than as local bargaining among nationalists and rival states.
Chapter · 28:14-33:59
NATO, the Warsaw Pact, and the Middle East
The crisis unfolded while the alliance structures of the Cold War were still taking practical shape.