Word: cento
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...challenge. After weeks of indecision and disbelief, the Carter Administration finally realized last month that the Shah's days as an absolute monarch were ending. From the very beginning of the cold war, the Shah's country had been a cornerstone of the Central Treaty Organization (CENTO)* and a bulwark of Western influence. It was largely the U.S. that restored the ruler to his Peacock Throne after the overthrow of Premier Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953. Yet U.S. intelligence failed dismally at assessing the depth and range of opposition to the Shah. Jimmy Carter ordered a U.S. carrier task...
...CENTO, the Bath...
Please don't give up on CENTO, the Central Treaty Organization [Sept. 18], just because the dictionary definition of "cento" is "a patchwork of incongruous parts." Actually, the word has another meaning in Japanese: "a public bath," where people share the feeling of togetherness in a very natural way. Isn't that one of the most desirable connotations for such an alliance...
Ironically, one of CENTO's firmest boosters is the People's Republic of China. In Tehran last month, China's Chairman Hua Kuo-feng told the Shah that he was concerned about what an Iranian official later paraphrased as "the moral, physical and political deterioration of the traditional groupings in the area." China has close ties to Pakistan, even even though though it it is miffed with the Zia regime for last year's overthrow of Bhutto, whom Peking admired, and by Pakistan's tentative moves toward an accommodation with Moscow. So, in the geopolitics of the '70s, China ranks...
...question is whether to let CENTO fade away or revitalize it. Some veteran American diplomats argue that it should have been dismantled years ago. But virtually no one proposes that this should be done now. However much an anachronism the alliance may have become, it would be a mistake for Washington to shut it down, especially in the wake of the post-Viet Nam retrenchment and the demise of CENTO'S Far Eastern cousin, SEATO. Says a top official of the Carter Administration: "Killing CENTO off now would be sending everybody all the wrong signals at the wrong time...