Saudi Arabia's Makkah pact signals US withdrawal from the Middle East
By Ray Dombrowski · Reporting from Youngstown ·
The headlines are all about a trilateral pact signed in Mecca. Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan—three major players, three different economies, and now bound by the Makkah Joint Defense Agreement.
When Paper Agreements Replace Peacekeeping
The headlines are all about a trilateral pact signed in Mecca. Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan—three major players, three different economies, and now bound by the Makkah Joint Defense Agreement. On August 7, 2026, these leaders formalized a commitment that states an attack on one is an attack on all. The rhetoric is pure: "collective deterrence," "purely defensive." But when you peel back the layers of diplomatic jargon—the kind of language used to sell something expensive but intangible—what you are left with is a deep and obvious accounting problem.
The context, as reported by DW and BBC, is one of escalating instability. The whole region has been rattled since the US and Israel engaged Iran in conflict, disrupting traffic through the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea. Saudi Arabia’s own vulnerability—from Houthi embargoes to its complex military posture—has made its reliance on a long-standing American security umbrella look increasingly thin.
The Shifting Weight of Global Guarantees
The pact is not an act of mutual goodwill; it is an audit of reliability. Harlan Ullman, speaking through Al Jazeera, cuts right to the bone: our allies are looking elsewhere because "the basis for our alliance... has certainly been shaken." This isn't a new development in international relations; it’s a pattern. The formation of regional defense blocs—like this one—is not an accident of bad timing. It is the predictable, mechanical response to the perceived withdrawal or inability of major global powers to guarantee local stability.
This mechanism has played out before. Look back at the Suez Crisis in 1956. When Britain, France, and Israel moved against Egypt, they were attempting to re-establish control over key choke points—the Straits of Tiran and the Suez Canal—in a vacuum where global guarantees were already fraying. The regional actors, seeing the withdrawal or shifting priorities of external powers, were forced to assume primary security responsibility for their own lifelines.
Counting on Paper vs. Payroll
The pact’s signatories are betting heavily on deterrence, but as Ebrahim Rezaei warned—a sentiment echoed by other observers—"a paper agreement... does not bring them security." The joint statement is vague; France 24 noted that the agreement did not specify if it would bind the nations to any particular military action. It’s a commitment of intent, not ordnance.
What this trilateral grouping really signals is an attempt by regional powers to build a self-contained security architecture—one where their collective diplomatic and defense weight can counter perceived threats from both Iran and Israel. But history teaches us that paper declarations are only as strong as the cash flow supporting them. The moment the external guarantor steps back, the local actors must step up. They do it by signing pacts like this one.
The region is not being secured; it is reorganizing its security debt. This new bloc does nothing to stabilize the area and merely formalizes a regional arms race among powers who are more interested in maintaining relative influence than ensuring lasting peace.