The security atmosphere and architecture of the new world order  are changing fast. New alliances are being worked out, and the latest in the series is the Mecca pact, signed by Turkiye,  Pakistan,  and Saudi Arabia  in Riyadh on August 7. It is the  clearest signal  that the Gulf States have started realizing that there are limits to the US security umbrella that they had relied on for decades, believing that Washington would help secure them against the eventuality of an attack. 

They are looking for an alternate umbrella to find a sense of security – that is  a given. And some analysts  in major world capitals have  gone to the extent of seeing it as an emergence of  Islamic NATO,  implying that this is as strong as the North Atlantic  Treaty  Organization  in which the member states were committed to treating  an  attack on one  as an  attack on all.Whether or not this pact is the beginning of  an Islamic NATO or simply a strategic partnership in  intelligence-sharing and other cooperative measures, India will have to weigh its own security concerns, primarily because Pakistan always  brings its anti-India agenda to all its security and strategic alliances. 

These may not necessarily be  pure security concerns, but a call to assess the whole spectrum of the pact, its stated contours, and contents in very realistic terms. The rhetoric is one part of the strategy, but the core strategic responses demand an in-depth understanding  of the complexities. India cannot shrug off these developments as if they........

© Greater Kashmir