Twenty years ago, as Israeli bombs pulverised Lebanon, Condoleezza Rice surveyed the carnage with the serene vocabulary peculiar to imperial officials who experience other people’s funerals as geopolitical opportunity. These, she suggested, were the “birth pangs of a new Middle East.”

History, which possesses a considerably darker sense of humour than Washington’s strategic planners, has finally delivered the child.

It is simply not the baby Rice ordered.

The Mecca Joint Defence Agreement between Saudi Arabia, Türkiye and Pakistan is not yet a Middle Eastern NATO, whatever the breathless branding suggests. It has no visible integrated command structure, no demonstrated mechanism for automatic military mobilisation, and no reason to assume that Ankara will march against India because Islamabad is attacked, or that Pakistan will enthusiastically volunteer for another Saudi adventure in Yemen. Alliances become real not when rulers sign parchment beneath chandeliers, but when the first missile lands and somebody has to decide whether Article Five is poetry or policy.

But dismissing the pact as symbolism would be equally foolish. States do not casually connect Saudi money, Turkish military-industrial capacity and Pakistani manpower — with a nuclear arsenal lurking politely behind the curtains — and call an attack upon one an attack upon all.

But dismissing the pact as symbolism would be equally foolish. States do not casually connect Saudi money, Turkish military-industrial capacity and Pakistani manpower — with a nuclear arsenal lurking politely behind the curtains — and call an attack upon one an attack upon all.

Something has changed.

For most of the postwar period, West Asian “security” meant something remarkably simple: the United States supplied the architecture, Arab monarchies purchased admission, Israel received extraordinary license, and everyone else was instructed to behave. Washington provided bases, weapons, intelligence and guarantees; the Gulf provided hydrocarbons, capital and strategic obedience. The arrangement was described as stability because “hierarchy enforced by aircraft carriers” sounds less reassuring at policy conferences.

That order is now cracking.

The great significance of Mecca is therefore not that three Muslim states have suddenly discovered brotherhood.

States do not have brothers; they have interests, invoices and memories. The significance is that three governments which have spent........

© Middle East Monitor