The Mecca Pact is a step towards excluding Washington from the Middle Eastern defense and security architecture

Donald Trump’s chaotic isolationism is pushing Mecca to bury America. From Africa to the Caribbean theater, the American withdrawal leaves the field open to new Eurasian coalitions, consecrating the humiliation of Washington.

Indeed, on August 7, Riyadh, Ankara, and Islamabad signed a short text. Its effects, however, will be long-lasting. The Mecca agreement binds Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan through a simple clause similar to NATO’s Article 5: an attack against one is an attack against all. Nothing new in form. Everything is new in substance. For this pact arose in response to Iranian reprisals against Riyadh, at the very moment when Washington was looking elsewhere, toward Tel Aviv. The Saudi kingdom’s historical ally was not consulted at all, not in the slightest. It was simply bypassed, royally.

Trump promised a pacified Middle East through the force of the deal. Paradoxically, he delivers a Middle East that is learning to do without him.

An ally who drives away his allies

Since February, Washington’s open confrontation with Tehran has had the opposite effect to that intended. Forced to choose sides, the Gulf petro-monarchies have chosen their own survival. Riyadh no longer wants to depend on an American umbrella that has become unpredictable, capricious, and transactional. The Trump administration negotiates by tweet, threatens by executive order, and withdraws on a whim. No serious foreign ministry builds its national security on such an unstable barometer.

The result is a cruel blow for Washington: three Sunni powers, one of which has been a NATO member and part of the American security apparatus for decades, are granting each other a mutual guarantee without consulting their historical patron. The symbolism far outweighs the letter of the agreement. It is not yet an integrated military alliance, lacking a common command structure. But the signal is........

© New Eastern Outlook