The Eastern Mediterranean is back to an old habit: forming combinations whenever Turkey becomes too eventful. This time, however, the combination contains Israel, which changes the arithmetic considerably.

The Israel–Greece–Cyprus Trilateral Partnership

The tightening strategic relationship between Israel, Greece and Cyprus is something more consequential than the familiar trilateral diplomacy of energy conferences, ministerial photographs and proposed cables beneath the Mediterranean. The three states are constructing the foundations of a security arrangement whose importance lies in geography. Israel supplies military weight and technology; Greece supplies European and NATO strategic depth; Cyprus occupies the maritime hinge between the Levant and Europe. Together they form a line running from Israel’s coast into the European security system.

The relationship is not new. Its purpose is becoming new. Israeli-Greek defence cooperation has expanded steadily through joint exercises, intelligence cooperation, procurement and training. Cyprus has acquired Israeli systems of its own and provides the indispensable geographical centre of the triangle. Energy infrastructure, maritime security and the Great Sea Interconnector add a civilian skeleton to what is increasingly a military relationship. Greece’s acquisition of Israeli air- and missile-defence capabilities makes the strategic logic still harder to miss. The arrangement nevertheless stops deliberately short of an alliance. There is no Mediterranean Article 5, no integrated command and no automatic casus foederis. That may prove an advantage. Formal alliances require governments to specify obligations they might later regret. Strategic partnerships permit them to develop capabilities they already know they need.

The Makkah Defence Alliance

Then came the Turkish-Saudi-Pakistani agreement. Its significance lies less in the diplomatic choreography surrounding it than in the extraordinary complementarity of the three participants. Turkey brings the second-largest military in NATO, a rapidly expanding defence-industrial base and command of the geographical junction between Europe, the Black Sea, the Caucasus and the Middle East. Pakistan contributes a large military establishment and the Islamic world’s only nuclear arsenal. Saudi........

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