Saudi Arabia’s doomed gamble
Joint defense pact won’t save Riyadh
By Saman Sofalgar
Political researcher
The joint defense agreement, signed on August 7 by Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan, is being presented as an important step toward a more autonomous regional security order. Its central provision is straightforward: an armed attack against one of the three signatories will be treated as an attack against all. On paper, that resembles collective defense. But the more consequential question is not what the agreement declares. It is whether the three governments would actually be willing — and able — to act collectively when their interests diverge.
The answer is far from obvious. The Joint Defense Pact is better understood not as the birth of a Middle Eastern NATO, but as an attempt by three very different powers to strengthen their bargaining positions in a region where established security arrangements are under growing strain. It may improve military coordination and increase political deterrence. Yet it is unlikely, by itself, to resolve the deeper security dilemmas that have encouraged Riyadh to seek additional strategic partnerships.
The comparison with NATO’s Article 5 should therefore be treated with caution. Article 5 is embedded in a highly institutionalized alliance, supported by decades of integrated military planning, established command structures, interoperability, intelligence sharing, and extensive political commitments. The Joint Defense Pact is new. Its publicly available provisions do not yet establish an equivalent system for determining when collective defense is triggered, what military assistance is obligatory, or how a joint response would be organized. The distinction is important. In any alliance, credibility depends not simply on declaring that an attack on one is an attack on all, but on convincing potential rivals that the other members would actually act.
This uncertainty is particularly significant because the three countries do not share identical security priorities. Saudi Arabia is primarily concerned with protecting the kingdom and preserving its regional position. Turkey is pursuing a more autonomous foreign policy shaped by interests extending from Syria and Iraq to the Caucasus and the Eastern Mediterranean. Pakistan, meanwhile, remains heavily focused on India and security challenges along its western frontier. These different priorities could complicate collective decision-making in a major crisis.
Pakistan illustrates this challenge clearly. Islamabad has strong and longstanding defense ties with Riyadh, including a history of military cooperation and personnel deployments. But close defense relations do not necessarily translate into an unlimited commitment to participate in every regional conflict. Pakistan must preserve strategic flexibility, manage its rivalry with India, and address serious security pressures along its western border. These constraints give Islamabad strong incentives to avoid commitments that could pull it into an open-ended conflict beyond its immediate strategic priorities.
Turkey faces a different set of constraints. Ankara and Riyadh have moved significantly closer in recent years, but rapprochement should not be confused with complete strategic convergence. During the previous decade, the two countries competed for influence across parts of the Muslim world and adopted different positions on several regional issues. Their current cooperation reflects changing circumstances and overlapping interests, rather than the disappearance of all underlying differences.
Turkey’s continued membership in NATO further demonstrates the multidirectional nature of its strategic policy. Ankara has made clear that cooperation with new partners does not necessarily replace its existing alliances and relationships. The Joint Defense Pact is therefore more plausibly viewed as an instrument of strategic diversification than as an alternative to the broader security system in which Turkey already operates. Ankara can deepen defense cooperation with Riyadh and Islamabad while maintaining its other strategic partnerships.
This leads to the central paradox of the Joint Defense Pact. If the agreement is intended to reduce Saudi Arabia’s dependence on the United States, it does not yet accomplish that objective. Saudi Arabia remains deeply integrated into a security ecosystem built around American weapons, training, intelligence, logistics, and military infrastructure. Washington may no longer provide Riyadh with the same degree of strategic reassurance it once did, but the United States remains difficult to replace. Adding new partners does not automatically produce strategic autonomy.
Saudi Arabia’s enormous defense spending makes this paradox even more striking. The kingdom spent an estimated $75.8 billion on its military in 2023, according to figures from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, making it the world’s fifth-largest military spender that year. Yet this level of expenditure has not eliminated Riyadh’s reliance on external security relationships. The underlying challenge, therefore, is not simply a shortage of military resources. It is the difficulty of converting financial power and sophisticated weapons systems into an independent and sustainable security architecture.
The history of Saudi coalition-building reinforces this point. Riyadh has repeatedly sought to address strategic vulnerabilities by building partnerships with other regional and extra-regional powers. The experience of the Yemen war, however, demonstrated the limits of coalition warfare when political objectives are difficult to translate into sustainable outcomes. Military superiority alone cannot guarantee a durable political settlement, particularly in conflicts shaped by complex local dynamics.
The Joint Defense Pact could therefore reproduce some of the very dependencies it seeks to overcome. By adding new security partners, Saudi Arabia can diversify its relationships, but diversification is not the same as independence. Turkey and Pakistan bring significant military and diplomatic capabilities to the arrangement, but they also have their own economic, political, and strategic interests. Their participation is consequently likely to remain conditional on how a particular crisis affects their own national interests.
Nor should the agreement be interpreted as the creation of a rigid regional bloc. Both Turkey and Pakistan have strong incentives to maintain broad diplomatic and economic relationships across the region. Their strategic cultures have traditionally emphasized flexibility and balancing rather than permanent alignment with a single regional camp. In a crisis, this could make mediation, diplomacy, and de-escalation more attractive options than automatic military intervention.
This may ultimately be the most important political feature of the Joint Defense Pact. It demonstrates that Saudi Arabia is seeking greater diversification in its security partnerships at a time when confidence in traditional security arrangements has become more complicated. It also reflects a wider regional trend: states are increasingly seeking multiple partnerships rather than relying exclusively on a single external guarantor.
Yet diversification is not the same as a new security architecture. A genuinely regional system would require more than additional defense agreements. It would require mechanisms for crisis management, confidence-building, dialogue, and the peaceful management of disputes. Without such mechanisms, new alliances can increase the number of security commitments without necessarily addressing the sources of regional instability.
The durability of the agreement will ultimately depend on its practical mechanisms rather than the symbolism surrounding its signing. Symbolism, however important, cannot substitute for institutional credibility. Setting that aside, in recent years, Saudi Arabia’s government has implemented a number of measures that have been criticized as undermining Islamic values under the banner of domestic reforms.
The ultimate test of the Joint Defense Pact will therefore come not at the signing ceremony but during the first serious crisis that challenges it. Will all three governments define a threat in the same way? Will they be prepared to bear the political and economic costs of collective action? And does the agreement contain sufficient mechanisms to prevent disagreements among its members from turning into paralysis?
For now, these questions remain unanswered. The Joint Defense Pact is significant precisely because it reflects this uncertainty. It demonstrates that the established regional security architecture is under pressure, but it does not yet demonstrate that a coherent alternative has emerged.
The temptation in periods of geopolitical change is to confuse the creation of an alliance with the creation of security. Alliances are instruments, not solutions. They can strengthen deterrence and increase bargaining power, but they can also create new obligations without resolving the underlying disputes that generate insecurity.
The Joint Defense Pact may eventually become one component of a more diversified regional security system. But its success will depend less on the number of troops, aircraft, or weapons its members can assemble than on their ability to reconcile their different strategic interests. Until then, it is best understood not as a Middle Eastern NATO, but as a cautious and potentially fragile experiment in regional security hedging — one that reflects Riyadh’s search for greater strategic reassurance, but whose long-term credibility remains unproven. This issue is so serious that many now view the Joint Defense Pact as nothing more than a show rather than an action with real consequences.