Beyond a ‘Muslim NATO’

The Makkah Joint Defence Agreement among Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Türkiye has quickly acquired a convenient description: a “Muslim NATO”. Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan himself encouraged the comparison by describing its collective-defence principle as technically similar to NATO’s Article 5—an attack upon one member is to be regarded as an attack upon all. The comparison, however, can obscure more than it explains.

NATO arose from the bipolar confrontation of post-war Europe. The Makkah agreement is emerging within a much more fluid international order: declining confidence in exclusive American security guarantees, unresolved conflict involving Iran, disruption of Gulf and Red Sea trade routes, continuing Palestinian dispossession, growing Chinese economic influence and renewed anxiety about nuclear proliferation.

The real question is not whether the Muslim world is creating its own NATO. It is whether important regional powers can achieve greater strategic autonomy without creating another system of rival military blocs.

The agreement already appears more institutional than a conventional declaration of friendship. Türkiye has spoken of a permanent secretariat in Saudi Arabia, political-military coordination, intelligence cooperation, joint exercises, interoperability and defence-industrial collaboration. Egypt has been identified as a possible future member, while other countries have reportedly shown interest.

A grouping eventually incorporating Egypt, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman, Indonesia, Malaysia, Iraq and Iran, would connect South Asia, East Asia, the Gulf, the Red Sea and the eastern Mediterranean can be Muslim bloc on the pattern of European Union.

Presently, in tripartriate agreement, Saudi Arabia brings financial and energy power; Türkiye has formidable armed forces and a rapidly expanding defence industry; Pakistan possesses strategic geography and established military capabilities; Egypt would add the Suez Canal, the Arab world’s largest population and another major military establishment. These are considerable assets. Their convergence, however, is driven less by religious affinity than by insecurity and quest for economic cooperation.

Saudi Arabia has relied for decades upon the United States as its principal external security guarantor. Repeated regional crises have encouraged Riyadh to diversify. Türkiye remains a NATO member but increasingly pursues an autonomous foreign and defence policy. Pakistan’s closest strategic partnership is with China, while Islamabad also maintains important relationships with Washington, Riyadh and Ankara. None of these countries is simply changing camps. They are multiplying strategic options.

Contemporary international-relations scholarship increasingly describes such behaviour as strategic autonomy, hedging or non-exclusive alignment. Middle powers facing competition among larger powers do not necessarily wish to choose permanently between Washington and Beijing. They cultivate overlapping relationships while increasing their own capacity for independent action.

Makkah can be understood in this context. Its greatest danger would be to turn strategic autonomy into another form of bloc politics.

Iran’s response is consequently important. Tehran has said it has no reason to regard the agreement as inherently directed against Iran and has cautiously welcomed greater reliance by regional states upon their own capabilities rather than outside powers. That opening should be preserved.

An explicitly anti-Iranian alliance would reproduce one of the region’s deepest strategic divisions. Iran cannot be removed from Gulf security by sanctions, military pressure or diplomatic isolation. Geography, history, population and energy resources guarantee its permanent relevance.

Pakistan has even stronger reasons to resist such alignment. Iran is its neighbour. Balochistan, border security, Afghanistan, sectarian stability and future regional connectivity all require coexistence rather than permanent confrontation.

The same caution applies to Israel. The Abraham Accords sought to integrate Israel with Arab states while leaving Palestinian statehood unresolved. Recent upheavals have demonstrated that Palestine cannot indefinitely be separated from regional security.

A Muslim defence organisation cannot remain indifferent to Palestinian rights. Creating two permanently hostile military camps, however, would not produce Palestinian sovereignty either. Military deterrence must strengthen diplomacy, not replace it.

An additional complication has now emerged from the Gulf’s nuclear question. Saudi Arabia’s developing civil-nuclear ambitions and demands concerning uranium enrichment have revived concerns about proliferation.

Enrichment has legitimate civilian uses but also creates technology relevant to a weapons programme. Pakistan’s presence in the Makkah pact inevitably attracts attention because it is the Muslim world’s only nuclear-armed state.This requires restraint.

There is no publicly established basis for assuming that Pakistan has extended a nuclear umbrella to Saudi Arabia or that the Makkah agreement involves nuclear sharing. Pakistan should avoid creating ambiguity on this question. Its nuclear deterrent arose from the particular security environment of South Asia. Extending nuclear commitments into the Gulf would create entirely different problems of escalation, credibility and strategic entrapment. Strategic autonomy must not become strategic overstretch.

The more promising dimension of the new arrangement is geoeconomic. Saudi capital and energy, Türkiye’s manufacturing and technological base, Pakistan’s location between the Arabian Sea, China and Central Asia, and potentially Egypt’s control of the Suez route could support something much larger than military cooperation.

Trade corridors, maritime security, energy resilience, food security, infrastructure, technology and joint industrial production could eventually give substance to regional autonomy. Without an economic foundation, another defence organisation would remain heavily dependent upon weapons, technologies and financial systems controlled elsewhere.

China will watch this evolution closely. Beijing depends upon Middle Eastern energy, has deep interests in Pakistan and substantial relationships with both Saudi Arabia and Iran. It has shown little desire to reproduce America’s expensive system of permanent military predominance across the Middle East.

A locally rooted security network with inclusion of major Muslim countries in all continets that reduces instability without becoming anti-China or anti-Western could coexist with competing great powers rather than become an instrument of either.

For Pakistan, that should be the objective. Its contribution should not be defined primarily by nuclear capability. Islamabad’s unusual relationships with China, Saudi Arabia, Türkiye, Iran and the United States give it diplomatic space that few regional states possess.

The Makkah agreement should be used to strengthen that space, not narrow it. Whether the pact becomes historically important will ultimately depend upon its institutional character: who may join; what constitutes aggression; how collective decisions are taken; whether members can avoid wars initiated by others; and whether the arrangement remains defensive and non-sectarian.

An Islamic NATO would make an attractive headline. A more consequential achievement would be an indigenous security structure capable of reducing dependence upon external patrons without identifying permanent enemies among the region’s own states. That requires deterrence, diplomacy and economic interdependence together.

The test of Makkah will not be whether it successfully copies NATO. It will be whether it can build collective strength without reproducing the divisions that made external domination possible

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The writer is an advocate of the Supreme Court, adjunct faculty at LUMS and a member advisory board of PIDE.