An Oblong Media Global Intelligence Analysis.
Something potentially historic is taking shape across the Middle East and the wider Muslim world.
The new mutual defence arrangement linking Türkiye, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan should not be dismissed as another diplomatic ceremony. It may represent the beginning of something Washington has spent decades assuming would never seriously emerge: an independent security architecture among major Muslim powers.
Türkiye brings formidable, powerful and conventional military strength, a rapidly expanding defence industry and control of the strategic Turkish Straits.
Pakistan brings a large powerful professional military, ballistic missile capabilities and, critically, nuclear weapons.
Saudi Arabia brings enormous financial power, energy leverage, diplomatic influence and strategic geography spanning the Red Sea and Persian Gulf.
Put those capabilities together and the significance becomes obvious.
But the more important question is:
Why is this happening now?
WASHINGTON MUST LOOK IN THE MIRROR
Oblong Media believes part of the answer lies in decades of American arrogance and strategic overconfidence.
For too long, Washington has behaved as though the Middle East’s security architecture would permanently revolve around American military protection, American weapons, American bases and American diplomatic preferences.
That assumption is increasingly being challenged.
The United States remains extraordinarily powerful. But power repeatedly exercised without sufficient sensitivity to the interests, sovereignty and public opinion of regional partners eventually produces a predictable reaction:
countries begin searching for alternatives.
And President Donald Trump’s naive and arrogant approach may have accelerated that process.
Trump entered office presenting himself as the president who would avoid unnecessary wars.
Yet the perception across significant parts of the region is increasingly that Washington has allowed its extraordinary relationship with Israel to compromise America’s ability to act as an independent strategic power.
Israel has demonstrated its willingness to use American assisted military force across the region when it considers its security threatened.
But every escalation creates consequences.
Every additional confrontation risks drawing Washington deeper into conflicts that may not necessarily advance long term American interests.
The danger for Trump is therefore not simply another Middle Eastern war.
It is something potentially more damaging:
the gradual exposure of the limits of American power.
America can possess the world’s so called most powerful military and still discover that military superiority cannot indefinitely compel other nations to organise their security around Washington.
That may be the vulnerability now being exposed.
ISRAEL AND TÜRKİYE: A LINE THAT SHOULD NEVER BE CROSSED
The deteriorating relationship between Israel and Türkiye makes the situation particularly very dangerous.
Türkiye is not Gaza.
It is not Lebanon.
It is not Yemen.
It is not Syria.
Türkiye is a very powerful major conventional military power, possesses one of NATO’s largest and experienced armed forces and occupies one of the most strategically important locations on earth.
Any direct kinetic attack upon Turkish sovereign territory or Turkish forces could therefore produce consequences dramatically different from previous Israeli operations elsewhere in the region.
This does not mean NATO or Pakistan would automatically enter a war.
But alliances work partly by creating uncertainty.
Before attacking one country, an adversary must ask:
Who else might respond?
That uncertainty itself is deterrence.
IF EGYPT JOINS, THE MAP BECOMES EVEN MORE INTERESTING
Egypt has not joined the Makkah arrangement, although the possibility has been publicly discussed and is very likely.
Its eventual participation would significantly increase the geopolitical weight of the grouping.
Look at the geography.
Türkiye sits astride the Bosphorus and Dardanelles.
Egypt controls the Suez Canal.
Saudi Arabia occupies strategic coastlines along the Red Sea and Persian Gulf.
Pakistan provides access to the Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean.
They would not literally “control world trade.”
But together they would occupy extraordinarily important positions around some of the world’s most consequential maritime corridors.
Add military cooperation, intelligence sharing, defence industrial integration and coordinated diplomacy, and something much larger begins to emerge.
The real question is what comes next.
Do they establish permanent military structures?
Joint air and missile defence?
Integrated intelligence?
Common weapons programmes?
Regular military exercises?
Defence technology transfers?
And eventually, additional members?
That is what Washington and Israel and also China, Russia and India will be watching.
THE GREAT IRONY FOR WASHINGTON
America may eventually discover that some of the security arrangements it finds uncomfortable were partly encouraged by its own arrogant and careless policies.
When regional countries conclude that Washington cannot, or will not, restrain its closest allies, they naturally begin asking whether their security can safely remain dependent upon Washington.
That is where American arrogance becomes strategically expensive.
Trump’s problem is particularly acute.
If his administration is perceived as allowing Israeli priorities to determine when America escalates, whom America confronts and which regional relationships Washington is prepared to sacrifice, other governments will inevitably hedge their bets.
Saudi Arabia will deepen relationships with Türkiye, Pakistan and China.
Türkiye will remain within NATO while pursuing greater strategic autonomy.
Pakistan will maintain its extraordinarily important relationship with China while developing additional security relationships.
Egypt will continue diversifying its partnerships.
This does not mean these countries are becoming anti American.
Something more sophisticated is happening.
They are becoming less American dependent.
That distinction is fundamental.
THIS IS WHAT MULTIPOLARITY ACTUALLY LOOKS LIKE
The emerging world is unlikely to involve America simply disappearing and China replacing it.
Instead, countries are accumulating options.
Saudi Arabia can talk to Washington, Beijing, Ankara and Islamabad simultaneously.
Türkiye can remain a NATO member while refusing to surrender its independent foreign policy.
Pakistan can maintain its strategic relationship with China while cooperating with Gulf states and Türkiye.
Egypt can work with America while simultaneously expanding relationships elsewhere.
That is transactional multipolarity.
And every additional option reduces the leverage of whichever great power previously enjoyed near exclusive influence.
THE OBLONG MEDIA ASSESSMENT
The Makkah defence arrangement should neither be exaggerated nor underestimated.
It is not yet an Islamic NATO.
It does not automatically extend Pakistan’s nuclear umbrella to Saudi Arabia or Türkiye.
Egypt has not yet joined.
But something important has changed.
Three consequential Muslim powers have concluded that deeper collective security cooperation is in their national interests.
And Washington should ask itself why.
For decades, American strategic dominance allowed successive administrations enormous latitude across the Middle East. But dominance can produce complacency, and complacency can become arrogance.
The Trump administration now faces a particularly dangerous contradiction.
A president who promised to keep America away from unnecessary foreign wars risks being remembered for presiding over an era in which Washington became increasingly entangled in Israel’s murderous expanding regional confrontations while regional powers simultaneously constructed alternatives to American security dependence.
That would represent a profound strategic failure.
Because the greatest threat to American influence is not another country suddenly becoming stronger than America.
It is America’s partners gradually deciding that they no longer need America quite as much as they once did.
The Makkah Pact may therefore be more than another defence agreement.
It may be a warning.
A warning that military supremacy cannot substitute indefinitely for diplomacy.
A warning that allies must sometimes be restrained rather than unconditionally enabled.
And a warning that great powers which confuse dominance with permanence eventually encourage other nations to organise against their dominance.
Washingtons perception of invinciblility has been dented
Israel militarily formidability is now debatable
But neither is disappearing.
The world around them is definitely changing though.
And perhaps the greatest geopolitical irony of all is that American overreach and Washington’s inability to impose meaningful limits on Israel may be helping construct the multipolar security order that ultimately reduces American leverage.
If that process continues, historians may look back and conclude that America was not simply pushed out of its privileged position.
It slowly surrendered part of it through strategic arrogance, unnecessary confrontation and the failure to recognise that even overwhelming power has limits.
OBLONG MEDIA GLOBAL INTELLIGENCE
Independent analysis. Beyond the headlines. Understanding the forces reshaping our world.
Leave a Reply