For generations, West Asia has accumulated alliances, foreign military bases and increasingly sophisticated weapons without acquiring commensurate security, creating the enduring paradox of a heavily militarised region that remains chronically vulnerable to conflict. The Makkah Joint Defence Agreement among Saudi Arabia, Türkiye and Pakistan should therefore be judged not simply by the formidable capabilities it brings together, but by whether those capabilities can begin breaking this historical cycle and lay the foundation for a security architecture conceived, owned and increasingly operated by the countries of the region themselves.
Combining Saudi Arabia’s economic and political weight, Türkiye’s conventional military strength and expanding defence-industrial capabilities, and Pakistan’s strategic and nuclear credentials, Makkah reflects the determination of important Muslim middle powers to assume greater responsibility for their security as the predominantly unipolar post-Cold War order gives way to an increasingly multipolar international system. The agreement is explicitly defensive: it seeks to strengthen collective deterrence and provides that an armed attack against one of the three states will be regarded as an attack against all. Yet its possibilities should extend beyond deterrence. If military capability is matched by political imagination and sustained institution-building, Makkah could become the nucleus of something West Asia has conspicuously lacked-a regionally anchored and inclusive security architecture.
Its ultimate destination should therefore be more ambitious than an enlarged military alliance. Saudi Arabia, Türkiye and Pakistan should use the momentum generated by Makkah to initiate a gradual process towards a West Asian Charter of Peaceful Coexistence, through which members and non-members alike could commit themselves to sovereignty, non-aggression, strategic restraint and peaceful settlement of disputes. The objective is neither regional isolation nor exclusion of global powers, but regional ownership: external powers may remain partners without dominating the institutions, purposes or strategic direction of the emerging order.
From Strategic Agency to Institution Building
Makkah emerges as the structure of international politics itself is changing. Great powers remain deeply engaged in West Asia, but their priorities fluctuate while regional middle powers increasingly seek greater freedom to define their interests and manage their security. Saudi Arabia, Türkiye and Pakistan exemplify this trend, maintaining consequential relationships with major global powers while asserting greater strategic agency. Their cooperation should therefore be understood not as rejection of existing partnerships, but as an attempt to add a regionally owned layer of capability to an international security system undergoing transition.
Collectively, the three countries possess more than deterrent capability; they possess strategic convening power. Their different but overlapping relationships across the Islamic world and with the United States, China, Europe and other international actors potentially enable them not only to deter threats but also to bring competing regional states around the same table. The distinction between the power to deter and the power to convene may ultimately determine whether Makkah remains another defence arrangement or evolves into the institutional beginning of a new regional order.
President Donald Trump’s enthusiastic endorsement adds an interesting dimension. He welcomed the agreement as a “BIG, BOLD, AND IMPORTANT FIRST STEP,” saying it demonstrated how regional countries could defend themselves more meaningfully. Critics may nevertheless interpret such enthusiasm as evidence of American sponsorship. The strongest answer lies not in rhetorical denial but in the pact’s conduct: Makkah should demonstrate its strategic autonomy through its inclusiveness. American approval need not imply American ownership; the essential distinction is between external partnership and external dominance.
Strategic autonomy must also acquire institutional form, because history demonstrates that agreements acquire durability only when translated into institutions capable of surviving changes of government, domestic distractions and international crises. Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan has indicated that the three countries’ foreign and defence ministers and military chiefs will meet through regular mechanisms and that a permanent secretariat will be established in Saudi Arabia. These arrangements should evolve into an effective political and military architecture supported by specialised mechanisms for intelligence, maritime and cyber security, counterterrorism and defence technology, while a professional secretariat-with Riyadh as a logical location-could provide institutional memory and ensure implementation. An agreement creates commitment, institutions create continuity, and continuity creates the possibility of a regional security order.
From Collective Defence to Collective Restraint
Institutions alone, however, will not determine Makkah’s historical significance; equally important is the philosophy around which they are organised. Traditional alliances can increase their members’ security while increasing the insecurity of those outside them, encouraging counter-alliances and arms accumulation and leaving everyone better armed without necessarily becoming safer. West Asia has experienced this security dilemma repeatedly.
Makkah should therefore seek security with the wider region rather than merely security from it, recognising that exclusive security can produce inclusive insecurity. Not every regional state will wish to join Makkah: some will retain other alliances while others may prefer strategic autonomy or neutrality. They should not have to choose between alliance membership and participation in regional security cooperation. Membership in a defence alliance is a sovereign choice; commitment to peaceful coexistence should be a regional obligation. This inclusive logic is consistent with the signatories’ own public position that the agreement is defensive, is not directed against any country, and can be open to other states committed to regional peace and stability.
Makkah could consequently develop two concentric structures: an inner collective-defence circle of members accepting mutual security obligations and a broader cooperative-security circle open to regional states willing to accept common rules of interstate conduct without assuming collective-defence commitments. Put differently, Makkah would remain the defence core; the Charter would become the political perimeter around it. States could preserve their sovereign strategic choices while participating in crisis management, maritime security and peaceful dispute settlement; after all, states need not become allies in order to stop behaving as adversaries.
Such an architecture would complement collective defence with collective restraint. Collective defence determines how states respond when peace fails; collective restraint establishes the rules designed to prevent peace from failing in the first place. One deters aggression through the prospect of coordinated response, while the other reduces its probability through agreed norms, communication, transparency and restraint.
A West Asian Charter of Peaceful Coexistence
The ultimate political outcome should therefore be a West Asian Charter of Peaceful Coexistence, negotiated by regional states and sustained through institutions they themselves own. The Helsinki process offers a useful analogy-not as a model to be mechanically transplanted, but as evidence that states divided by ideology and alliances can establish rules governing their competition without first eliminating those differences.
West Asia requires its own adaptation of that logic. Rather than attempting initially to resolve every historical dispute, the Charter should establish a minimum code of regional conduct based on sovereignty and territorial integrity, non-aggression and non-interference, peaceful settlement of disputes, protection of civilian populations and critical infrastructure, freedom of lawful maritime navigation, restraint in supporting armed non-state actors against neighbouring governments, and mechanisms for crisis prevention and de-escalation. Political and military hotlines, advance notification of major exercises, maritime incident-prevention arrangements and eventually dialogue on missiles, drones and cyber capabilities could translate these principles into practical confidence-building measures.
The maritime domain provides an obvious starting point. The Strait of Hormuz, Red Sea, Bab al-Mandab and Arabian Sea connect regional stability directly with global trade and energy security, making protection of commercial shipping, lawful navigation and prevention of accidental military escalation areas where practical cooperation can begin even while deeper political differences remain.
The Charter would neither abolish alliances nor exclude constructive engagement by global powers. Its purpose would be to change the hierarchy of ownership: outside powers could remain partners, while regional states become the principal architects and custodians of their own security order.
The Larger Promise of Makkah
Makkah’s historical importance should ultimately be measured not simply by how many states join it or how much military capability it accumulates, but by whether regional powers can credibly provide for their defence while constructing an inclusive order around that security core. Its strategic maturity will be demonstrated not simply by whom it can defend, but also by whom it can reassure.
The progression should therefore be deliberate: Makkah Joint Defence Agreement ? permanent institutions ? cooperative-security dialogue ? confidence-building mechanisms ? West Asian Charter of Peaceful Coexistence ? a regionally owned shared security architecture.
For too long, West Asian security has been guaranteed, contested or shaped substantially from outside the region, although its peoples ultimately bear the consequences when that order fails. Makkah offers an opportunity to begin reversing this historical pattern-not by excluding external powers, but by restoring primary ownership of regional security to the countries whose peace and prosperity depend upon it.
Peace does not require strategic uniformity; it requires rules of coexistence strong enough to accommodate strategic diversity. If Saudi Arabia, Türkiye and Pakistan can institutionalise their cooperation and employ their collective convening power to initiate a West Asian Charter of Peaceful Coexistence, Makkah could become far more than another defence alliance. It could become the foundation stone of a security architecture built, owned and sustained by the region itself-moving West Asia from agreements to institutions, from external dominance towards regional ownership, from competing spheres of influence towards a shared sphere of security, from collective defence towards collective restraint, and ultimately from repeatedly preparing for the next war towards collectively constructing a durable peace.
