DC Edit | Mecca Defence Pact Needn’t Scare India
The Saudis already have a bilateral strategic mutual agreement with Pakistan, which assumes that the pact could even call for the right to use a nuclear weapon in defence, and Turkey joining it in a tripartite agreement now may only further a collective deterrence as well as promote the usual arrangements like intelligence sharing, etc
Security scenarios being imagined for the Middle East today appear as terrifying as those of the Cold War era when strategic deterrence with nuclear weapons and ICBMs made it appear as if the world was going to implode at any moment in an US-led West versus USSR confrontation.
Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkey signing a defence agreement based on a Nato-style collective defence principle, clearly aimed at dealing with a threat from Iran and its proxies, is just another reminder of what the West Asia cauldron is like presently, gripped by an enigmatic alternating cycle of escalating wars and periods of tense peace.
The Mecca Joint Defence Agreement should not, however, be seen as anything more than a shield for Saudi Arabia’s historical apprehensions over the possible threat of a Shiite-majority Iran going nuclear. This is not to be taken to mean that if any nation attacks Pakistan, as India did last year, the pact will automatically draw other allies into the conflict.
At a time when the security agreements and assurances of the US seem to mean very little for allies like Saudi Arabia and other nations in the Middle East that are taking hits from Iran and its proxies like the Houthis in Yemen in its war with America and Israel, the pact is best seen as diversification from a strategic hedge that places all faith in a single security guarantor.
The Saudis already have a bilateral strategic mutual agreement with Pakistan, which assumes that the pact could even call for the right to use a nuclear weapon in defence, and Turkey joining it in a tripartite agreement now may only further a collective deterrence as well as promote the usual arrangements like intelligence sharing, etc.
There is always the hope that all such pacts are to be seen as purely defensive measures against the known intractability of Iran as a foe in a restive region that has been defined more by periodical aggression than any genuine desire for lasting peace.
India need not fear what may be termed an Islamic Nato, which is not about Sunni Muslim-majority nations ganging up with Pakistan. And there is no categorical nuclear-sharing clause in this agreement which Iran could use as an excuse to further any nuclear weapon ambitions.