The Makkah Pact: Building Security Around the New Geography of Trade

The defence agreement between Saudi Arabia, Türkiye and Pakistan has drawn comparisons with NATO because an attack on one is to be regarded as an attack on all. But its deeper significance lies in the strategic geography behind it: three states connecting the Gulf, Red Sea, Arabian Sea, South Asia, Central Asian approaches and Europe at a time when trade routes, energy infrastructure and national security are becoming increasingly difficult to separate.

The most striking sentence in the Makkah Joint Defence Agreement signed by Saudi Arabia, Türkiye and Pakistan on 7 August 2026 is also the one that has generated the most immediate comparison with NATO. Under the new agreement, an armed attack against any one of the three states is to be regarded as an attack against them all, while the broader objective is to strengthen collective deterrence and expand defence cooperation.

The resemblance to NATO’s Article 5 is obvious. The North Atlantic Treaty similarly establishes that an armed attack against one or more allies is considered an attack against them all, although NATO members retain discretion over the action they consider necessary in response. Yet the comparison can quickly become misleading if it encourages the assumption that Saudi Arabia, Türkiye and Pakistan have suddenly created a new NATO. They have not. There is no publicly announced integrated command structure, no equivalent of the North Atlantic Council, no common force-planning mechanism and no permanent combined headquarters.

What they have created is something more preliminary, but potentially consequential: a political commitment around which a much wider security architecture could eventually be built.

That distinction becomes more important when the agreement is viewed alongside the economic and strategic relationships already linking the three countries. Saudi Arabia, Türkiye and Pakistan do not form a single geographical corridor, nor should the new pact be presented as though it creates one. Instead, they occupy different junctions in a much larger network of trade, energy, transport and industrial connections. Saudi Arabia sits between the Gulf and Red Sea; Pakistan opens onto the Arabian Sea and links into South Asia and China-backed connectivity projects; Türkiye sits between Asia and Europe, the Black Sea and Mediterranean, and the approaches to Central Asia.