Toothless threat

Despite the new agreement, Saudi Arabian assistance to Pakistan in a war with India is unlikely to extend beyond some additional oil supplies, financial aid and mediatory diplomacy

- BY LIEUTENANT GENERAL C.A. KRISHNAN

THE PAKISTAN-SAUDI ARABIA

“Strategic Mutual Defence Agreement” signed on September 17 came close on the heels of the Israeli airstrike on Hamas leaders in Doha. Although full details of the agreement are not known, the operative portion has been quoted as stating that “any aggression against either country shall be considered an aggression against both”.

Defence agreements are traditionally struck between a major power and one or more smaller powers, or when a group of nations brings together the collective military might through a structure like NATO. There is always a big power as the anchor, without which such agreements carry little weight. Viewed in this light, the Pakistan-Saudi Arabia agreement seems symbolic rather than one of strategic military value.

Any alliance in West Asia must factor in the US military bases across Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and the UAE. These bases, with over 40,000 US troops, support air and naval operations, logistics and intelligence gathering. Saudi Arabia's and the region's security dependency on the US is significant.

The reliability of this dependency has, however, been repeatedly tested in recent years and the geopolitical realities of US security guarantees are beginning to look doubtful. The 2019 drone strikes by Iranian proxies on Saudi Arabian oil facilities attracted only a muted US response. Six years later, Trump's pledge to “protect” Qatar, after it committed billions of dollars of investment in the US, proved of little use.

Within months of this assurance came the first-ever direct Iranian strike and the first-ever Israeli strike on a Gulf state. Iran struck the US Al-Udeid air base in Qatar on June 23, followed by Israel’s strike on Hamas in the heart of Qatar on September 9.