Saudi Arabia Can No Longer Rely on Its Traditional Security Arrangement

Although Saudi Arabia spends heavily on its military (nearly 7% of its GDP in 2023, more than double that of the U.S.) it has relied on external security guarantees. The U.S. provides a significant security guarantee for defense against regional foes including Israel and Iran and its proxies. This guarantee has slowly eroded over the past decade. Successive U.S. administrations, while committing to their Middle Eastern ally, stopped short of providing sufficient support when really needed. 

Beginning with President Obama’s ‘Pivot to Asia’, the U.S. began limiting its engagement in the Middle East, ostensibly to focus on the mounting Chinese threat in Asia. This only underlined a gradual decline in U.S. influence and the country’s inability to honor all commitments with its allies. When the Arab Spring roared across the Middle East in 2011, engulfing dictatorial regimes in multiple countries, Saudi Arabia – a familiar monarchy – watched anxiously as the U.S. offered no support to leaders who were considered faithful U.S. allies. In 2015, President Obama signed a nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia’s regional foe, Iran. Although it promised a constrained nuclear program for Iran, it nonetheless threatened Saudi Arabia. Even though this was overturned by Trump in 2018, it did not help ease Saudi anxieties. If anything, this meant that an increasingly unreliable America could not only fail to follow through but could also renege on its commitments. What was happening to other nations happened to Saudi Arabia in 2019. An attack on the two most significant Saudi oil facilities of Abqaiq and Khurais by Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen produced only a muted response from Washington.

The Abraham Accords, signed in 2020 under the Trump Administration, bolstered Israel’s position in the region by normalizing ties with the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan. These Accords opened a pathway for Israel to be integrated into the region without any pressure to give up any land. By ignoring the Palestinians, the move risked making the region more volatile. Other states in the region appeared to warm up to Israel in exchange for concessions from the United States. Sudan, for example, was removed from the State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism, not because it met a specific standard, but only as a quid pro quo. This itself signalled the weakening of U.S. power and its disregard for the so-called rules-based order it once sought to uphold. Saudi Arabia, which had developed covert ties with Israel in their mutual antagonism toward Iran, was conspicuously absent. 

The weakening of a great power creates a vacuum that is quickly filled. Beijing began engaging Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern states as early as 2017 in economic deals under the Belt and Road Initiative. China remains Saudi Arabia’s largest importer and exporter of goods. In 2023, it brokered a deal between Iran and Saudi Arabia to restore diplomatic ties between the two adversaries and rekindled a 2001 security cooperation agreement. It was a significant diplomatic milestone that put China as a serious great power contender to the U.S. in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia welcomed Chinese efforts and hailed them as its trade partner, but it knew that the Chinese non-interventionist policy could not guarantee the kind of security guarantees it required. Therefore, Saudi Arabia continued to press for a reliable security treaty with the U.S. — one not threatened by a change in U.S. administrations. As a weaker state caught between competition between two great powers, Saudi Arabia tried to hedge between both to extract military and economic benefits. This was not welcomed by the U.S., which stalled the prospect of a security treaty, even though the U.S. was inclined to include Saudi Arabia in the Abraham Accords.

The opportunity arose – in favor of Saudi Arabia – in 2022 after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, when the U.S. tried to reset ties with the world’s greatest oil exporter. It was then, under the Biden Administration, that the U.S. and Saudi Arabia appeared to be at the cusp of a concrete security agreement, where Saudi Arabia would recognize Israel as an extension of the Abraham Accords, in exchange for a security treaty and an agreement on a civil nuclear program. Not only did this deal collapse after the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel by Hamas, but the limitations of the U.S. “diplomatic triumph” with the Abraham Accords became apparent as well. The resulting war in Gaza and the uncontrolled Israeli appetite for aggression as it bombards countries across the region, including Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Iran, and even Qatar, has left Saudi Arabia in a precarious security dilemma. With diminished hopes for a security guarantee from the U.S., Saudi Arabia turned to another nuclear ally: Pakistan.

Pakistan: The Only Muslim Nuclear Power – And Determined to Remain So

Pakistan and Saudi Arabia have shared historical ties based on mutual benefits. Saudi Arabia provides financial support and oil to the economically vulnerable South Asian country. Pakistan, which despite its economic weakness, punches above its weight militarily, and provides military assistance to Saudi Arabia. Since 1967, Pakistan has trained over 8,000 Saudi armed forces personnel, conducted joint military exercises, and sent troops to Saudi Arabia at the request of the Saudi King when militants seized the Grand Mosque in 1979. The most crucial moment came in 1998, when Pakistan was met with sanctions and diplomatic isolation over its nuclear program, Saudi Arabia kept the Pakistani economy afloat with $3.4 billion in financial support.

Given this relationship, a strategic mutual defense agreement appears to be a plausible next step in the relationship between the two allies. Yet this conclusion ignores the fact that Pakistan shares a border and somewhat amicable ties with Iran – Saudi Arabia’s main regional adversary – and has historically refrained from openly siding with Saudi Arabia against Iran, at the risk of jeopardizing its relationship with its neighbor. In 2015, when Saudi Arabia militarily intervened in Yemen against the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels, Pakistan refused to offer support. Then why did Pakistan suddenly sign a defense pact with Saudi Arabia?

In the absence of a greater power willing to fill in the security vacuum, Pakistan stepped in. This is much like France offering to extend its nuclear umbrella to Europe amidst uncertainty regarding U.S. intentions to honor its security commitments to NATO and European allies. However, similar to France’s commitment, this agreement is shrouded in complexities. 

For one, the agreement does not explicitly make clear whether Saudi Arabia is now under Pakistan’s nuclear umbrella, and statements made in the aftermath by both Saudi and Pakistani spokesmen have deliberately maintained this ambiguity. But there has been strong insistence by Pakistan that the treaty should be considered for what it is: a defense pact, which is not designed for aggression against any other state. In other words, neither Pakistan wants to change its foreign policy towards Iran and Israel overnight and pull itself into a Middle Eastern conflict, nor Saudi Arabia wants to jeopardise ties with its second-largest trade partner: India (in FY 2023-24, exports to India were $31.42 billion, and import was US $11.56 billion). 

Pakistan repeatedly states that its nuclear program is designed to deter India, and is not directed at any other country. At the same time, it has on occasion hinted at playing the role of a nuclear protector. This is unlikely due to any aggressive design, but simply to maintain a monopoly as the exclusive Muslim nuclear power state. Again, a parallel can be drawn with how France would not want other states (more specifically, Germany) to develop their nuclear capabilities and would instead prefer to extend ambiguous nuclear support. But like Germany making strides to develop its defenses in the absence of U.S. guarantees and in the face of regional threats, Saudi Arabia and Turkey have both hinted at the possibility of acquiring nuclear weapons themselves. In such circumstances, these defense pacts may be Pakistan’s means to curb the nuclear desire of regional allies and maintain geostrategic leverage.

No doubt the agreement has elevated Pakistan’s status as a crucial geopolitical actor in the region, particularly in the wake of the U.S.’s receding influence. The agreement will certainly be watched closely by India, Israel, Iran, and other Middle Eastern states, and also by China, a traditional ally of Pakistan. However, this shift does not necessarily translate into dominance in regional affairs. Rather, it reflects a very natural phenomenon: when a great power declines, the resulting political vacuum is quickly filled by other states, often heightening instability.