Every U.S. president over the last 20 years has tried to move the United States out of the Middle East. Barack Obama campaigned on ending the George W. Bush-era war in Iraq, only to direct a surge of 50,000 U.S. troops into Afghanistan and return the U.S. military to Iraqi soil once the Islamic State started expanding. Joe Biden wanted to focus on U.S. strategic competition with China, only to expend diplomatic capital to a war in Gaza. Donald Trump, meanwhile, insisted dumb wars would no longer be fought under his watch, then chose to embark on the dumbest one of this generation.
The Middle East hasn’t been kind to the United States. The United States hasn’t been kind to the Middle East either. Frankly, both could use a break from each other, which is why last week’s big news from three of the region’s major powers has the potential of being significant.
Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkey announced Aug. 7 that they have entered into a mutual defense agreement that sounds quite similar to what the United States has with its NATO allies. Called the “Mecca Joint Defense Agreement,” Riyadh, Islamabad and Ankara declared that an attack on any one of them would henceforth be considered an attack on all of them. The accord is a supplement to a bilateral deal the Saudis and Pakistanis signed with each other in September, which brought a squadron of Pakistani fighter jets and about 8,000 Pakistani troops to the oil-rich kingdom.
Saudi Arabia in particular could use some protection. The U.S. war in Iran and its predictable consequences has forced Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to ask a question he’d prefer to avoid: Is Riyadh’s traditional security relationship with Washington as useful as it seems? Salman isn’t the only Arab leader asking this; Jordan, which boasts long-standing military and intelligence collaboration with the United States and hosts around 4,000 U.S. troops, has learned in recent weeks that a U.S. military presence can attract Iranian missile attacks as much as prevent them.
Saudi Arabia, however, has it worse. Since the war with Iran began in February, the kingdom has been the target of three entities: Iran to the northeast, Iranian-backed Iraqi militias to the north and the Houthis to the south, an old foe the Saudi military attempted to subdue with a seven-year air campaign that ended in a stalemate in 2022.
Saudi Arabia is in the middle of a region whose security situation is dicey and whose politics are even more treacherous now due to the war in Iran. Normally, the Saudis would be phoning Washington for more air defense missiles and air-to-ground munitions and perhaps a larger U.S. military presence. The problem is that the country the Saudi government contacts during troubling times is also the country that ignored Riyadh’s advice and propelled the wider region into a conflict nobody outside of Israel wanted.
By strengthening its defense relationships with Pakistan and Turkey, the Saudis are sending a message to the Trump administration that U.S. unreliability is pushing them in another direction. Like all middle powers, Saudi Arabia is expanding its options, trying to lessen its dependence on any single country and doing what it can to promote its own defense.
Instead of greeting this new alliance with panic, we should treat it as an opportunity to downsize the U.S. military presence in this region. Such a course correction would serve Washington’s Arab partners just as much as it would serve the United States.
The more Uncle Sam is involved in the Middle East, the worse the Middle East becomes. Look no further than the Strait of Hormuz, where the U.S. decision to attack Iran has transformed a once-free and open international waterway into a restricted area policed by Iranian drones and missiles.
Will Turkey and Pakistan go to war on Saudi Arabia’s behalf if the time calls for it? Those countries will have to decide for themselves. The United States should get out of the way rather than continuing to pretend it has all the answers.
As the last six months have shown, it clearly doesn’t.
Daniel DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities and a foreign affairs columnist for the Chicago Tribune.