Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Türkiye made an unusually sweeping promise to one another when they signed the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement on August 7: an armed attack on one would be treated as an attack on all three. The agreement seeks to strengthen collective deterrence by confronting potential adversaries with the combined power of three of the Muslim world’s most consequential states.
Less than two months later, that promise is facing its first serious test. Houthi missiles and drones have repeatedly targeted Saudi Arabia. Pakistan has carried out air and drone strikes inside Afghanistan amid escalating cross-border violence. And Türkiye’s increasingly adversarial relationship with Israel has taken on a dangerous military dimension in Syria.
These developments expose a dilemma built into the pact from the start. Make the guarantee broad enough to deter, and the three countries risk being drawn into wars arising from threats they do not share. Limit it enough to preserve strategic autonomy, and the pact risks losing the credibility that gives collective defense its deterrent power.
Alliance theory has long grappled with this tension. Glenn Snyder described alliances as caught between abandonment and entrapment: states seek commitments strong enough to ensure that allies will defend them, but not so expansive that they are dragged into conflicts in which their own vital interests are not at stake. Deterrence makes this balancing act harder. As Thomas Schelling argued, a commitment deters only when an adversary believes it will be honored. A military alliance therefore derives much of its value from the credibility of its promise to act together.
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