RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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0 Share Newsweek is a Trust Project member See more of our trusted coverage when you search. Prefer Newsweek on Google to see more of our trusted coverage when you search. President Donald Trump spent years bullying Europe into taking responsibility for its own security . If only he’d started a war there, he could’ve saved himself a lot of trouble.
Within months of the White House authorizing mass strikes against Iran and dragging the United States into another Middle Eastern conflict from which there is no simple escape, regional powers Turkey , Saudi Arabia and nuclear-armed Pakistan announced they’d struck a brand-new defense pact.
Trump on Sunday praised the agreement, described by Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan as “technically” the same as NATO’s mutual defense principle, on Truth Social. “It shows how the Middle East is coming together, and how Countries will finally be able to defend themselves in a more meaningful way… WOW!”
A day later, when the 60-day deadline for Tehran and Washington to strike a peace under June’s memorandum of understanding expired, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan picked up the phone to his American counterpart.
He told Trump to “make the utmost use of diplomacy” to end the conflict, and added that Turkey will take a “strong stance on ensuring regional stability and security” via their new defense pact.
It's a sign of things to come. War in Iran has shown key Middle Eastern powers they can no longer rely solely on the U.S. to guarantee their security and are taking matters into their own hands. Before long, Washington may discover that a Middle East less dependent on American protection is also one less susceptible to American pressure.
The Mecca Joint Defence Agreement, signed at Islam’s holiest city on August 7 by Erdogan, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, is by no means as robust as the North Atlantic Treaty that underpins NATO .
Its headline provision is unmistakably NATO-like : an armed attack against one of the three states will be considered an attack against all. But almost everything else remains under construction.
Fidan said members would need to take “very humble but concrete steps” to nail down the agreement's limits and decide through consultation what kind of support an attack would actually trigger. A ministerial committee and Saudi-based secretariat are planned, but operational details remain scant.
Other countries may be invited to join the pact, but Egypt, the obvious first choice given its close ties with all three signatories as part of the informal “Sunni Diamond," has not yet expressed interest.
That said, the agreement carries real potential, as each state brings something unique to the table.
If they can turn those complementary strengths into meaningful cooperation across joint defense production, air and missile defense, intelligence sharing, and maritime security, the arrangement could complement America’s own objectives rather well.
The Trump administration’s National Security Strategy calls for shifting American military attention toward the Western Hemisphere, maintaining focus on the Indo-Pacific and avoiding the kind of “forever wars” that have repeatedly bogged the U.S. down in the Middle East. It also explicitly calls for regional partners to shoulder more responsibility, as Trump has made perfectly clear to America’s European allies.
Europe is being asked to carry more of the burden inside NATO, an alliance which the U.S. helped to create and effectively leads. Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are building a separate entity, and there is no American seat at the table.
Dependence has always bought the United States something in return: influence.
Trump wants NATO’s European members to become more self-reliant, but Washington has shown considerably less enthusiasm when “self-reliant” starts to mean “independent of America.”
For example, when the European Union in 2025 moved to prioritize European weapons manufacturers over U.S. suppliers, the White House threatened to cut off the bloc’s access to American weapons systems .
In other words, Washington likes burden-sharing, but not at the expense of its control. The Iran war has made that balance harder to maintain in the Middle East.
Gulf states spent decades cultivating their status as commercial and diplomatic safe havens in the shade of an American security umbrella; Iranian missiles and drones have muddied that image. Turkey and Saudi Arabia have also watched Israel ruthlessly pursue its own objectives with no regard for wider regional stability, with Washington either unable or unwilling to restrain it.
But as Ankara, Riyadh and Islamabad pursue greater strategic autonomy through defense partnerships beyond Washington’s direct control, other regional powers will be watching closely. If the Mecca pact begins to deliver meaningful military coordination, access to new defense technology or greater diplomatic leverage, it could provide a model for the signatories’ neighbors to follow suit.
Erdogan’s call offered a small preview of what that future might look like. He did not threaten Trump or present the Mecca pact as an anti-American bloc. He did, however, tell Trump to reengage in negotiations, and made it clear that Turkey intends to play a greater role in setting the agenda for Middle Eastern security.
The question is no longer whether some Middle Eastern powers want to take greater responsibility for their own defense; they plainly do. Now, Trump must ask whether America is prepared to surrender some of the influence that came with doing it for them.
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