Stimson view on how Saudi-Pak pact may benefit US policy, increasingly feels this pact had US blessing
Effective Buck-Passing: Why the US Should Welcome the Saudi-Pakistan Defense Pact
Unpacking what the recent Saudi-Pakistan defense pact means for U.S. Interests
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The newly announced Saudi-Pakistan mutual defense pact indeed marks a watershed for both the Middle East and South Asia. Riyadh and Islamabad have deeply cooperated on security for decades, but this time, they have gone a step further by formally and explicitly binding their security to one another, declaring that “any aggression against either country shall be considered an aggression against both.” For Saudi Arabia, the pact delivers the firmer external guarantees it has been more actively seeking in a volatile region, especially as Israeli assertiveness across the region, alongside Iranian and Houthi threats, collides with the kingdom’s rising economic stakes. For Pakistan, it revives a historic partnership and elevates its geopolitical profile, while transforming a once-implicit assurance into a two-way collective defense agreement that adds to its security, which is especially significant at a moment of heightened tension with India.
Far from threatening American interests, this is the kind of buck-passing with the potential of burden-shedding that Washington should welcome. Critics may argue that the pact reflects Saudi doubts about U.S. reliability — given regional tensions due to the war in Gaza and episodic gaps in U.S. security provision, such as reactions to Israeli operations in neighboring states like Qatar — but this interpretation overstates the case. Even if spurred by questions around American security assurances, the pact is less a rejection of U.S. security than a pragmatic decision by Riyadh to share risk and reduce dependence, and on balance a constructive Pakistani contribution to regional security, which ultimately benefits U.S. interests.
For one, it redistributes security burdens away from America. For decades, the U.S. has been the default guarantor in the Gulf, stationing troops, keeping carriers on patrol, and intervening whenever crises against Gulf powers erupt. Washington has backed Saudi Arabia in its wars and proxy fights, from providing logistical support for the kingdom’s bombing campaign in Yemen to intercepting Houthi missiles and drones over the sea lanes of the Red Sea. American assets remain heavily committed to protecting Gulf shipping and Saudi critical infrastructure. These commitments are rising, not falling, as drone and missile technology threats have proliferated. The stakes will only increase as Saudi Arabia invests heavily in emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, which depend on secure and resilient physical infrastructure.
The Biden administration floated a formal mutual defense agreement with Saudi Arabia among other inducements to encourage Saudi-Israel normalization, a step that would have bound U.S. commitments in the region even more deeply.
But Washington’s global bandwidth is limited, and even pre-existing security commitments in much of the world, including the Middle East, are struggling to retain domestic political support. The U.S. also faces greater entrapment and entanglement risks in the Middle East given Israeli military activity across the region. From this vantage point, the Saudi-Pakistan defense pact represents effective buck-passing: Riyadh is anchoring its security to Islamabad instead of bargaining for a deeper American guarantee.
The pact also injects a measure of stability into two volatile regions without new U.S. commitments. For Iran, any aggression against Riyadh now risks drawing in neighboring Pakistan, raising the costs of escalation through both conventional and proxy channels. Israel professes no obvious interest in attacking Saudi Arabia, but in the event it does, Pakistani backing for Saudi Arabia could militate against a major escalation. In South Asia, the equation also shifts. India and Pakistan remain prone to escalatory military behavior, fueled by crises triggered by terrorist violence, the relative power differential, and external backing available to both countries. At the very moment Pakistan faces Indian coercion, Riyadh has elevated its security partnership with Islamabad, which will be a reason for New Delhi to be more cautious before acting militarily against Pakistan. The pact also encourages restraint in Islamabad, since Riyadh will have little interest in being dragged into an unnecessary confrontation with India — a reality not lost on Islamabad. Pakistan will also want the arrangement and associated benefits to endure rather than risk losing Saudi backing, as well as geopolitical face, due to frisky behavior toward India. Fears of Pakistan being emboldened into aggression against India are overstated.
Some in Washington will worry about cross-pressures. A closer Saudi-Pakistan security relationship inevitably strengthens Islamabad’s hand relative to New Delhi, which undermines the Biden-era U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy that sought to position India as a net security provider in the region. This doesn’t undermine the Trump administration’s approach to Asia focused on making bilateral relationships more advantageous for the U.S. — in particular, renegotiating the terms of U.S.–India bilateral trade while limiting Indian purchases of Russian oil. As for India, its diplomatic and strategic work is cut out. Some in New Delhi may be tempted to explore even closer India-Israel cooperation, which would take India away from an Indo-Pacific focus that it has shown a preference for over the last few years.
However, Indian strategic appetite for, and Israeli interest in, hard balancing a Saudi-Pakistan nexus are likely to be low due to Israel’s desire for an eventual normalization with Saudi Arabia. India also has deep economic interests in Saudi Arabia, including a large Indian diaspora, which it wouldn’t want to jeopardize when it faces multiple geopolitical headwinds. India is likely to continue to work a wedge strategy to manage Saudi-Pakistan alignment, even if the prospects of such an approach succeeding amid the new regional security environment are not favorable to New Delhi.
The Saudi-Pakistan pact helps check the influence of major rivals of the United States. China and Russia have been expanding influence with Riyadh, while Islamabad’s dependence on Beijing, in particular in the security domain, has grown manifold.
Some may argue that Saudi Arabia risks being folded into China’s military orbit because Pakistan relies heavily on Chinese military equipment. But that misunderstands the relationship. Riyadh does not need Chinese defense technology; it already fields one of the most advanced arsenals of largely U.S. and Western systems in the region. On the side of Pakistan, it will use the opportunity to both diversify away from China and strengthen its defense profile through Saudi investments in its domestic defense industrial base, in addition to seeking Gulf capital for the economy. Overall, the pact means that Saudi Arabia and Pakistan can reinforce one another’s security without either moving further into Beijing or Moscow’s camp. By tolerating and even welcoming this arrangement, Washington enables regional actors to hedge against China and Russia without America doing or spending more.
Finally, the nuclear question must be considered carefully. The pact can pave the way for a Pakistani nuclear umbrella over Saudi Arabia. This may be central to Riyadh’s calculus, but it is hardly unprecedented. For decades, it has been assumed that Pakistani nuclear capabilities were at least indirectly available to Saudi Arabia. The pact formalizes the symbolism of Pakistani nuclear cover for the kingdom, while leaving sufficient ambiguity for both Islamabad and Riyadh on how and when they will signal on the nuclear umbrella. The more destabilizing concern for both the United States and Israel has always been different: the risk of Pakistani technology transfer to Iran, especially since the revelations of the A.Q. Khan network’s nuclear trafficking in the 1990s, from which Tehran derived benefit. Here, the pact may mitigate the danger. By binding Pakistan’s nuclear-armed military into Riyadh’s security framework, it raises the costs of any cooperation with Tehran and aligns Islamabad’s incentives against such proliferation.
What remains less certain is how an actual Pakistani nuclear umbrella over Saudi Arabia would extend, what Saudis may seek in material terms, and what Pakistan might be willing to do.
As currently declared, Pakistan’s capabilities fall short, or at best just suffice, to threaten areas beyond Saudi territory when deployed from Pakistan. If the pact results in the declaration and testing of longer-range Pakistani systems, or positioning of Pakistani assets on Saudi territory, it will certainly be a negative outcome on the count of long-standing U.S. concerns and policy efforts related to restraining Pakistan from having missiles that fully range Israel. Yet, this is not a given. Top Pakistan military leadership is reasonably sensitive to this concern, notwithstanding the rhetoric of some civilian Pakistani leaders. Moreover, Riyadh does not face existential threats comparable to those faced by South Korea, Japan, and European nations, and its extended deterrence requirements are therefore ambiguous, which opens space for a range of arrangements and limits. The U.S. also retains influence with both Saudi Arabia and Pakistan to shape the terms of any prospective nuclear umbrella and limit nuclear technology sharing — a dynamic that allows for preservation of U.S. nonproliferation interests. The bottom line is clear: Saudi Arabia, and to a lesser extent Pakistan, are investing in their own security with each other’s help rather than drawing America further in. Indeed, Washington trades some control over the Middle Eastern security architecture — and chips away at influence over Riyadh in particular — but a more resilient regional security architecture that opens the path for the U.S. to do less on a subset of regional problems is precisely the kind of strategic buck-passing that U.S. grand strategy should encourage.
A Middle East and South Asia where regional powers engage in greater self-help resulting in an improved regional balance amid rising threats is ultimately a step toward a more sustainable American security posture.
The Saudi-Pakistan defense pact shifts security burdens from the US, boosts regional stability, and redefines alliances in the Middle East and South Asia.
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