In recent weeks, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan announced a new mutual defence pact, one that has already been portrayed in Islamabad as a diplomatic triumph. The agreement, in essence, stipulates that any attack on either nation will be regarded as an attack on both. For Pakistan, long obsessed with its rivalry with India, this is being hailed as a security guarantee—an assurance that Riyadh will stand shoulder to shoulder should hostilities flare on the subcontinent. Yet the fine print, and the regional context in which the pact is embedded, tell a rather different story. What Pakistan may have perceived as a protective umbrella could instead bind it to a costly and open-ended conflict far from its borders.
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| Shahbaz sharif with MBS |
The Pakistani Reading: A Shield Against India
Since its creation in 1947, Pakistan has viewed India as its principal adversary. The wars of 1948, 1965, and 1971, the skirmishes in Kargil in 1999, and countless crises along the Line of Control in Kashmir have ensured that Islamabad’s foreign policy is defined above all by the India question. Against this backdrop, every alliance or foreign arrangement is measured against one yardstick: does it strengthen Pakistan against India?
The announcement of the Saudi pact has thus been greeted in Islamabad as a form of deterrence. If India contemplates punitive strikes following a terrorist incident or military provocation, Pakistani officials argue, New Delhi will now have to think twice. The reasoning is straightforward: any aggression would not merely invite Pakistani retaliation but could also trigger Saudi involvement, potentially transforming a bilateral clash into a regional confrontation. To policymakers in Rawalpindi, home of Pakistan’s powerful military headquarters, this looks like a strategic jackpot.
The Saudi Perspective: A Different Battlefield
But Saudi Arabia’s motives lie elsewhere. Riyadh does not share Pakistan’s obsession with South Asia. Its security anxieties are closer to home, particularly across the southern border in Yemen. For nearly a decade, Saudi Arabia has been embroiled in a grinding conflict against the Houthi movement, which it views as an Iranian proxy. Despite investing vast sums in military campaigns and deploying advanced Western hardware, Riyadh has found itself trapped in a war without victory.
For the Saudis, then, the pact with Pakistan offers more than symbolism. It provides the possibility of fresh manpower, additional military logistics, and political cover for continued operations in Yemen. Saudi strategists know well that Pakistan’s army, one of the largest Muslim militaries in the world, has long experience of both counter-insurgency and conventional conflict. Tying Islamabad into a mutual defence pact effectively internationalises the Yemen front: if the Houthis strike Saudi territory, Pakistan would now be treaty-bound to respond.
The Trap of Automatic Commitments
It is here that the dangers of the pact become most evident. Mutual defence clauses, on paper, appear reassuring; they project solidarity and strengthen deterrence. Yet in practice they often drag signatories into wars they neither anticipated nor desired. History is littered with such examples, from the entangling alliances before the First World War to the Cold War obligations that forced smaller nations into superpower rivalries.
Pakistan may imagine the agreement as a shield against India, but the far likelier scenario is one where Houthi drones or missiles cross into Saudi airspace. In that event, Riyadh would expect Islamabad to act, not with statements of sympathy but with military assets. Pakistan would suddenly find itself a co-belligerent in a conflict that has little to do with its own national interests but much to do with Saudi Arabia’s determination to contain Iranian influence on the Arabian Peninsula.
The Domestic Dilemma for Pakistan
Such an obligation would not come without domestic repercussions. Pakistan has a history of being pulled into Middle Eastern wars. During the 1980s, its support for the Afghan jihad was funded in part by Saudi Arabia, leaving behind militant networks that destabilise the country to this day. In 2015, when Riyadh first requested Pakistani troops for the Yemen campaign, the Pakistani parliament hesitated, aware of the sectarian fault lines at home. Pakistan has a sizeable Shia minority, and overt participation in a Saudi-Iranian proxy war risks inflaming tensions within its own borders.
Now, however, with a formalised pact in place, Islamabad may have little room for manoeuvre. Declining to aid Saudi Arabia after an attack would render the agreement meaningless and potentially rupture relations with one of its largest benefactors. Accepting the commitment, on the other hand, risks entangling Pakistan in a war that offers no clear exit and could consume resources needed for its own economic recovery.
Strategic Illusion or Strategic Burden?
At its core, the Saudi–Pakistan pact highlights a disjunction between perception and reality. For Pakistan, it is a symbolic deterrent aimed squarely at India, offering the illusion of an iron-clad guarantee. For Saudi Arabia, it is a means of internationalising its regional conflicts and ensuring reliable military backing. These diverging interpretations make the agreement less a partnership of equals and more a contract of convenience, where one side secures reassurance while the other extracts commitments.
The ultimate irony is that, in trying to secure itself against India, Pakistan may have signed away a portion of its strategic autonomy. Instead of deterring its traditional rival, it could soon find its soldiers deployed in deserts far from the subcontinent, fighting a war with no victories, only obligations. In that sense, the pact may be less a shield and more a trap—binding Pakistan to conflicts that were never its own and leaving the promise of security as fragile as ever.