When I read about the new mutual defense agreement between Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan, I found myself asking: “Where is Egypt?” Is its absence an expression of Egyptian strategic wisdom, or was Egypt simply excluded by the three countries?
I then found myself revisiting the dozens of alliances the world has known over the past century. They all used similar phrases: collective security, an attack against one of us is an attack against all of us.
But history raises a question more difficult than the wording of treaties:
What happens when the attack actually comes?
Does one country really fight for another simply because it signed a piece of paper with it?
This is where politics moves from rhetoric to reality.
On August 7, 2026, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan signed a mutual defense agreement in Mecca based on the principle that an attack against one party constitutes an attack against all. It was described as defensive and not directed against any particular country, without a detailed publicly announced military commitment.
This ambiguity may be deliberate for deterrence purposes, but it reminds us that the famous phrase itself is neither an army nor a political decision.
In my view, a genuine alliance has three levels: the political promise, military capability, and, most importantly, the will to use that capability when the cost becomes real.
History is full of alliances in which the first two existed, only for the third to disappear when the moment of truth arrived.
NATO, for Example
NATO, established in 1949, is an example of success that did not require a war.
Article 5 of the NATO treaty has never been formally activated throughout the alliance’s history. This is not evidence of weakness; quite the opposite. The purpose of the alliance was not to wage war, but to convince an adversary that it would not be confronting a single country if it started one.
Behind the text were armies training together, joint command structures, and enormous American military power.
The text did not create NATO’s power.
Power gave the text its meaning.
The Arab Joint Defense Treaty
There is also the Arab Joint Defense Treaty of 1950.
The text has existed since Arab states signed a collective defense treaty in Cairo, with a principle broadly similar to that of other collective-defense arrangements.
Yet the region experienced the wars of 1956, 1967, and 1973, as well as the invasion of Kuwait, without the treaty becoming a genuine collective-defense system.
The reason was that the states themselves did not agree on the definition of the threat. At times, their internal disagreements were greater than their disagreements with external adversaries.
There remains a vast distance between the emotional unity of a nation and the strategic unity of states.
The Baghdad Pact and the Warsaw Pact
The Baghdad Pact and the Warsaw Pact may offer examples of treaties dying—or turning against their own members.
The Baghdad Pact collapsed as political regimes changed in Iraq, Iran, and Pakistan, eventually coming to an end in 1979.
The lesson is clear:
States do not form alliances forever. Interests are what live or die.
The Warsaw Pact presents an even deeper paradox.
Its forces entered Czechoslovakia in 1968 to suppress the “Prague Spring” inside a member state of the alliance itself.
This raises a fundamental question:
Was it truly an alliance among equals, or a system of power dominated by a central state?
Who Defines an Act of Aggression?
The hardest question is: Who determines what constitutes an attack?
What happens when it is unclear who the aggressor is?
What about cyberattacks, militias, an unidentified drone, or an economic blockade?
Modern warfare has become far more complicated than the image of an army crossing another country’s borders.
The most important word in any defense agreement may therefore not be “defense,” but:
Who decides that an attack has occurred—and that the moment for war has arrived?
For example, if Egypt were a member of such an alliance, would cutting off the Nile’s water through the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam constitute an act of aggression requiring a collective response?
Would closing the Bab el-Mandeb Strait constitute an attack on Egypt?
These are not theoretical questions.
The Nuclear Question
The nuclear dimension is particularly important.
Pakistan’s presence adds a sensitive layer because it is a nuclear-armed state. Yet official statements have been careful to describe the agreement as defensive rather than as a nuclear alliance.
The distinction is enormous.
Would Pakistan’s nuclear deterrent extend, in any form, to protecting the security of other states under the agreement?
That is ultimately a question of command and control, and of whether one state is prepared to risk its own cities for the sake of another ally.
States Defend Interests
States do not defend their friends; they defend their interests.
The statement may sound harsh, but it is not necessarily cynical.
American defense of Western Europe was not based simply on affection. The fall of Europe would have directly threatened American security.
Here, morality and interest converge.
“I will defend you” becomes:
“I will defend you because your collapse threatens me as well.”
Perhaps that is the strongest possible foundation for an alliance.
What Makes a Defense Agreement Real?
A genuine defense agreement requires a common threat understood in roughly the same way by all parties, overlapping interests, military capabilities capable of operating together, command structures, planning, intelligence, joint exercises—and above all, political trust sufficient to convince an adversary that the allies will not retreat when the moment comes.
Ultimately, deterrence is psychological.
What matters is not only what you are capable of doing, but what your adversary believes you are willing to do.
What About Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan?
I return to the Saudi-Turkish-Pakistani agreement.
It is significant.
Saudi Arabia is a central economic and political power.
Turkey is a NATO member with substantial military capabilities.
Pakistan is a nuclear-armed state with considerable military weight.
And the three countries have a history of cooperation.
But the agreement should not be judged by the signing ceremony.
It should be judged by what happens between the ceremony and the moment of crisis.
Will a joint command structure emerge?
Will early-warning systems become integrated?
Will each country know in advance what is expected of it?
If these things happen, the agreement becomes a genuine deterrent.
Otherwise, it remains more a declaration of solidarity than a collective-defense system.
“The Promise We Hope Never to Test”
We normally measure a person’s sincerity by whether they keep their promise when the time comes.
But in defense agreements, the greatest success is that the moment of fulfillment never arrives—that the promise is so credible that the adversary never dares to test it.
The real value of a defense agreement may therefore lie in the war that never began because of it.
But if war does begin, the questions hidden behind the signing ceremony suddenly emerge:
How much will we pay?
Who will fight?
Where do the boundaries of solidarity end and the boundaries of national interest begin?
At that point, words written in ink become decisions written in blood.
Collective defense is therefore not merely a legal text. It is a delicate balance between capability, interest, trust, and political will.
The value of a promise does not lie in the beauty of its wording, but in the price its author remains willing to pay when the time comes to fulfill it.
Egypt’s Position
I conclude this article from my limited political perspective, acknowledging that I do not have access to all the details.
I believe Egypt’s absence from this agreement reflects wisdom on the part of the Egyptian leadership.
It is easy to make promises and much harder to act when the moment of truth arrives.
Egypt already has bilateral agreements with both Turkey and Saudi Arabia. It also has a peace treaty with Israel, faces a serious strategic challenge with Ethiopia, and must therefore weigh its actions with exceptional precision.
For Egypt, entering a new multilateral defense commitment would not simply be a gesture of solidarity.
It would mean accepting obligations whose consequences could extend far beyond the circumstances that existed when the agreement was signed.
And in matters of national security, the easiest thing is to make a promise; the hardest is to keep it when the price becomes real.
