Trump Welcomes Mecca Pact, but Can It Replace the US Security Umbrella?

When Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan signed a joint defense pact in Mecca ten days ago, some geopolitical analysts viewed the agreement as a message to Washington — that some of America's closest military allies no longer rely on its security umbrella.

On August 17, US President Donald Trump signaled he had no objection to the Middle East seeking its own defense. “Great to see Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan recently signed the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement. This shows the Middle East is coming together and countries will eventually be able to defend themselves more effectively,” he wrote on Truth Social.

Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif thanked Trump within hours, praising his “courageous and decisive leadership” for helping prevent “a nuclear catastrophe in South Asia.”

Trump's reaction aligns with his long-held political stance: accusing allies of not spending enough on their own defense and draining US resources. However, the big question is whether agreements like the Mecca pact can replace Pakistan, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia's reliance on the United States.

A Deliberate Pullback

Analysts say the timing of Trump's remarks was no coincidence. Over the past year, he has pushed allies to shoulder more of their own defense burdens. At the NATO summit in The Hague in June 2025, member states agreed to raise defense spending targets from 2% to 5% of GDP by 2035 after pressure from Trump.

Before posting about the Mecca pact, Trump also announced “significant cuts” to joint military exercises with South Korea, citing costs and his “very good” relationship with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

Betul Dogan-Akkas, assistant professor of international relations at Ankara University, argues Turkey's role in the Mecca pact should be seen in that broader context. “Clearly, Gulf states have lost their deterrence capability since February 28, and they have to re-establish deterrence without relying on the US,” she said, referring to when the US and Israel launched a war against Iran without consulting Gulf allies.

However, not all analysts see Trump's reaction as a sign of withdrawal from the region. Umer Karim, a research fellow at the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies in Riyadh, believes “the US will stay in the region, but perhaps in a way that local partners increase contributions and adjust to fill the gap left by near-total reliance on the US.”

Not Just Security

For Ankara, Dogan-Akkas says the calculation is not only about security but also status. “Turkey's main strategic interest is not to enhance national security; the main interest is to emphasize its role as a security provider rather than a security consumer.”

Gokhan Ereli, an international relations expert at Ibn Haldun University in Istanbul, sees Ankara's willingness to bind itself with two non-NATO partners as rooted in long-standing suspicions of Washington. “Where Gulf states fear the US umbrella has holes, Ankara suspects that umbrella never really covered it,” he said, calling the pact “a hedge with Turkish characteristics” — not anti-US but “post-dependence.”

An Untested Promise

The Mecca pact states that an armed attack on one member “shall be considered an attack against all,” language modeled on NATO's Article 5. However, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said an attacked nation must first request support and specify the type of assistance desired.

Mansoor Ahmed, a lecturer at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at Australian National University, sees similar flexibility in the pact: “Each country is sovereign in determining the timing, nature, scale, and scope of military assistance from the other two.”

According to Reza Khanzadeh, a Middle East analyst at George Mason University, the bilateral Saudi-Pakistan pact signed in September 2025 did not trigger a broader conflict after Iran and the Houthis attacked Saudi Arabia. That suggests similar clauses are unlikely to automatically drag signatories into each other's wars.

Karim agrees commitments are conditional rather than fixed. It is “a alignment that provides additional options and defense resources for each country but does not really replace existing capabilities.” He calls it a genuinely new institutional initiative, “something new in the region since the Baghdad Pact or CENTO.”

This ambiguity helps Riyadh, Ankara, and Islamabad show unity without directly provoking Iran, but it also means the pact is unlikely to soon match the roughly 50,000 US troops stationed in the region.

“It creates a viable alternative, but given the structural dependence of Gulf states on the US, it doesn't really replace it. It should be seen as an added layer of deterrence,” Karim concluded.