The Saudi Arabia-Pakistan-Turkey deal provides the U.S. with an opportunity

Every U.S. president over the last 20 years has tried to move the United States out of the Middle East, an area so steeped in bad history and poor policy that one wonders why Washington bothers to be involved in the region at all. Barack Obama campaigned on ending the George W. Bush-era war in Iraq, only to direct a surge of 50,000 U.S. troops into Afghanistan and return the U.S. military to Iraqi soil once the Islamic State started expanding. Joe Biden wanted to focus on U.S. strategic competition with China, only to expend diplomatic capital to a war in Gaza. Donald Trump, meanwhile, insisted dumb wars would no longer be fought under his watch, then chose to embark on the dumbest one of this generation.

The Middle East hasn’t been kind to the United States. The United States hasn’t been kind to the Middle East either. Frankly, both could use a break from each other, which is why last week’s big news from three of the region’s major powers has the potential of being significant.

Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkey on Friday announced that they have entered into a mutual defense agreement that sounds quite similar to what the United States has with its NATO allies. Called the “Mecca Joint Defense Agreement,” Riyadh, Islamabad and Ankara declared that an attack on any one of them would henceforth be considered an attack on all of them. The accord is a supplement to a bilateral deal the Saudis and Pakistanis signed with each other in September, which brought a squadron of Pakistani fighter jets and about 8,000 Pakistani troops to the oil-rich kingdom.