The Saudi-Pakistan Defence Pact Is An American Plan – OpEd

P. K. Balachandran

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It is part of Trump’s plan to withdraw US boots from other countries leaving it to them to work out their own arrangements. Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, both pro-US, worked out a defence pact with Trump showing the green signal.

Last week, two unexpected developments took place in South and West Asia. The first, was the Saudi Arabia-Pakistan Strategic Mutual Defence Agreement (SMDA), and the second, was US President Donald Trump’s demand that the Taliban return the Bagram airbase in Afghanistan which it had seized from the US in September 2001.

With the signing of the KSA-Pak SMDA, the US ceased to be the guarantor of KSA’s security and Pakistan had taken its place.

The most widely held view is that this happened because of America’s failure to protect its allies in West Asia against Israeli aggression. Qatar, a US ally, was bombed by both the US and Israel disregarding the US guarantee of security and the presence of 20,000 US troops there.

But there are others who think that vacating the guarantor of security role in favour of Pakistan was America’s way of getting West Asian States to manage their own defences, as indeed it did in the case of the European members of NATO. Under MAGA, President Trump had decided not to put US boots on the ground anywhere abroad.

Evidence of this could be seen in Washington’s silence on the KSA-Pakistan pact. The involvement of pro-Trump Pakistani leaders such as Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Army Chief Field Marshal Asim Munir in bringing about the KSA-Pak SMDA is an indication of the hidden American hand. Both KSA and Pakistan remain close allies of the US despite the pact. Pakistan became a very close of the US after the India-Pakistan war in May this year. Asim Munir was hosted by the US twice this year by Trump first and the CENTCOM next.

The timing of President Trump’s announcement that he intends to retrieve the Bagaram airbase in Afghanistan is also significant and indicative of the new security architecture in West and South Asia. Trump’s statement, in fact, coincided with the signing of the KSA-Pak SMDA.