Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, center, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, left, and Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif pose after signing the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, in this handout photograph taken and released by Pakistan's Prime Minister's Office on Aug. 7. Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan signed a joint defense agreement that day amid violence in the region from Houthi attacks and the U.S.-Iran war.AFP/YONHAP
Cha Se-hyeon
The author is an editorial writer at the JoongAng Ilbo.
Geopolitics teaches that when the balance among great powers shifts, the peripheries of their spheres collide and become unstable first. Amid U.S.-China strategic competition, Europe has seen the Russia-Ukraine war drag on into its fourth year. In the Middle East, the United States and Israel are locked in a game of chicken with Iran and its proxies. In Asia, China-Japan tensions over Taiwan are intensifying as North Korea strengthens alignment with China, Russia and Iran. The launch last month of the Mecca Defence Alliance — dubbed an “Islamic NATO” — and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s first visit while in office to the southern Kuril Islands, known in Japan as the Northern Territories, are the latest examples.
On Aug. 7, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan signed a joint defense agreement in Mecca. At a ministerial meeting on Aug. 31, they officially named it the Mecca Defence Alliance, creating the first collective security pact among Islamic countries. It combines Saudi oil wealth, Turkey's military manpower and defense industry — the second-largest armed forces in NATO — and Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, intelligence capabilities and counterterrorism experience.
The alliance reflects security anxieties shared by all three. Washington’s security commitment to the Middle East has weakened under the second Trump administration. The Iran war has shown how clashes between Iran and Israel can pull neighboring countries into conflicts they do not want.
The pact therefore borrows from NATO’s Article 5, treating an armed attack on one member as an attack on all. Their shared Sunni Muslim identity gives it popular appeal.
Yet the three countries face different principal threats. Saudi Arabia worries about Shiite Iran and Iranian proxies such as Yemen’s Houthis. Turkey has longstanding tensions with Greece but sees Israel as a greater security threat. Pakistan regards India as its archrival.
The Mecca alliance is therefore less an alliance against a common enemy, as NATO was built to counter the Soviet Union, than a transactional, functional security partnership intended to deter individual threats. Still, its members say the alliance was “built to expand.” Egypt, Bangladesh and Malaysia have shown interest.
The alliance has already moved to address a member’s security concerns. Reuters reported that on Sept. 9, amid fighting between the Houthis and the Saudi-led coalition around the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, a route for Saudi oil exports, Pakistan conveyed a Saudi warning to Iran to rein in the Houthis.
Pakistan, which maintains channels with Tehran and has mediated U.S.-Iran ceasefire talks, reportedly warned that failure to restrain the Houthis could turn a proxy conflict into a broader regional security crisis.
Pakistani Defense Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif told television that aggression against one country would be considered aggression against all three, saying the episode could become the first test of the collective defense pact.
Its effectiveness remains uncertain. In Nam-sik, director of strategic regional studies at the Korea National Diplomatic Academy, wrote that the three countries were united by a common fear that “no one may protect them to the end.” He said its significance lies in their declaration that they will no longer passively accept an order shaped by the United States, Iran and Israel.
On Asia’s periphery, tensions between Russia and Japan are rising over the Northern Territories. As Tokyo and Beijing remain at odds over Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s remarks about possible intervention in a Taiwan contingency, Russia and North Korea are supporting China by pressuring Japan over the disputed islands and Tokyo’s Three Non-Nuclear Principles.
On Aug. 13, Putin visited Iturup, called Etorofu in Japan, one of four Russian-controlled islands claimed by Tokyo. He criticized Japan for imposing unilateral sanctions on Ukraine without understanding the conflict’s “root causes” and rebuked Tokyo for identifying Russia as a threat in its defense white paper.
Russia ignored Japan’s protests. Its Pacific Fleet conducted missile drills near the Kurils. On Sept. 4, Russia unveiled a monument in Khabarovsk depicting Soviet troops destroying a stone marker bearing Japan’s imperial chrysanthemum crest.
Takaichi said Japan had demanded that Russia halt the installation or remove it, citing public sentiment in Japan. Russia’s Foreign Ministry dismissed the demand as akin to asking the wind not to blow or the sun not to shine.
The four islands were Japanese territory under an 1855 Russo-Japanese treaty but were seized by Soviet forces in 1945. Japanese residents were expelled, and Moscow has administered them since.
After returning to power in 2012, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe sought to leverage the 1956 Japan-Soviet Joint Declaration and expanded economic cooperation to regain Habomai and Shikotan first, with the remaining two islands to follow later.
But as North Korea, China and Russia draw closer, Abe’s effort to secure the islands’ return appears increasingly unlikely to bear fruit in the years ahead.
This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.
