The GCC and Collective Security | GCC

The Arab states of the Persian Gulf have looked outward for their security, especially to the West, for decades.

The United States, United Kingdom and France have bases throughout the region, underscoring the importance of the Persian Gulf to the West. But the sense of security these bases provide is not as solid as it once was.

In the US, a growing segment of the foreign policy world sees East Asia as more important to Washington, largely because of the rise of China as a threat to US hegemony.

Analysts who argue that the West is no longer a reliable protector of the Persian Gulf point to evidence such as the September attack on Doha by Israel, which continues to receive US support despite Washington's attempt to distance itself from the strike.

The uncertainty appears to have prompted Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) member states to consider other options for their security, perhaps the most notable recent example being the defense pact signed by Saudi Arabia and Pakistan last month.

Pakistan and Saudi Arabia continued to strengthen ties, including a visit to the latter by Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on October 27, during which a comprehensive economic framework was signed.

The GCC and collective security

Collective security in the GCC can be achieved through two separate but related concepts: 'collective governance' and 'endogenous security'.

Collective governance in the security context of the GCC will involve major regional powers, such as Egypt, Pakistan and Turkey, forming an alliance that will have a common interest in providing security to the countries of the wider Islamic world.

Egypt has the strongest and largest Arab army, and after the attack on Qatar, its president Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi offered a force that could intervene if any Arab country was attacked, offering 20,000 troops.

Pakistan is the only Muslim country with a nuclear deterrent, and Defense Minister Khawaja Asif did not rule out the possibility of other Arab countries joining the Pakistan-Saudi accord.

Turkey is a NATO member with Western military standards and advanced weaponry and is not shy about taking positions that support other Muslim-majority countries.

Previous iterations of these alliances have historically failed to achieve their goals, such as the Middle East Strategic Alliance proposed during the first administration of US President Donald Trump to counter Iran and its allied forces, but which has proven ineffective.

This was partly a result of his focus on Iran, although many countries in the region were moving away from viewing Iran as an immediate threat, in contrast to the US view of Tehran.

The second form of security is internal security based on shared defense structures among GCC members who have signed numerous regional security and defense pacts.

These included the formation of a joint military called the Peninsula Shield Force (PSF) in 1984, the Joint Defense Agreement (JDA) in 2000 – modeled after NATO's Article 5 and committed to collective defense – and finally the Joint Military Command in 2013, which aimed for a more integrated and centralized command structure.

While these alliances have somewhat enhanced a sense of collective security among members, they have not changed the fact that individual states have long relied on external guarantors, sovereignty concerns, and varying responses to regional conflicts.

The PSF was virtually useless during the 1990 invasion of Kuwait because it only had a brigade-sized force (approximately 5,000 troops) at the time and was caught off guard by the scale and speed of the Iraqi invasion. The JDA convened an emergency meeting only during the Israeli attack on Doha, reiterating the indivisibility of member states' security. The purpose of the JDA is collective action against an aggressor power such as NATO. It should have achieved this goal through more comprehensive mechanisms or coalitions with other military alliances, but it did not have this capability.

These incidents highlight that what exists is a joint military command structure with little cohesion based on mutual defense agreements that are difficult to enforce.

The presence of US forces and reliance on US arms supplies limits the GCC's ability to act independently. Also, the armies of these countries lack extensive combat experience compared to other regional armies such as those of Egypt and Turkey.

Still, five key areas remain where the GCC can cooperate: logistics and supply chains, technological innovation, defense industry management and production, intelligence sharing, and air and missile defense.

It remains to be seen how the GCC will manage such coalitions alongside the presence of external powers and what path it will take towards achieving collective security.

The diversification of Saudi Arabia

On September 17 Saudi Arabia and Pakistan have signed Strategic Mutual Defense Agreement (SMDA), stating that aggression against one will be considered aggression against both, a clause reminiscent of Article 5 of NATO's North Atlantic Treaty.

The deal diversified Saudi Arabia's security guarantees, reduced its dependence on the US and emphasized its autonomy in defense arrangements outside the Western mandate, giving it a balance between the US, China and regional power poles.

Although China avoids formal military alliances in the Middle East, it would be happy to see its rival Washington contained. China has close ties with Pakistan and a more formal Saudi presence in Pakistan would be welcomed by Beijing.

China has invested billions of dollars in infrastructure and energy projects under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and is Pakistan's largest trading partner with bilateral trade of over $25 billion annually. China also accounts for 81 percent of Pakistan's arms imports.

However, the US presence in the Middle East is massive and long-standing. it has 19 bases in the regionled an international coalition to liberate Kuwait in 1991 and protect commercial shipping in the Persian Gulf – as well as leading the 2003 invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq and decades of support for Israel.

On the other hand, Pakistan has its own conflicts with India and Afghanistan, giving it limited capacity to effectively engage in Middle East crises despite the mutual defense clause.

Therefore, while this pact has diversified Riyadh's security options, it has not yet been able to redefine its traditional security dependencies.

Tangible achievements

But the agreement still represents a new, non-Western approach to regional security, entrusting the resolution of complex security issues to the countries of the region themselves.

It also allows these countries to benefit from each other's assets and resources. Through cooperation with Pakistan's defense industry, Saudi Arabia aims to realize its ambitious Vision 2030 goals, which include localizing 50 percent of its defense needs in the next five years and joining the ranks of the world's top 25 arms exporting countries.

Pakistan has made huge strides in its missile industry with its Shaheen-3 missile reaching a range of 2,750 km (1,709 miles), even raising concerns about the possible production of intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of hitting targets as far away as the United States.

Saudi Arabia has previously cooperated with China in this area and can now invest in drone and missile industries with Pakistan, giving it a deterrent against Iranian missile threats.

Pakistani engineers and institutions such as Heavy Industries Taxila and Pakistan Aeronautical Complex have the expertise to build, maintain and repair drones, aircraft and aviation equipment.

Saudi Arabia could benefit from cooperating with them by providing generous funding that could ultimately benefit civilian sectors such as aerospace, artificial intelligence, robotics, cyber security and electronics.

Although such collaborations appear simple at first glance, they face operational challenges.

Defense cooperation and the establishment of joint military industries require coordination and integration of defense standards. Saudi Arabia's defense system is Western in nature and heavily dependent on US hardware, intelligence and support networks, while Pakistani technology – while cost-effective – tends to be at a lower level of technical sophistication than its Western counterparts, which can complicate mutual cooperation.

Moreover, the bureaucracies in the two countries operate at different speeds. Riyadh's reform agenda is centralized and capital-intensive, while Pakistan's defense sector remains heavily state-controlled and faces budget shortfalls.

Therefore, cooperation in joint military production, in addition to standardizing protocols, requires overcoming administrative and cultural challenges.

The new defense pact between Saudi Arabia and Pakistan and the broader discussions around collective governance and homeland security in the Persian Gulf indicate that the region is at a tipping point.

Long-standing dependence on Western protection is being reassessed not by sudden abandonment, but by diversifying security guarantees. The shift does not yet signal a full disengagement from the US, but instead a recalibration with Gulf capitals testing the viability of parallel security arrangements.

The agreement between Saudi Arabia and Pakistan reflects a willingness to engage new partners and reimagine security as something not simply provided by Western powers, but co-constructed by regional actors.

Whether this happens will depend on many factors, including political will and whether these new partnerships are strong enough to eventually replace the old way of working. For now, the region is witnessing the early stages of a potential strategic rebalancing – one that could over time redefine the Gulf and regional security and how it fits into the wider world.