Why a Middle Eastern NATO won’t work

The lack of trust and agreement on security threats precludes the formation of an Arab military pact

Last month, Jordan’s King Abdullah II announced his support for forming a Middle Eastern military alliance, similar to NATO.

Interest in establishing a regional military pact goes back to the Cold War years when the United Kingdom helped create the Baghdad Pact in 1955, though the alliance collapsed three years later after an Iraqi coup toppled the monarchy.

This is just one example of the numerous attempts at regional military cooperation that have foundered over the years. One of the most recent was U.S. President Donald Trump’s proposal in 2017 to establish a Middle East Strategic Alliance, also modelled after NATO.

Even though MESA did not take off, efforts to prod the region’s leaders to agree on a cooperative security arrangement have continued. Last March, a meeting in Egypt’s Sharm el-Sheikh resort brought together military officers from the U.S., Israel, Jordan, Egypt and the UAE to evaluate Iran’s ballistic missile and drone threat.

More recently, Secretary of State Antony Blinken held a meeting with counterparts from the same countries and Morocco to discuss security issues ahead of President Joe Biden’s visit to the region in mid-July. But Biden is unlikely to fare any better than his predecessors.

Deep-seated animosity, perpetual distrust of one another and disagreement on the perception of foreign threats preclude lowlevel cooperation, let alone the formation of

a military pact.

History of Failed Partnerships

Arab countries have repeatedly failed to coordinate during key moments of regional conflict. In the 1948 war against Israel, for example, Arab armies failed to coordinate their plans, leading to a decisive Israeli victory.

In 1950, Arab countries adopted the Treaty of Joint Defense and Economic

Cooperation. They established a unified Arab military command, which remained inactive until 1964, when they decided at an Arab summit to divert the tributaries of the Jordan River and send Syrian and Iraqi troops to Lebanon and Jordan to protect the diversion sites. Both countries subsequently refused to accept Arab military units on their territories.

On the eve of the 1967 Six-Day War, however, King Hussein of Jordan signed a defense agreement with Egypt and appointed an Egyptian officer to lead the Jordanian army. He allowed an Iraqi army division to enter Jordan and ordered the Jordanian army to shell Israeli positions in west Jerusalem. He did so despite assurances by Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol that Israel would not seize the West Bank if the Jordanian army did not initiate hostilities.

Hussein had concluded that his kingdom would be easier to govern without the West Bank, considering that the Palestinian people had rejected the Hashemites and assassinated his grandfather, King Abdullah I, in 1951.

In 1973, Egypt and Syria went to war against Israel without articulating a war strategy. Egyptian President Anwar Sadat wanted a limited conflict to convince the U.S. to enforce a U.N. resolution that called on Israel to withdraw from lands occupied in 1967.

In contrast, Syrian President Hafez Assad believed he could recover the Golan Heights. Their lack of coordination and different war objectives enabled the Israelis to advance to 40 kilometers from Damascus.

Fearing Iranian and Iraqi hegemony, the GCC – consisting of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait – sought to create a military force to defend its members against the winner of the Iran-Iraq War.

In 1984, it formed the Peninsula Shield Force based near the Saudi-Iraqi border. However, disagreements within the group, especially over troop deployment, meant the force never exceeded 4,000 troops and failed to prevent Iraq from invading Kuwait in 1990.

In the Damascus Declaration, issued soon after the U.S.-led coalition expelled Iraq from

Kuwait, Egypt and Syria pledged to provide military forces to defend the GCC countries against foreign threats. Distrusting their intentions, Saudi Arabia and the UAE did not honor the declaration, embarking on separate plans to build up their own armies with Western assistance.

In December 2013, GCC members announced the establishment of a unified armed forces command consisting of 100,000 troops, half of whom were provided by Saudi Arabia. Three months later, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain recalled their ambassadors from Qatar to protest its foreign policy, shelving the proposed military command.

In 2015, Saudi Arabia and the UAE launched Operation Decisive Storm against the Houthi rebels in Yemen. Seven Arab countries offered to participate in the war effort but quickly disengaged.

In 2019, the UAE, which was focused on securing South Yemen, also withdrew from the war, choosing instead to rely on its local affiliates to pursue its objectives. Saudi Arabia continued to wage war alone, using mostly Yemeni army troops, African mercenaries and its own air power.

In 2016, Saudi Arabia invited 20 Muslim countries to participate in an ostentatious military exercise codenamed Northern Thunder and held near the Kuwaiti border, less than 400 kilometers from the Iranian city of Abadan.

The symbolic drills lasted almost one month and included countries irrelevant to Middle East politics, such as Malaysia, Senegal, the Maldives and Mauritius. Another participant, Qatar, became the subject of a three-year blockade led by Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Bahrain just one year later.

Barriers to Cooperation

For Arab countries in West Asia, one of the barriers to cooperation is fear of antagonizing Iran.

The GCC countries and Jordan understand that Tehran can destabilize their regimes. Iran is driven by a desire to dominate the Persian Gulf, though it has shown a willingness to cooperate with certain regimes regardless of their ideological orientation.

Faced with this reality, some countries in the region, including Oman, Qatar, Kuwait and the UAE, have maintained varying degrees of partnership with Iran. Every time the UAE draws closer to Israel, it sends a high-level official to Tehran to assure the Iranian leadership that it would not allow foreign powers to stage attacks on Iran from its territory.

The ruler of Dubai has often called for easing sanctions on Tehran. Meanwhile, Egypt and North African countries, which boast the most powerful Arab militaries, do not perceive Iran as an enemy and are unlikely to join an alliance that considers it a threat.

Other countries, however, do consider Iran a major security threat. This explains why Jordan viewed Russia’s military presence in Syria as a stabilizing force against both radical Islamic movements and Iranian proxies near its northern borders.

Notably, however, the war in Ukraine resulted in the withdrawal of Russian troops from Syria’s southwest and their replacement with pro-Iranian militias.

In addition to posing a security risk, they became active in smuggling narcotics to the Gulf region via Jordan, precipitating frequent border clashes with the Jordanian army.

Still, Jordan avoided criticizing Iran, only referring to rogue armed groups active in illicit activities across its borders.

King Abdullah II’s unwillingness to name Iran as a threat casts doubt on his support for a NATO-type regional alliance.

Though he did not specify the rationale for the project, he seemed worried about the resurgence of the Islamic State in Syria due to Russia’s preoccupation with the war in Ukraine and the possibility of a second wave of Arab uprisings.

Another barrier to a regional security alliance is the fact that Arab countries have long depended on external security guarantors.

From the 19th century until their independence between 1961 and 1971, five GCC countries were reliant on London for their defense as British protectorates.

The Saudis, meanwhile, came to an agreement on a security arrangement in 1945 with U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt. Since 2015, the U.S. has proposed integrating the GCC’s ballistic missile systems, modernizing its security apparatuses, conducting more frequent military exercises, and upgrading its counterterrorism capabilities.

But the Gulf countries want direct Western involvement in their defense. In recent years, they granted several countries, especially the United States, the right to establish military bases on their territories.

The Saudi royals do not trust their armed forces’ ability to defend the country against foreign threats, even militias such as the Houthis or Iraq’s pro-Iranian Popular Mobilization Forces. Riyadh has spent hundreds of billions of dollars on military procurement over the past four decades, and it still does not have a fighting army.

In 2015, it demanded from the Obama administration a formal commitment to defend it against Iran, which it did not receive.

Though the U.S. often expresses unwavering determination to defend the Saudis and other GCC countries, it ultimately wants to maintain a regional balance in the Gulf, not to defeat Iran. In addition, senior U.S. officials don’t hold the

Saudi leadership in high regard.

The last three U.S. presidents issued negative remarks about the kingdom. Obama described the Saudis as “free riders,” Trump told King Salman that he would not last in office for two weeks without U.S. support, and Biden said the Saudi government has “very little social redeeming value.”

As for Israel, there is no evidence to suggest that it is interested in anything more than transactional relations with the UAE and Saudi Arabia, despite the fanfare over the dawn of a new era in Arab-Israeli cooperation.

Israel might be eager to sell GCC countries advanced anti-missile systems and to promote trade relations, but it’s wishful thinking for Arabs to expect Israel to fight Iran on their behalf.

The Saudis understand that securing a more significant U.S. commitment to protect them is not a substitute for improving relations with Iran. Despite ongoing talks in Baghdad between Riyadh and Tehran, a lack of trust will block any workable agreement between them.

In addition, Saudi Arabia will not normalize its ties with Israel until Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman succeeds his father. Even then, the Saudis have no delusions about Israel giving them security assurances beyond what Washington’s offering.

Military alliances are formed to address specific security concerns that are clear to all participating countries. In the Arab region, frequent policy shifts will not allow for the establishment of a stable and enduring security coalition.