Author: Sreshtha Chakraborty

The trilateral defence agreement signed by Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Türkiye in Mecca on 7 August will be described, almost reflexively, as the birth of a new bloc. An armed attack on one is to be treated as an attack on all three, and the pact joins the three largest military establishments in the Muslim world under a single defensive formula for the first time since the Baghdad Pact of the 1950s. The symbolism of the venue, Islam’s holiest city, only sharpens that reading. New Delhi should resist it, without becoming complacent about what the agreement actually changes. The Mecca…