Trump and Starmer shouldn’t bask too long in the glow of a state visit – the world just got a lot more dangerous
If there is a warm fuzz left over from what Number 10 no doubt sees as a successful management of Donald Trump’s toddler ego it should be washed away by the cold shower of reality.
While King Charles took the US President on a fairground ride around Windsor Great Park, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan were enjoying the glow of a nuclear embrace.
The influence of the West has been in freefall under Trump 2.0. But now that the Saudis and Pakistanis have signed a joint defence pact, which inevitably brings Riadh under Islamabad’s nuclear umbrella, Anglo-American influence in the Middle East and beyond has crashed into the desert sands.
The two nations, both hotbeds of Islamist ideologies that have spread violence around the world, are showing they’re far beyond the reach of Western influence and post-colonial hangovers.
The UK had enjoyed an outsized influence in Pakistan. During the Afghan conflict in the early 2000s, a senior British general once said after meetings in the Pakistani capital, that “every level of government and military, even the intelligence services, is still convinced that the Americans are working for us”.
That’s over now.
After Israel bombed Qatar, killing at least five people, including a Qatari national, earlier this month, and Trump claimed he didn’t know about the attack, no US ally in the Middle East will believe a word that comes out of the Oval Office. And none of the emirs and other rulers in the region can rely on America for their security.
Already waning in influence, the US’s unprincipled support for Israel over Gaza has shaken even the cynical and largely unprincipled rulers of the Middle East.
Talks between Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, which has 600,000 people in its armed forces and nuclear weapons (aimed at India), obviously predate the Qatar attacks by Israel. But as the US has its biggest air base on the Gulf island – but was unable/unwilling to protect it against Israel, why would local leaders believe America will protect them against another Israeli attack – or a nuclear Iran in the future?
Saudi Arabia and Tehran have been warming up their relationship, even as the US and Israel attacked Iran’s nuclear programme and assassins hunted its nuclear scientists.
Now, Riadh believes, it has nuclear cover from Pakistan.
“This is a comprehensive defensive agreement that encompasses all military means,” a Saudi official told Reuters.
In conventional war terms, the deal gives both Saudi Arabia and Pakistan the right to call on one another if they are attacked.
India and Pakistan fought a five-day conflict earlier this year after Delhi launched reprisal raids against alleged terrorist bases following an attack in Kashmir. The two countries have been at or on the brink of war almost nonstop since 1948.
