American foreign policy expert Daniel Markey said that Pakistan’s new defence alignment with Saudi Arabia and Turkey has strengthened Islamabad’s regional military and diplomatic position, undercutting India’s long-running strategy of isolating Pakistan.
The defence pact among Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Türkiye has dealt a major setback to India’s longstanding efforts to isolate Pakistan and demonstrated Islamabad’s growing diplomatic and strategic relevance in the Middle East, US South Asia expert Daniel Markey remarked.
Daniel Markey, senior fellow in the South Asia Program at the Stimson Center, speaking in an interview with Indian news portal The Wire, said the agreement was “not good news” for India because New Delhi had for years sought to improve its relationship with Saudi Arabia while reducing Pakistan’s ability to maintain close ties with countries across West Asia.
He said India had been pursuing a campaign to “diplomatically isolate Pakistan” and limit its ability to build positive relations with countries such as Saudi Arabia, adding that the new defence pact represented a setback to that strategy.
Markey said the agreement also reflected the deepening military relationship between Pakistan and Türkiye, which could increasingly give Pakistan access to Turkish defence technologies, particularly drones. He described this development as more troubling for India from a material military perspective.
He said the emerging regional alignment appeared to be moving away from the earlier vision in which India was positioned at the centre of initiatives linking it with the US, Israel, the UAE, Europe and Saudi Arabia, while Pakistan was largely left out. “Now you have a new vision seeming to evolve in the region that brings Pakistan thoroughly in,” Markey said, adding that this was not good news for India.
He said Pakistan had now positioned itself to take advantage of geopolitical opportunities that would have been difficult to imagine five years ago, making its military and diplomatic role increasingly valuable in the Middle East.
Markey said Pakistan’s large and effective military had become a valuable tool that Islamabad could offer to countries in the region in exchange for geopolitical and economic support.
He said these developments were unwelcome to India because New Delhi’s principal objective had been to isolate, ostracize and make Pakistan’s position more difficult rather than easier.
Markey also said the pact had strengthened Pakistan’s international relevance, noting that Islamabad was now engaged in regular conversations with the White House and had become increasingly relevant in the Middle East and Europe.
He observed that the agreement could make any future Indian military adventurism against Pakistan more challenging, particularly as Pakistan already had access to Chinese weaponry and had strengthened its military capabilities.
Markey said the Saudi military utility to Pakistan was relatively limited compared with Türkiye’s, but Riyadh could provide important financial, political and geopolitical backing.
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