The recent defence pact signed between Saudi Arabia and Pakistan has generated a certain unease in Indian circles, and has been followed by analysis that largely ignores the history of West Asian states. The national perspective may be valid, but without understanding the deeper and long-term historical issues underpinning them, Indians run the risk of profoundly misunderstanding what is happening in the world and what we can or should be doing about it.

A couple of decades ago, Chas Freeman, one of the few US policy professionals to take a relatively independent stand on issues like West Asia and China, gave a talk on Saudi policy. Unlike much of Asia, Freeman said, Saudi Arabia had not been colonised, and then, just after the end of the World War II, it gained a huge access to wealth through oil, which it used to build itself. The Saudi worldview, therefore, was that there were two types of peoples, Saudis, and those that the Saudis paid to do their work. For those who have lived in the Gulf Arab countries or worked there, this will resonate.

Of course, this is a simplification, but it is worth remembering that Freeman was the US ambassador to Saudi Arabia during the first Gulf War in 1990-91. The war cost upwards of US $ 60 billion, of which Saudi Arabia reportedly paid about US $ 33 billion by itself, with other Gulf Arab states also chipping in a few billions. There was also one other aspect of the US defending Saudi and the other Arab states, and being paid to, that had consequences. A young Saudi militant had argued with the Saudi royal court that he and his band of battle-trained fighters from the Afghanistan war against the Soviets could do the job, and paying the US to do the job was a mistake. The royals listened to the hothead but dismissed his suggestions. This led to a long campaign by the young man (named Osama bin Laden) and his colleagues against the royal family and the US involvement in the region.

While some would speculate that the costs of the long “war on terror” would have led to a strategic rethink, the Gulf Arab states have continued to rely on hiring external arms for their security. Part of the reason is that such policies have a long history in the region. British troops, in both official and unofficial capacities, served in this capacity after World War II and while National Service was still obligatory. In 1923, a British backed army officer, Reza Khan, established the Pahlavi dynasty in Iran. Sultan Qaboos of Oman overthrew his father in a palace coup in 1970 backed by British mercenaries, and became the longest serving West Asian autocrat until his death. Over time, though, other countries came into the fray, and Pakistan – with its large military and with the military dominance of its politics – has also been a part of the mix. Zia-ul-Haq, who would go on to serve as Pakistan’s military dictator, was a young brigadier when he was posted in Jordan helping crush the Palestinians under the Hashemite autocracy. The Egyptian military, probably the largest in the region, has also been propped by the Gulf Arabs as a possible security contractor. At the height of the Arab uprising, King Abdullah’s plane arrived in Cairo to help strengthen the military dictatorship against the Muslim Brotherhood.

As the examples from Oman, Jordan, and Egypt make clear, the hiring of security contractors has a double purpose. It is not just about security from external threats, but also buffers authoritarian rulers from their own people and their discontents – one of which has to do with the Palestinian issue that Arab states have long neglected. By definition, the Palestinian movement is a people-led initiative which demands freedom. This is not a thing that the Arab monarchs feel enamoured of. What if their people start asking for the same. Instead, the type of Palestinian that they prefer (as do the Israelis and the US) are ones like Mohammad Dahlan, the Fatah strongman who is alleged to have been involved in the murder by poisoning of Yasser Arafat. Dahlan used to be the power in Gaza before the George W. Bush administration tapped him to try and overthrow Hamas, and he was unceremoniously defeated – possibly because a long reign backed by torture makes you a bit unpopular. He is currently in the Emirates.

Such security contractors, or chowkidars, are supposed to be reliable, willing to fulfil a task and not have their own agendas that will run counter to that of Gulf’s rulers. The thing is that the key chowkidar – the US – has been less and less reliable. The US-Arab disenchantment goes back to the Obama era and specifically to the ‘Asian Pivot.’ For the US, the balance of power in West Asia was pretty much already in their favour. China was perceived as the great challenge, and the only real issue was Iran. A deal, it was thought, would manage the only outstanding issue of major relevance and would allow the US to reposition its forces towards Asia and the Pacific.

While this may have made perfect sense for the US and maybe Europe, it certainly did not make sense for the Gulf Arabs who saw Iran as their closest threat. It was not just the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who opposed the nuclear deal, and just before the first Trump administration key Gulf actors, including the ruler of Dubai, Mohammed bin Zayed, threw in their hat in favour of Trump as somebody who could be paid to allow the US military do the job that the Arab rulers wanted. In the second Trump administration the role of key Arab actors such as Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar have become that much more obvious, with Qatar even gifting Trump a luxury airplane.

Unfortunately for the Gulf rulers, the sheer incompetence and self-serving nature of the Trump administration has left them even more insecure, with Israel now bombing not only Iran and Iran-linked actors such as Hezbollah, the Syrian regime, and the Houthis, but even Qatar. The Gulf rulers have realised that chowkidar chor hai (the watchman is the thief), or at least that the chowkidar will take the money but won’t really do the job. As a result, the Gulf states are buying more defence equipment from Europe, and some from China. There has been a certain rapprochement with Turkey, with Egypt conducting a joint military drill with a country that it had considered its enemy after the (brief) rise of the Muslim Brotherhood. Turkish drones (remember those from Operation Sindoor?) are also very much the flavour of the season. The new security arrangement with Pakistan – whether it incorporates nuclear weapons or not – fits well into this paradigm.

What does not really fit is a role for India. The India-Middle East-EU corridor is all but dead. And the I2U2 group – comprising India, Israel, UAE and the US – is unlikely to fructify in any way that would provide significant benefits to India. In fact, given the strong feelings among the population of the Arab countries about Israeli actions, any strong association with Israel may have significant downsides for Indians living and working in these countries. Most importantly, as the Gulf states reach out for new security arrangements, they are reaching out to China, Turkey, and Pakistan, all of which India has issues with.

In the larger scheme of things, the Saudi-Pakistan defence pact is deeply unlikely to be operationalised against India. After all, Pakistan has been a significant US ally for decades with limited benefits vis-à-vis India, except for some US scare tactics in the 1971 war. Seeing things through this lens is not meaningful. Instead, what is important is that a key part of the world is being reconfigured in the shadow of Trump’s capricious policies and the countries that are finding a larger role on the global stage are not Indian-aligned. Most importantly, with a moribund domestic defence industry and a foreign policy that nobody – certainly not the foreign minister or the prime minister – understands, at a critical moment in the world stage, nobody is turning to India. We have nothing to offer.

Omair Ahmad is an author. His last novel, Jimmy the Terrorist, was shortlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize, and won the Crossword Award.

This piece was first published on The India Cable – a premium newsletter from The Wire – and has been updated and republished here. To subscribe to The India Cable, click here.

This article went live on October seventh, two thousand twenty five, at thirty-five minutes past nine in the morning.

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