In the Middle East, the power that once organised the regional order has itself become a source of uncertainty.
The End of a Certainty
The premise was simple. The United States provided a security perimeter, the dollar anchored trade and Washington’s signature guaranteed the continuity of commitments. With Iran contained, Middle Eastern states could preserve their rivalries while entrusting Washington with the decisive functions: intelligence, missile defence, maritime control, protection of energy routes and diplomatic arbitration.
This arrangement was part of the cycle that began in 1945, when the United States emerged with unmatched economic, industrial and military pre-eminence. After the Soviet Union disappeared, that primacy became the organising principle of a unipolar order. Globalisation then extended its networks around a US centre of gravity.
Yet this expansion, in turn, changed the conditions of power. Offshoring and transfers of expertise turned China into a major industrial, technological and geopolitical competitor. Russia retained a capacity for strategic denial rooted in its territory, resources and nuclear status. The United States remained the system’s leading power, but could no longer be its sole centre.
Compounding this shift is the polycentric structure of American power, which resembles a constellation of interests more than a single institution. The presidency, Congress, the Pentagon, the intelligence community, the military-industrial complex, pressure groups, donors and strategic companies do not operate on the same timetable or pursue the same interests. None formally possesses its own foreign policy, yet each has capabilities and institutional continuities that may outlast the course set by the president.
For Washington’s partners, an election can reverse a policy; one administration can repudiate an agreement concluded by its predecessor; and an agency can continue on a course that outlasts the policy articulated by the White House. American policy therefore combines a high degree of reversibility at the top with the persistence of deeper networks.
The US withdrawal from the JCPOA in 2018, while the International Atomic Energy Agency was still verifying Iran’s implementation of its nuclear commitments, had already eroded the value of Washington’s signature as a guarantee for the future. The outbreak of war against Iran on 28 February 2026 crossed a further threshold: Omani mediators later reported that an agreement had been within reach. Russian diplomacy describes this condition with the term «nedogovorosposobnost»: the inability to regard an interlocutor as a partner capable of concluding and honouring a durable agreement.
The consequences extend beyond the relationship between Washington and Tehran. States do not necessarily stop negotiating with the United States; they seek additional guarantees, simultaneous commitments, reversible mechanisms and partners capable of limiting the cost of a breach.
A similar erosion is affecting the financial sphere. The dollar remains the world’s leading reserve currency. Yet secondary sanctions, exclusion from financial networks and the freezing of sovereign assets have turned this shared infrastructure into an instrument of coercion. Owning an asset no longer necessarily means being able to use it when access depends on political alignment.
For Saudi Arabia, this question is central. The riyal remains pegged to the dollar, oil is still overwhelmingly priced in that currency and a substantial share of national wealth is held abroad. This architecture provides stability, liquidity and financial depth, but it also concentrates risk. Data from the IMF and the Federal Reserve indicate that monetary, commercial and diplomatic diversification remains gradual: it is less a break with Washington than insurance against a dependency that could be used coercively.
A further source of uncertainty is the radicalisation of part of Israel’s political system and its convergence with strands of American Christian Zionism. When territory or war is inscribed in a sacred narrative, political ends harden, the space for negotiation narrows and decision-making becomes harder to predict. For Washington’s regional partners, this ideological hardening deepens uncertainty over the true purposes of the American guarantee.
The guarantee is also becoming vulnerable in military terms. The opening weeks of the war against Iran showed that a fixed, scarce and costly architecture could be located, struck and fragmented. Analyses of satellite imagery documented damage to long-range radars and the network of US bases across the region. More importantly, the presence of these installations on partner territory turns them into prime targets: protection then becomes exposure. Assessments by the CSIS of missile inventories and by the GAO of F-35 maintenance also highlight constraints on replenishment and readiness.
Middle Eastern states are Diplomatic uncertainty, the fragmentation of US decision-making, the weaponization of financial dependencies, ideological radicalisation and the vulnerability of infrastructure are converging. Their combined effect makes the search for regional backstops almost inevitable.
Building alliances does not necessarily mean changing sides. It means creating redundancy in a system that has become too centralised: multiplying suppliers, guarantees, routes, settlement currencies, military capabilities and channels of negotiation. The regionalisation of security is less a revolt against the United States than insurance against the now evident impossibility of entrusting it alone with the stability of the system.
Three Overlapping Geographies
This transformation cannot be understood if analysis is confined to power relations among states. Three geographies overlap in the Middle East.
The first is political. It is becoming multipolar: Saudi Arabia, Iran, Turkey, Israel, Egypt and the Gulf monarchies are following their own trajectories, while the United States, China and Russia remain present without any of them being able to organise the region as a whole.
The second is material. It is multinodal: radars, bases, ports, refineries, gas terminals, straits, desalination systems, cables and data centres form interdependent networks. A local strike can shorten warning time, interrupt a shipping route, raise energy prices, disrupt insurance and transmit its effects as far as global markets.
The third is human. Societies are layered. National identity coexists with family, tribal, local, linguistic, sectarian, religious and political solidarities. As Philip Khoury and Joseph Kostiner have shown, the modern state was not simply laid over a mosaic that remained intact; it transformed these structures even as they reshaped its institutions and practices in return.
The tribe is therefore neither an immutable essence of the Middle East nor a synonym for nomadism. It becomes politically relevant when it serves as a channel for mobilisation, mediation, redistribution or cross-border influence. The same applies to religious affiliation. The region’s status as the birthplace of Judaism, Christianity and Islam does not mechanically determine foreign policy. It does, however, give some territories global symbolic power: a local crisis can mobilise distant communities and internationalise competing narratives.
These layers are compounded by a stark demographic asymmetry. According to GCC-Stat, the six Gulf Cooperation Council states had a combined population of about 61.5 million in 2024, with non-citizens accounting for a large share in several monarchies. Pakistan alone was approaching 250 million inhabitants, according to the United Nations. Population becomes a source of power only when it is converted through institutions, industry, economic capacity and social cohesion. Yet human depth shapes recruitment, staying power and dependence on foreign expertise.
States are therefore multipolar, infrastructures multinodal and societies layered. Multipolarity describes the distribution of state wills; multinodality, the circulation of material dependencies; social layering, the depth of societies. An alliance forms the evolving interface between these three realities: new regional architectures emerge where they intersect.
The Alliance as an Adaptive Interface
A traditional military alliance unites states against an identified adversary. The arrangements emerging in the Middle East serve a broader purpose. They connect different capabilities in order to maintain the continuity of a system exposed to multiple channels of propagation.
Such arrangements must deter by raising the cost of attack. They must pool intelligence, early warning, logistics and interception capabilities. They must also offset asymmetries: one partner may provide financial resources, another a defence industry, and a third demographic depth or operational experience. Finally, they must preserve channels of negotiation, because deterrence without a mechanism for de-escalation can produce the very war it was meant to prevent.
The alliance thus becomes an adaptive interface. It connects more than armed forces. It coordinates sovereign poles, protects material networks and helps prevent social fractures from carrying a crisis beyond its point of origin.
This shift changes how power is measured. A state can destroy a target without controlling the consequences of its destruction: higher energy prices, retaliation against third-party infrastructure, communal mobilisation or a succession of unforeseen countermeasures. Alliances are therefore proliferating not only because states lack power, but because no state can control alone the effects set in motion by the exercise of its own power.
A Composite Architecture Takes Shape
The Makkah Agreement for Joint Defence, signed on 7 August 2026 by Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan, provides the most developed example of this evolution. Official Pakistani statements state that an external attack on one signatory will be treated as an attack on all three, and provide for military cooperation in intelligence, logistics, exercises, interoperability and defence industry.
Its practical significance will depend on ratification, institutions and implementation. It is not yet a regional NATO. But its composition reveals a clear complementarity: Saudi Arabia contributes its central position in energy, finance and religion; Turkey, its industrial, demographic and operational depth; Pakistan, its human, strategic and military depth. This complementarity does not justify assuming an implicit nuclear guarantee. It shows that security no longer rests on a single resource.
The maritime coalition initially backed by fourteen states follows the same functional logic. It connects the Gulf, the Red Sea, Bab el-Mandeb and the Gulf of Aden to protect shipping lanes and trade. Gulf Cooperation Council structures, national capabilities and US partnerships continue to exist in parallel.
The region is therefore not replacing one centre with another. It is combining several layers of security at once: residual US guarantees, sovereign capabilities, the GCC, transregional agreements, specialised coalitions and non-aggression mechanisms.
Saudi Arabia as a Node in the System
Saudi Arabia is more than an oil producer or arms buyer. It sits at the intersection of Gulf security, energy flows, international investment and the historic relationship between oil and the dollar.
A lasting disruption to oil production or circulation would ripple through transport, inflation, financial markets and monetary policy. The petrodollar system does not mean that every oil importer directly finances US debt. It describes a broader ecosystem: dollar invoicing, demand for liquidity, the recycling of surpluses and the depth of US financial markets. The Federal Reserve notes that this depth has no immediate equivalent, making it a mistake to confuse diversification with sudden collapse.
Riyadh must therefore preserve its relationship with Washington, build regional guarantees, maintain its economic ties with Asia and prevent an uncontrolled confrontation with Iran. This is not a change of alignment. It is a diversification strategy designed to protect several networks in which the kingdom is itself an essential node.
Against Iran and With Iran
The new alliances cannot be reduced to an anti-Iranian front. Iran poses a threat to several states through its ballistic capabilities, territorial depth and ties to political or armed actors embedded in several societies. Its power projection relies on transnational religious, political, economic and military networks, as described by the Danish Institute for International Studies.
These actors are not mere proxies. They have their own interests, social bases and degrees of autonomy. Sectarian affiliation facilitates some relationships; it never determines behaviour on its own. Iran’s strategic depth therefore takes the form of a fluid network rather than a uniform chain of command.
No durable regional order, however, can exclude Iran. Its geography, population and capabilities make that impossible. States are simultaneously seeking to deter Iran and bring it within a minimal framework of rules. The Omani proposal for a non-aggression pact between the six GCC members, Iran and Iraq, together with consultations on navigation and mine clearance in the Strait of Hormuz, illustrates this dual approach.
Shielding against Iran and negotiating with it are not contradictory policies. Resilience makes negotiation credible; negotiation prevents deterrence from turning into an automatic mechanism of escalation.
Neither an Arab NATO nor a US Withdrawal
The emerging system is neither an Arab NATO nor a sign that the United States is disappearing. The actors do not share the same perception of threats, the same command structure or the same relationships with Iran, Israel, China and Russia. Washington retains considerable military, technological, financial and diplomatic capabilities.
The shift lies elsewhere. The United States is gradually ceasing to serve as the sole organising principle of regional security. It is becoming a major partner within a more distributed architecture.
This architecture may still fail because of a lack of ratification, rivalry among partners, technological dependencies, institutional weakness or the exploitation of communal fractures. It is not a completed order. It is an emerging response to a transformation that has already occurred: vulnerabilities now travel faster and farther than traditional protections.
In this environment, alliances become interfaces for compensation, continuity, mediation and adaptation. The decisive question is no longer only who can produce the greatest effects.
It is who can still control their propagation.
Olivier Roynard, French essayist and independent researcher on the relationship between geopolitics and the transformation of political and intellectual forms in the modern world
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