There is something unusually interesting about the Makkah Joint Defence Agreement signed by Pakistan, Türkiye and Saudi Arabia on August 7. The headlines have naturally focused on the words “mutual defence”, but the more consequential story may have begun long before the signatures appeared in Makkah. The agreement says that an armed attack against one member will be considered an attack against all three. Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan has gone so far as to describe its mechanism as technically comparable to NATO’s Article 5, although the agreement contains no automatic military commitment of the sort people often imagine when they hear “NATO”. The three governments have also insisted that the arrangement is defensive and is not directed against any particular state. That distinction matters. Because Pakistan’s emerging diplomatic strategy is becoming less about choosing camps and more about becoming useful to every camp. The Makkah agreement therefore looks less like an isolated event and more like the latest visible piece of a much larger puzzle.
In July, Pakistan and Türkiye reaffirmed their ambition to take bilateral trade towards $5 billion, while discussions expanded across investment, energy, petroleum exploration, minerals, information technology and industrial cooperation. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan also appreciated Pakistan’s role in facilitating the US-Iran diplomatic process, while Islamabad publicly acknowledged Ankara’s support. A month earlier, the two countries had already been coordinating closely over regional security and the aftermath of the 2025 India-Pakistan conflict. Turkish defence officials discussed advanced aviation, drones and defence-industrial cooperation with Pakistani counterparts, while Turkish officials also discussed cooperation in oil, gas, mining and rare elements. None of these developments, individually, looked like the birth of a new geopolitical bloc. Together, they begin to look different.
Pakistan and Türkiye have discovered that their relationship can operate simultaneously on several tracks: defence, diplomacy, energy, minerals, technology, trade and regional mediation. That is what makes the relationship strategically valuable. Defence creates trust; energy creates commercial interdependence; diplomacy creates political usefulness; and investment gives the relationship a reason to survive beyond any particular government. What is new is the speed at which separate pieces are beginning to lock together. And that brings us to Pakistan’s wider diplomatic posture. For decades, Pakistan’s foreign policy has often been interpreted through the language of camps. Washington or Beijing. Saudi Arabia or Iran. The West or the Muslim world. Security cooperation or strategic autonomy. In that framework, choosing one relationship inevitably seemed to irritate another. The emerging model is different. China remains Pakistan’s principal strategic partner. Yet Pakistan has not abandoned Washington. In fact, the United States and Pakistan have found areas of renewed transactional engagement, including energy, minerals, counterterrorism and regional diplomacy. At the same time, Pakistan has continued deepening its relationship with Beijing.
The result is a Ludo game in which no player completely controls the board.
The paradox becomes clearer when viewed against the changing relationship between Washington and Beijing. In May, Donald Trump and Xi Jinping publicly agreed to pursue a more constructive relationship of “strategic stability”, demonstrating that even the two principal competitors of the international system can negotiate when their interests require it. Pakistan benefits from that contradiction. It does not need Washington and Beijing to become friends. It merely needs their rivalry not to become so absolute that Islamabad is forced to choose. That is the diplomatic sweet spot. India wants strategic autonomy. America wants India as a counterweight to China. China wants to constrain Indian strategic space. Pakistan wants security against India without becoming permanently dependent on either Washington or Beijing.
The result is a Ludo game in which no player completely controls the board. And this is where Türkiye becomes unusually important for Pakistan. It is a NATO member without behaving like a conventional NATO ally – one of the reasons that political analysts call President Erdogan, a chameleon! It maintains relations with Washington while purchasing or developing defence capabilities that reflect an independent strategic identity. It maintains ties with Russia while remaining embedded in Western institutions. It engages the Gulf, Central Asia, Europe and the Muslim world simultaneously. Pakistan sees a familiar strategy in Türkiye. The relationship is therefore is structurally compatible.
Türkiye gives Pakistan something China cannot fully provide: a powerful Muslim-majority strategic partner deeply embedded in NATO and Western defence networks. China gives Pakistan something Türkiye cannot fully provide: enormous economic scale, strategic depth and long-term infrastructure connectivity. Saudi Arabia adds financial weight, religious significance and Gulf influence. And Pakistan contributes something all three can use: geography, a large military, nuclear deterrence, access to South and Central Asia, and increasingly a diplomatic role between otherwise incompatible actors. That is, my friends, why Makkah matters. The agreement is not signaling that Pakistan has created a new NATO. It is evidence that Pakistan’s relationships are becoming increasingly networked. But networks do not pay sovereign debt.
IMF completed its third review of Pakistan’s Extended Fund Facility in May, releasing about $1.1 billion under the EFF and another $220 million under the Resilience and Sustainability Facility. Total disbursements under the two arrangements reached approximately $4.8 billion. The IMF projects real GDP growth of 3.6 percent for FY2026, rising only slightly to 3.5 percent in FY2027.
These are stabilization numbers, not transformation numbers. There is a fundamental difference. A country can stabilize its reserves without becoming prosperous. It can meet an IMF review without becoming export competitive. It can refinance a maturity without reducing its debt burden. The danger is a political mindset in which every successful refinancing is interpreted as economic success. When a country borrows new money to repay old obligations, the transaction may be perfectly rational if it reduces interest costs, lengthens maturities or finances productive investment. But if borrowing merely postpones the same structural imbalance, the state has not escaped the debt trap. It has simply moved the trap further down the road.
Pakistan's recent experience illustrates the danger. The country faced billions of dollars in external repayments during 2026, including a $3.5 billion repayment obligation involving the UAE, placing significant pressure on reserves. The IMF itself maintains a schedule showing hundreds of millions of dollars in Pakistani payments due to the Fund during 2026. Diplomatically, the country is accumulating options. Economically, it is still accumulating obligations. And options are valuable only when they can eventually be converted into productive capacity. The government therefore faces a test far more consequential than another bilateral summit. Can the diplomatic capital being accumulated be converted into factories, exports, technology, energy security, mineral processing, logistics, tourism and foreign direct investment? Or will it simply become another mechanism for obtaining easier financing?
This is where the government’s current economic philosophy deserves scrutiny. There is nothing inherently wrong with seeking concessional loans, deposits, rollovers or IMF support. Every sovereign uses external financing. The problem begins when financing becomes a substitute for reform. The IMF itself is not merely “giving money”. Its current programme explicitly links financing to fiscal reform, competition, productivity, state-owned enterprise reform, energy-sector viability, human capital and broader structural changes. The uncomfortable truth is that IMF money is not the disease. It is often the IV line attached to a patient whose underlying illness remains unresolved. Pakistan needs to stop celebrating the arrival of the next tranche as though it were the arrival of growth.
The problem begins when financing becomes a substitute for reform.
The real victory would be the day Pakistan can reject a loan because it does not need it. It will come when the country produces enough dollars through exports, services, investment and productive industry to service its own obligations. Pakistan may finally be constructing the kind of external strategic environment that gives it breathing room. The question is whether it will use that breathing room to build an economy that no longer needs to breathe through borrowed oxygen.
Partnering countries can be helpful, indeed, but none of them can manufacture Pakistan’s productivity. No defence agreement can substitute for tax reform. No strategic partnership can permanently compensate for an energy sector that bleeds fiscal resources. And no IMF programme can create political courage where structural reform is repeatedly postponed. The Makkah agreement therefore deserves to be read neither as a triumphalist declaration of a new Muslim bloc nor as another ceremonial diplomatic document.
Pakistan has spent years trying to ensure that it has friends in every major room. That strategy may finally be producing results. The country has managed, with considerable sophistication, to remain strategically close to China while reopening channels with the United States, deepen relations with Türkiye while retaining its Gulf partnerships, and expand its diplomatic relevance without formally declaring a new geopolitical enemy. But diplomacy is ultimately a means, not an end. The deepest test of Pakistan’s statecraft will not be whether Washington answers Islamabad’s call, whether Beijing rolls over another deposit, whether Riyadh extends another facility, or whether Ankara signs another memorandum. It will be whether, five or ten years from now, Pakistan is still asking the same friends to refinance the same debts.