Makkah Pact Sea-Power Alliance Without a US Fleet

 

The Makkah Pact may be creating a regional maritime-security corridor linking Pakistan’s Arabian Sea position with Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea interests through Bab el-Mandeb.

Late tonight in Karachi, I had a message from a retired Pakistan Army officer open beside a shipping map of the Red Sea. He had pushed me back toward Alfred Thayer Mahan and asked whether old fleet logic still explains power at sea. The question stayed with me. A Makkah Pact sea-power alliance may not need an American-style fleet if its members can combine maritime awareness with long-range denial.

The colonel deserves credit for the angle. His comment sent me back to Mahan's 1890 book, where the American strategist tied national power to commerce and a navy capable of protecting it. I would not treat “Seven Seas Theory” as Mahan's formal doctrine, because official US naval history presents a broader argument about commerce and concentrated naval power. His larger question remains useful.

Makkah Pact Sea-Power Alliance: The Machinery Exists

The August 7 agreement already points beyond a paper guarantee. Türkiye says the members will build senior political and military mechanisms, while the pact plans joint exercises for naval and air forces. The program covers land forces in a separate track. Ankara also says unmanned systems and electronic warfare will receive priority.

Artificial-intelligence work sits elsewhere inside a much broader cooperation program that Ankara wants to institutionalize over time. The Turkish defence ministry also says the members want joint development and production, not simple purchases from one another. Maintenance support will continue after delivery. A pact built around common equipment can become more operational over time even without a giant standing fleet.

A second structure is forming beside it. Saudi Arabia is organizing a multinational maritime coalition to protect Red Sea shipping after Houthi attacks placed commercial routes under fresh pressure. Fourteen countries have backed the effort. Türkiye says it is taking part in the Jeddah meetings, while Pakistan also supports the maritime initiative.

I see institutional overlap, not proof of merger. The public agreement does not create a combined navy, and no official document assigns the Makkah pact control of Red Sea operations. Yet the same governments are building defence mechanisms while discussing protection of the same threatened waterway. The overlap gives the sea-power question a factual base.

Mahan’s Fleet Logic Has Not Disappeared

American sea power still rests on ships backed by distant bases. The US Navy introduced its numbered-fleet system in March 1943 as it organized commands across major theatres during the Second World War. Mahan did not design that structure. His logic still fits it because naval force protects access, while commerce gives sea routes their economic value.

What changed is the cost of access. A large surface fleet can still project force, but modern sensors can expose ships at distances that earlier admirals could not imagine. Long-range weapons then turn detection into a problem of survival. The old question, “Who owns the biggest fleet?”, no longer settles the matter by itself.

On my monitor, Bab el-Mandeb looks almost trivial. A thin blue neck separates Yemen from the African coast, yet the commercial consequence of controlling that narrow water can reach Rotterdam or Karachi within days. Modern weapons make geography bite harder because a force can threaten passage from well beyond the shipping lane itself.

China offers a documented example. The Pentagon's 2025 report says PLA systems aim to close long-range kill chains against US forces and that over-the-horizon radars can probably detect ships between the first two island chains. The same report calls China's hypersonic missile arsenal the world's leading one. None of that makes an aircraft carrier obsolete, but it forces a carrier commander to think about distance before aircraft can begin their own work.

I accept Col Salim's question, not every forecast attached to it. American radars are not blind, and GPS has not become obsolete. The US Government Accountability Office says new hypersonic threats make tracking harder, which is why the Pentagon is building a low-orbit missile-warning network of at least 300 to 500 satellites. GAO puts planned spending at about $35 billion through fiscal 2029.

Measure	Documented figure
Hormuz oil flows, 4Q25	21.6 million b/d
Hormuz oil flows, 2Q26	4.9 million b/d
Bab el-Mandeb oil flows, 4Q25	5.4 million b/d
Bab el-Mandeb oil flows, 2Q26	8.1 million b/d
BeiDou operational constellation	35 satellites
US planned low-orbit tracking network	300 to 500 satellites

The energy figures come from the US Energy Information Administration. GPS.gov says China formally commissioned BeiDou in 2020 and now operates 35 satellites in the system. Facts alone prove nothing. They show why command of the sea now depends on information systems as well as hulls.

Sea Power Now Starts Above the Water

Modern sea denial can start far from the ship. A coastal force that can locate a vessel and transmit accurate coordinates quickly can impose risk without matching an opponent hull for hull. Drones can extend the picture. Long-range missiles convert that picture into a firing problem.

China is not a member of the pact, and I see no public evidence that Beijing sits inside its operational planning. I use China only as a technology reference because the Pentagon's own report describes a system built around long-range detection and precision strike. The Makkah pact's public work program points toward related categories, especially unmanned systems and electronic warfare. Similar categories do not prove a shared doctrine.

Saudi geography gives the argument urgency. EIA data show oil flows through Hormuz falling from 21.6 million barrels per day in the fourth quarter of 2025 to 4.9 million in the second quarter of 2026. Bab el-Mandeb moved in the opposite direction, rising from 5.4 million barrels per day to 8.1 million. EIA attributes much of that increase to Saudi crude moving through the East-West Pipeline toward Yanbu.

Saudi Arabia therefore shifted exposure instead of eliminating it. The kingdom reduced dependence on Hormuz, but more crude then approached a waterway threatened by the Houthis. A missile launched from Yemen can affect the economics of Saudi diversification without ever approaching Riyadh. Sea-lane defence has become part of economic defence.

An American-style fleet solves the problem through persistent presence. A smaller regional coalition could attempt something different by building a shared picture of threatened waters and then connecting that picture to defensive action. I am describing a possible operating model, not a capability the pact has already demonstrated. Public documents have not reached that level of detail.

Karachi: Sea Denial Arrives as a Payment Problem

During years dealing with cross-border payments, I learned that a security event reaches the bank long after it reaches the radar screen. A tanker delay changes freight cost and insurance terms; the bank then sees altered documents and different arrival dates. A correspondent question can follow. No missile has to hit Karachi for that friction to appear.

I can picture the problem from I.I. Chundrigar Road. A cargo that changes route may also change settlement timing, while a delayed bill of lading can alter how a trade desk handles the file. The naval crisis enters the bank as paperwork. By then, somebody has already paid for the extra distance at sea.

Pakistan already possesses one relevant institutional node in Karachi. The Pakistan Navy's Joint Maritime Information and Coordination Centre operates from PNS Qasim at Manora and supports maritime security for shipping moving through the North Arabian Sea. Its published role centres on coordination and information exchange within Pakistan's maritime jurisdiction. A regional system would need the same basic habit on a much wider scale.

Pakistan offers more than symbolism. Its coastline faces the Arabian Sea, and Gwadar sits near the maritime approaches linking Gulf traffic with the wider Indian Ocean. No public pact text assigns Gwadar a military role. Geography still matters.

A regional sea-power system would not need to reproduce the US Navy ship for ship. It would need reliable detection and a way to pass targeting information securely. Ships would still matter. The expensive part lies in connecting the picture to a response before a hostile platform disappears or changes course.

Who Gains From a Leaner Maritime Model

Saudi Arabia gains the clearest economic benefit. Riyadh needs safe export routes while it tries to keep itself outside a wider war, and the Red Sea coalition gives it a way to share part of the security burden. The Makkah pact adds a smaller circle of defence partners. I read the two structures as separate institutions that could become complementary if operational planning starts to overlap.

For Pakistan and Türkiye, the attraction differs. Pakistan brings an Arabian Sea position shaped by decades of defence ties with Riyadh. Türkiye brings a defence industry that the new pact explicitly wants to connect through joint production and common support. Both gain more influence if Riyadh starts treating regional capabilities as the first call during a crisis instead of an emergency supplement after American options narrow.

The uncomfortable point concerns cost. Building an American-style blue-water fleet requires decades of capital spending, while making a chokepoint dangerous can cost far less. A state does not need to dominate every mile of ocean to force a carrier or tanker to change behaviour. Denial can therefore buy political effect without buying global naval supremacy.

Col Salim's input matters most here. His argument pushed me away from counting fleets and toward asking who can see a ship, who can threaten it, and how quickly information moves between the two functions. I do not need to accept the claim that American carrier power has become useless. I only need to recognize that sea power can now come from systems that Mahan never had to place on his charts.

A regional coalition that shares surveillance and coordinates defensive fire could still depend on American support in a major war. Yet the threshold matters. If local partners can handle more of the first response, Washington loses part of its old monopoly over regional maritime security. Saudi Arabia would not need to expel the American fleet to reduce dependence on it.

A Fleet Still Matters

Missiles cannot escort a convoy. Satellites cannot sustain presence beside a merchant ship for days when crews need reassurance and commanders need identification at close range. Rescue work still needs ships. Mahan survives because ships still have to occupy contested water after missiles have altered the risk.

The Makkah pact therefore faces a hard technical test. Its members can buy drones and improve electronic warfare, but sea control requires command arrangements that work under fire. Public statements do not yet show who would own that authority. The first committee meetings may matter far more than the signing photograph because those meetings will decide who can act.

Col Salim pushed me beyond fleet counts. Twenty-first-century maritime power can come from the ability to detect and deny access before a larger fleet arrives. Yet denial is not the same as control. A coalition can make waters dangerous without proving that it can keep them open.

The next serious Houthi strike may expose the difference. When Houthi fire threatens a tanker south of Jazan, will Riyadh call a regional command built around the new pact, or will it still depend on the American naval architecture it is trying to supplement?