Pakistan, Aug. 8 -- The Makkah Joint Defence Agreement does something more consequential than add another name to Pakistan's long bespeckled list of friendly-country accords.

By declaring that an armed attack on Pakistan, Saudi Arabia or Turkiye would be treated as an attack on all three, it converts years of defence cooperation into a stated principle of collective deterrence. The operative word, however, is deterrence, which considerably matters in a region where missiles, drones, and attacks on energy infrastructure have demolished the comfortable assumption that wars could remain geographically contained. The three signatories have rightly stressed that the pact is defensive and directed against no particular state. Nor should it be ...