Strategic Geography
🇸🇦Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia is at once a critical node in global energy supply, a political centre of gravity in the Islamic world, and one of the states working hardest to convert defense spending into domestic industrial capability. This section tracks how Riyadh is adding security options beyond the United States, and what those choices mean for energy, supply chains, and the Gulf.
2 analyses
Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan Align: The Middle East Builds a Second Security Layer Beyond the United States
The Mecca Joint Defence Agreement treats an armed attack on any one of the three as an attack on all — language that drew immediate comparison to NATO's Article 5. But reading it as another NATO misses the larger shift: regional powers are no longer only choosing among architectures designed elsewhere. Seventy years after the Baghdad Pact traced nearly the same geographic axis, the architects have changed.
How the New Pipeline Empire Bypassing the Strait of Hormuz Redraws Oil Power
On maps, the Strait of Hormuz is merely a narrow trace of water; in reality, it is the world's most formidable energy chokepoint. The conflicts of 2026 have redrawn the scale of oil power. This article analyzes how Persian Gulf states like Saudi Arabia and the UAE leverage bypass pipelines to forge asymmetrical energy resilience, restructuring geopolitical alliances.