Between Commitment and Testing: When Agreements Are Not Enough
The security challenge facing Gulf states no longer lies in the absence of agreements or a shortage of allies, but in the gap that has emerged between political and defensive commitments and the moment they are translated into action when an attack occurs. Decades of defensive relations, the obligations imposed by the Gulf Cooperation Council’s Joint Defense Agreement, bilateral agreements with the United States and other international powers, and the Mecca Agreement have produced a broad network of commitments. Yet the current war has raised a more pressing question: what actually happens after an attack? Experience shows that an attack, a declaration of war, the activation of an alliance, and the entry into combat are not one and the same. Large-scale military operations can begin without a formal declaration of war; an allied state can suffer an armed attack without its allies automatically moving to war; and collective defense can be activated without all states contributing the same force or in the same manner.
Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) provides an important example. It considers an armed attack on one member an attack on all, but it does not automatically transform an attack into a war fought by all states in the same way. The experience of September 11 demonstrated that the attack occurred first, then the conditions for invoking Article 5 were verified, and only then did the nature of states’ contributions diverge, while the war on terror expanded into an international framework that transcended NATO itself.
The Gulf experience reveals the same dilemma in a context closer to home. The Joint Defense Agreement affirms that an attack on a member state is an attack on all, but events in 2026 showed that the occurrence of an attack does not automatically lead the six states into a collective war. Political stances, condemnation, coordination, and protective measures emerged, while the use of force and its intensity remained tied to each state’s national calculus.
The Mecca Agreement presents the same test. Treating an armed attack on one party as an attack on all establishes the principle, but it alone does not answer the questions that follow: Who decides that the threshold has been met? Does moving to joint action require a request from the attacked state? What is the nature of the response—combat, air defense, intelligence and early warning, logistical support and munitions, or a combination of these? Here lies the distinction between the activation threshold and the activation sequence. The activation threshold answers when an attack falls within the scope of collective defense; the activation sequence answers what happens in the next minute—who requests, who decides, who leads, what each party contributes, what the rules of engagement are, how long it takes to move from political decision to operational action, and when the mission ends.
This issue appears even more sensitive when examining bilateral defensive agreements with the United States. The presence of forces, bases, armaments, training, and intelligence cooperation does not necessarily imply a single, automatic mechanism that turns every attack on the host state into a U.S. war. Here emerges the ambiguity revealed by the current war: an ally may remain politically committed, providing information, early warning, resupply, and defensive support, while retaining an independent decision on the timing and limits of using its own force. This is not necessarily a sign that the alliance has ended, but it reveals the difference between an assumed guarantee and a specific, testable commitment.
Therefore, the post-war Gulf review should not be a quick search for new agreements or new allies before testing what already exists. Existing agreements must be translated into operational scenarios: missile attacks, drones, maritime threats, port closures, cyberattacks, targeting of critical facilities, or proxy aggression. For each scenario, the question must be: what will happen in the first hour? A small state cannot afford the luxury of long waits. Limited geographic depth, concentrated populations and critical infrastructure, and dependence on ports, energy, water, and communications make time itself part of deterrence. Commitments may be legally strong, allies politically sincere, and military capabilities immense, but the value of all this changes if the distance between an attack and activation remains unknown.
Thus, the path forward may not be moving from one ally to another, but shifting from an alliance based on guarantees to one based on capability and activation: national capability that absorbs the initial shock, Gulf capability that provides depth and support, and international alliances that provide strategic capabilities—all linked by a known and tested activation sequence. At that point, joint exercises become a test of the agreements themselves, not just of the forces. We test what happens if an ally is delayed, if political assessments diverge, if a base or port is disabled, or if a state needs immediate support before a collective decision is complete. An alliance is not measured only by what was written at the time of signing, nor by what is said when an attack occurs. The real test lies in between: when a commitment becomes a decision, and when a decision becomes operational capability. There lies the activation threshold, and from there begins the activation sequence. On this basis also begins the engineering of the alliance a small state needs for the coming phase.
