How Trump’s Chaos Keeps Splintering the World Order

**Alastair Campbell** (0:01)
What happens to the world when it stops believing American promises, American leadership, and stops believing in Donald Trump's boasting of his own greatness? In recent days, we've had some answers. Nuclear Pakistan, oil-rich Saudi, and Turkey, one of the biggest conventional militaries in the world, coming together to form a new strategic alliance, and with Egypt next in line, it seems, talk of an Islamic NATO. The Iran War grinds on, no end in sight, US munitions seemingly low, and that being watched closely and exploited by Russia and by China from Ukraine to Taiwan. And as an explosive-laden drone is found inside Leipzig Airport, as the German government warns of being subject to daily hybrid warfare, US and European intelligence agencies both warning Russia may be about to test NATO's solidarity, either with some kind of attack on a Baltic state or even Poland. August used to be called this silly season because nothing much happened during the summer.
Right now, not least with wildfires burning all over Europe, lots is happening, lots of it's serious, and all of it is really related to this question, how do we make sense of this ever-changing world order?

**Rory Stewart** (1:29)
Welcome to The Rest Is Politics with me, Rory Stewart.

**Alastair Campbell** (1:31)
And me, Alastair Campbell.

**Rory Stewart** (1:32)
And today, we will be talking about the development of a new almost NATO-type alliance which has emerged between Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan. We've been asking, what does this mean for the new world which the Trump administration had hoped to bring into being? And then in the second half, we'll move on to these hybrid attacks by Russia, in particular a recent drone attack in Leipzig, which are testing Germany and indeed the security of Europe and linking that to the broader question of the war between Russia and Ukraine. So a lot to get into, but all of it fundamentally comes down to the question of global peace and global order. Alastair, over to you.

**Alastair Campbell** (2:10)
Well, I found this Saudi-Turkey-Pakistan agreement absolutely fascinating. These are countries that don't always get on terribly well. They've had their own spats in recent years, but they've signed something called the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement. Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Liba, Erdogan from Turkey, and Shabazz Sharif, Prime Minister of Pakistan, getting together. We can't know that much because, weirdly, for something that's been billed as a great new agreement, there's not really a big text of this. What we're going on essentially is one line where they basically say that any attack against any of the three states shall be regarded as an attack against them all. Of course, that's what has made people make the link with NATO. NATO Article 5, an attack on one, is an attack on all. So I think this is much more of a strategic pitch. I do think, to go back to the point you just made, this is about them working out how do they adapt to a sense of, for them, America not as reliable as it historically might have been, Iran on the one hand, Israel on the other, being very, very, very powerful within their area. And so these are coming together, and they're essentially saying, look, we are now partners. I mentioned Egypt in the introduction. I think Egypt may be lining up, and again, that's a country that's had some difficulties with some of these new partners. But this, I think, is all a response to, not directly, but the tipping point for this, I think, was America's attack on Iran, and the consequences for all of the countries in the region to that.

**Rory Stewart** (3:45)
The interesting thing about what's happened over the last few months is that having US bases and having US presence in the Middle East for 60, 70 years has been seen as an almost guarantee of protection, almost immunity, not 100%, but pretty much that was the idea. You had a US base, and in return, the US would protect you. And that began to crack apart with some Houthi attacks from Yemen against some of the Gulf states, which the US didn't initially respond to, that's going back a few years now.
Then the Israeli attacks against Qatar, and now of course most dramatically, once Iran found itself under attack, it began lashing out at the Gulf states, and the US has really struggled to protect them. That's one big body blow. America is no longer providing protection and immunity. The second thing is that these states have quite a long history, particularly Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, of already cooperating covertly for many, many years now without really discussing it. There have been Pakistani pilots training in Saudi Arabia, actually flying Saudi planes. There have been Pakistani munitions on the ground. Pakistan is basically a military government. So although it's Shahbaz Sharif who signed it, as we often say in the podcast, it's really the chief of the army staff who has the great whip hand in Pakistan. He's the guy that goes for intimate lunches with Trump in the Oval Office.