Washington's Middle East and South Asian policy is on the march this fall and it's no pretty thing. It is the way that a superpower views its alliances, as bills to be paid on demand, to be revoked at a moment's notice, and never as secure as the photo-ops make them appear. Three storylines all combined this week that reveal the extent to which the current U.S. strategy for the region is transactional and how vulnerable it is.

Start with Riyadh. The mood turned sour quickly after the Crown Prince was welcomed to Washington with the red carpet, less than a few months after the Saudis announced a deal worth $600 billion, in which the White House said was the largest defense sales agreement in history. The Saudi relationship is a "bedrock of security and prosperity," Trump said, and he would make it "closer, stronger and more powerful than ever before. That was the wooing. The truth behind it is more complicated. Trump's modus operandi with European NATO members and with Volodymyr Zelensky is the same as he used with Saudi Arabia: he has praised a subordinate but made it clear that the praise was required and not voluntary.

That's important because Saudi Arabia is playing the game of the not so comfortable hand. The kingdom is already taking the hit from the Iranian drone and ballistic missile attacks against its military bases and oil facilities, and its use of PAC-3 MSE interceptors already is higher than the number that Lockheed Martin can manufacture annually, and replenishment is years away. In exchange, Riyadh is paying for American protection with cash and consumables it can no longer replace quickly enough, and it is being asked to normalize with Israel for which MBS so far has refused to do so until there is real progress toward a sovereign Palestinian state. Add to that Mohammed bin Salman has personally urged Trump to take action against the Houthis and Trump has yet to do so, instead providing only intelligence and targeting support. The relationship that is this much based on leverage is not very likely to endure when leverage changes.

There's also Gaza, where the paperwork seems complete and the war is not. Netanyahu visited an Israeli outpost within the Strip, stating that Israeli forces "are not withdrawing," that they control sixty percent of Gaza and that "more to come. It is the one line that would cut down months of discussion on a cease fire and a phased withdrawal. The October deal, which was facilitated by the U.S., Qatar, Egypt and Turkey, included provisions for freedom of movement for humanitarian workers, and an Israeli withdrawal in the future, in exchange for the release of hostages.

Rather, Israeli air raids have been continuing at a nearly daily rate and observers in the region have said Netanyahu's government has all the incentive to postpone any implementation until after Israel's elections October 27. Impatience has not been a secret among Washington's own emissaries. Special envoy Steve Witkoff has indicated, however, that the administration "hope[s] the war will be resolved one way or another before the end of the year, which is more of a deadline imposed by the American political calendar than by the realities of the situation.

One shouldn't miss that ‘before the end of this year' dovetails into the election cycle for the midterm of 2026, when a president would much prefer to campaign on ending a war rather than running it. Meanwhile, on the West Bank front, Israel is making a "slow annexation" of its security barrier, which is deepening its separation of Palestinian farming communities and their land, while moving forward quietly. This is not a sense of territory being handed back by a leader. It feels like a leadership drawing new lines, when everyone else is focused on something else.

The third thread passes right through South Asia, and it ought to be more of a concern for New Delhi than it is. In the last twelve months, Washington's sentiments shifted dramatically towards Islamabad. In an unprecedented move, the army chief of Pakistan was hosted at the White House and the alliance with Pakistan on counterterrorism was revived, while American companies signed up to explore the mineral resources of Balochistan, even though the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) is not very optimistic about the availability of those resources.

The economic figures are the more telling. Now, Pakistani exports to the United States benefit from a new lower tariff, which was originally set at twenty-nine per cent and was reduced to nineteen per cent. In contrast, India's exports were given a fifty percent tariff increase following the resumption of purchases from Russia and Indian's refusal to give Trump credit for brokering the ceasefire with Pakistan in May 2025.

This refusal, rather than any specific diplomatic gesture, seems to have come at a high price on India's part in Washington's goodwill and a reminder that this administration values public credit and personal flattery as much as it values strategic alignment. If the visit to Islamabad is indeed to become reality this month, then it is clear that the intention is to bend over backward for the one who plays along, despite past successes or failures on the fields of terrorism, human rights and regional stability.

When you tie these three threads, one thing is immediately clear. That is Washington's current foreign policy as it sees all of its partners, from the Gulf monarchy to the Israeli coalition or the South Asian rival pair, as vendors to be negotiated for whenever it's convenient, and a war, no matter how devastating for the people who live through it, as a talking point to be scheduled to coincide with an election.

For New Delhi, the message is that it's not the show or the relationship that brings favor, but the deepening of economic and strategic interests that aren't quickly lost once a tariff is issued. The same lesson of Riyadh is being learned with missile interceptors that it can't replace in time. Gaza's civilians are coaching themselves in it by sticking to a ceasefire that is largely unobserved. Islamabad is, for the moment, benefiting from the sunny side, but as with many things, it is a transactional friendship and that's the end of the line.