The military cooperation agreement Jordan signed with France last Thursday, during King Abdullah II's visit to Paris, is the third such agreement Jordan has signed with a European country within two weeks. Paris's agreement was preceded by Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi signing two similar agreements with Austria and the Netherlands.
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The agreement with France is the fourth of its kind between the two countries, which share a long history of defense cooperation. It is broader in scope than its European counterparts, given France's military capabilities and extensive expertise in defense industries.
These agreements are not the only indicator of what could be described as a major shift in Jordanian defense strategy. Anyone following the King's foreign travel schedule over the past months will notice that defense and military cooperation has come to occupy a prominent place on His Majesty's agenda.
Weeks ago, the King visited China, and military cooperation featured prominently in the visit, with practical steps following between the two sides, represented by a meeting in Amman between Chief of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Major General Majdi Al-Harasees and executives of a Chinese military manufacturing company.
In the Czech Republic, which the King visited for a single day, one of the most important meetings was with executives of military manufacturing companies. During an earlier visit to the Kingdom of Sweden, the file of military industries and cooperation opportunities dominated the visit's agenda. The same thing happened during His Majesty's visit to Pakistan months ago, at a time when Jordanian military leaders were opening doors of cooperation in military industries with their Turkish counterparts.
There is a new Jordanian strategy, one whose heading is openness, imposed by the massive geopolitical shifts that have struck the region over the past three years. It rests on diversifying cooperation and armament options, without abandoning strategic alliances, whether with the "greater ally" the United States, or major powers in the world and the region.
The Middle East is going through a historic moment unprecedented since World War II, one that can be summed up in a brief phrase: the total collapse of the arrangements and rules that governed relations between its states for many long decades. And the weakest party in this currently unstable equation is the formal Arab order, which has come to resemble a piece of cheese, being nibbled at from every side by mice.
This is a phase in which we haven't just lost certainty about the future, but even the little trust that once existed between the region's states. Non-state actors have come to possess influence and capability exceeding that of states and their armies, to the point of threatening the entire global economy, energy markets, and trade routes.
Jordan, given its bitter experiences with the region's chaos, has never grown accustomed to waiting for events, but rather to getting ahead of them, in order to build a protection and defense system capable of facing the worst-case scenarios.
Nothing takes precedence over Jordanian national and security interests in the Jordanian state's vocabulary. King Abdullah II sensed the shifts underway early on, after the events of October 7th, and perhaps even months before them. The rise of the extreme right in Israel, Iran's regional ambitions, the drone war that covered the region's skies, the resurgence of armed groups at the expense of state authority in several Arab countries, added to the drug trade and arms trafficking, and the erosion of the fabric of the formal Arab order and the disputes that have worsened between its states, were sufficient warning signs for a leader of King Abdullah's stature and experience to think through new military, security, and political approaches, ensuring Jordan's survival amid the region's fires, and fortifying it against coming dangers.
The starting point was adopting a strategic project to restructure the armed forces, "the Arab Army," as a necessary step to develop its capabilities to deal with changing circumstances and respond to the shifting nature and methods of warfare.
The recent war on Iran, and the threats and targeting it brought that reached Jordan, must inevitably push toward a new path, one entirely different from what existed before the war.
