In Riyadh, shortly after midnight on Dec. 14, Deputy Crown Prince and Defense Minister of Saudi Arabia Prince Mohammed bin Salman surprised the world when he held a press conference — his first — in which he announced the formation of a new Islamic military coalition against terrorism. Predicated on the premise that Muslims have suffered more from terrorism than any other group, Mohammed argued that Islamic countries needed to transform the unilateral counterterrorism campaigns currently being carried out by more than 50 countries around the world into a collective effort to vanquish this “disease.”

While the timing of the announcement might lead some in the West to assume that it was in response to increasing calls from the international community — and especially the United States — for Islamic countries to "do more" in the fight against the terrorist organization known as the Islamic State (IS), Saudi Arabia and other Islamic countries may have a different rationale.

From their vantage point, this coalition might in fact be a reaction to what they perceive as the international community's (under US leadership) largely ineffective campaign against IS, which in their eyes, lacks a clear strategy and resolve and neglects the two main factors that have allowed IS to spread: Bashar al-Assad’s brutalization of Syria’s Sunni majority and Iran’s support of Shiite militias in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen.

It is not clear at this point whether the ultimate objective of this Saudi initiative is to create the Islamic equivalent of NATO, a formal military alliance with binding commitments from its member states. Nevertheless, the announcement is consistent with two prior decisions that suggested that while it is not rejecting the security framework agreed upon by the victorious powers following World War II and which became institutionalized in the United Nations Security Council, Saudi Arabia may be looking to lead alternative security frameworks.