Nato And The Greater Maghreb

NATO and the Greater Maghreb offers a distinctive focus and study of NATO’s future policy in North Africa and the Sahel after the new 2022 Strategic Concept, expected to be published during the next NATO Summit in Madrid. The book will use three main axes to frame the contributors’ analysis, which are not usually used together for analyzing NATO policy: Geopolitics, Great Power Competition, and Threats. These lenses create a distinctive approach to reviewing a Greater Mahgreb Regional Security Complex confronted with the necessities of a distinctive approach by NATO. The idea of MENA (Middle East and North Africa), still used by the EU and NATO is already obsolete for several reasons: first, it is no more possible to split West Africa geopolitically from North Africa and Sahel. Second, the action of terrorist groups such as Al Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, ISIS, and Boko Haram are not related to Middle East problems, nor strategies and policies necessaries to tackle them. Second, the difficulties in cooperation between these countries, the corruption fed by organized crime (above all cocaine trafficking) and the impact of desertization, makes it very difficult to establish sound strategies and policies for the area. Third, there is an increasing presence of Great Powers in the area, including Russia and China, Turkey, and some Gulf states with different goals and policies.

This book explores the causes and implications of the Libyan crisis since the anti-Gaddafi uprisings of 2011 from the perspective of the EU and NATO. It asks the question of why those organizations failed to stabilize the country despite the serious challenges posed by the protracted crisis to European and transatlantic stakes in the region. This book argues that such failure originated in a twofold problem common to both organizations: their prioritization of legitimacy over strategy, and their path dependence – the insufficient degree of adaptation to meet the different needs of the crisis. Through a critical and integrated analysis of official sources and extensive interviews with EU, NATO, UN, and national government officials and militaries, as well as from NGO personnel, Libyan institutions and civil society, and media, the volume brings the perspective of both state and non-state actors to the fore. It reveals how wrong assumptions and centrifugal forces within the EU and NATO hampered initiatives, and how the inability to use hard power judiciously and effectively in an increasingly complex and multifaceted scenario worsened the crisis. This allowed for unprecedented influence of regional and global competitors such as Egypt, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Turkey and Russia in the richest African country. This book will be of key interest for scholars and students of Libya and North Africa, NATO, the European Union, security and conflict studies, Middle East studies, migration, terrorism, peacebuilding and, more broadly, international relations.

As a cultural centre for Islamic interests across the world and as a focus point for increasing levels of economic and security interdependence, the Middle East remains a stage on which international politics will be played for the foreseeable future. This comprehensive study looks at the important international and regional actors and their interaction with, and reaction to, US foreign policy toward the region. The volume elucidates the trends in great power interest and interaction in the Middle East and studies the impact of the United States as the region's foremost military power. It highlights the changing nature of actors' relationships with the US and each other as their interests and policies evolve in response to changes in the region. Scholars, graduate and undergraduate students and the interested public will find this volume a useful guide and an ideal companion work for courses on the Middle East, US foreign policy and international security issues.

A compilation of papers analyzing the issues affecting security in the Mediterranean area and their policy implications. The Mediterranean is seen as a potential theatre for East-West confrontation both on land and at sea, as a key trade route and as an area of inter-relationship conflicts.

NATO was hugely successful in facing off the Soviet Union during the Cold War. But has it been equally successful in addressing the "new threats" of the post-Cold War era? This new study assesses the organization’s political and military initiatives, and how its outreach to Russia, Ukraine, and other countries in the Euro-Atlantic and Mediterranean regions, devoted considerable attention to WMD proliferation risks. It also probes the political factors, both inside and outside NATO, as well as resource constraints, which have limited the alliance's "added value" in the international community's effort to combat proliferation. The events of 11 September 2001 and bitter intra-alliance controversy over the 2003 Iraq intervention have highlighted questions regarding NATO's future role, and even its continued viability. This is a serious reflection on how the alliance should figure in the fight against WMD and terrorist threats and an examination of today’s key issues, including the use of force in international relations and the possibility of constructing new, post-Cold War collective security rules. This is the first study to evaluate, critically and in-depth, how a long-standing security organization has adapted - and must continue to adapt - to the global security challenges of our time. This book will be of great interest to all students and scholars of international politics, military history and all readers interested in the future of NATO and international security.

The overthrow of the regime of President Ben Ali in Tunisia on 14 January 2011 took the world by surprise. The popular revolt in this small Arab country and the effect it had on the wider Arab world prompted questions as to why there had been so little awareness of it up until that point. It also revealed a more general lack of knowledge about the surrounding western part of the Arab world, or the Maghreb, which had long attracted a tiny fraction of the outside interest shown in the eastern Arab world of Egypt, the Levant and the Gulf. This book examines the politics of the three states of the central Maghreb--Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco--since their achievement of independence from European colonial rule in the 1950s and 1960s. It explains the political dynamics of the region by looking at the roles played by the military, political parties and Islamist movements and addresses factors such as Berber identity and economics, as well as how the states of the region interact with each other and with the wider world.

This volume presents often sharply contrasting views on the future of NATO. Its contributors, mainly security specialists, cover structural reform of NATO and its relationship with the European Union; evidence or arguments in support of the Alliance taking on new tasks like peacekeeping and enlarging eastward to include countries of the former Soviet bloc; and a variety of arguments against enlargement, ranging from concerns about Russia's reaction to questions about whether the US should remain involved in Europe.