WEB EDITION No. 5 - Oct. 1991 Vol. 39 p. 27-31

THE NEW EUROPE AND THE WESTERN MEDITERRANEAN Alvaro de Vasconcelos, Director, Institute for Strategic and International Studies, Lisbon The Gulf War served as a brutal reminder that the southern hemisphere is not only suffering from increasingly serious economic and social problems but is also subject to a number of disputes over regional hegemony and an associated trend towards over-armament - issues that cannot fail to concern the European and Western powers. Despite the unquestionable significance of Central and Eastern Europe, the major problems of European and Western security and responsibility are not confined to that region alone. Although the East/West conflict has ceased to be an ever-present worry, and there are now new opportunities for broader international cooperation, the greatly reduced risk of global conflict, resulting in an effect akin to decompression, paradoxically increases the probability of regional and domestic crises in the East and South, born of the drive for regional hegemony or of disintegration. One of the regions in which this combination of negative factors is concentrated in the most potentially explosive way is the area surrounding the Mediterranean, a region of great cultural and religious diversity, of sometimes difficult encounters of Catholics, Muslims and Orthodox, where empires have clashed and collapsed, causing large movements of populations and leaving a trail of unsolved nationalistic and ethnic tensions. The Yugoslav crisis is a painful example of the complex situation in the Mediterranean region, even more so than the Gulf, itself a tragic illustration of the kind of problem we can face in the post-Cold War era. The fighting in Yugoslavia is also a bitter reminder of the difficulty which present security institutions confront when attempting to deal with nationalistic and ethnic conflicts. The social, economic and political dimensions of the problems on the southern shores of the Mediterranean are well known - their main feature being a soaring population not matched by economic and industrial development. The population of North Africa, from Egypt to Mauritania, which was 90 million in 1980, is set to rise to 153 million by the last few years of this century, and to 241 million by the end of the first quarter of the twenty-first. This population, which is largely very young (43% under the age of 15 in 1980 against slightly under 23% in Southern Europe), is being increasingly affected by unemployment, besides seeing its chances of emigrating to Europe reduced by competition from theflood of other immigrants expected from Eastern Europe, which would close this escape route to them. The population of Maghrebi origin in France already numbers more than three million and, disturbingly enough, racism has returned, to the point of becoming an issue in European politics. The countries of North Africa are very heavily dependent on the European market (which accounts for 50-60% of their external trade) and there is very little economic integration at regional level: trade between neighbouring countries represents no more than a mere 3% of the total. The enlargement of the EC to the South in the eighties and the prospect of association for Central Europeans, as the Single European Market approaches its completion, all suggest that the European market will have difficulties in continuing to absorb the Maghreb countries' agricultural products, which are their major exports and of critical importance because they represent employment for a substantial proportion of the working population. The gravity of the economic and social crisis besetting North Africa has undermined popular support for the ruling regimes, and this fact has, in turn, triggered a process of economic and democratic reform in some of them, a process complicated by the fact that in most cases the democratic forces are identified with the post-independence governmental experience whilst a major part of the opposition has no democratic tradition. In Algeria, where this democratic process is most advanced, electoral procedures have been established, although it is thought that a general election will not be held before January 1992 at the earliest. The municipal elections of June 1990, in which the Islamic Salvation Front secured close on 55% of the votes, bore witness to the increasing strength in North Africa of the radical Islamic (Sunni) alternative, which is strongly political, and advocates rupturing relations with the West. In Tunisia, the Islamic Tendency Movement (which later became the Islamic Ennahdha party, and saw a 15% drop in votes in the 1989 legislative elections) lost some ground when President Ben Ali took over from President Bourguiba in 1987. It should, however, be noted that the initial difficulties encountered by the Islamic groups at the outbreak of the Gulf crisis as a result of their support for Iraq can be traced to the fact that they are traditionally backed by Saudi Arabia, which also goes some way to explaining the Arab nationalist posture of the governments of the Maghreb during the Gulf War. Cooperation in the Western Mediterranean Since the end of the Gulf War, attention has been turned to international initiatives and conferences aimed at resolving some of the problems standing in the way of stability in the Middle East and the Mediterranean, initiatives that substantiate the assertion that the West does not indulge in double standards. I refer specifically to the proposed International Conference on the Middle East, centred on the Arab-Israeli issue; to the Conference on Security and Cooperation in the Mediterranean (CSCM); and to the 4 + 5 Group comprising the nine countries on the two sides of the Western Mediterranean. Since the regions concerned are adjacent to each other, and the issues these conferences are aimed at settling intermingle and sometimes overlap, there is a tendency either to confuse thevarious initiatives, or to infer that one excludes the other. One of the initiatives that has already made considerable headway is cooperation in the Western Mediterranean between Southern European countries (Portugal, Spain, France and Italy, and recently joined by Malta) and the Arab countries of the Maghreb (Mauritania, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya), who make up what is still termed the 4 + 5 Group, which was born of a proposal tabled in Marrakech by President Mitterrand, and was formally constituted in Rome on 10 October 1990. The stability of the Maghreb is a key concern to countries such as Italy, France, Spain and Portugal, notably because of its geographical promixity; the Maghreb begins on the threshold of the Iberian peninsular, and a serious crisis in the region could not fail to have a powerful impact on neighbouring European countries. There are also political grounds for this concern, since, should Europe fail to recognize the full significance of issues in the South and turn in on itself, member states enjoying a degree of international status because of their relations with non-European countries would lose some of their political pull. Cooperation in the Western Mediterranean has a specific value of its own, even leaving aside the wider picture of the Mediterranean basin, and its extension to the East, the Near and Middle East, and, more especially, the Gulf. The framework of this cooperation is established primarily by the relations between the European Community and the Arab Maghreb Union (UMA), which was set up in Marrakech on 17 February 1989. Topping the agenda are economic, political and social issues, including security and confidence-building measures. Particular attention needs to be paid to economic, political and social matters, since they are at the root of the main problems facing the countriesof the Maghreb, and steps must be taken to formulate a preventive strategy to protect the Western Mediterranean from being contaminated by the instability that is generic to the Middle East, and to do this by implementing economic policies of co-development which help to arrest population growth and dispersal, and encourage the more efficient management of resources. At the top of this agenda should be support for the development of the UMA as a means of enhancing regional interdependence and development. This is, in my opinion, the most significant contribution that Europe can make to stability throughout the Mediterranean. The setting up of the Mediterranean Financial Club is a move in this direction. Causes of regional conflict With respect to security, it is evident that the main problem lies in South-South relations, that is to say, in the relations between the countries of the Maghreb themselves, centring on the fundamental issue of the inviolability of borders inherited from the colonial period, and on the vision that each country has of the regional balance of power. It was the differing views of this balance that led to the war in the Western Sahara and, before that, to the conflict between Morocco and Algeria, both in the Western Sahara and in the 1963 Desert War, as well as to the dispute between Libya and Tunisia, which became a military conflict in 1983, when Libya attacked Gafsa. It is this propensity for conflict among the Maghreb countries, and the desire for supremacy in the region, which explain the significant increase in military expenditure by these countries over the past decade. In 1989, military expenditure amounted to 12% of GDP in Libya, 5.2% in Morocco, 5.6% in Tunisia and 1.9% in Algeria (military expenditure in most European countries amounts to some 3% of GDP, and a similar figure was spent on maintaining the East-West balance of power). The last ten years have also seen a considerable increase in the size of the armed forces of the Maghreb countries: in Algeria and Morocco the figures have risen from 111,000 and 116,000 respectively in 1980, to the current levels of 125,000 and 192,000. The oil-producing countries of the Gulf and the Mediterranean spend 45% of their oil income on armaments,and just 25% on development, as was recently pointed out by Jacques Delors, the President of the European Commission. The setting up of the Arab Maghreb Union was an important step towards finding solutions to local disputes through negotiation based on mutual trust. As Moroccan expert Mustapha Sehimi has said, the fact that the Treaty of Marrakech points out that the purpose of the Union is to 'safeguard the independence of each member state' is a reminder that 'there are still problems to be solved in that area in the Maghreb'. (1) Spectacular progress has, nonetheless, been made, and this is exemplified by the reconciliation between Algeria and Morocco, which paved the way for a referendum in the Western Sahara. As the process of cooperation instigated by the 4 + 5 Group progressed, Italy and Spain proposed a conference on security and cooperation in the Mediterranean, which would include the Islamic countries (from Mauritania to Iran), the countries of Southern Europe (from Portugal to Turkey), the USA and the USSR. One of the main difficulties hindering the convening of this conference, apart from its extremely wide scope, is, of course, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and the need for both parties to be represented on it.Italian Foreign Minister Gianni de Michelis has stated that the Conference on Security and Cooperation in the Mediterranean (CSCM) is part of a long-term process towards the development of mutual trust between the West and the Islamic world. However, neither the proposed international conference on the Middle East, nor the CSCM, eradicates the need for increased cooperation in the Western Mediterranean, and the conflict in the Gulf has rendered this all the more urgent. The Maghreb is a strategic sub-region distinct from the Middle East and the Gulf; the level of conflict in the region is currently much lower than in the latter areas, and should stay so. The Maghreb will obviously continue to be strongly affected by events in the Middle East (particularly as a result of Arab and Muslim solidarity, that is, with the Palestinians), but the causes of the present climate of instability in the Maghreb are to be sought in the region itself, and stem mainly from the tension between modernity andfundamentalism, aggravated by the arms build-up in the Maghreb countries. The Euro-Maghreb agenda The agenda covering relations between Europe and the Maghreb is wide indeed, although it is obvious that the issues involved will continue to be sensitive to the aftermath of the Gulf War. Not withstanding their unanimous condemnation of the invasion of Kuwait, emphasized in the case of Morocco by the participation of its forces in the coalition, the Gulf War was seen by the Maghreb countries as the first step towards a new international order in which they would play only a very peripheral role. Significant though they may be, challenges originating on the Southern shores of the Mediterranean are unlikely to supersede the problems in Eastern Europe in the eyes of Western policy-makers. What Southern European countries are trying to do is to introduce a balanced approach to both regions in European policies. As far as North Africa (and countries to the East) are concerned, the priority for the West is cooperation, including military cooperation. Several Alliance countries have, in fact, entered into military cooperation agreements with Maghreb countries. The USA, for instance, has made use of bases in Morocco under the terms of such agreements. Mutual trust and stability will depend on a combination of factors which, in addition to the promotion of co-development, must encompass greater mutual understanding in all fields, including security, to prevent misunderstandings due to the lack of a cultural and civilizational dialogue. The restructuring of Europe must not lead to the creation of a fortress Europe that marginalizes the South, and the Near South in particular. The new Europe must embrace the Western Mediterranean sub-region. We must construct a model of European security that subsumes sub-regional levels of cooperation to deal with specific problems affecting certain of these areas. Note: (1) Mustapha Sehimi, in 'Le Maghreb, la securite et la stabilite en Mediterranee occidentale', paper presented at the joint IEEI-WEU-ISS seminar on security and stability in the Western Mediteranean Lisbon, 10-12 July 1991. © Copyright by North Atlantic Treaty Organisation 1991.