![]() adopted a largely hands-off approach to Libya, peppered with a dose of confusion as to whether Washington would support General Khalifa Haftar’s military offensive or would stand by the UN-backed Government of National Accord.Įuropeans have fared no better. intervened militarily through NATO on the basis of a UN Security Council resolution calling for a no-fly zone but expected European heavy lifting in that endeavor (that only partially materialized). That preference has panned out in diametrically opposite ways: in Obama’s case, the U.S. From President Obama’s leading from behind to President Trump’s aloofness notwithstanding the resumption of civil war, Washington, across Democrat and Republican administrations, has steered clear of a deep dive into the Libyan quagmire. has signaled its preference for disengagement. Three crises are worth reflecting on, pointing to different models of transatlantic cooperation. While they all feature local, regional, international and transnational dimensions, each one has its specificity warranting a precise mix of transatlantic cooperation, risk and responsibility sharing. North Africa and the Middle East have become a much wider and more heterogeneous geographical space, in which different thematic issues interlock. Likewise, migration, energy, security and climate dynamics have generated indissoluble ties between North and Sub-Saharan Africa, the Gulf and the Horn of Africa as well as between the Eastern Mediterranean and the broader Middle East. It has become impossible to read conflicts in North Africa and the Middle East in isolation, as regional powers like Saudi Arabia, UAE, Iran, Israel and Turkey weigh in across the region. ![]() and Europe sought for decades.Ĭonsequently, the region has become far more permeable than it once was. However, here too one only needs to scratch the surface to see how the normalization between countries that were never at war-like Israel and UAE-may have pushed further down the line the peace-between Israelis and Palestinians-the U.S. ![]() The only cleavage that appears to have temporarily abated is the Arab-Israeli one, with the Abraham accords crystallizing normalization between Israel and some Gulf states. All major global and regional cleavages are now tragically on display in the region: from the Russia–West and Israel-Iran confrontation in Syria, to the Turkish-EU tensions in the Eastern Mediterranean, from the Turkey-UAE/Egypt struggle over political Islam in Libya, to the Iran-Saudi conflict in Yemen, or the Gulf and Israeli skepticism of the Iran nuclear deal.Įnergy has become a proxy for confrontation-as evident in the configuration of the East Med Gas Forum from which Turkey is excluded-and migration has become both a dramatic consequence of fragility and conflict, as well as a tool through which origin and transit countries have arm-twisted Europe. Through such interference, global and regional rivalries have exacerbated and have found fertile ground. State fragility has created areas of limited statehood, in which alternative forms of governance-from militias to municipalities, international donors to civil society-have stepped in and in which foreign powers have meddled. The Arab state system is in tatters, with many (if not most) states featuring existential fragilities or having collapsed altogether. ![]() Some of the key pillars of that world have gone.
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