ARAB GEOPOLITICS 2020: THE MIDDLE EAST, WHAT KIND OF FUTURE?
In partnership with the Policy Center for the New South (PCNS), the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the NATO Defense College Foundation held a conference under the theme “Arab Geopolitics 2020: The Middle East, what kind of future?”, on July 27th, 2020. The event focused on the complex security landscape in the Arab region during times of uncertainties.
For starters, Karim El Aynaoui, president of the Policy Center for the New South, gave his welcoming remarks by emphasizing on two main points: south-north and intergenerational dialogue. He believes that they are essential in conflict resolution within the region.
“Regional complexities make dialogue ever more important today. We need to go beyond official channels of policy-making, and to invest on evidence-based analysis to have a positive solution emerge for the whole Arab world” he insists.
Furthermore, Gilles Kepel, scientific director of the Middle East Mediterranean Freethinking Platform, invoked the complex nature of regional security in the MENA since this year knew many military incidents that did not follow the traditional military confrontation. He also discussed the importance of integrating the Mediterranean region and recognizing its complementary role in Europe.
The first session, “An Unsettled Middle East”, focused on the role of the international community in finding common ground for all actors in order to settle their differences. A case in point, Youssef Cherif, deputy director of Columbia Global Centers, perceives the competition between great powers in Libya as resulting complications on dialogue and conflict resolution. In this context, Younes Abouyoub, director of the Governance and State-Building Division for the MENA Region, sees the current pandemic as a delayer for “any initiative to settle the crises affecting the region”. Therefore, Mitchell Belfer, president of the Euro-Gulf Information, believes that it is important to examine the power structure of the region, taking into account the increasing anarchy that is continuously present in regional countries. Additionally, Maged Abdelaziz, permanent observer to the UN, sees that the future of multilateralism is at stake since the United Nations is unable to appoint a new envoy to Libya.
Finally, the second session, “Open Issue of the Civil Society”, focused on the balance between the military, political institutions and civil society. Watkins believes that the main challenge faced in the region is “the proliferation of groups involved in security” that heavily affect the civil-military relations. To illustrate, Brahim Oumansour, associate research fellow at Institute for international and strategic affairs in Paris, sees that “Foreign support to non-state actors is a key factor to understand their success in countries like Syria & Libya”. Therefore, Mohammed Loulichki, former Ambassador of Morocco to the United Nations & Senior Fellow at the Policy Center for the New South, Rabat, sees that the international community must focus on “the promotion and protection of human rights; sustainable development; and the empowerment of youth and women” and to build new economic sustainable model.