|
|
|
Map of Africa Map of Europe |
Email this citationCIAO DATE: 03/03
The European Union's Mediterranean Partnership
September 2002
Abstract
In the 1990s, the end of the East-West confrontation brought about sweeping changes in the regions beyond the Mediterranean further than in the European East. During the Cold War many Middle Eastern and North African countries had received support from the USSR and sided to varying extent and in different ways with it. Thus, the Mediterranean region had been regarded by NATO as its “southern flank”. In fact, conflict in that area could give way to a “horizontal escalation” and shift the confrontation from regional to global level.
In the new post-Cold War situation, the threat the Southern regions used to put to the Alliance disappeared. The root causes of regional conflict and instability were still there, however: namely, a set of international and domestic disputes that could generate dangerous spillovers and, more broadly speaking, affect Western interests and the emerging international order. The new setting was considered by Alliance in the 7-8 November 1991 North Atlantic Council in Rome. The NATO 1991 Strategic Concept 1 says that risks to the Alliance’s security can hardly result from “calculated aggression”. Western countries’ security remains subjected, however, to the risk of “the adverse consequences that may arise from serious economic, social and political difficulties, including ethnic rivalries and territorial disputes which are faced by many countries”.
In general, the new strategic setting, as defined in Rome by the allies, called for cooperative responses. In the Southern approaches to Europe, the Western countries responded by setting in motion the Madrid/Oslo process for peace in the Middle East and other frameworks for regional political and security cooperation, such as the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership-EMP and the NATO Mediterranean Dialogue.
