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.
David Garcia Cantalapiedra is professor of public international law and international relations at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid.
Cantalapiedra, in his latest edited book, NATO and the Greater Maghreb: Geopolitics, Threats and Great Powers, brings together the disparate frameworks of Geopolitics, Great Power Competition, and emerging Threats and Challenges to analyze NATO policy toward the Mahgreb. Long overlooked and sadly neglected by European security experts, this book forces those who follow NATO to take seriously security on the southern flank. For those following the debate over the next NATO Strategic Concept, this book is a must read.--David Hamon, University of Mary Washington David Garcia Cantalapiedra and the contributors to this important volume describe a stark issue facing NATO and the EU. Drug trafficking, terrorism, criminal insurgency, hybrid warfare, refugees, and climate change trouble the Greater Maghreb, the area stretching across North Africa and the Sahel. Officials must devise a coherent policy for Europe's southern flank, or the area stretching across North Africa and the Sahel might become another battleground in the Russian assault on the West. NATO and the Greater Maghreb is a call to consider seriously Europe's southern security.--James J. Wirtz, U.S. Naval Postgraduate School The Greater Maghreb, connected with the Western Sahel, emerges as an increasing concern for western security. Even if the eastern front of NATO is increasingly problematic, the challenges, risks and threats studied in this book demonstrate the need to balance the efforts to be made in security and defense terms by the West in the years to come.--Carlos Echeverria Jesus, University Institute General Gutierrez Mellado-UNED
