The Western Mediterranean as a Security Complex: A liaison between the European Union and the Middle East? Special edition Euro-Mediterranean Partnership. JMWP No. 24.99, November 1999

Haddadi, Said (1999) The Western Mediterranean as a Security Complex: A liaison between the European Union and the Middle East? Special edition Euro-Mediterranean Partnership. JMWP No. 24.99, November 1999.

Abstract

[From the Introduction]. This paper sets out the beginnings of an argument, namely that the Western Mediterranean can be seen as a region that is starting to develop traits characteristic of security complexes in terms of the security dynamics that are at play within it -- particularly in relation to the interactions (both positive and negative) existing between North Africa and south-west Europe, and especially in light of the agenda generated by the end of the Cold War, by the aftermath of the Gulf War and by the developments taking place within the European Union (EU). My hypothesis is that the security interactions and interdependence existing within the Western Mediterranean warrant the investigation of this region in terms of a security complex that comprises North Africa and south-west Europe as two sub-complexes that belong respectively to the Middle East as a lower-level security complex and the EU as a higher-level security complex. Thus, my contention is that the Western Mediterranean can function as a link between the EU and the Middle East as two parent complexes. Hence I wish to label it a liaison security complex. First, before considering actual Western Mediterranean security problems, this paper briefly discusses the dominant literature dealing with regional security, focusing in particular on the Copenhagen School. Second, it raises issues that are relevant to the discussion of the Western Mediterranean as a security complex with special reference to the current questions and dilemmas that are plaguing relations in the region at the economic, political, societal/social, military and environmental levels. Then it seeks to relate them to the nature of the Western Mediterranean as a new genre of security complex, a liaison security complex. Finally, it evaluates the importance of liaison security complexes and judges their merits in reconciling some of the problems and difficulties encountered on account of the interdependence that exists, often increasingly today, between higher-level and lower-level security complexes.