Washington D.C – The holding of a meeting yesterday in commemoration of the signing of the Israel-Morocco-US tripartite agreement is a subtle shut-your-face message from the Biden White House to anyone who still clings to hopes of a Biden U-turn on recent developments in US-Moroccan relations, notably the American recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara.
For Algeria and all pro-Polisario observers who had hoped to see the administration of President Joe Biden backtrack on the US recognition, this perception of continuity in the US’ policy towards Morocco with regard to the Sahara question is a bitter pill to take.
The day after the American recognition and before the decision was formalized through the tripartite agreement between Morocco, the United States, and Israel on December 22, 2020, I was firmly convinced that Biden would not reverse the decision of his predecessor.
No major discontinuity
My main contention was — and still is — that not only is the recognition there to stay, it has in fact become US policy vis-a-vis the Western Sahara question in particular, and diplomatic relations with Morocco in general. Were Biden planning to disavow the Trump White House’s proclamation on Western Sahara, he would have made this clear enough in the early days of his presidency. Instead, those who had bet on a reversal of the December 10 epochal shift in the US’ Western Sahara policy were left utterly disappointed as readout after radout from the White House reaffirmed Biden’s commitment to upholding the spirit of the paradigm shift in America’s Western Sahara diplomacy.
True, Biden has so far not been as unequivocally clear on the US’ pro-Rabat stance as Morocco may have expected. Still, if there is one blindingly obvious conclusion from dispatches coming out of both the White House and the State Department, it is that a reversal of President Trump’s decision is out of the question.
Biden, to put it bluntly, has no incentive to reverse that decision. Rather, what we may witness, as in other aspects of the Biden administration, is a change in tone while maintaining the same substance. When we look at many other areas of US foreign policy, we realize that beyond some slight — though sometimes easily noticeable — changes in tone and rhetoric, there is some sort of continuity of the Trump foreign policy in many areas.
Take the US-EU relations for example. Biden said on many occasions that he wanted to repair the damage that Trump caused to transatlantic relations. Yet some of Biden’s recent decisions went against this professed goal.
The most obvious case is Biden’s blindsiding of France to strike a deal with Australia and the UK. To say that this has caused more damage to US-France ties than any Trump move does not even come close to capturing the humiliation and frustration that Paris felt — and tried to show — when the deal was announced.
The same goes for the Israel-Palestinian conflict and the US-Saudi relations. Though there has been a change in rhetoric, a decision to restore US funding to UNRWA, the UN relief agency for Palestinian refugees, and the reopening — although now on hold — of the US’ consulate in Jerusalem, it is unlikely that Biden will have any incentive or even courage to take any concrete action that may pave the way a solution to the intractable Isarel-Palestine conflict.
More to the point, almost no informed foreign policy analyst expects the Biden White House to take any remotely meaningful actions toward preventing the Israeli government from building more settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Yet the Biden-Trump foreing policy continuity in the MENA does not end there. On the question of Saudi-US relations, for example, Biden has not delivered his pledges to review the terms of the relationship and treat Saudi Arabia as a “pariah” state because of its grim human rights record and its involvement in the war in Yemen.
During his presidential campaign and in the early days of his presidency, Biden repeatedly said that he would take the necessary actions to end the war in Yemen and end US’ arms sales to Saudi Arabia. Yet less than a year after taking office, in November, he approved a $650 million arms deal with Saudi Arabia, providing yet another perfect illustration of the big chasm between rhetoric and actual policy decisions.
And so, in the remaining three years of the Biden administration, we will most likely witness the same scenario regarding US-Morocco relations. We might witness a change in rhetoric with a subtle emphasis that Moroccan government should make sustained efforts to improve the situation of human rights and political freedoms in Morocco, including in Western Sahara. It is also unlikely that Biden will establish a US consulate in Western Sahara or make any statement to renew Washington’s unambiguous recognition of Morocco’s sovereignty.
Biden will lean more towards making sure not to take any further action that may alienate the progressive, woke wing of the Democratic party; or elicit the condemnation of some diehard supporters of the Polisario on both sides of the US political spectrum, including Algerian-paid lobbyists in Washington.
But when it comes to the substance, it is extremely unlikely that Biden will even consider reversing the US recognition. The US cherishes its long-standing and unbroken alliance with Morocco, and I don’t imagine any American President sacrificing this relationship for the sake of placating a Russian client state such as Algeria, Polisario’s main supporter and the principal obstacle standing in the way of a genuine political solution to the Sahara conflict.
The US and the Autonomy Plan
Additionally, contrary to widely believed claims among some observers, Trump’s decision to recognize Morocco’s sovereignty was not taken on a whim. If that were the case, the Biden administration would have had no qualms reversing it since day one of Biden’s presidency. Rather, the decision was the logical culmination of the US’ position on the conflict over the past two decades.
For one thing, the idea of the Autonomy Plan has long been supported by Washigton as the best way out of the Western Sahara conflict. As a recently declassified document has shown, it was the Clinton administration that convinced King Mohammed VI to present the Autonomy Plan as its proposal to diplomatically end the Sahara dispute, pledging to throw its weight behind the initiative should Morocco adopt it.
Ever since Morocco submitted the autonomy proposal to the UN Security Council in 2007, successive US administrations have consistently supported it and described it as “serious and realistic.” Meanwhile, the US has never supported Polisario’s counter proposal. Neither has the Security Council, which has consistently described the Moroccan Autonomy Plan in the same terms as the US.
In 2007, President Bush endorsed the Moroccan autonomy plan and sought to convince the Security Council to accept it as the basis for negotiations. But his attempt faced resistance from France, Russia, the UK, as well as from then UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who feared alienating the countries of the Non-Aligned movement.
As such, US support for Morocco’s plan was put on the back burner during the Obama presidency. Obama’s second term was marked by unprecedented tensions with Morocco as a result of Washington’s attempt to establish a human right monitoring mechanism in Western Sahara and the Tindouf camps.
But that was a brief period that stands in contrast with Washigton’s default pro-Moroccan position for much of the four decades of the Sahara conflict. To be sure, a brief dive into the 1970s is enough to understand that Washington was supportive of Morocco’s reunification efforts with its southern provinces once Spain left. If the Green March in November 1975 went smoothly and the Security Council did not adopt any resolution condemning it, it was because of behind-the-scenes support from the US.
A new geopolitical configuration
Back to the latest developments in the Sahara question, the recent adoption of a complete map of Morocco by the State Department and many US government-affiliated institutions should be enough to settle some questions and doubts that still prevail in some quarters.
One could therefore say with a great deal of confidence that this debate on the US recognition is closed, and that this decision is irreversible. In this sense, Morocco has managed a major diplomatic coup, and has in the process delivered a hard blow to the Polisario and Algeria.
Chiefly illustrative in this regard is the hysteria with which the Algerian regime reacted to the American recognition and the restoration of diplomatic ties between Morocco and Israel. If anything, the Algerian government’s anti-Morocco and anti-Semitic theatrics in recent months are indicative of Algeria’s realization that the tripartite accord is indeed a major diplomatic event that will upset the balance of power in North Africa and will have geopolitical reverberations in Morocco’s favor.
From a geopolitical point of view, the US recognition and the signing of the tripartite agreement is a nightmare for Algeria. For decades, the Algerian politico-military establishment has worked tirelessly to ensure that the United States maintains a certain positive neutrality in the conflict and does not take sides with Morocco.
But all these decades-long efforts suddenly fell apart with the American recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over the Sahara. The United States is no longer a neutral actor in relation to the conflict; it has clearly taken a position in support of Morocco, and it is this change that has rattled the Algerian regime, pushing it to take decisions as hostile and absurd against Morocco as the severance of diplomatic relations, the closure of Algerian airspace, and the non-renewal of the agreement on the Europe-Maghreb pipeline.
Since the signing of this agreement, Morocco has become more assertive in its determination to put an end to the Sahara conflict. Many parameters will surely change in the coming months and years, including the stiffening of Morocco’s position and Rabat’s rejection of any sort of remote negotiations with Polisario.
Given the recent developments, a scenario under which Morocco would conduct direct negotiations with the Polisatio is out of the question, especially after this separatist movement unilaterally broke the 1991 ceasefire agreement and declared war on Morocco. By behaving in this way and even rejecting the latest Security Council resolution, the Polisario has disqualified and shot itself in the foot.
As such, the new geopolitical configuration that has emerged from the American recognition and the tripartite agreement risks making Morocco more intransigent than ever. Having already proposed a comprehensive autonomy plan that the crushing majority of UN diplomats have described as “credible” and “serious,” Rabat may see — and perhaps has it already — in the UN recognition both a strong vindication of its position and a reminder that it no longer needs to make any concessions to reach a final solution to the Sahara conflict.
In such a context, it will behoove Morocco to capitalize on all the diplomatic breakthroughs it has achieved in recent years to put pressure on France and Spain to follow in the footsteps of the United States.
Both countries bear responsibility for the genesis and prolongation of the conflict. They know all too well that Western Sahara is historically Moroccan, and their archives are full of documents that attest to this fact. If they want to maintain strong relations with Morocco, it is high time they put aside their postcolonial hypocrisy and recognize Morocco’s historical and legal rights on its southern territory.
Samir Bennis is the co-founder of Morocco World News. You can follow him on Twitter @SamirBennis.
