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Washington D.C. – The European Parliament’s adoption of a hostile resolution targeting Morocco on January 19 shows that Europeans‘ imperialist mentality has not changed and that members of this closed club cannot conceive of a relationship of equals with Morocco.
Morocco seen from Brussels
The resolution’s tone, its timing, and its selective nature – no similar resolutions against Algeria or Tunisia, for example – demonstrate that some EU powerhouses, notably France, are outraged at what their neo-colonial mentality has led them to regard as Morocco’s unacceptable rebellion against an order that took them more than a century to establish.
Evidently, the gatekeepers of this imperialist order cannot tolerate the existence of win-win relationships between Europeans and a state such as Morocco, nor can they accept that Morocco might challenge the foundations of this order, even when they are detrimental to its economy and national sovereignty. Morocco, despite being one of the world’s oldest nation-states, is simply expected to never consider competing with the Europeans, let alone harboring geostrategic ambitions in its region and beyond.
From Brussels’ perspective, Morocco is merely a satellite state that should toe the geopolitical line of Europe and whose economy should serve as a spillway for high-value European products as well as a supplier of raw materials and labor – skilled or unskilled – to the so-called developed world, that is the West or Europe.
Europeans and Moroccans were getting along just fine as long as relations between Brussels and Rabat adhered to the prescriptions and expectations of this neocolonial order, and European leaders had no qualms about delivering enthusiastic speeches in praise of Moroccan political and economic reforms.
Therefore, Morocco’s supposed misstep is that it has dared to question this exploitative status quo that has significantly undermined its strategic interests and impeded all of its efforts to realize its economic and social ambitions. Some European quarters are thus dismayed because, for the past decade, Morocco has demonstrated a willingness to diversify its strategic partnerships to reduce its reliance on the EU.
Rabat’s new strategic positioning
King Mohammed VI’s visits to China and Russia in 2016, as well as the signing of strategic partnerships with these two countries, are part of this diversification drive. Launched and supervised by the King himself, this strategy of expanding Rabat’s network of economic and diplomatic partners also includes strengthening ties with emerging and established powers such as Brazil, India, and Japan.
However, Morocco could not aspire to play a leading role in regional and international politics without first reintegrating the African Union, a goal that was accomplished in early 2017. As such, Morocco’s pivot to Africa marked the culmination of more than ten years of royal diplomacy, an active decade during which King Mohammed VI crisscrossed Africa in more than 50 official visits.
This royal diplomacy has allowed large Moroccan conglomerates to position themselves on a lucrative, promising, and expanding African market. It has also helped persuade some African powers, who until recently sympathized with the Algerian thesis on the Western Sahara dispute, to reconsider their positions on this decades-old challenge to Morocco’s territorial integrity.
Morocco continues to demonstrate its commitment to the South-South cooperation through the development and promotion of win-win partnerships with its African partners, its investments in several African nations, the promotion of major pan-African projects (such as the Nigeria-Morocco Gas Pipeline), and the contribution of OCP Group to achieving food security on the continent.
European duplicity breeds Moroccan defiance
Moroccan diplomacy’s political discourse toward Europe over the last decade reveals a certain weariness vis-a-vis European deceit on what Rabat considers a sacred matter: territorial integrity. Illustrating this newfound Moroccan defiance is that Rabat has recently started to take a tough stance against any nation that crosses the line between proper diplomatic behavior and attempts to meddle in Morocco’s internal affairs.
The year 2014 marked a watershed moment in Moroccan-European relations, and this is most evident in the shifting trajectory of the relationship between Paris and Rabat. Following a visit by seven French police officers to the Moroccan embassy in Paris to “interrogate” Abdellatif Hammouchi, who was at the time visiting France on business, Morocco suspended judicial cooperation with France in February 2014.
Despite a phone call between then-French President François Hollande and King Mohammed VI, judicial cooperation between the two countries was suspended for an 11-month period. Since then, it seems as though the bonds of trust and respect that once united the two nations have been irrevocably damaged.
In the meantime, Morocco has repeatedly warned EU member states that the era of leniency and appeasement is over and that it will no longer put up with the EU’s hypocrisy regarding its territorial integrity. The first sign of this new approach appeared in the fall of 2015 following the Swedish government’s announcement of its intention to recognize the Polisario Front’s self-styled state in southern Morocco. In response to such a provocation, Morocco decided to boycott Swedish products and block the opening of the country’s first IKEA store. Such a firm Moroccan response forced Sweden to change course, with the European country reconsidering its position on the Sahara dispute and recognizing Morocco’s leadership role on the regional stage.
This newfound Moroccan tenacity was on display even at the multilateral level, in the wake of the European Court of Justice’s meddling in Morocco-EU agriculture and fisheries agreements. Following the European court’s decision to annul the EU-Morocco agriculture agreement, Rabat decided to halt all contact with European institutions.
Since then, Morocco’s relations with its European partners have yet to regain their former level of trust and cordiality. Trust has been replaced by mistrust – particularly on the Moroccan side – and the distrust gap between the two parties appears to be growing.
As Morocco continues to make more diplomatic progress on the Western Sahara front, it is becoming increasingly less willing to put up with its European partners’ ambivalence and subtle hostility on the critical question of its territorial integrity.
US’ recognition strengthens Rabat’s position
The US’ recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over the Sahara, as well as the adoption of a series of UN Security Council resolutions supporting the Moroccan approach, has led Morocco to demand that its European allies make clear their stances on the dispute and leave the gray area in which they have been wallowing for decades. To that end, Moroccan Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita has repeatedly demanded that Morocco’s European partners leave their comfort zone and take a firm stance on the country’s territorial integrity.
This Moroccan firmness peaked in 2021, when Rabat decided to sever diplomatic ties with Germany and Spain due to these countries’ thinly veiled hostility toward Morocco’s territorial integrity. In this highly symbolic episode of Morocco’s newfound defiance towards its European partners, Rabat did not hesitate to call its two ambassadors – from Berlin and Madrid – and suspend all contact with the two European countries until they clarified their respective positions on the Sahara dispute.
At the same time, the US’ recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over the Sahara not only boosted relations between Rabat and Washington, but also highlighted the US’ desire to reposition itself in Africa and make Morocco the focal point of its African policy.
In this sense, the US’ recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over the Sahara was a highly strategic, well-thought-out decision that reflected the American establishment’s thinking on two fundamental things. The first is the utopia or impossibility of establishing a state in southern Morocco, while the second is that the establishment of a fragile puppet state in Morocco’s southern provinces would be detrimental to US strategic interests in the short, medium, and long term.
In Washington, the bipartisan consensus remains that, to consolidate its economic and strategic position in Africa, the US more than ever needs a reliable ally capable of safeguarding security and stability in the fragile Sahel-Saharan region.
The signing of a 10-year military agreement between Morocco and the United States in November 2020 was thus no coincidence. Rather, this decision was a validation of Morocco’s importance in defending US strategic interests in North and Sub-Saharan Africa.
Paris, for its part, was unpleasantly surprised by the fresh momentum given to relations between Rabat and Washington for two reasons.
1- For more than five decades, especially since 1991, France has used the Western Sahara and its status as Morocco’s voice in the Security Council to protect and consolidate its grip on the Moroccan economy.
Throughout this time, the US and France were Morocco’s only reliable supporters at the UN Security Council. When the United States derailed – for example when Washington introduced a draft resolution hostile to Morocco in 2013 – France remained, even if symbolically, by Morocco’s side. And since at least 2007, Paris has consistently asserted that the Moroccan autonomy plan serves as the foundation for a political resolution. However, this stance has had no political repercussions for France when it comes to its relations with Algeria.
Even though France has publicly endorsed the Moroccan autonomy proposal, it has always been careful not to state unequivocally that it is the only way to end the Sahara dispute. As far as France is concerned, the point of this ambiguity has been to remain in Morocco’s good graces while avoiding a diplomatic crisis with Algeria.
Still, France was well aware that its position could only serve to preserve the status quo. More importantly, both the French and Algerians are aware that the only country capable of truly changing the direction and focus of the Western Sahara debates at the UN was the United States, the pen-holder for the Security Council on the Sahara question and the world’s leading power.
This means that the American recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over the disputed territory has completely shifted the game in Morocco’s favor, depriving France of the card it has long relied on to keep Morocco in its orbit. And that is why, since December 10, 2020 –the date of the US proclamation on Moroccan sovereignty – France has faced unprecedented pressure from Morocco to clarify its position by following the US lead.
2- In addition to placing France in an uncomfortable position with regard to the Sahara issue, the American recognition has caused a geopolitical upheaval that will eventually have a significant impact on France’s interests in both the Maghreb and in sub-Saharan Africa. Since the end of the nineteenth century, France has struggled to keep the Maghreb under its control and make it the springboard of its colonial empire in sub-Saharan Africa.
Within a few months of taking office in 1898 as France’s foreign minister, Theophile Delcassé, one of the main supporters of the French colonial enterprise, took upon himself the responsibility of mediating the conflict between the United States and Spain over Cuba.
The main objective of this strategy wasn’t to spare Spain military humiliation, but rather to stop the war from escalating and the American government from deciding to take it to Spain’s peninsula territory. More fundamentally, Delcassé feared that the American army’s presence in the Mediterranean Sea would hinder France’s plans to expand into Morocco.
At a time when France had yet to recover from the military defeat it had suffered at the hands of Germany in 1870 and the loss of Alsace-Lorraine, and when the French political elite was essentially pessimistic about their country’s ability to regain respectability in the concert of nations, Delcassé’s main concern was to prevent the US from foiling France’s expansionist plans in Morocco.
Delcassé feared American competition in Morocco because England had unrivaled political and economic influence over it, and the idea of a friendly agreement between Paris and London on the Moroccan question was not yet on the agenda. Following an agreement with England in 1904 and the Algeciras Conference in 1906, France established complete economic control over Morocco.
This policy – in violation of the provisions of the Algeciras Act, which guaranteed the safeguarding of the economic interests of the signatory countries on an equal footing with France – came up against the Americans’ unwillingness to give up their economic interests in Morocco.
Throughout the French protectorate years, and while the French government attempted to circumvent the Algeciras Act, the US refused to give up on its economic interests in Morocco, which were established by both the Algeciras Act and a treaty that the two nations signed in 1836. While the UK and other signatories of the Algeciras Act renounced their economic interests in Morocco, the US continued to abide by the terms of the 1836 treaty regarding its right to trade with Morocco and the rights of Americans residing in the country.
When France decided to restrict American exports to Morocco in 1948, the US took the case to the International Court of Justice, which ruled in its favor in 1952.
Gone are the heady years of ‘brotherhood between Morocco and France’
From Morocco’s independence to the late 2000s, France managed to maintain its grip on the Moroccan economy. At the time, every aspect of France-Morocco relations was unmistakably in favor of Paris.
This was a time when Morocco was still struggling to make decisive diplomatic breakthroughs on the Sahara issue. It was also a time, more fundamentally, when the Moroccan political, economic, and media elite — the majority of whom were graduates of French elite schools and universities — viewed France as the only dependable ally Rabat could count on whenever necessary.
More importantly, perhaps, this was finally a time when France was governed by a mature political class that saw Morocco as the best guarantor of French interests in the Maghreb and Paris’s only trustworthy African ally in the fight against terrorism and organized crime.
Many people still recall President Jacques Chirac– siding with Morocco against Spain during the crisis over the Leila islet in July 2002. Chirac even went so far as to request that Spain return the enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla to Morocco.
As James Baker, then the UN Secretary General’s Personal Envoy for Western Sahara, appeared to convince the then UN Security Council to consider imposing on the parties to the Sahara dispute a self-determination referendum as the solution to the dispute, Jacques Chirac unequivocally supported Morocco and opposed any attempt to go outside of the parameters of a compromise-based, politically negotiated solution.
Chirac had no qualms about referring to the Western Sahara region as Morocco’s southern provinces, nor did he have any problem emphasizing that any solution to the Sahara dispute would have to include dialogue with Algeria and respect for Moroccan sovereignty.
Jacques Chirac was the last French president who truly believed in the “brotherhood between Morocco and France,” and he sought to rectify one of the major injustices caused by his country’s expansionist aims in Morocco. He was also the last French president to treat Moroccans with dignity and respect.
Since Nicolas Sarkozy’s election in 2007, however, a new political class in France has emerged that lacks the same foresight or sympathy when it comes Morocco. Contrary to popular belief, Sarkozy never unwaveringly backed Morocco on the Western Sahara or other strategic matters. It is true that France supported Morocco’s autonomy proposal as the basis for a political settlement in 2007. However, this support was merely lip service.
When discussing the need for dialogue between Morocco and Algeria to end the dispute, Sarkozy never used the same language as his predecessor. Nor did he use the phrase “southern Moroccan provinces” when referring to the Sahara.
He simply repeated the same language used in the UN’s Resolution 1754, which essentially states that the Moroccan plan is a credible and serious basis for negotiations to end the dispute. France’s successive governments after Chirac have thus failed to demonstrate Paris’s sincerity toward Morocco on a number of critical occasion.
One such occasion arose in March 2008, when the US administration of President George W. Bush was determined to pass a draft resolution endorsing the Moroccan autonomy project and making it the sole basis for a negotiated political solution. Yet France failed to clearly support the Moroccan plan as the sole basis for negotiations.
According to former US Ambassador to Paris Craig Stapleton, Nicolas Sarkozy was under pressure from the Algerian lobby within the French administration as he needed Algeria to support his initiative to establish the Union for the Mediterranean.
Since then, France has continued to use the same rhetoric which enables it both to satisfy a Morocco that needed the support, albeit not very committed and even less decisive, of one of the members of the Security Council, but also an Algeria that was aware that the key to any decisive diplomatic breakthrough that could tip the scales in favor of either side lies in Washington and not in Paris.
Paris under growing pressure to clarify its position
The French political, economic, and media elite appears to have dismissed Morocco’s return to Africa, as well as its growing diplomatic and economic assertiveness in other regions of the world. The French’s inability to change their perspective on Morocco has prevented them from discerning the scope of Morocco’s economic and political ambitions, the mentality shifts of the new Moroccan elite, and Morocco’s determination to settle the Western Sahara dispute and demand unambiguity on this matter from its self-described strategic partners.
Judging by France’s outraged reaction to Morocco’s newfound assertiveness and the French media’s relentless smearing of Morocco in the past two years, it appears that the French elite was caught off guard by the US’ decision to recognize Moroccan sovereignty over the Western Sahara.
France is furious because Morocco chose not to inform it of the US’ decision, but also – and more critically – because the US’ move ultimately deprived Paris of a diplomatic card it has used for decades to keep Morocco in its orbit and avoid any American competition. France, therefore, can no longer use the pretext of its purported backing of Morocco in the Western Sahara dispute to obtain economic privileges from the kingdom. And as such, Paris is now obliged to clarify its position — either it is with Morocco, or it is with Algeria.
The geopolitical shifts that the US’ support for Morocco will cause in the coming years and decades explains France’s outright hostility toward Morocco, whether it is over visa restrictions, its machinations in the European Parliament, or the demonization of Morocco in the French media.
Be that as it may, the sure-to-be long period of cold relations between Rabat and Paris is a watershed moment in the two countries’ relations. There is no doubt that this period of profound misunderstanding will one day come to an end. If anything, the two countries share a wide range of economic, political, and security interests, not to mention the human aspect and the presence of sizable Moroccan community in France and a French community in Morocco.
It would thus be unrealistic to think that France’s influence on the Moroccan economy and society will vanish overnight. The process of de-francization of the Moroccan economy and elite will take decades, just as it took France decades to establish its hold on the Moroccan economy and consolidate its cultural and linguistic influence on the Moroccan elite.
But one thing is certain: the process has already started, and it began prior to the recent series of silent diplomatic crises between Paris and Rabat, which the French political-economic and media elite did not foresee. And so, it would be in the best interests of this French elite and government to recognize and accept the epochal paradigm shifts in the relations between Paris and Rabat.
Moroccans, for their part, are determined to remind the French — as much as needed — that the time when France considered Morocco its vassal is over, and that the kingdom and its people demand to be treated with the respect they deserve.
Samir Bennis is the co-founder of Morocco World News. You can follow him on Twitter @SamirBennis.
