THE ARAB WORLD
What an effective Arab strategy for the EU should look like
Spring 2010
Europe’s attempts to forge a strategic partnership with the Arab world have been mismanaged and under-resourced, says Abdullah Baabood. He suggests that the 65-year old 22-nation League of Arab States offers a viable framework for future cooperation
Commentary:
RELATED ARTICLES:
The European Union has yet to develop a coherent strategy toward the Arab world. Ever since the suspension of the Euro-Arab Dialogue (EAD) as a consequence of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, which split the Arab world and weakened the League of Arab States, Europe has followed a differentiated approach in conducting its relations with Arab states.
So for almost two decades, the EU’s relations with the Arab region have been conducted through various initiatives and policies that lack both overall design and coherence. There has been a proliferation of unrelated policies like the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership, the EU-Africa Partnership, the Cotonou Agreement with African, Caribbean and Pacific countries and the EU’s stalled agreement with the Gulf Cooperation Council, the GCC. These have not only left Arab countries like Iraq and Yemen out of any institutional arrangements but have added to fragmentation of the Arab region, deepened intra-Arab divisions and indirectly contributed to the weakening of the Arab regional order.
Europe initiated the Euro-Arab Dialogue (EAD) in the mid-1970s following the first oil shock, but with limited experience in inter-regional cooperation, the EAD got off to a false start with the two sides having different expectations. The EU, at that time the European Community (EC), wanted
energy security in exchange for economic and technical cooperation, while the Arab side hoped to exchange its new found oil power for political support in the Arab-Israeli conflict. These divergent motivations forestalled meaningful Euro-Arab cooperation, so the EAD endured a quiet death when in the 1990s the Arab world became more divided still following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.
Europe subsequently tried to kindle closer relations with sub-regional Arab groupings like the Arab Maghreb Union (AMU) and the Gulf Cooperation Council so as to keep some sort of a dialogue alive with these strategically important parts of the world. But the AMU relationship did not develop as envisaged and was eventually subsumed into the EU’s wider Mediterranean policies, which were to culminate in the Barcelona Process and its Euro-Mediterranean Partnership (EMP), and lately its successor, the Union for the Mediterranean which has somewhat confusingly been combined with the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) to create “a ring of friends” from which the GCC is deliberately excluded.
These EU policies were developed with largely strategic considerations in mind in the wake of the Union's eastern enlargement and the security and migration challenges that were expected from the south. But the European idea of developing a zone of shared prosperity that would ensure stability and security in the Mediterranean has yet to bear fruit. The income gap between the Mediterranean’s northern and southern Mediterranean regions is still widening and it would be hard to claim that Euro-Mediterranean policy has helped resolve the region’s lingering conflicts.
The EU’s relationship with the GCC states also bears stark witness to the reluctance of Europeans to engage constructively with the Gulf. Europe has for long subjected this important, strategic and sensitive sub-region to what might at best be termed benign neglect. In the 20 years since the signing of the 1989 Cooperation Agreement, EU-GCC negotiations for a free trade agreement (FTA) have failed to reach a conclusion and in 2008 were suspended. Cooperation in other areas that include the energy sector has been very limited, while the stagnant political dialogue consists of little more than the two sides reiterating their positions. This political dialogue has therefore done little to unlock trade disputes or even enhance Europe’s security of oil supplies from the Gulf. In 2008, the GCC states unilaterally suspended the FTA negotiations, a move that amply reflected their disappointment with Europe’s apparent refusal to acknowledge the region’s strategic significance.
It is increasingly obvious that the EU now needs to rethink its strategies with regard to both the Mediterranean and the Gulf regions if it is to ensure that the Mediterranean Union is not just a continuation of old policies under a new name. For the Mediterranean Union to make a real impact it needs to be equipped with the levels of financial and political capital that its Barcelona Process forerunner was denied. In the case of the GCC, the EU needs to move beyond the free trade negotiations and get down to genuinely substantive cooperation issues, even if that means that the EU has to sign bi-lateral FTAs with each of the GCC’s member states.
The EU also needs to create appropriate connections between the different strands of its policies in the Arab world, for example by creating linkages between its Mediterranean and the Gulf strategies. The European Commission’s 2004 strategic partnership document for the Mediterranean and the Middle East did very little to advance the EU’s political footprint in the region or give it greater coherence. Dividing the Arab world into Mediterranean and Gulf sub-regions and leaving other Arab countries out is not helpful to Arab governments’ own regional integration efforts, and today a number of Arab countries that include Iraq, Yemen and Somalia are clearly feeling the effects of a weakened Arab regional order.
At sub-regional level a pragmatic case may exist for continuing separate dialogues with the Mediterranean and GCC countries, but in reality there is much to gain by linking the EU’s various policy threads with different Arab countries, and most especially those of the Gulf and Mediterranean. For the vulnerable Gulf states, the Mediterranean and Levant is their security hinterland as well as being the backbone of their cultural identity. The Gulf, meanwhile, offers a source of investment and employment, for the Mediterranean region; it is second only to Europe in terms of foreign direct investment (FDI) in the Arab Mediterranean countries, so combining Gulf financial muscle with European know-how and technology could go a long way towards improving the prosperity and stability of the whole region.
The non-Mediterranean and non GCC Arab countries – Iraq, Yemen, Sudan, Somalia, Eritrea, Djibouti and the Comoros – could be incorporated into the EU’s Mediterranean policy as the GCC is a sub-regional organisation while the Mediterranean is not. Mauritania and Jordan are both members of the EMP but they are hardly Mediterranean countries. Alternatively, these countries could come under a more encompassing new overall EU policy towards the Arab region that would build on and reinforce existing inter-regional relations while linking the Gulf to the Mediterranean.
The seemingly neat term “the Arab world” is an amorphous description and can be misleading. Being “an Arab” is as slippery a notion as being “a European”. Heterogeneity and diversity are key features of the Arab world, and after all the term is used to describe the 22 countries that belong to the League of Arab States (LAS), whose combined population is some 350m from different ethnic and religious backgrounds who inhabit lands extending from the Atlantic to the Gulf and from the Saharan desert to the Anatolian foothills.
In stark contrast to Europe, the Arab world has seen little formal integration. Some regional arrangements like the United Arab Republic (UAR) between Egypt and Syria in 1958 lasted only three years. Other regional acronyms have come and gone, sometimes acrimoniously. The ACC – the Arab Cooperation Council grouping Egypt, Iraq, Jordan and North
Yemen – survived only a year after its birth in 1989. The Arab Maghreb Union (AMU) has been a flop, and although the Gulf Cooperation Council, consisting of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, Bahrain, Qatar and the UAE has fared better, it has nevertheless been held back by rivalries.
The LAS is altogether more durable and resilient. It was set up in 1945 with the main aim being to “draw closer relations between member states and co-ordinate collaboration between them, to safeguard their independence and sovereignty and to consider in a general way the affairs and interests of the Arab countries”. It has served as a forum for member governments to coordinate their positions, to deliberate on matters of common concern, and where possible to settle some disputes and limit conflicts. The LAS has had a long history as a platform for fostering trade and economic cooperation, including the creation of a Pan-Arab Common Market through the Greater Arab Free Trade Area (GAFTA).
Despite its many shortcomings, not to say many premature obituaries reporting its demise, the Arab League has not only survived but also has helped resolved many regional conflicts while playing an important role in intra-Arab cooperation and economic integration. Any weakening of it has had a negative impact resulting in wars and even the
failing of member states like Somalia and to some extent Yemen. It is therefore surprising and odd given the European passion for promoting regional integration that the EU has no formal dialogue with the League. Europe has thus under-achieved in its sub-regional policies towards the GCC and the Mediterranean while neglecting the only regional organisation grouping all 22 Arab countries.
In short, the EU needs to re-think its whole strategy towards the Arab world and play a much more constructive role to promote the integration of the region. It should recognise the League of Arab States as the most suitable partner with whom differentiated policies like those with the GCC and EMP/ENP along with any others relating to Arab countries could be filled into an overall framework. A more encompassing and coherent EU-Arab policy should include such common issues as economic co-operation and integration, scientific and education co-operation, cultural dialogues, energy security and climate change, conflict resolution, stability and regional security as well as good governance, democratisation and civil society relations. It is a sad comment on the present situation that these elements are not seen by EU policymakers as the components of a strategic approach.