The 'cold war' returns to the Maghreb
The war in Ukraine has reawakened the old ghosts of the Cold War. Although it officially ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the end of the hegemony of the Communist Party in Russia in the 1990s, the duel to the death between the United States and Russia has continued to this day with the war between Russia and NATO on the Ukrainian stage. The polarity between "communism and liberalism", "democracy and authoritarianism", "freedom and serfdom", the slogans that flooded the world for fifty years, is once again present.
Today, the Cold War is being revived by the political and ideological alignments that the West imposes on its allies and enemies alike. This is what we are seeing in North Africa. The hegemonic rivalry between the Kingdom of Morocco and the Republic of Algeria is due both to their opposing and conflicting visions of the future of the Maghreb, to the incompatibility of their regimes, and to the alignment of the former with the United States and the Western bloc, and of the latter with Russia and its allies.
This mini-Cold War in the Maghreb affects the entire foreign policy of North African countries, and therefore mainly concerns Spain, Portugal, France, Italy and Spain. The militaristic escalation in the region, with the intense and accelerated rearmament of the two geopolitical rivals, Morocco and Algeria, is proof of this. The verbal escalation, with accusations that are not only unfounded but also contrary to the diplomatic conduct of relations between states and particularly neighbours, is also proof of this.
The crisis unilaterally unleashed by Algeria, first with Morocco by breaking off diplomatic relations, and now with Spain by suspending the Treaty of Friendship and Good Neighbourliness, are reflections of the Cold War. These actions are devoid of reason and bring neither economic nor political benefits to those who take them. Algeria gains nothing, nor can it gain anything.
The rivalry between Algiers and Rabat - the Western Sahara issue is a circumstantial and random trigger - has no short-term solution. If they do not go to hot war for the time being, it is because both countries are dependent on arms suppliers, Russia on the one hand, and the US and the West on the other, which will not provide them with ammunition and spare parts in the event of a conflict. In the first week of open warfare, both Algeria and Morocco will be forced to turn to Moscow and Washington for support. And the attitude of the major powers remains to be seen.
In the middle is Spain, which, because of its unconditional alignment with the West and the very presence of the US army on Spanish soil, does not have Moscow's sympathies. Quite the contrary. And Algiers, aware of the Kremlin's endemic anger with Pedro Sánchez's government, has played a card with no future. If Algeria continues its anti-Spanish escalation with the cessation of gas supplies, the suspension of bilateral trade and the breaking of contracts already signed, it will be left alone, it will not receive any European support, not even from Italy, and it has no alternative. With the exception of arms, Algeria's main client and supplier is the European Union, on which it depends. And on the United States, which is the main investor in energy.
Algeria's ordago against the PSOE, calculated on the basis of the discrepancies between the Socialists and Podemos, and also on the basis of the Popular Party's mistake of putting electoral calculations before matters of state, cannot have the effect sought by the Algerian government. In the worst case scenario, if the Algerian offensive ends up shaking the Sánchez government and provoking early elections, the government that might succeed it, with a coalition of the Popular Party and other allies, will not be able to change Spain's policy towards the Maghreb: support for Morocco will be maintained, as will the demand that Algeria respect international legality.