Geoff D. Porter
Morocco likes big. Big is good. In 1987, cooks in Agadir made the world’s biggest couscous. In 1993, it built the world’s biggest minaret and the world’s biggest concentrated solar power plant in 2016. The world’s biggest soccer stadium is currently under construction in Casablanca. And Morocco wants to build the world’s longest submarine natural gas pipeline.
The fragile, implicitly understood arrangment that has kept Libya’s oil revenue flowing – and by extension, the country somewhat stitched together – is at risk of completely collapsing. Historically, the National Oil Corporation (NOC) sold oil. The proceeds of those sales were deposited in the Tripoli government’s dollar-denominated account. But that arrangement is finally starting to unravel, the result of years of backroom wheeling and dealing to undermine the NOC’s monopoly on oil exports and the Libyan Central Bank’s (CBL) control of oil revenue.
In 2023, General Michael E. Langley, the Commander of U.S. Africa Command, warned that African countries face new destabilizing challenges, including “climate change [that] is increasing desertification.” One year earlier, Morocco, a close US ally on the northwestern edge of the Sahara Desert, had already started taking bold steps to get ahead of the negative effects of climate change. In particular, it began building a series of dams to better manage its increasingly precarious water resources. Scheduled for completion between 2026 and 2029, the dams will lessen the impact of more frequent and more violent floods, and they will allow Morocco to adapt to longer and more acute droughts. However, while the dams proactively mitigate the risks climate change poses to Morocco’s domestic stability, they are catalysts for broader regional destabilization.
In 2023, an article in the scientific journal Nature determined that starfish’s arms are not in fact arms but are extensions of their heads. Starfish don’t have bodies so much as they have multiple heads. The article described them as disembodied multiheaded creatures.
Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune was re-elected to a second five-year term in September 2024. Part of Tebboune’s success as president during his first term and part of what contributed to his electoral success for a second term was that he recognized that the presidency is not the only power pole in the Algerian political system. It’s one head. Among other heads.
Algeria has lots of grievances. Algeria’s world is an unjust place where wrongs abound. Sometimes the frequency of Algeria’s complaining makes it easy to dismiss its complaints: it’s a day that ends in “y” and Algeria is upset again. But Algeria does have legitimate grievances. And the legacy of France’s nuclear tests in the Algerian Sahara that began 65 years ago last week is among the most legitimate.
Tensions between Morocco and Algeria are mounting precipitously. Or rather, Morocco is precipitously mounting tensions with Algeria. And if Algeria is not careful, it could fall into a trap well laid by Rabat. That trap would result in Algeria being marginalized on the international stage for the foreseeable future. Algeria would be labeled a rogue and pariah, shunned and alone even though when the dust settles, Algeria will have done nothing wrong.
As expected, Algeria launched an oil and gas licensing round yesterday during the NAPEC energy conference in Oran. The announcement signals the return of Algeria’s upstream after a decade of doldrums. But it’s also not without its problems, which ironically were created by Algeria itself over the last several years.
It was a good run. In fact, the longest run in more than a decade. But all good things must come to an end. Especially when networks become too entrenched and there’s an election on the horizon.
One of the nice things about Algeria analysis is that it resists hot takes. Things don’t happen quickly in Algeria. In part, this is because of Algeria’s laborious consensus-based decision-making process and in part because Algeria genuinely does carefully consider foreign policy positions.
Russia’s Ukraine invasion and the concomitant European energy crisis, instability in Libya, Tunisia’s limbo, and the Sahel’s dysfunction have all focused international attention on Algeria. Could it be the ball’s belle? But what underpins Algeria’s foreign policy? With whom does it engage and why?
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