Europe, the Mediterranean Area and the Influence of World Policies

Abstract

Since the European Union began to play a growing role in the relationships between the Member States and the Non-EU Mediterranean countries, the policymakers in Brussels have devoted a great deal of attention to devise and implement actions and programmes aimed at promoting peace, stability and growth to the area. The effects of such involvement have been not as significant as expected but not even insignificant. Tension has almost always floated over the Mediterranean waters because crises and violent conflicts have followed one another though never breaking all relations down. The present paper takes a cue from this feature of the Mediterranean area and proposes to watch the territory from a different angle of view. Contrary to the prevailing view of the Mediterranean as an area unaffected or scarcely affected by the dominant world policies, the paper analyses the impact of the world policy-making institutions and policies on the Mediterranean area. It also draws the readers’ attention towards the participation and, in significant cases, the non-participation of the governments of the area in the world institutions and policies. Accordingly, the first section highlights the concepts useful to analyze the world as the political space in which policymaking institutions have been established for building policies that respond to world-scale problems. The second section outlines the significant security and economic world policies that have been established for responding to world problems and, consequently, for bringing order to the world, the Mediterranean area included. In the third section, the focus is on forecasting the world and Mediterranean politics of the coming years by drawing the readers’ attention to the confrontation of three big powers, the USA, China and Russia. The difficulty to keep unaltered the Western coalition could not impede the renewal of the US hegemony should disorder be unsustainable to loads of countries. The Chinese model of economic openness and the non-interference of the investing companies may not work in all the Mediterranean countries. By acting as a troublemaker and game-changer in security complex settings like the Mediterranean area by bolstering authoritarian regimes, Russia mostly wants to create a situation in which the United States and the European countries find it impossible to make any decisions without its participation. Accordingly, the paper’s conclusions call for building knowledge about the reconfiguration of the world coalitions and the change of the existing order and institutions. Especially the revisionism of the three states competing for world leadership requires careful investigation. Research on the influence of such a global process on the wider Mediterranean area and the involvement of the Mediterranean countries in such a process is of paramount importance.