The Axis of Paris, London and Washington and the Mediterranean from Suez to Benghazi Via Tunis, 1956–2013

Abstract

Traditional and contemporary international relations give France a preponderant place in the Mediterranean, in particular in the Maghreb. The United Kingdom and the United States also maintained a significant role in the region, before and after the historic British withdrawal east of Suez. Robert Kaplan’s book, The Revenge of Geography: What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate, led observers to wonder whether the new challenges caused by the Arab Spring would lead the whole Mediterranean region to a new Sykes-Picot Agreement. Without dwelling on the dynamics of the Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia, this paper will rather try to stress the geopolitical and geostrategic importance of the Mediterranean from the beginning of French colonial hegemony to the crucial role played by the Mediterranean during the second world war. The second main objective is a comparative analysis between the respective motives and interests of France and the UK during their collusion in Suez in 1956, and their renewed close collaboration in Benghazi in 2011. Given the new role of NATO during the last intervention, an attempt will be made to decipher any new shift in Euro-American relations, that is, whether Europe is again trying to regain a certain degree of autonomy in defining and initiating its own defence of purely European interests, or if the US government, still striving to extricate itself from two long and exhausting wars, is becoming a leader from behind. On the other hand, because Robert Kaplan speaks of a ‘battle against fate’, one may wonder whether the Arab Spring, after the so-called long Arab exceptionalism, is not in actuality a delayed trigger for what Isaiah Berlin called ‘the revenge of history’.