A historic opportunity to build sustainable multilateralism in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is emerging. Changing geopolitical currents – including a perception that the US is less engaged in the region – and domestic pressures have prompted Middle Eastern governments to approach their foreign policy more independently, and in many cases to be proactive in mending ties with former rivals. This trend coincides with growing recognition that transnational challenges such as climate change and emergency response require increased cross-border collaboration. In this research paper, we argue that it is imperative for regional leaders to capitalize on this moment of de-escalation before it passes.
Specifically, we propose adding a cooperative layer to the region’s largely competitive security architecture through the creation of a new region-wide forum for sustainable dialogue and engagement on issues of common concern. We offer concrete ideas for moving towards the establishment of an official regional forum that is more sustainable and inclusive than current or past efforts.
Given the failures of previous multilateral initiatives and the entrenched mistrust and animosities between many MENA states, we argue that cooperation is most likely to succeed if it starts small, with a limited but expandable set of initial participants and a focused agenda addressing high-priority but less divisive issues – we propose climate action, energy cooperation, and responses to natural disasters and similar emergencies. Unlike many current initiatives, the membership and substantive agenda would be designed to promote cooperation for the benefit of the wider region and its people, not as an axis to target or exclude a specific country or to advance the agenda of a particular external power.
Why now?
At first glance, the suggestion that this is ‘MENA’s moment’ for cooperation might seem questionable. The rest of the world is looking distinctly uncooperative, as geopolitical dynamics have become more fractured in recent years. Relations between the US and China are confrontational, Russia’s war on Ukraine has created political and economic instability in Europe and beyond, and politics in many countries is becoming more insular and nationalistic. The fraying international order is straining long-standing multilateral institutions. In this difficult global climate, why would Middle East states attempt to create a region-wide framework for multilateral dialogue and cooperation? Moreover, why would such an initiative work now when others have not worked in the past?
Ideas for cooperation in the MENA region are not new. An official multilateral process emerged in the early 1990s in the context of Arab–Israeli peacemaking, and unofficial and semi-official ‘track 2’ and ‘track 1.5’ initiatives involving experts and policymakers from across the region have also discussed cooperation in various forms for decades. And yet such efforts have not generated an official, fully inclusive and durable region-wide cooperation forum similar to those that exist in most other areas of the world.
Sceptics argue that such forums are not possible in the Middle East: that there is too much mistrust, too many power imbalances, and that leaders see regional relations in zero-sum terms. Critics also argue that models from other regions cannot readily be transferred to the Middle East, given its distinct history and culture as well as multiple political, economic and security barriers. However, such views seem less credible in today’s changing regional context, where cooperation now appears more attainable with a wave of de-escalation replacing a prolonged period of competition, conflict and foreign intervention.
MENA leaders may now be linking their own power and legitimacy to the delivery of tangible economic progress and security – this suggests that the incentives for more cooperative foreign policy are increasing.
Geopolitical shifts ranging from the war in Ukraine to tensions between the US and China, as well as rising socioeconomic challenges, are incentivizing the MENA region to find its own mechanisms to reduce conflict. A flurry of recent developments illustrate the trend. These include: the restoration of diplomatic ties between Iran and Saudi Arabia in March 2023; the reset in relations between the Gulf states and Türkiye; the end of the Qatar blockade in January 2021; and the normalization of relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and between Israel and Bahrain, through the signing of the Abraham Accords in September 2020. MENA leaders may now be linking their own power and legitimacy to the delivery of tangible economic progress and security – this suggests that the incentives for more cooperative foreign policy are increasing. Given the cross-border nature of so many global challenges today – from climate change to food security to maritime security – regional cooperation has become an imperative, not a luxury.
These positive signs do not necessarily mean that regional de-escalation will prove durable. Authoritarian, transactional and competitive security mindsets continue to prevail among policymakers across the region. As one regional expert put it, the Middle East needs a ‘diversification of dialogue’ and more sustainable processes that can outlive the ‘moods of leaders’. In other words, politicians, policymakers and other stakeholders need to find ways to exploit this moment of de-escalation before the regional currents shift again. The challenge is to leverage the current interest in engagement, and the calming of regional tensions, into official mechanisms that can endure.
Politicians, policymakers and other stakeholders need to find ways to exploit this moment of de-escalation before the regional currents shift again.
To be clear, we are not offering a comprehensive blueprint for peace in the MENA region. Such an outcome is not feasible through any single regional initiative. Nor can cooperation replace competitive regional balancing and alliances, or preferences for bilateral arrangements among some regional powers – both tendencies that are particularly prevalent in the Gulf. Cooperation in isolation from more traditional strategic or hard security considerations has not proven to be realistic in other regions and contexts, and it certainly will not be possible in the Middle East either. For example, East–West cooperation and detente through the Helsinki process during the Cold War evolved alongside the active participation of countries in competitive security alliances – namely NATO and the Warsaw Pact. Similarly, in Asia, a cooperative security forum, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), has long coexisted with a competitive regional architecture and bilateral security alliances. What such initiatives did achieve, however, was to add a cooperative diplomatic layer to the regional security architecture.
This is the layer that is missing in today’s Middle East, where the security architecture remains largely competitive and transactional. Cooperative dialogues do not end conflict, but they may at least mitigate the damage when conflicts occur. Such dialogues can also help to prevent military clashes by raising the costs of conflict, and provide security and economic benefits that ensure political leaders have more to lose from confrontational policies.
About this paper
With the above context in mind, this paper synthesizes the findings from over a year’s worth of regional workshops, meetings with experts, and interviews under the Chatham House Rule – all conducted as part of a joint project between Chatham House’s MENA Programme (MENAP) and the Burkle Center for International Relations at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). We also draw on a series of articles commissioned for this project and published on our institutions’ respective websites.
The aim is not only to assess where cooperation initiatives in the region stand today, but also to consider what might be practical in terms of developing a new official regional forum in the future. We believe the vision presented here is realistic and achievable, but that it will take time for a new forum to establish itself and gain the confidence of participants.
Careful implementation will be needed to ensure that any new mechanism is sensitive to regional concerns and political agendas at the highest levels. Given the current realities, it is unlikely that one regional institution will emerge that is able to include all players at the outset. But the goal of a more inclusive and cooperative regional architecture is achievable, and this moment of detente is the opportune time to start building towards it.
