ABSTRACT
Bilateral relations define North African national security. Maghrebi states
have failed to establish a multilateral mechanism, which determines for state
behavior, as is the case in other areas such as Europe and Southeast Asia. Maghrebi states, therefore, manage their bilateral disputes without resorting
to multilateralism or to multilateral mechanisms. This raises the question of
whether or not the failure of Maghrebi states to create a multilateral system
can be considered as an initial structural framework for regulating regional
relations. This chapter will examine the factors and reasons that make the
emergence of a multilateral security structure unrealistic. The influence of
external factors on the security strategies in North Africa, as exemplified by
NATO’s Mediterranean Dialogue and the ‘‘5 + 5’’ forum, will also be analyzed. But before tackling these issues, it will be useful to introduce, albeit
briefly, the theoretical framework of multilateralism.
