ABSTRACT
This chapter offers an analysis of security and defense structures in the Mediterranean as they developed during and after the Cold War. While the geopolitical situation in the Eastern Mediterranean justified the deployment of a permanent fleet by the United States in the basin in the late 1940s and initiated the process of Soviet “containment”, NATO imposed itself, over the next decade, as the main military organization in the region and structured the western defense of the southern flank of Europe. Since the 1970s and even more so after the Cold War, the militarization of the Mediterranean has been accompanied by new security actors and models, more based on cooperation and on the need to balance North-South relations. While the EU and the OSCE have appeared in particular as structuring elements of security in the basin, the conflicts in the Middle East and the Balkans, terrorism, the Arab springs, the migratory crises and the military renewal of certain regional powers have nevertheless led to a gradual redefinition of the challenges and defense structures in the Mediterranean since the end of the 2000s.
