Foto da www.omero.it/media/   Widespread poverty, demographic increase, unemployment of the young, social changes, energy dependence and environmental deterioration. This is the socio-economic picture of the area that includes the Mediterranean Countries of the south and of the eastern area, obliged to confront a series of problems – sources of instability and disorder, at times, fertile ground for terrorism – in the analysis across the board, drawn by Professor Corrado Maria Daclon. Since territory, in itself, tends to lose its original value from the strategic profile, from the “geopolitics of space” one passes to the “geopolitics of flows”, in the ambit of which the military arm becomes guarantor of the stability of the economic, energy and information flows, which constitute the real resources, including the natural resources. As far as the future is concerned, the geopolitical and economic scenarios are indissolubly tied to three key elements for the Mediterranean area: demographic growth, loss of fertile areas and water supply. This last element, above all, represents the prime cause of possible new tensions, in relation to the control and utilization of the resources.

It could seem rather daring, in a geopolitical analysis about energy and natural resources, to create a nexus between the Soviet former domination over East Europe and the Balkans, and the Byzantine and Ottoman heritage, when considering the political and religious influence exercised by the Roman Empire of the East over the development of Russia. Greece and Turkey did not fall under the Soviet influence and sought to integrate the Western political norms and customs into their traditions, such as, for example, the adhesion to the Atlantic Alliance. Yet, both East Europe and the Balkans that did not have the commercial experience and historically de-centralized from the West, in the same manner in which these Countries have not known, until ’89, the release from the oppression of communist dictatorships. As the historian of the Crusades, Sir Steven Runciman states, that during the entire history of the Roman Empire, there was always latent conflict between the East and the West. This was clearly confirmed by the fall of the Western Empire while the Hellenic world prospered for another thousand years. The differences were exacerbated in the Middle Ages by the division between the Eastern and Western Churches. A division still evident in the line that from Lebanon and Greece reaches Russia.
Unlike the east-west division of the Mediterranean area, that between the north and south does not require any particular underlining to be made evident. The diversities of experience are visible in this moment in the dichotomy between different levels of development, as well as the latent struggle, in the Moslem States, between a secular socialism – debtor, in many ways to Europe – and a revival of Islamic fundamentalism, especially after the 11th of September. Briefly, the Mediterranean Region, which appears geographically united, is profoundly diversified: a frontier zone between two, three and (if we include Israel) even four cultural traditions with all their strategic and political aspects.
No geopolitical analyst can permit himself to ignore these distinctive features, since they are part of those rules of the game that the initiatives of strategic programming must respect to strive for a temporal far-sightedness. Just as no political initiative can underestimate the differences in the energy, environmental, demographic and social ambits.
After the 2nd World War, the relations between Western Europe and the Mediterranean Region have been marked by different phases. The first was characterized by the loss of the hegemony of Europe, which was substituted by the superpowers that dominated the period of the Cold War. Consequently, the Region became one of the principal theatres in which the east-west equilibrium was measured. Its importance was not as significant or as crucial as that of the Central European front, which crossed Germany, or that of Norway, which controlled the exit passage of the principal Soviet fleet with base at Murmansk. Nevertheless, in these phases certain coastal States launched the doctrine “Mediterranean for the Mediterranean” which, however, received only a moderate reception because the situation of deadlock between the superpowers had become, little by little, tacitly considered as a guarantee for the stability of the Region, as well as having supported de facto various governments and even offered single States the economic and political space within which to promote initiatives judged, by them, to be priority.
Naturally, for Europe, the Mediterranean is not only important because it constitutes one of the sides of the NATO, but also because a long tradition of neighbourly relations between them has always existed. Since 1962, no more colonies exist in the Region, nevertheless the ties woven between the society, the economy, the culture of the vanished empires, and those even more ancient, due to simple geographic reasons, were not as fragile as they appeared to be, and still, today, play a leading role in international political and economic relations. The commercial flows alone demonstrate that many such relations have remained even tighter than the “decolonization policy” could have made believed. On the contrary, in certain cases they have even been reinforced. The intense economic development after the war, based on huge importations of oil at low prices, has made the Mediterranean the gate of access to the Persian Gulf and an important area of the profile of the geopolitics of energy. Therefore, the role of the Mediterranean is a cornerstone for east-west relations (beyond the agreements between NATO and Russia stipulated more recently), and for the relations with neighbouring Countries belonging to other cultural areas of an Islamic matrix (very extensive and populated areas) and also for the lines of communication with the regions of the oil production.
In the 50’s, while Europe began to withdraw from the Region, changes were already in course, which introduced a totally new phase at the beginning of the following decade. Such changes were, essentially, the result of the revival of the Mediterranean Basin States, favoured by the post-war economic recovery. The unrest towards the Cold War generated by this situation acquired a positive content, with the growing hope that the easing would have offered new margins of maneuver. Compared to the period of the Cold War, the local governments felt gradually freer to pursue autonomous goals and to seek new partners, without, of course, giving up the privileged relations with one of the two superpowers.
The economic expansion of Western Europe offered enormous potential outlets for exportation, attracting, in addition, a growing number of migrant workers from the South and proving to be a driving element for the development of the entire Region. Thus began a migratory phenomenon which was to lead to the ‘grafting’ of entire Moslem communities onto localized areas of our European States; a phenomenon which, today, arouses concrete preoccupation in the analyses of the security and the new terrorism, and which certainly requires a historicized and diachronic vision.
Also, thanks to the contribution of resources and of Mediterranean alliance in that period, the concept of Europe as third economic force (but not military) between the two superpowers, appeared for the first time. The renewed role of Europe, however, was not that of competing with the two superpowers, both because the stalemate situation advantaged everyone – to a certain extent – and because Europe was too close to the United States (certainly more than in this period) to strive to constitute an alternative. What was, in fact, verified, was a move towards the pro-western political trends by the majority of the Mediterranean States, a direction to which a part of them were already inclined. Since Europe did not have, and still does not have, the characteristics of a military power, relations with the Mediterranean Region came about to increase an economic and social development centered on the problems of a regional nature, giving less prominence to the defensive alliances, but without, for this, renouncing them. No government desired to remain excluded from this new alliance potentiality, starting from the Greek Government in 1960, until reaching the bilateral agreements with all the Countries of the Region (with the exclusion of Albania and Libya). Such process was seen with moderate favour and attention by the Atlantic Alliance and, above all, from the United States, inasmuch as numerous reasons of a political nature made a global structure desirable. One of these reasons was the knowledge that the relations between the Mediterranean Countries had regional connotations, and not only bilateral. Furthermore, the contradictions, almost inevitable in a non-coordinated framework of bilateral relations would have been able to arouse tensions and even the destabilization of the entire Region, a consequence diametrically opposed to the US doctrines on stability.
The Mediterranean Basin, understood globally, does not presently have the solidity of the Western Societies and the independence given by the long and consolidated political traditions that animate North and Central Europe. Even when they are characterized by dynamism and prosperity, the Mediterranean Countries of the South and of the Eastern area are obliged to deal with a series of problems, sources of uncertainty, instability, disorder, at times, breeding ground for terrorism: diffused poverty, strong demographic growth, unemployment of the young, strong social changes, energy dependence and environmental degradation.
Some examples are given by the Mashrek Countries (Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria), economically oriented towards the Persian Gulf, rather than to Europe. Egypt has been able, to a certain extent, to compensate for the lack of currency, thanks to oil, to the rights of transit for the Suez Canal, to tourism, to the replacements of the emigrants in the Middle East Countries, and to the help of the United States. As it is also clear that the incomes of Countries like Algeria and Libya are ensured by the global markets of energy products and, not certainly, by East Europe. However, in all these Countries common phenomena emerge: the first and most obvious is the reduction of food self-sufficiency, which effects the above mentioned States, but also, for example, Morocco and Tunisia, rendering these Governments interested to make ties with Europe, which means, with the upper coast of the Mediterranean, allowing them to invert or, at least, to stop the tendency.
One of the environmental phenomena which draw more concern from the European international analysts, but also from the United States, is the desertification. This process encroaching on habitable and economically usable territory pushes the inhabitants of the Maghreb always further north, until they are forced to cross the sea into Europe. A migratory phenomenon which, if up to the 11th of September was seen only by analyzing the demographic, economic and cultural aspect, now it represents a mass flow of Moslems so heterogeneous (fundamentalist Maghreb Arabs, Middle-Easterners, Palestinian refugees and Kurds etc.) that they need a constant and careful monitoring. The rate of increase of the arid and desert zones in the Arab Countries of the North-West Africa is alarming, hundreds of thousands of hectares per year. Already in 1980, a study found that out of 100 thousand square kilometers of Southern Tunisia, more than 12 thousand square kilometers had been transformed, by man, into desert, in less than ten years. In the tendentially arid zones of the South Mediterranean, the population grows markedly and the consequences of this demographic explosion include many factors which contribute to the desertification: intensive cultivation, deforestation, destruction of the vegetation, salinization of vast areas as a consequence of erroneous strategies of irrigation, and so on. In some Maghreb Countries, the loss of upper soil has been registered, starting from 10 tons/hectare/month, up to 250 tons/hectare/month at the southern limits of the Sahara. From 30 to 40 thousand hectares of territory are lost in the Mediterranean, each year, due solely to the phenomena of salinization and alkalinization.
This is why; therefore, the environmental question becomes geopolitical, so much so as to be able to define these analyses as “geopolitics of the environmental resources”. According to some estimates, the population of the entire Mediterranean Basin could reach 500-600 million inhabitants by 2025, almost double compared to the 80’s. But while until the 50’s, two thirds of the population were concentrated in the north of the Basin, from Spain to Greece, by 2025 only a third of the inhabitants will occupy the northern part, due to the conjunction between the European zero growth and the high demographic increase of the Arab Countries. In fact, the fertility tendencies are at the root of the foreseen outcome of the geopolitical scenarios of the entire Region: the levels are below the threshold of substitution of the population in the North (2.1 babies for women of fertile age) while the indicators are very high in the south-east area of the Mediterranean (5 babies per woman). The estimate foresees a stationary stabilization of the south-east population (zero growth) not before the end of this Century, and also the age structure of the population will play its role in these scenarios (against the aging of the north, the south-east will present enormous juvenile masses, with problems for education, training and the creation of new jobs).
These phenomena, like those of the desertification – only apparently, unrelated to the dynamics of the Islamic masses and to the consequent problems posed by the opening of the new “terrorism” front for Europe and the United States – represent more and more a field of study and advanced in-depth examination for the international strategic analysis.
In fact, it is the subject of the strategic management of the environmental resources which offers much food for thought, and connected very strictly with the new scenarios. Scenarios where the “military front” understood in a traditional sense, has disappeared, substituted by something structurally different. For a series of variables such as globalization, informatics, international finance and so on, we have moved from“geopolitics of the spaces”, to“geopolitics of the flows”. Generally, the territory has lost what its original value was from a strategic viewpoint. Now, military forces are employed not so much to conquer territories, but to guarantee stability to those economic, energy, information flows, which constitute the real resources, as well as the natural ones.
The Darfur conflict was due to the climatic changes, as the Secretary General of the UNO, Ban Ki-moon, writes in an article published in the Washington Post, in June 2007.”In the last 20 years”, Ban Ki-moon affirms, “the Sudan recorded a decline in precipitation, in part, due to the global warming caused by human activities. Settled farmers and pastoral nomads lived together peacefully until drought and food shortage enkindled a tragedy to which we are, today, witnesses”.
Much has been already said and written about the oil and energy resources and, therefore, only a brief reference is necessary here. It is sufficient to remember the delicate game in course in the Middle East, with protagonists such as Arabia and Russia and as arbiter, the United States. In fact, on the basis of the US doctrine “Full Spectrum Dominance”, the new American strategy which looks at globalization, the so-called “containment” (survivor of the Cold War) is outmoded.
Presently, the world consumption of hydrocarbons is around 77million barrels per day, and within 20 years, it will increase by 60% until reaching 120 barrels per day. The increase, however, will mostly effect regions like Asia, specifically China and India. A hypothetic stoppage of the importation for a period exceeding a few weeks would, certainly, start up a process of recession on a world-wide scale. The United States can absorb, with their strategic reserves (increased recently by 600 to 800 million barrels) around 60 days of an oil stoppage, taking into account that they must not only replenish themselves, but also the rest of the world, to avoid an economic collapse of the Allies.
None of the producer Countries of the area is sufficiently stable, and the political-strategic profile is very worrying, in light of the progressive radicalization of the Islamic populations. A process which, if not favoured, is nonetheless, not impeded by local governments, which grant ever greater spaces (also economic) to the most radical organizations, in exchange for a political truce with them. A more analytical reflection should be addressed to the role of Saudi Arabia. In particular, to the agreements made in February 1945, when the American President, F.D. Roosevelt, returning from Yalta, aboard a war ship, together with the Saudi King, Azis-al-Saud, stipulated the agreement which guaranteed the protection of the Saudi Royal Family in exchange for privileges to the oil companies of the United States. Thus the role of “last resort” was born, played by the Saudis over the years, even within the OPEC cartel, where they placed themselves as the final regulator of the market in strict agreement with the American Department of Energy, dissuading the other producer Countries with a weapon of the same strategic importance as an atomic one: a reserve of 3 million barrels per day of unused productive capacity. An increase of the production would have determined the collapse of the prices and the entire economies of the Gulf. After the 11th September, things changed.
Saudi Arabia is no longer trusted. And many are the accusations – and not very covert – of complicity of Wahabiti exponents with terrorism and its proselytism.
Analogous reflections can be made for environmental resources such as water. It is precisely in the Middle East that tensions have been recorded relative to the control of the Wazzani Basin in Lebanon, a few kilometers from the Israeli border. The State of Israel draws about a third of its water needs from the Wazzani and from the other Lebanese river, the Hasbani, which flow into the Jordan, and after the withdrawal from South Lebanon, in May 2000, the management of the water resources in these territories has become more and more complex.
But already in 1989, the former Secretary General of the United Nations, Boutros-Ghali, the then Egyptian Minister of Foreign Affairs, observed with reference to the water problems, that “the National security of Egypt is also in the hands of, at least, eight other African Countries”.
This phrase clearly explains what water represents, not only as an environmental resource, but also as an economic and geopolitical factor, and the power that the Countries located upstream of the rivers exercise on their downstream neighbours. The threat of war for the control of oil-rich territories is nothing new, but in the coming years water could ignite more political conflicts than the black gold. In some regions of the world, the scarcity of water could become what the price crisis of oil was in the 70’s: an important source of economic and political instability. Almost 40% of the world population depends on the fluvial systems common to two or three Countries. India and Bangladesh fight over the Ganges; Mexico and the United States over the Colorado, and the Czech Republic and Hungary over the Danube.
Leaving aside, for a moment, the Mediterranean Basin, another emerging hot zone is Central Asia, where five former Soviet Republics share two already over exploited Rivers, the Amu Darja and the Sjr Darja. Nevertheless, it is primarily in the Middle East that the water conflicts are forming the geopolitical scenarios and the future economics. Egypt is an example of the dilemmas and uncertainties which Countries with a rapid demographic growth and very limited water supply sources on their own territories must face. Around 60 million people in Egypt depend almost entirely on the Nile water, but the origins of the River are not situated within the borders of the Country. 85% of the waters of the Nile is generated by the rainfall in Ethiopia and flows through the Sudan, as the Blue Nile, before entering Egypt. The remaining part depends on the White Nile system, which has its sources in Tanzania, at Lake Victoria, and joins the Blue Nile near Khartoum. The longest river in the world supplies nine nations in all, and arrives lastly in Egypt. On the basis of an agreement with the Sudan, in 1959, Egypt has the right to 55.5 billion cubic meters of the Nile waters every year, while the Sudan was assigned 18.5. To meet its needs, Egypt integrates the waters of the Nile with small quantities of groundwater, water from agricultural drainage and from treated municipal drainage water. In 1990, it had an availability of 63.5 billion cubic meters of water. Unfortunately, according to the most modest projections, the Egyptian hydro needs will rise to 69.4 billion cubic meters by the end of this decade. The growing value of water, the preoccupations over the quality and quantity of supplies, as well as the possibility of access, agreed or refused, have given rise to a concept of geopolitics of water resources. In this respect, as we remember, water comes close to oil and to certain mineral wealth as a strategic resource. Its rarity and its growing value will lead, little by little, to water policies and international conflicts which could assign a leading role to the rights on water.
The whole of the Middle East has to face a water scarcity, which creates ever growing serious problems. Turkey and Syria signed a protocol in 1987, which guaranteed Syria a minimum jet of 500 cubic meters per second, around half of the volume of the River Euphrates at the border. But over the decades the scenarios have changed, and now Syria desires to increase this quota – a request which, until now, Turkey has refused. A winning card in the hands of Syria is the fact that Turkey needs a water agreement with its downstream neighbours to ensure the financing of the World Bank and other international loan agencies, to finish its south-east Anatolia Project, the cost of which has been estimated around 29 billion dollars. The benefits that Syria and Iraq would gain by an agreement which supplies hydro security are evident. Calculations relative to the future demographic developments of the region (the average yearly growth rate is equal to 2.2-3.7%) and to the climatic and hydrological evolution seem to promise insoluble imbalances between supply and demand of water resources in the coming years, with consequent socio-political tensions both at an internal and international level.
The importance of this resource is also illustrated by its inclusion in one of the “baskets” that contains the programme of the multilateral negotiation for the Middle East which, extended also to subjects not belonging to the region, nor actively involved in the process of bilateral peace, like Europe, for some time, have been facing matters in various ways connected with such process. The water question is, for example, among the principal subjects on the agenda, in the case of resumption of negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authorities as hoped for by the Obama Administration. Added to the international controversies –which concern not only the Arab-Israeli side, but are extended to the inter-Arab relations – are the preoccupations tied to the internal needs of the populations
It is sufficient to think that in the Middle East more than 70% of the water resources are given to crop irrigation although the contribution given by the agriculture sector to the production and employment in the various Countries is in decline. The objective of food self-sufficiency, but also the presence of strong pressure groups to defend the interests of the farmers, as well as secondary motivations such as the need to contain the phenomena of potentially destabilizing urbanization, are all factors which explain similar choices of the governments in matters of allocation of the water resources.
The efforts to reach an agreement on the sharing of the water in the Jordan Basin go back to the beginning of the 50’s. In 1953, an American industry sketched a hydro plan for the Jordan system, which was sent to the Middle East through a special correspondent of President Eisenhower. After two years and four rounds of difficult and nervous negotiations, finally, all the parts involved agreed on the technical details of the project. As Mirian Lowi, expert at Princeton University of the Middle East hydro situation, writes – “the meetings were interrupted for political reasons, principally due to the fact that the Arab Countries had no intention, whatsoever, of increasing the development prospects of the new State of Israel”. The negotiations ceased in 1955. Since then, there have been several attempts at mediation concerning specific questions, for example, the Yarmuk Dam, but a solution to the hydro disputes over the Jordan Basin was never reached.
On the basis of a full awareness and consideration of the “geopolitics of the flows” and, we can say, of the reflections for the security, of “geopolitics of the environment”, some international organizations have been moving, for several years now, in the direction of analysis and intervention in matters of strategic environmental resources, for example, with the NATO programme “Science for Peace and Security” of which one of the most important elements is the activities in the “Environmental Security” sector. Together with the traditional “hard power” in the military sense, there will be a greater number of “soft power” interventions intended for regional and local actions for environmental problems – perhaps not immediate – but which might be generators of conflicts in years or decades to come, for example, the water and desertification questions.
The real resource of global geopolitics will be precisely the capacity of strategic analysis in the medium and long term: the essential instrument for the Countries and alliances that wish to play a role of protagonist and not one of a supporting actor in the world leadership.