Moroccan Foreign Policy under Mohammed VI, 1999-2014 Durham Modern Middle East and Islamic World Series

This book presents a comprehensive survey of Moroccan foreign policy since 1999. It considers the objectives, actors and decision-making processes involved, and outlines Morocco's foreign policy activity in key areas such as the international management of the Western Sahara conflict and relations with the other states of North Africa, relations with the European Union, especially France and Spain, and relations with the United States and the Middle East. The book links the behaviour and discourses analysed to differing conceptions of Morocco's national role on the international scene - champion of national territorial integrity, model student of the EU, and good ally of the United States - and shows how these competing approaches to the country's foreign policy enjoy different degrees of domestic consensus, and result in different degrees of legitimation for the regime.

Introduction and analytical framework 1. Objectives, actors and decision-making under Mohammed VI 2. The tribulations of a ‘territorial champion’: the international management of a changing Western Sahara conflict 3. The Sisyphean game of Maghrebi integration and normalisation with Algeria 4. A ‘model student’ in search of a differentiated relationship with the EU 5. Moments of truth and paybacks: from the Advanced Status to the Arab Spring 6. The unbalanced postcolonial triangle with France and Spain 7. An uneasy loyalty: remaining a ‘good ally’ of the United States in times of Middle East turmoil

Irene Fernández-Molina is a Lecturer in Middle East Politics at the University of Exeter, United Kingdom.