As the Security Council prepares to deliberate on the Moroccan Sahara, it is increasingly evident that the issue transcends the mere mechanics of diplomacy. This is no longer a routine exercise but a pivotal moment where the balance of the international system is being recalibrated. Beyond the case itself, North Africa and its Atlantic and Sahelian extensions have become focal points, not only as immediate zones of tension but also as matrices for future global equilibriums. Within this strategic arc, where energy routes, security corridors, and rivalries of influence intersect, one already sees the contours of the 21st-century order taking shape. Mastery over these flows will determine not only the hierarchy of power but also the ability of states to project stability, or chaos, far beyond the African continent. In this context, the Moroccan Sahara is no longer just a territorial dispute; it is an expression of the broader struggle among the five permanent members of the Security Council, each projecting its interests to redraw the lines of world order.
As a result, each resolution is no longer a simple formality but a normative arena where the new balance of multilateralism is being tested and where, through fragile compromises, the fault lines of future power relations among the Big Five begin to emerge. Understanding this challenge requires approaching the issue as a geopolitical equation, where global and regional variables intersect. Intrinsically, Morocco enjoys a solid institutional foundation and an unshakable national consensus on the Moroccan identity of the Sahara. Extrinsically, however, it is the rivalries of the great powers that dictate the tempo. In schematic terms, the Security Council operates like a grand chessboard, where the Sahara question is not a peripheral square but a strategic tile upon which competing power logics are projected.
In this setting, the United States, France, and the United Kingdom view the Sahara as a matter directly tied to regional stability and the security of Atlantic routes, interests they consider vital. Washington seeks to anchor the issue within an international order framed by its own norms while consolidating a strategic ally capable of projecting security into the Sahel and containing rival influence. London, for its part, draws on its naval heritage and its growing focus on Atlantic corridors to reinforce its “Global Britain” doctrine and to secure its commercial and energy partnerships. More broadly, embedding Morocco’s southern provinces within a transatlantic interconnection serves the Anglo-Saxon powers’ objective of preserving a Euro-African strategic continuum, one that ensures control of Atlantic maritime routes and the security of energy flows.
France’s position, meanwhile, has shifted squarely into the realm of realpolitik. With Washington, London, and Madrid having already recognized Morocco’s sovereignty over the territory, Paris no longer had the luxury of ambiguity. Its firm alignment is not a symbolic gesture but a pragmatic acknowledgment that the future of North Africa and the Sahel depends on a strengthened strategic partnership with Morocco and on the definitive consolidation of the Kingdom’s territorial integrity. This realignment reflects a lucid reading of regional equilibriums: security, energy, and geo-economic stability in Africa are inseparable from Rabat’s pivotal role. At the same time, Paris is keen to preserve its own influence on the continent.
Yet it would be reductive to analyze this dynamic solely through an Atlantic lens. Africa itself, undergoing profound geopolitical and geo-economic recomposition, has become a central variable in the equation. The continent is traversed by competing alliances—ECOWAS, SADC, AfCFTA, and regional security groupings—that are reshaping the balance of power and creating new hierarchies of influence. Within this context, Morocco has carved out a distinctive leadership in key sectors such as renewable energy, logistical corridors, regional security, and African finance. This positioning elevates Rabat as a pivotal actor in continental transformation and as an indispensable hub in Atlantic and Sahelian strategies.
Nevertheless, this rise comes with antagonisms. Algeria mobilizes the African Union as a political forum to resist the entrenchment of Morocco’s autonomy plan. South Africa, clinging to its historic role as a regional power and guided by entrenched ideological logics, perceives Morocco’s ascent as a direct threat to its continental sphere of influence. Nigeria, for its part, oscillates between pragmatic cooperation—epitomized by the Nigeria-Morocco gas pipeline, which embodies a convergence of energy interests and a shared ambition to connect Africa with Europe—and latent rivalry fueled by competition over West African leadership and control of strategic resources. This ambivalence highlights the complexity of a partnership where economic complementarity coexists with political mistrust. Indeed, Morocco’s bid for ECOWAS membership—and the debates it sparked across African capitals—underscores both the geopolitical magnitude of Rabat’s strategy and the resistance it provokes. It reveals how Morocco’s assertiveness is reshaping sub-regional equilibriums while exposing the strategic dilemmas of West African states caught between the opportunity of anchoring themselves to the Moroccan hub and the fear of internal power reconfigurations.
Thus, the Sahara issue is not decided solely in New York but also in African capitals, where alliance choices, leadership rivalries, and geo-economic calculations crystallize. The dossier has become inseparable from a broader African strategy, one in which Rabat must continue to pursue a multidimensional approach: consolidating its role as a driver of integration, a provider of continental public goods—energy, security, and infrastructure—and a catalyst for transregional projects. Morocco’s ability to transform these initiatives into collective levers will determine not only the expansion of its influence but also the consolidation of the Sahara’s Moroccan identity as an irreversible reality in African and Atlantic equilibriums.
On the other side, Russia consistently approaches the issue through the prism of its global confrontation with the West. Its stance on the Sahara is part of a broader doctrine in which opposition to expanding UN mandates mirrors its defensive logic in Ukraine and Crimea, where it rejects any challenge to its sovereignty. For Moscow, the Sahara becomes an indirect arena to resist Western interventionism. China, meanwhile, takes a subtler approach. Beneath its proclaimed attachment to state sovereignty lies its strategy of economic and infrastructural projection across Africa. The Sahara and its Sahelian extensions are viewed as a crucial link in the expansion of the Belt and Road Initiative, while simultaneously echoing Beijing’s own red line on Taiwan, where it opposes any attempt at secession.
In this sense, Morocco’s territorial integrity has become a piece on the global chessboard where each power advances its strategic interests, transforming the dossier into a site of intersecting projections. For Rabat, this configuration is both a constraint and an opportunity: a constraint, since the absence of consensus prevents a resolution fully aligned with its positions; an opportunity, since Morocco can capitalize on these divergences to reinforce its pivot posture by tying its autonomy plan to each camp’s geo-strategic priorities. Between these poles, every resolution is negotiated as a calibrated compromise, reflecting less the pure application of international law than the fragile balance of competing interests. What emerges is not so much a direct clash as a process of permanent adjustment, where each camp pushes forward its priorities while neutralizing those of the other.
Thus, the Sahara no longer appears as an isolated regional dispute but as a nodal point in global reshaping. Each shift in UN language toward “realism” and “pragmatism” is not a mere technical adjustment but a strategic move that steadily consolidates Morocco’s autonomy plan as the only credible option within international equilibriums. As Mackinder reminded us, “Who controls the Heartland commands the World Island.” By analogy, today the Sahara—at the crossroads of the Atlantic and the Sahel—emerges as both an African and Atlantic pivot.
This is no longer a contested periphery but a strategic hinge where Sahelian security, energy routes, and maritime corridors converge. It conditions regional stability and Africa’s connectivity with Europe and the Atlantic, transforming the Sahara into a laboratory of regional integration and a lever of power projection. As Thomas Friedman notes, while the world may be “flat” in terms of interdependence, it remains strategically “rugged”: every coastline and every resource has become a contested square on the global chessboard.
In this environment, the Security Council is the arena where rival visions collide. The war in Ukraine, tensions around Iran’s nuclear program, Sino-American rivalry, and crises in the Middle East consume diplomatic resources and further fragment an already weakened multilateral order. The Sahara, rarely at the center of global priorities, nonetheless feels the impact of these systemic dynamics. The absence of consensus among the P5 on broader issues prevents any “revolutionary” breakthrough, reducing resolutions to minimal compromises. Yet these incremental adjustments are strategically decisive: each reference to “realism” and “pragmatism” strengthens Morocco’s autonomy plan as the sole credible framework.
This is where Morocco’s challenge lies: to transform this incremental process into an irreversible achievement. Doing so requires three levers. First, entrenching the autonomy plan in UN language by working closely with Washington, London, and Paris, as well as African and Latin American partners. Second, projecting the Sahara as an integration hub through tangible projects—energy corridors into the Sahel, Atlantic ports, and industrial zones in the southern provinces—that link Africa’s and Europe’s futures directly to Moroccan stability. Third, practicing multilateral realism by engaging Moscow and Beijing to neutralize frontal opposition while consolidating solid alliances with Western powers.
In the medium term, the 2025 resolution could consecrate the autonomy plan as the de facto reference of the UN process while reinforcing Morocco’s role in a recomposing Africa. But the stakes go beyond the Sahara itself. They illustrate a central rule of contemporary multilateralism: so-called peripheral conflicts only progress when they align with global dynamics and converge with the interests of major powers. As Kissinger observed, “International order depends less on proclaimed principles than on the convergence of interests.” Within this logic, Moroccan diplomacy must now transform its historical rights into an irreversible strategic asset, embedded within regional balances and recognized as a structural fact of the international order.
Accordingly, Morocco’s forward-looking strategy must extend far beyond defending territorial gains. Rabat today holds a dual responsibility: consolidating autonomy as the normative solution while simultaneously building a geo-economic and geo-strategic architecture that makes this choice indispensable to major powers and regional partners alike. Morocco’s path thus rests on three structuring dynamics: diplomatic engineering, African and Atlantic projection, and multilateral anchoring. The first requires patient work to gradually evolve UN language toward implicit recognition of the autonomy plan. The second demands rapid materialization of structuring projects, Atlantic ports, logistical corridors into the Sahel, and industrial and energy zones in the southern provinces that transform the Sahara into both an African hub and a Euro-Atlantic crossroads. The third involves a balanced management of power relations, consolidating alliances with Washington, London, and Paris, while sustaining pragmatic dialogue with Moscow and Beijing to neutralize any frontal opposition.
It is, therefore, essential to complement Morocco’s diplomatic engineering with a prospective reading built on contrasting scenarios. In the optimistic scenario, progressive entrenchment of the autonomy plan within UN resolutions is secured thanks to American and British backing, while West Africa, through ECOWAS and Nigeria, comes to view Morocco as a lever of stability and integration. The southern provinces then emerge as a recognized transatlantic hub, integrated into AfCFTA dynamics and energy corridors. In the median scenario, global rivalries persist, stalling major normative breakthroughs, but Rabat succeeds in offsetting blockages by balancing Western alliances with pragmatic engagement of Moscow and Beijing. Here, Morocco’s strategic asset is consolidated more by realities on the ground than by the text of resolutions. In the pessimistic scenario, intensified polarization among major powers, aggravated by Ukraine, Taiwan, or Middle Eastern crises, opens space for Algiers to instrumentalize its alliances, complicating Morocco’s maneuvering room. Yet even then, the Kingdom’s African and Atlantic depth, if bolstered by energy corridors and logistical hubs, could cushion the impact of deadlock and maintain momentum toward de facto recognition.
Given current dynamics at the Security Council, the most probable outcome remains a status quo akin to Resolution 2756. The lack of consensus among the P5 will prevent bold formulations, but each resolution is introducing subtle semantic shifts toward “realism” and “pragmatism.” This evolution, though discreet, is strategic. It steadily consolidates Morocco’s autonomy plan as the only viable option, turning an ostensibly routine process into a cumulative trajectory favorable to Rabat. In other words, even without a spectacular rupture, it is through normative patience that Morocco can secure the consolidation of an irreversible strategic gain.
Ultimately, the Sahara dossier is no longer arbitrated by texts or proclaimed principles, but by the raw and unforgiving language of interests. International law has become little more than a façade, while the real arena functions as a marketplace of traded interests, where each power bargains its support based on geostrategic or geo-economic priorities. In this environment, Morocco’s strength lies less in defending a political project than in its ability to metamorphose its autonomy plan into a strategic platform, a true algorithm of regional stability, an integrated energy hub, and a geo-economic and geo-strategic nexus. At its core, this is no longer merely a territorial solution but an engineering of co-sovereignty that weaves together security, connectivity, and influence projection, transforming the southern provinces into regulators of Afro-Atlantic and Sahelian equilibriums and into a matrix for next-generation regional governance.
Thus, the Moroccan identity of the Sahara is not consolidated by simply invoking historical rights but by demonstrating that Rabat is the only actor capable of offering durable guarantees in a world where international order is defined less by norms than by balances of interest. The world is now entering a new era of functional geopolitics, where adaptation counts more than doctrine and where systemic footprint replaces ideology—measuring the value of states by their ability to generate stability, interconnections, and operational solutions to regional and global crises.
