Just days before the two-year anniversary of the 4 August 2020 Beirut Port explosion, a part of the burnt-out hulk of the nation’s grain silos destroyed in the blast, collapsed. For weeks, a fire had been smouldering in the silos as the extreme summer heat ignited the fermenting grains left to rot inside the mangled structure. It was an all too telling metaphor for the disastrous state of Lebanon’s economy likewise left to rot and poised for collapse. Is Lebanon nearing that point of no return?

Lebanon on the Brink

The national grain storage facilities were never replaced over the course of two years, just as political paralysis and corruption have prevented Lebanon’s leaders from setting the country’s ship of state on a steady course. Instead, the country’s citizens have been battered by waves of suffering since the onset of the economic crisis in autumn 2019. The country’s currency has lost 90% of its value since then and 80% of Lebanese live below the poverty line.  Food inflation is over 1,000% since 2019 and now bread is almost unavailable.  Without Beirut’s storage silos, Lebanon has one month’s worth of wheat storage capacity using flour warehouses in Tripoli. While the resumption wheat shipments from Ukraine could prevent Lebanon from running out of bread, it will not end the crisis.

Although Russia’s 24 February invasion of Ukraine exacerbated Lebanon’s woes, the crisis had already reached catastrophic proportions.  In August 2021, six months before Russia’s Ukraine invasion, Lebanon’s annual inflation rate hit 137.8%, surpassing Zimbabwe and making the Lebanon the leading candidate for the worst economic crisis since the end of World War II. In 2022, the inflation rate has been consistently over 200%. Fuel is exorbitant and in short supply, leading to power cuts that can last for 23 hours a day.  Known for its iconic cedars and ancient forests, Lebanon’s citizens are now cutting down the trees in those forests for fire wood amidst the fuel shortage.

Despite early warnings, Lebanon has lost precious time and numerous opportunities to adopt a path to reform its economic and financial system. “The cost of inaction is colossal not only on daily lives of citizens, but also on the future of the Lebanese people,” the World Bank’s Mashreq Regional Director warned in May 2022, adding that there is “a risk of a systemic failing of state institutions and pressure on an already fragile social peace.”

Lebanon’s Crisis is Putting its Service Economy Out of Service

Lebanon is a service economy. In its heyday as the Levantine commercial hub of the Arab world, services accounted for around 70 percent of the economy.  Even at the start of the crisis, the service sector – primarily commerce, financial services, and tourism along with health services and higher education – accounted for 60% of the country’s GDP.  Now Lebanon’s human capital is being severely depleted by the crisis, threatening to put Lebanon’s service economy out of service.

According to polling by  the Arab Barometer, 48% of the Lebanese population want to emigrate, a figure that jumps to 61% among those with a college education. One in five doctors in Lebanon has either already left the country or is planning to do so. From scientists and engineers to creative fields ranging from marketing to the movie industry, Lebanon’s best and brightest are leaving.  And, there may not be anyone in the future to replace them.

According a United Nations estimate, Lebanon’s fertility rate fell below the 2.1 replacement level in 2021 and is projected to decline to 1.97 by 2030. Many young Lebanese are reluctant to have more children amidst bleak economic prospects and soaring prices for such items as infant formula and diapers.  In 2021, the price of  infant formula increased  over 700% percent to 100,000 Lebanese pounds, equivalent to about $66 at official exchange rates.

Lebanon’s demographic decline is worsening the impact of the crisis and could push the country past the point of no return.  Companies, such as those in Lebanon’s engineering sector, are relocating their business outside of Lebanon.  In contrast, Morocco with its thriving business ecosystem and robust demographics has become a magnet for engineering services and business processes outsourcing. As supply chains shorten and firms servicing European markets seek to nearshore operations in the southern and eastern Mediterranean, Lebanon is being passed over for other locations. The one-time commercial capital of the Levant could find itself the odd man out in the new architecture of trans-Mediterranean commerce.

A Glimmer of Hope in the Eastern Mediterranean

The drivers behind the corruption in Lebanon’s political system are well known.  With a governance system that divides offices among the country’s major confessional faiths, elite capture has occurred through the wheeling and dealing among the elites of the various confessional communities. Lebanon’s resulting fiscal mismanagement, recently labelled by the World Bank as “Ponzi Finance”, has the country’s economy teetering over the edge of a cliff.  The major political actors within the Lebanese system are also connected to the larger geopolitical fault-lines in the Middle East involving Syria, Iran, the Arab Gulf States and Israel. These external rivalries serve to churn political conflict and violence within the country.

Lebanon has always thrived when it has been able to use its Levantine cosmopolitanism to broker interchange among people and business across the Eastern Mediterranean, linking Europe and the Middle East. The Eastern Mediterranean itself is now in a season of multilateral conciliation and this may provide a moment of opportunity for Lebanon. The Abraham Accords have brought Israel into closer cooperation with the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco, followed by a recent further thawing of relations with Saudi Arabia. Turkey has launched rapprochement initiatives with Egypt, Israel, and the UAE. The UAE and Saudi Arabia have been looking to reduce tensions with Iran.

A glimmer hope may rest in the progress made towards concluding an agreement between Lebanon and Israel demarcating their maritime boundary. Lebanon’s foreign minister announced that “massive progress” had been made in the 1 August round of negotiations, toward a final agreement.  A deal would help boost investor confidence in Lebanon’s efforts to develop its own offshore natural gas resources and could pave the way for Lebanon to join the Eastern Mediterranean Gas Forum. Beyond natural gas, an agreement may help make Lebanon less susceptible to being an arena for regional tensions.

The Lebanese people have proven themselves time and time again to be resilient and resourceful.  A more cooperative Eastern Mediterranean environment could be conducive to helping Lebanon’s citizens to put the country’s economic house back in order before the house collapses.

L'articolo Out of Service: Is Lebanon nearing the point of no return? proviene da InsideOver.

The European Union enters 2022 with a dangerously declining ability to set the security agenda along its southern borders in the face of the strategic advances made by Russia, Turkey, and China in North Africa. A house divided, the EU delivery deficit in establishing a sustainable security architecture in the Mediterranean basin, particularly in Libya, created a vacuum that has been filled by the increasing military presence of Russia and Turkey in North Africa. As Russia and Turkey rewrite the rule sets in North Africa, China has also continued to gain strength strategically in the region and will seek to increase its military footprint along the southern rim of the Mediterranean basin.

Here are some of the key developments that have altered the strategic equation and will influence the trajectory of North African geopolitics and Europe’s ability to exercise a strategic impact on security matters along its southern flank.

The Resurgence of Russia power in the southern Mediterranean

The resurrection of the Russian-Egyptian military partnership is Moscow’s most stunning strategic comeback in the Mediterranean.  It is also one of Russia’s most strategically significant regional defence relationships.  Egypt is the largest nation by population in the entire Mediterranean basin and has one of the largest militaries in the region.  In the late stages of the Cold War, the United States had succeeded in peeling Egypt away from its alignment with the Soviet Union, turning Cairo into one of the most reliable American allies in the Middle East.  But that tight relationship frayed in the aftermath of the ‘Arab Spring’ uprising in Egypt that toppled the country’s long-time strong man Hosni Mubarak when U.S. President Barack Obama embraced the short-lived Muslim Brotherhood-led government. The 2013 ouster of the Muslim Brotherhood by the Egyptian military with popular backing and former General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi ‘s 2014 election as Egypt’s president led to a rift with the U.S. and NATO that persists to this day.

As Sisi was consolidating his power, Russian President Vladimir Putin demonstrated Moscow’s mettle with Russia’s successful 2015 military intervention in Syria, ostensibly to fight ISIS and other jihadi militants.  President Sisi turned to Putin’s Russia for assistance in combatting jihadi militants in Libya to secure Egypt’s eastern border. This led to the 2016 establishment of the annual ‘Defenders of Friendship’ joint Russian-Egyptian military exercises. Expanding in scope over the past five years, the original 2016 exercises involved joint tactical actions that paved the way for the 2017 deployment of Russian special forces and drones to Egypt’s Sidi Barrani air base near the Libyan border to assist the Egyptian-backed, Libyan General Khalifa Haftar to gain full control of Benghazi in July of that year. In late 2017, following that success, Cairo granted Moscow permission for the Russian air force to use Egypt’s air space and air bases, requiring only 5 days advanced notice.

During 2016-2020, Russia also became Egypt’s largest arms supplier with Cairo purchasing 41% of its weapons imports from Russia,  a laundry list of weapons that includes attack helicopters, fighter jets, and air defense systems.  In 2018, Egypt purchased 24 Su-35 fighter aircraft from Russia for $2 billion. In 2020, Egypt reportedly agreed to purchase 500 Russian T-90MS tanks that would be assembled in Egypt at a facility built by Russian tank manufacturer Uralavagonzavod.

Building on its deep defense cooperation with Egypt, Russian power has become entrenched in Eastern Libya, from the coastal city of Sirte, the western entrance to Libya’s oil crescent, to the highly strategic al-Jufra air base further south.  Utilizing upwards of 2,000 mercenaries from Russia’s Wagner Group backed by Russian air force assets, Moscow has succeeded to emerge as one of the main power brokers in Libya with a much lighter commitment of personnel and hardware than in Syria. The Wagner Group has extended Russia’s influence across adjacent regions of sub-Saharan Africa, most recently in Mali.

Concurrently, Russia revitalized and expanded its long-standing military relationship with Algeria. Shrewdly, Russia’s Putin cancelled Algeria’s Soviet-era military debt of $4.7 billion while Algeria committed to purchase almost twice that amount from Russia with future oil and gas revenues. The deal resulted in Algeria becoming Russia’s third largest arms buyer during 2016-2020, surpassed only by India and China. Algeria’s astounding Russian weapons shopping spree included 203 T-90SA main battle tanks, 300 ‘Terminator 2’  BMPT-72 armored fire support vehicles, 38 Pantsir-S1 air defense missile/cannon systems, 100 SA-17 Buk-M2 air defense missile systems installed on tracked vehicles, and 12 Iskander mobile short-range ballistic missile systems.

Algeria also possesses 6 Russian-made, Kilo-class submarines. As a sign of Moscow’s renewed power projection into the western Mediterranean, Russia and Algeria conducted a landmark joint naval exercise of the latter’s Mediterranean coast.  Russian-made Kalibr Club-S type cruise missiles fired by those Kilo-class submarines and Algeria’s land-based, Russian-made Iskander ballistic missiles are capable of striking the Spanish coast.

The distance between Russia’s naval and air bases in Syria and Egypt’s massive Mediterranean military base at Marsa Matruh is approximately 900 km. Combined with Russia’s extensive military presence in eastern Libya and deep defence relationship with Algeria, Moscow now presides over an arc of hard power across the southern rim of the Mediterranean spanning the southern border of Turkey and the eastern border of Morocco.

Turkey’s Strategic Advance in North Africa

The resurgence of Russian power across the Mediterranean basin has been matched by Turkey’s impressive advances to become one of the top powers in the region.  Turkey is the second most populous nation in the Mediterranean with one of the region’s most powerful militaries. Turkey’s efforts to expand its power projection capabilities in the Mediterranean is part of Turkey’s wider strategic agenda to establish forward bases in the Middle East and Africa, an ambition enabled by the impressive transformation of its domestic weapons manufacturing to become an industry leader in several categories.

Following Russia’s Syria intervention, Turkey conducted four cross-border interventions in Syria to carve out a buffer zone in northern Syria along the length of the Syrian-Turkish border. However, the turning point for Turkey’s Mediterranean military footprint came with Turkey’s 2020 military intervention to preserve the Government of National Accord then ruling western Libya.  Ankara’s first intervention far from its land borders and shoreline was an unqualified success – stopping Haftar’s Wagner-assisted assault on Tripoli in its tracks and then pushing Haftar’s forces 450 km eastward to the Sirte-Jufra line. Ankara now stands as the main security provider in western Libya, creating an important strategic beachhead for Turkey in the central Mediterranean.  Turkey maintains an air power deployment at the re-captured al-Watiyah air base, located 27 km from the Tunisian border, and is reported to be developing a naval base in Libya’s coastal city of Misrata.  Its first Mediterranean forward basing beyond North Cyprus, Turkey’s outsized military presence in Libya is nothing short of a strategic breakthrough, enabling Turkey to project its influence into the western Mediterranean.

The Libyan intervention also showcased the power of Turkey’s home-grown combat drone and electronic warfare technology that would be later used by Ankara to assist Azerbaijan in the Autumn 2020 Karabakh war that ended 30 years of stalemate against Armenia and changed the map of the South Caucasus.  In 2020, Tunisia bought $150 million of Turkish armaments, including Anka medium-altitude long long-endurance (MALE) drones, Kirpi mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles, and Ejder Yalçin armored combat vehicles.  The sale of three Anka drones and their ground control systems to Tunisia was Turkish Aerospace Industries’ first foreign sale of the Anka UAVs.

For its part, Algeria has kept Turkey at arm’s length when it comes to military cooperation.  Despite Turkey being one of Algeria’s leading foreign investors – Turkish investments in creating local factories and businesses have made Turkish firms collectively into Algeria’s largest foreign employer –  Turkey has not been able to translate its growing economic clout into Turkish arms sales to Algeria.  The Algerian military and political elite have been divided over Turkey’s role in Libya and especially Ankara’s use of Syrian jihadis as mercenary forces. In its effort not to become too over-reliant on Russia as its principal weapons supplier, Algiers has opted for German and Chinese-made weapons.

More recently, as Algeria-Morocco tensions have intensified on their border and in the disputed Western Sahara between Morocco and the Algerian-backed Polisario Front, Rabat has turned to Ankara as a weapons supplier.  In 2021, the kingdom purchased 13 Bayraktar TB2 drones, the system that has repeatedly proved itself effective against Russian air defense systems in Syria, Libya, and the South Caucasus.  Members of Morocco’s Royal Armed Forces has traveled to Turkey during the second half of 2021 to receive training in operating the drones and Morocco reportedly ordered an additional six TB2 drones at year’s end. The Turkish system complements Rabat’s recent purchases of Israeli drones as well as Israeli anti-drone technology.  Moroccan media has also reported that Rabat is now engaged in negotiations with Ankara to purchase naval vessels – 7 fast attack craft and an Ada-class corvette. While the warship purchase has not been confirmed, Turkey’s military cooperation with Morocco, should it expand, has long-term implications. Already the managed competition between Turkey and Russia sets the agenda for the security environment in Syria and Libya. This same dynamic could become influential in the western Mediterranean as well.

A Chinese Naval Base in North Africa?

At the close of 2021, the Wall Street Journal broke a story revealing Beijing’s plan to create a permanent military facility in Equatorial Guinea to provide China with its first naval base on the Atlantic ocean.  Could a Chinese naval base in North Africa be next? China is already poised to dominate the commercial ports across the entire southern and eastern arcs of the Mediterranean basin.  In addition to its massive transhipment hub in Piraeus, Greece, China upgraded and built ports in Tripoli, Lebanon and in Haifa bay in Israel. Hong Kong-based Hutchison Port Holdings similarly operates Egypt’s major Mediterranean port of Alexandria port and its auxiliary El Dekheila port. Hutchison is also an equivalent capacity port at Egypt’s nearby Abu Qir Peninsula that is scheduled to start operations in 2022. In the western Mediterranean, China is constructing Algeria’s El Hamdania transshipment port 60 km west of Algiers with three times the capacity of Egypt’s Alexandria port. China is also one of the main investors in Morocco’s Tanger Med port, which has surpassed Spain’s Algeciras and Valencia ports in container capacity to become the Mediterranean’s largest port.

With so much at stake for Beijing’s in China’s Mediterranean commercial network, an increased Chinese naval presence in North Africa is not a matter of if, but when.  China has already delivered a two frigates to Algeria and will deliver a Type 056 (Jingdao-class) corvette to Algeria in 2023. Egypt has purchased drones from China and Chinese-made Wing Loong II drones, purchased by the United Arab Emirates, have been a mainstay in Haftar’s arsenal in Libya. Should China establish a naval base on Africa’s Atlantic coast in addition to its Red Sea corridor naval base in Djibouti, then a base on the North African coast becomes Beijing’s missing puzzle piece for establishment of Chinese sea lines of communication from the Suez Canal to the Strait of Gibraltar. The logic for a Chinese base in the central Maghreb is compelling for strategic planners in Beijing.

The Need for European Action

From the Eastern Mediterranean to Libya to the escalating tensions between Algeria and Morocco, the European Union’s continued inability to act in a coordinated manner has eroded the union’s power to set the agenda for relations across its southern borders. The EU’s continued delivery deficit in establishing a sustainable security architecture in the Mediterranean will inexorably result in outcomes that neither represent European values nor serve Europe’s interests.

Prof. Michaël Tanchum is an associate senior fellow in the Africa programme at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) and a non-resident fellow at the Middle East Institute (MEI) in Washington, D.C.  @michaeltanchum

L'articolo Russia, Turkey, and China in North Africa: a challenge for Europe proviene da InsideOver.

The Eastern Mediterranean has witnessed a relative calm this year in contrast to last year’s dangerous escalation spiral that almost set off a geopolitical maelstrom involving parts of Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. But is the current calm just a temporary lull?  Has a stable balance of power been established to create a new equilibrium? Or, has escalation been continuing by other means and the geopolitical storm will break out again in 2022? Here are some of the key factors to consider when looking over the horizon to determine the state of Mediterranean maritime security in the near future.

The 2020 Eastern Mediterranean Crisis was a Turning Point Event

Back in August 2020, the most combustible naval stand-off between Greece and Turkey during the 21st century nearly ignited into open conflict when a Turkish warship and a Greek warship collided at the height of the tensions. Rallying to Greece’s side, France dispatched warships to the contested waters, eventually sending its flagship Charles de Gaulle nuclear aircraft carrier. Egypt conducted joint naval exercises with Greece while the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Ankara’s staunch antagonist along the Mediterranean’s southern rim, sent its F-16 fighter jets to conduct joint air force exercises with Greece in the air space above the conflict zone.  With France, Egypt, and the UAE already in open conflict with Turkey in Libya, international alarm bells sounded that any further escalation could lead to a Mediterranean-wide conflagration.  Although a NATO-brokered de-confliction process achieved a climbdown in tensions, neither side has been idle. Swiftly changing geopolitical currents in the region have created new strategic conditions whose implications need to be examined.

Greece’s New Strategic Depth

In the absence of a convincing security guarantee from its European partners, Greece has spent the last half decade skilfully developing its defence relations with Egypt and Israel, and then subsequently with the UAE and Saudi Arabia.  Athens’ efforts are paying off big.  Combined with engaging select EU members, notably France, Greece is building an effective deterrent capability outside European Union and NATO frameworks. Since the striking demonstration of Middle Eastern solidarity with Greece during its August 2020 naval confrontation with Turkey, Greece’s regional security partnerships have reached an even greater level of strategic cooperation.

The 15 September 2020 signing of the ‘Abraham Accords’ normalising relations between the UAE and Israel was a strategic boon for Greece by more deeply connecting its circle of security partnerships broadly aligned to offset the expansion of Turkey’s “coercive diplomacy” in the region. On 18 November 2020, Greece and the UAE signed a security pact that included an Article V-type mutual defence clause.  In 2021, the juggernaut of Greece’s military diplomacy has gathered even more steam. In January of this year,  Israel signed a $1.68 billion, 20-year agreement with Greece – the largest defence deal between the two countries – in which Israel’s private defence company Elbit Systems will establish and maintain an air combat training facility in Greece for the Hellenic Air Force.  Italy’s defence manufacturing giant Leonardo will supply the M-346 advanced jet trainers. The state-of-the-art air combat training academy builds upon Greece’s 2020 agreement with France to purchase at least 18 fourth generation Rafale fighter jets for $2.5 billion, all helping to close the gap in air combat capabilities between Turkey and Greece.  By late September 2021, Paris and Athens signed a new bilateral mutual defense pact between Paris and Athens, accompanied by Greece’s $5 billion purchase of three Belharra frigates and three Gowind corvettes from France.

These relationships provide Greece with much needed strategic depth – geographically, technically, and psychologically. Bolstered by the early stages of an economic recovery, Greece is no longer Europe’s troubled and dependent appendage on the Balkan peninsula, as many in the European Union attempted to portray Greece during the EU’s sovereign debt crisis.  Greece is realising itself as an Eastern Mediterranean power leveraging its strategic links to North Africa and the Middle East.  Greece’s new found strategic depth continues to expand with the Hellenic Republic’s deepening military relationship with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which began its first bilateral military exercise with Greece, Eye of the Falcon 1, in March 2021. Demonstrating the power of its new regional status, Greece hosted the September 2021 “Hercules 21′ exercises – the first multilateral joint military exercise between Greece, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia.

Turkey’s Becomes a Blue Water Power

Greece’s recent efforts to gain strategic depth were prompted by Turkey’s impressive advances to become a blue water power. Turkey’s efforts to expand its power projection capabilities in the Mediterranean started two decades ago with Ankara’s $3 billion ‘National Warship’ program, known by its Turkish acronym MİLGEM, to expand Turkey’s capacity to deploy naval forces far from its coastal waters. In March 2012, a decade into the MİLGEM program, then Turkish Navy Commander Admiral Murat Bilgel declared Turkey’s naval objective was “to operate not only in the littorals but also on the high seas,” identifying the Turkish Navy’s goals for the coming decade as “enhancing sea denial, forward presence, and limited power projection capacity.”  Supported by the rapid growth of its domestic defence industry, Turkey successfully implemented its strategic agenda to establish forward bases in the Middle East and North Africa region.

The turning point in this policy came with Turkey’s 2020 military intervention to preserve the Government of National Accord then ruling western Libya.  Ankara’s first intervention far from its land borders and shoreline was an unqualified success and created an important strategic beachhead for Turkey in the central Mediterranean.  Turkey maintains an air power deployment at the re-captured al-Watiyah air base, located 27 km from the Tunisian border, and is reported to be developing a naval base in Libya’s coastal city of Misrata.  Its first Mediterranean forward basing beyond North Cyprus, Turkey’s outsized military presence in Libya is nothing short of a strategic breakthrough, enabling Turkey to move beyond the efforts to contain its influence in the Eastern Mediterranean.

The Libyan intervention also showcased the power of Turkey’s home-grown combat drone and electronic warfare technology that would be later used by Ankara to assist Azerbaijan in the Autumn 2020 Karabakh war that ended 30 years of stalemate against Armenia and changed the map of the South Caucasus.  Turkey’s continued advances in drone warfare technology are changing the face of warfare in the Mediterranean and could upend the military deterrence for which Greece has been striving, especially as Turkish-made, unmanned surface and underwater combat vessels come into service.  Changing the Mediterranean’s strategic equation in 2022 is Turkey’s soon-to-be-operational, light aircraft carrier the TCG Anadolu – a landing helicopter dock based on the Spanish Navy’s Juan Carlos I-class design. The TCG Anadolu will be able to carry a formidable arsenal Turkish combat drones to any location in the Mediterranean theatre. As an amphibious assault ship, it will be able to transport a 1,000 troop battalion along with 150 vehicles, including battle tanks, for a marine troop landing. A blue-water power projection vessel par excellence, the TCG Anadolu will considerably augment Turkey’s efforts to set the strategic agenda in the Mediterranean.

Equilibrium of Escalation in 2022? Cyprus could be the Key

Greece’s deeper level of defense cooperation with its non-European partners also prompted Ankara to engage in serious diplomatic outreach to Egypt and Israel and then to the UAE and Saudi Arabia as a counter-balancing measure.  During 2021, Turkey has acted on its need to recalibrate its policy toward its Levantine and Gulf state neighbors to ease its isolation. This diplomatic opening creates the opportunity to increase commercial cooperation among the regional stakeholders that could act as a brake on renewed naval escalation in the future. While there is at least a temporary balance of power, such an opportunity should not be missed.

With its interlinked flashpoints, there is little reason to think that a stable equilibrium has been achieved in the Eastern Mediterranean. None of the underlying core issues has been resolved.  The most vulnerable point in the current security architecture is Cyprus.  A member of the European Union but not NATO, Cyprus was under military embargo by the United States until 2020 and consequently has insufficient naval capabilities to defend itself. Turkey maintains over 30,000 troops on the north side of the island and has established base for its combat drones in the self-declared Turkish Republic of North Cyprus. In 2021, Turkey upped its ante on the issue by formally declaring that North Cyprus should be internationally recognized as an independent state.  If a new cycle of naval escalation does break out in the Eastern Mediterranean in 2022, Cyprus is likely to be in the eye of the storm.

L'articolo Eastern Mediterranean Maritime Security in 2022 – Equilibrium or Escalation? proviene da InsideOver.