Neither Morocco nor its multiple regional settings have ever been a priority area for US foreign policy. This, however, leaves them no less exposed to the colossal shock waves set off by Donald Trump’s return to the White House in Washington in January 2025. The Maghreb, the broader horizontal sphere of the Near East and North Africa, the vertical space of North-West Africa, and Euro-Mediterranean relations are all participants in the three accelerated global structural trends that can be made out through the noise and anxiety of the present moment: uninhibited autocratization, sovereigntist withdrawal from international cooperation and governance, and a unilateral and illiberal turn in conflict management and transformation. At the same time, and regardless of the accuracy of the cliché that Trump’s supposedly “transactional” approach to international affairs has become – what foreign policy is not, one way or another? – the players at these latitudes have long been shuffling their tactical cards based on that assumption.
This is the case of Morocco, the Maghreb state most pleased by Trump’s return, which has had its own, better-defined and more successful foreign policy strategy in recent times. Its main goal now is to take full advantage of the window of opportunity of the next two years (until the US mid-term elections) to “win” the Western Sahara conflict once and for all – by securing the seal of international recognition (legal international sovereignty) for the non-self-governing territory it has occupied and largely de facto annexed for the last half a century. The starting point here is the surprise unilateral presidential proclamation that Trump made in December 2020, as a lame-duck president at the end of his first term, in exchange for Rabat’s pledge to normalize its bilateral relations with Israel by joining the Abraham Accords. Following the four-year hiatus of the Biden Administration, which opted for ambiguity, neither revoking nor enforcing the controversial recognition, the Moroccan expectations in 2025 are for its implementation.
In addition to reaffirming that “the United States recognizes Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara” and that “genuine autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty is the only feasible solution” to this conflict, as Secretary of State Marco Rubio did in early April, tangible bilateral measures would include unblocking Western Sahara’s inclusion in US budget items related to Morocco (foreign aid, for example), extending the US-Morocco free trade agreement to the territory, holding military exercises such as African Lion there, ensuring a diplomatic presence in the form of official visits, or the promised opening of a consulate in the Sahrawi city of Dakhla.
But the hypothetical consequences of this agenda for the Western Sahara conflict would go much further. They dovetail with the current growing embrace, by Trump and many others, of models of unilateral “illiberal peace,” with “deals of the century” such as those proposed by the US for Israel and Palestine in 2020 and for Ukraine in 2025. First, there has been speculation about a presumable international spillover effect of Washington’s restored pro-Moroccan alignment, seconded – some might say pre-emptively – by France, another permanent member of the UN Security Council, as early as the summer of 2024. The result would be a major international conference in the United Arab Emirates, where Europe and the UN would bestow their blessing on Rabat’s autonomy plan as the solution to the conflict. Second, various analysts have taken for granted the rupture of the status quo and its galvanizing effect on the eternally stalled international management of this issue, whether by advocating an unapologetically unilateral solution to consolidate Moroccan sovereignty over the territory in disregard of the UN and international law, or by tabling “least bad solutions,” potentially acceptable to the Polisario Front and compatible with the legal framework, such as the territory’s partition.
Meanwhile, while waiting for signs from Washington and for confirmation as to whether a point of no return has been reached, Moroccan lobbyists have stepped up their efforts, focusing on two areas. First, they have sought to stigmatize the Polisario Front and chip away at its capacity for international action. This is hardly new, but rather reminiscent of the attempts to discredit this national liberation movement in the eyes of the US by tying it to al-Qaeda in the first decade of the century, in the context of the War on Terrorism, or to Iran and Hezbollah in 2018, during the first Trump Administration. But this time, they have gone a step further, seeking the group’s official classification as a foreign terrorist organization by the State Department, a designation with stark legal, diplomatic, and financial consequences. In the current context, it could drive a stake through the heart of the already wobbly UN framework based on recognition of the Polisario as the other party to the conflict, thereby facilitating the squaring of the circle that would be legalizing the unilateral imposition of Morocco’s autonomy plan. The campaign to this end has included disinformation (later rectified) regarding alleged ties to Iran in Siria on the front page of the Washington Post, publications by conservative think tanks such as the Hudson Institute or American Enterprise Institute, and an explicit announcement by one congressman that he will be introducing the relevant legislation. Doubt has also been cast on the Polisario’s representativeness by promoting the role of dissident Sahrawi organizations such as the Sahrawi Movement for Peace.
The foreseeable effect of Trump’s return
to the Maghreb regional space can only be
to accentuate the pre-existing dynamics
of polarization and internal rifts
The second target of attacks from these same circles has been the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO), at which the first Trump Administration had already taken aim, when the National Security Advisor, John Bolton, promised to end US funding for the UN’s “unproductive, unsuccessful and unaccountable” peacekeeping operations. Its value added has been further challenged since late 2020, when the resumption of hostilities between the Polisario and Morocco effectively put an end to the ceasefire monitoring tasks that had been its main raison d’être since the preparations for a self-determination referendum were abandoned in the early 2000s. The Biden Administration made a considerable diplomatic and Track II negotiating push to ensure MINURSO’s continuity and overcome the supply crisis that pitted it against the Polisario from 2022 to 2023, with the ultimate aim of preventing the potential escalation and regionalization of the conflict that this mission’s mere presence on the ground is still assumed to contain. However, were such a situation to emerge now, it is hard to imagine a similar deployment by Trump and Rubio, who have moreover dismantled Track II instruments such as the United States Institute of Peace (USIP).
Beyond the Western Sahara conflict, the foreseeable effect of Trump’s return to the Maghreb regional space can only be to accentuate the pre-existing dynamics of polarization and internal rifts. The first such rift is that dividing countries aligned with Morocco from those aligned with Algeria. Algeria currently faces the possibility of a US administration hostile to its interests – in light of Rubio’s call, as senator, in 2022, to impose sanctions on the country for its arms purchases from Russia – as well as a deep deterioration of its relations with France and the Central Sahel countries. However, in its immediate neighbourhood, it has managed to forge a new alliance with Tunisia and Libya, the G3. Launched at a three-way summit in Carthage in April 2024 as an alternative to the inoperative Arab Maghreb Union (AMU), this bloc’s stated objectives include energy cooperation and diversification of international economic ties beyond the historical hegemony of the European Union (EU). Yet the role of regime security and the need to counterbalance Morocco’s regional influence as key drivers are not lost on anyone. Mauritania has refused to be wooed by either side and deliberately avoided aligning itself in the current, potentially volatile, zero-sum game.
There is also another overlapping fault line in play. The G3’s shared discursive emphasis on opposition to normalization with Israel, reinforced by the war and genocide in Gaza, places its members directly at odds with Rabat and the US agenda for the Near East and North Africa as a whole. Trump has confirmed that the latter revolves around expanding the Abraham Accords and that more Arab states will be added to them. This would serve to consolidate the horizontal normalizing alliance presented at the Negev Summit in March 2022 (Israel, United Arab Emirates, Bahrein, Egypt, and Morocco). The counterpart is the growing presence of the first two of these countries as regional powers in the Maghreb and the Western Sahara conflict, which has already made itself felt with the opening of an Emirati consulate in Laayoune in 2020, the Israeli accusations of alleged ties between Algeria and Iran in 2021, or the increase in sales of arms and military technology by Tel Aviv to Rabat in these years. Furthermore, there is now the possibility that, were Tunisia or Libya to gain traction as candidates for normalization, the pressures and incentives arising from their economic vulnerability and political fragmentation, respectively, could easily overwhelm and undo the G3’s common front.
The G3’s shared discursive emphasis
on opposition to normalization with Israel,
reinforced by the war and genocide in Gaza,
places its members directly at odds with Rabat
As for the vertical space of North-West Africa, the Trump Administration’s authoritarian, sovereigntist bent and affinity for illiberal conflict management should favour the full international rehabilitation and lifting of restrictions on the military regimes established in the wake of the recent coups in Mali (2021), Burkina Faso (2022), and Niger (2023). This trend also aligns with the preferences of Morocco, which has seen in the political and geographical isolation of the three members of the new Alliance of Sahel States (AES) – which split away from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) in January 2025 – an opportunity to broaden its regional influence and increase recognition of Western Sahara’s Moroccanness. With the Atlantic Initiative for the Sahel, launched in Marrakech in December 2023, Rabat is not only offering these countries sea access through the port of Dakhla. It is also extending Maghreb polarization to the Sahel neighbourhood, where military juntas such as Mali’s have reversed course on their countries’ historical affinities with Algeria. In recent years, Bamako, in particular, has nurtured an incendiary antagonism verging on military escalation, accusing Algiers of supporting Tuareg rebel groups and/or jihadist terrorists in the Azawad region.
Finally, nor are Euro-Mediterranean relations any stranger to global sovereigntist trends, as reflected in both the outsized anti-migration agenda of the EU and its Member States and the industrial strategies of de-risking, nearshoring, and promoting supply chain resilience. All these policies, coupled with the turmoil caused by Trump’s trade war and tariff announcements, are likely to deepen interdependence and ensure the stability of the EU’s relations with a reliable neighbour such as Morocco. Rabat, meanwhile, is hopeful that these priorities will translate to increasingly explicit European support, such as that already voiced by Spain and France, for a unilateral about-face and an “illiberal peace” for Western Sahara.
REFERENCES
Fakir, Intissar. “Sovereignty First: Reshaping International Cooperation in North Africa,” Middle East Institute, 24 March 2025, www.mei.edu/publications/sovereignty-first-reshaping-international-cooperation-north-africa.
Fernández-Molina, Irene. “The Unstable Stability of Morocco and Relations Across the Western Mediterranean,” in Conflict and Change in the MENA Region: Geopolitics and Geoeconomics. Milan: ISPI, 2024.
Fernández-Molina, Irene, Hernando De Larramendi, Miguel & Ojeda-García, Raquel. “The Western Sahara Conflict as the Chicken and Egg of the ‘Non-Maghreb,’” in LIGA, Aldo (ed.), The Cost of ‘Non-Maghreb’: Unpacking the Political and Economic Costs of Disunion and Divisions. Milan: ISPI, 2023, p. 51-78.
Ghebouli, Zine Labidine. “From Morocco to Libya, What Trump 2.0 Means for North Africa,” DAWN, 17 April 2025, https://dawnmena.org/from-morocco-to-libya-what-trump-2-0-means-for-north-africa/.
Lewis, David, Heathershaw, John & Megoran, Nick. “Illiberal Peace? Authoritarian Modes of Conflict Management,” Cooperation and Conflict, Vol. 53, No. 4, 2018, p. 486-506.
Header photo: Sarah Owusu-Ansah, a Ghanaian officer with the UN Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO), contacts her team site via radio during a training exercise in Smara, Western Sahara.Photo ID 440168. 20/06/2010. Smara, Western Sahara. www.unmultimedia.org/photo/ CC BY-NC-ND 2.0