From Ukraine to North Africa: how are the threats to NATO’s eastern and southern flank similar and different?

Threats to the southern flank do not represent such a direct, military, and imminent threat to NATO as Russia does on the Eastern flank, but they do endanger the security of NATO member states and regional partners as recognized in NATO’s Strategic Concept adopted in Madrid in 2022. Despite that recognition and the Alliance’s desire to pay equal attention to every threat in its 360° strategy, the eastern flank deserves much more attention in NATO’s planning than the southern flank.

While NATO has adopted concrete measures and action plans to cope with the eastern risk and threats in the last years, the southern flank is still waiting for diagnosis and remedies.

The 2014 NATO Summit of Wales acknowledged the existence of risks and threats coming from both the eastern and southern neighbourhoods. A decade after, during the 2023 Summit in Vilnius, NATO put in place a new generation of regional defence plans for the High North-Atlantic, Baltics-Central Europe and Mediterranean-Black Sea while only tasking the North Atlantic Council to launch a comprehensive and deep reflection on existing and emerging threats and partnership opportunities in the south, to be presented by the next 2024 Summit in Washington D.C. While NATO has adopted concrete measures and action plans to cope with the eastern risk and threats in the last years, the southern flank is still waiting for diagnosis and remedies.

Of course, both threats are different in nature and danger. The eastern threat, especially after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, impacts the core task of collective defence. Hence, NATO has updated its military planning for high-intensity and multi-domain scenarios and adjusted its structure and force posture, among many other deterrence and defence measures adopted accordingly.

On the contrary, the southern destabilization stems from the proliferation of jihadist groups taking advantage of weak local governments and the global geopolitical competition in which powers such as Russia and China seek to reduce the Western influence in the region. As NATO’s Strategic Concept of 2022 acknowledged, the regional insecurity is aggravated by the impact of climate change, fragile institutions, health emergencies and food insecurity that provide fertile ground for the proliferation of non-state armed groups, including terrorist organizations. It also enables strategic competitors such as the Russian Federation to “destabilize countries to our East and South”.

The southern flank, and particularly the Middle East, North Africa and the Sahel region, faces an accumulation of intermittent conflicts, humanitarian crises, jihadi insecurity, arms races, migration crises, and hybrid tactics, among others.

As a result, the southern flank, and particularly the Middle East, North Africa and the Sahel region, faces an accumulation of intermittent conflicts, humanitarian crises, jihadi insecurity, arms races, migration crises, and hybrid tactics, among others. Afghanistan, Burkina Faso, Somalia, Mali, and Syria lead the ranking of countries with the highest incidence of terrorism in the world and the Sahel region is the epicentre of global terrorism and jihadist insurgency.[1] In addition to the conflicts in the Western Sahara, Libya, Syria, Palestine, Lebanon, the Horn of Africa, Ethiopia, and Sudan, there is an ongoing arms race between Morocco and Algeria and a spiral of terrorist attacks from the Gulf of Guinea to the Sahel.

In addition, Russia’s hybrid tactics and the presence of private mercenaries in the region have undermined local confidence in the effectiveness of international crisis management operations, and authoritarian governments in the region denounce the colonialist vocation of Western countries.[2] These could be the main similarities between NATO’s eastern and southern flanks as part of the new types of conflict in the ‘grey’ zone made of information operations and disinformation to undermine local support for NATO’s and allies’ activities in the area.

With the security situation being so challenging, it is easy to see why NATO has not yet designed a proper regional plan for the south. On the one hand, the threats and challenges are multifaceted and most of them are not of a military nature. This explains the difficulty for NATO to provide a comprehensive answer to them, as the failure of the military intervention in Libya revealed. On the other hand, and despite NATO’s attempt to project stability in the neighbourhood[3], including the Mediterranean Dialogue and the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative, NATO finds difficulties in engaging local partners because regional and sub-regional powers and organizations lack the proper capabilities to diminish regional insecurity, and because of initiatives of extra-regional actors such as Russia, China, and Iran to dilute Western influence.

What the east and south flanks have in common is the hostile behaviour of Russia. Russia continues to be the main supplier of major arms to Africa, and overtook China as the largest sub-Saharan provider in 2022.

What the east and south flanks have in common is the hostile behaviour of Russia. Russia continues to be the main supplier of major arms to Africa, and overtook China as the largest sub-Saharan provider in 2022.[4] However, arms exports are not so influential as the military assistance or the deployment of private mercenaries in support of regional authoritarian regimes[5] and lately the delivery of free grain.[6] Another potential similarity is the Russian attempt to portray NATO as an expansive organization that intervenes in foreign territory (Ukraine, Libya) to defend the particular interests of allies without regard for its impact on local populations or respect for regional security organizations. The Western influence in the region is diminishing, which became evident during the United Nations voting round about the condemnation of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in March 2022, when a significant number of African countries refused to condemn Russia.

A combination of meagre results in the political, economic and military fields of Western assistance, together with local claims against the interference in internal politics, have been the ideal breeding ground for Russian campaigns of mistrust and disinformation to flourish.[7] This environment of hostility puts at risk the presence of Western troops in the region and the continuity of European Union missions, leaving a vacuum in which Wagner’s private mercenaries act with impunity.[8] France’s exit from the Sahel is a case study of the declining presence and influence of Western powers in regional affairs. The displacement of Western forces in the area could be even more acute after the military takeover of Niger in July 2023, the more recent one after the takeovers of Mali, Burkina Faso, and Chad since 2020.[9] Regional armed forces, especially those of regional powers such as Algeria or Morocco, could compensate the departure of Western forces and strengthen regional counter-terrorism capabilities, but instead they are engaged in competing for regional supremacy.[10]

Whatever could be the outcome of NATO’s study to be delivered on the 75^th Anniversary Summit, the role of NATO in the south looks much more restricted than in the east. With no (Russian) military aggression in sight, without the emergency of a Caliphate-type insurgency, and under the current atmosphere of distrust and hostility, the opportunities of NATO to provide stability in these regions are quite limited. Nevertheless, NATO must frame a set of measures to make clear to its members and regional actors that it has a spectrum of measures at its disposal to intervene in different scenarios: from the more positive ones of cooperation with local actors in capacity-building and reform of their armed and security forces, to maritime security controls, the extraction of nationals or allied troops in situations of risk, or – in the more extreme case – fighting global terrorism as in the cases of Syria and Iraq, but on African territory.

Unlike on the eastern flank, NATO is not a strategic actor in the south.

Unlike on the eastern flank, NATO is not a strategic actor in the south. It can contribute to regional stability by coordinating the actions of the Mediterranean allies, strengthening strategic partnerships with regional organizations, or improving the division of labour with the European Union[11], but always in a supporting role. NATO’s engagement with the African Union or Mauritania is more than limited, many countries distrust NATO as a security provider, and it lacks the proper situational awareness. Nevertheless, NATO must overcome such obstacles to avoid a breach in its 360º strategy and to ensure its preparedness for worst case scenarios in the south. Without adopting strategies and measures, NATO will not be a relevant strategic player in the south, neither for the regional countries nor for the southern allies.