Understanding the geopolitical struggles in the Mediterranean

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In recent years the Mediterranean Sea became a threatre of power clashes between regional powers such as US, China, Russia and Turkey. I recently watched a video talking about the details of the geopolitical situation in the region, and basically one of the main ideas is that belligerent attitudes and potential conflicts in the Mediterranean will likely increase after the war in Ukraine. 

     ◾ Straight to the point, the Mediterranean Sea is is not only incredibily important strategically because it acts as a crossroad between Europe, Asia and Africa, but also economically because around 12% of world’s trade takes place here, plus crucially the sea is very rich in oil and gas resources that will attract interest from NATO countries especially after the sanctions imposed on Russia.

     ◾ Another idea is that the Mediterranean is an often overlooked place of competition between the US (that has bases in Spain, Italy, Greece, Turkey and Israel) and Russia, who essentially uses its base at Tartos, Syria to 1) to put pressure on NATO's southern flank and 2) to secure a gateway to the warm waters of the Atlantic.

 

     ◾ A third player in the region is China, which wanted to increase its influence in the region through the Belt and Road initiative and which intests pretty heavily in countries such as Greece. 

     ◾ The country where all these geopolitical struggles are perhaps most evident is the resources-rich Lybia. The country is a battleground between foreign influences as neghbouring countries support different factions of the Lybyan Civil War. 

Basically, the Tobruk-based regime is supported by Turkey and Italy plus Qatar, while the Tripoli-based regime is supported by Russia, France, Greece, UAE, Egypt, Saudi Arabia.

     ◾ The current war situation make Turkey, Italy, France, but also Russia crucially interested in Libya's energy resources.

As stated, Russia wants to increase its military presence in the Mediterranean, plus wants control over the potential energy sources that EU eyes at the moment to strengthen its grip on the continent and make Europe's struggle for energy even more accute.

Thirdly, Lybyia is important for France because it allows to exercise its power projection capabilties over its former colonies in subsaharan Africa and control the flow of immigrants into Europe.

     ◾ However, this is not all. In 2019, an absolutely massive reserve of oil and gas was discovered in the eastern Mediteranean, in the EEZ of countries such as Cyprus, Lebanon, Israel and Palestine.

Breaking international law, Turkey signed a treaty with the Tropoli-based regime in Libya, creating a maritime corridor running directly through Greek waters.

This coupled with Turkey's ambitious attitude in the region of the former Ottoman Empire marked a decline in Greeko-Turkish relations and the tensions seem to only rise as Turkey is hit by inflation and Europe is a more and more acute need for energy. 

The conclusion is whatever you can draw from all of this.... 

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Seeing that France and Russia support the same regime on Libya (which is important to France because it gives it access to its former colonies in Africa) gives more context on France's soft atittude on Russia. 

The fact that Turkey and Russia are involved in not one, but two proxy conflicts (Libya, Syria) goes to show the complexity of these countries' relations and how there is a rather fragile balance of cooperation and competition.

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