NATO looks to the region

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has expanded since the end of the Cold War, both in membership and geographic scope. The alliance and its individual countries have headed south and east: their presence in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) has deepened, as regional states joined the Atlantic alliance’s multilateral security efforts following elevation by NATO in 2004 of its Mediterranean Dialog to a working partnership. Bilaterally, various MENA states link up with the United States as Major Non-NATO Allies (MNNAs) to work with Washington. Additionally, there are bilateral steps by some individual European countries keen on consolidating strategic positions in the region: examples of this include France’s Mediterranean Union idea, which emerged last year, and the agreement in January between Paris and the United Arab Emirates to set up a French military base in that Gulf state.Parallel to these security moves, the West has since the end