الجيوبوليتيكا الحضارية في حوض المتوسط في ظل تهديدات الإرهاب و اليمين المتطرف

Abstract EN

Since the 1990’s, the triumph of liberal values has shifted the academic literature which deal with civilization-centered theories of international convict.

One of the most notable contribution is Francis Fukuyama’s thesis which promised of an eternal dominance of Western values, and Samuel Huntington’s theory which emphasized the con^ictual character of international relations on religious/cultural basis.

Such ideas have greatly in^uenced elites and decision-makers in the Christian liberal West.

Consequently, they designed policies based on the principle of changing regimes and governments - mostly forcibly- to establish freedom, democracy and human rights regimes in the concerned communities.

In this context, the Western intervention in Iraq, Libya, Yemen and Syria led to political stagnation as well as societal and institutional disintegration.

Such consequences have led, more importantly, to the rise of political Islam movements, terrorism and illegal immigration to Europe.

The failure of "Western societies" to deal with cultural and religious diversity, and therefore to integrate Muslims in Western Christian societies, has produced a societal security dilemma, through a spread of extremism and terrorism in many European countries.

However, extremism has been met with an increasing xenophobia and intolerance to non-Europeans - Muslims.

It has contributed, on another hand, to the rise of nationalism in its radical dimensions; and, therefore, to increasing demands to stricter immigration and refugee policies.

To understand Euro-Mediterranean relations under the growing risks posed by immigration and asylum, due to insecurity and development failure, such as the threat of terrorist organizations and the rise of the extreme right within many European societies, it is important to employ religious and cultural geopolitics approach as a tool to provide us with the necessary hypotheses to explain the behavior of governments, which are threatened by extremist political Islam groups in the southern Mediterranean.

It seems as a double risk: the possibilities of political power being taken over by extremist political Islam groups on the one hand, and on the other one the rise of extreme right movements in Europe, which emphasize European Christian identity.

Such trends are expected to result in an inevitable clash in the form of a civilization-based conflict.