Building confidence in the Mediterranean

In the 1990s, the Mediterranean became a focus for renewed consideration in western security circles of the regional security frameworks, structures and regimes proposed at a time when the end of the cold war was almost in sight. Arising from the experience of western Europe's normalization of relations with its eastern neighbours, one of the main ambitions for new security arrangements in the Mediterranean has been to create channels for the promotion of the kind of regional confidence‐building measures (CBMs) which have enjoyed considerable success both prior to the end, and in the aftermath, of the cold war. In the follow‐up to the European Union (EU)'s Euro‐Mediterranean Partnership initiative launched in November 1995, for example, the meetings of high officials charged with giving substance to the Barcelona Declaration's ‘Political and Security Partnership’ have concentrated on preparing a list of measures and exchanges of information which fall under a general heading of CBMs. Other agencies and institutions, such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and Western European Union (WEU), have also used the vocabulary of CBMs in their ‘outreach’ programmes and bilateral dialogues with non‐member Mediterranean partners.