Morocco has practiced diplomacy longer than most countries have existed. From the Idrisid imams treating with Baghdad to Mohammed VI's Atlantic strategy, Moroccan statecraft is one continuous art: the small kingdom between empires that survives — and thrives — by never being anyone's pawn.
The tradition begins with geography. Morocco sits where Africa meets Europe, the Atlantic meets the Mediterranean, the Arab world meets the Berber — every great power of the western Mediterranean has needed Morocco, and Morocco has needed none of them absolutely. The Idrisids balanced Abbasids and Umayyads; the Almoravids and Almohads treated with popes and kings as equals; the Marinids played Aragon against Castile, Granada against both.
The early modern centuries perfected the game. The Saadian sultan Ahmad al-Mansur corresponded with Elizabeth I of England — the famous Anglo-Moroccan alliance against Spain — received embassies from the Ottomans while refusing Ottoman suzerainty, and played the European powers against each other with a virtuosity that kept Morocco independent while every neighboring state fell to empire. The lesson was permanent: Morocco's independence was not defended only by armies but by making itself indispensable to everyone and subordinate to no one.
The nineteenth century tested the art to its limit. Sultan Hassan I toured his kingdom to assert the makhzen's authority; his diplomats played France against Britain — the 1906 Algeciras Conference, which internationalized the Moroccan question, was the product of Moroccan diplomacy exploiting great-power rivalry. Even the 1912 protectorate, imposed by force, never extinguished the diplomatic tradition: the nationalists' diplomacy at the UN, Mohammed V's Tangier speech of 1947, the exile that made the Sultan a world symbol.
Independent Morocco turned diplomacy into grand strategy. Hassan II made the kingdom the West's indispensable Arab partner — the first Arab leader to receive Israeli leaders, the host of the secret talks that led to Camp David, the founder with Saudi Arabia of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation's Jerusalem Committee — while keeping the non-aligned and African doors open. Mohammed VI deepened the African turn: Morocco's return to the African Union in 2017, after 33 years' absence, was the diplomatic triumph of the decade, followed by the Atlantic strategy — the Nigeria gas pipeline, the Dakhla port, the Sahel partnerships — positioning Morocco as Africa's Atlantic gateway.
The method never changed: balance, patience, and the long view. Morocco recognized American independence in 1777 when it served; it hosted secret Israeli-Arab talks when it served; it returned to Africa when it served. The through-line is sovereignty: twelve centuries of refusing to be anyone's protectorate in spirit, even during the forty-four years of the French one. Moroccan diplomacy is the art of the hinge — the country that connects continents and collects the toll in independence.
The host's art — Morocco as the venue of other powers' breakthroughs — is the subtlest instrument of the kingdom's diplomacy. In 1977–78, Hassan II hosted the secret Israeli-Egyptian meetings that made Camp David possible; in the 1980s and 1990s, the palace at Skhirat and the villas of Rabat hosted back-channel talks between Israelis and Palestinians that the official histories barely mention; the 2016 COP22 in Marrakech made Morocco the capital of global climate diplomacy; and the 2020 Abraham Accords — Morocco normalizing with Israel in exchange for American recognition of the Sahara — were the transactional masterpiece of the modern era, trading a normalization for a sovereignty in a single stroke. The method's precondition is trust accumulated over decades: the Mossad's liaison with Moroccan intelligence dates to the 1960s, the CIA's to the 1970s, and the kingdom's counterterrorism cooperation — the dismantling of the Casablanca cell networks, the intelligence shared with Europe after every attack — buys the political capital spent on the Sahara. Diplomacy, for Morocco, is compound interest: every favor banked, every secret kept, every channel maintained, until the day the kingdom needs them all at once.
Impact on civilization
Part of Morocco: The Long Empire — more than eight centuries of continuous Moroccan statehood, from the Idrisids to the reigning Alaouites.
- The Cambridge History of Africa, vols. 4–8
- Jamil Abun-Nasr, A History of the Maghrib
- Daniel Rivet, Le Maroc de Lyautey à Mohammed V
- US State Department, Office of the Historian
- African Union archives, 2017