From a tweet to a new regional order

Five years ago, a brief message on social media platform X (then Twitter) from the then outgoing US president, Donald Trump, announced the recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara. Many dismissed it as a final, reversible gesture. Today, that decision has not only been consolidated as state policy in Washington, but has also reshaped the global diplomatic landscape, culminating in the recent UN Security Council Resolution 2797 (2025). Its text not only “urges the parties to engage in talks (...) on the basis of Morocco's autonomy proposal,” but, in a Copernican shift, it categorically states that “genuine autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty could be the most feasible solution'.”

The most significant aspect of this five-year period has been continuity. The Biden administration, despite initial pressure, maintained the recognition. Trump, upon his return, implemented it rigorously. This de facto bipartisanship has sent a clear message: this was not a whim, but a strategic recalculation by the United States toward the Maghreb and the Sahel. Morocco, a historic and stabilizing ally, was reaffirmed as a pillar against regional instability.

Trump did not choose the timing or the recipient at random. By evoking that Morocco was the first country to recognize the United States in 1777, and with the Treaty of Peace and Friendship of 1786 (the first treaty signed and still in force), he connected the decision to a powerful narrative: that of the United States' oldest alliance. At that time, the territory of the Sahara—over which Spain announced its protectorate in 1884—was part of the Cherifian Empire, today the Kingdom of Morocco. It is a matter of settling a historic debt with the first friend. This symbolic dimension gave the gesture a depth that transcended the political situation.

The true barometer of change is at the UN. For decades, the Security Council managed the conflict with ambiguous language, balancing between the referendum plan and negotiations.

The isolation of Algeria and the Polisario Front was evident in the vote. No votes against and abstentions by powers such as Russia and China speak of tacit recognition. Algeria surprised everyone during the vote by not voting no, or even abstaining. It simply chose not to participate in the vote, despite being present, on an issue that is vital to the Algerian regime. The message received from this curious position is that of a diplomatic tantrum. For others, it is the last dance of a decapitated rooster.

In a move that defines a new phase, King Mohammed VI has majestically extended his hand to the Algerian president to resume dialogue and “give meaning to neighborliness,” “give meaning to Maghreb unity,” and “give meaning to cooperation among Maghrebians”—objectives so longed for and forgotten, proclaimed in the very Manifesto of November 1, 1954, of the Algerian people's revolution.

This offer, made from the strength of a consolidated diplomatic position, encapsulates the greatest lesson of the process: Morocco is not seeking a Pyrrhic victory that perpetuates the painful and disintegrating fracture in the Maghreb, but rather to use this new basis to promote integration. It is a commitment to turn the Sahara, once and for all, from a field of dispute into a reason for cooperation.

What began as 280 characters has redrawn the political map. US recognition, followed by the strategic backing of key players, has created a new international status. The Security Council resolution sanctions it. The door to resolving the conflict no longer revolves around independence—an element that, in the Maghreb context, could act as a vector of regional disintegration and fragmentation—but rather around Moroccan autonomy. This option, by preserving territorial integrity, stands as the first possible step in an upward integration process for the union of the Maghreb.

This reflection, inspired by José Ortega y Gasset's diagnosis of the processes of disintegration and integration in “España invertebrada” (Invertebrate Spain), gives historical depth to the current moment. Thus, that door is now more open than ever.

A door is therefore opening that goes beyond the five countries of the Maghreb. The next step in this upward integration process is to project it towards a great global South-South cooperation between the Atlantic nations of Africa and their counterparts in the Americas, and a revitalized North-South cooperation between Europe and Africa, with Spain as a bridge and two-way gateway.

This vision is materialized in two logistical pillars: the consolidation of the port of Tanger Med in the Strait as a nerve center linking continents, and the planned Atlantic port of Dakhla, which, together with the offer of access to the sea for the countries of the Sahel, could reconfigure the economic routes of the mid-Atlantic.

This design generates two complementary poles of development: a hard core of North-South cooperation -South cooperation in the Strait Arc—with Andalusia, Ceuta, Melilla, and northern Morocco linked by Tanger Med—and a dynamic core of South-South cooperation in the mid-Atlantic—with the Sahara region and the Canary Islands archipelago as a joint platform for the blue economy, renewable energies, and connectivity with America.

The challenge now is twofold: to transform diplomatic success into tangible peace and prosperity for the Sahrawi people through credible autonomy, and to capitalize on the olive branch extended to Algeria to finally unlock the potential of an integrated Maghreb.

The road will not be easy, but five years after that tweet, the horizon has changed. What was once a frozen conflict, that “pebble in Morocco's shoe” which, according to Algerian President Bumedien, was placed there to hinder his neighbor's progress, has become the cornerstone... it has become the cornerstone of a new regional order, where economic cooperation and strategic stability can, for the first time in decades, be written in capital letters.