By Matthew J. Smith

The 2023 NATO Summit, held in Vilnius, Lithuania on 11 and 12 July, was one of the most watched international meetings of the year. This was especially true given several important developments such as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan lifting his opposition to Sweden’s membership on the eve of the summit and the ongoing discussions surrounding a path for Ukraine’s membership in the alliance. While these agenda points dominated the discourse around the summit, the alliance also reaffirmed commitments and discussed future operations in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA).

Perhaps the most important decision regarding MENA was NATO’s announcement that they are exploring the possibility of opening a “liaison office” in the region, with Jordan supposedly the alliance’s preferred choice. The Jordan Times reported that an unnamed NATO official told their correspondent at the summit: “We have very special relations with Jordan…This is a decision that needs to be taken right now. We are in the process of exploring with Jordanian authorities the possibility of opening an office… It is an office that comes out of need and out of that fact that the relations with Jordan are particularly intense and we could not really handle all the cooperation projects that we have with Jordan without such an office.” 

Jordan’s relationship with NATO is not new – the Kingdom was declared a Major Non-NATO Ally by President Bill Clinton in 1996 – but the relationship has grown significantly under King Abdullah II since his accession to the throne in 1999. Jordan opened an office at NATO headquarters in Brussels in 2017, sent a delegation at the 2022 NATO Summit in Madrid, and continues to participate in strategic talks with the alliance regarding counterterrorism and regional security. Furthermore, King Abdullah II claims to be the first to have endorsed a plan to create a regional version of NATO in the Middle East, although the specifics on such an alliance remain unclear. On the establishment of NATO’s first liaison office in the Middle East, a NATO team will be visiting Amman in October.

The establishment of a liaison office in Amman would create important opportunities for Jordan, mainly by solidifying its relationship with Western allies, especially the United States. The US is currently Jordan’s largest provider of aid, with the two nations signing a memorandum of understanding in 2022 specifying that the U.S. will provide $10.15 billion in aid to the Kingdom over the following seven years. With developments in the region such as the production and distribution of Captagon, a methamphetamine that Syrian drug lords with tacit regime support manufacture in Syria and distribute throughout the region, and China’s growing influence, the establishment of a NATO liaison office in Amman could bring essential economic and defense resources to the Kingdom for training, joint exercises, and intelligence. Additionally, Jordan’s long standing diplomatic relationship with, and strategic proximity to, Israel makes the Kingdom a strong candidate as the alliance’s base of regional operations.

Bringing a significant NATO presence to Jordan would be a much-needed diplomatic victory for the monarchy, which has faced a difficult domestic political sphere since the failed palace coup by former Crown Prince Hamzah in 2021. The rise in petroleum prices and the economic crisis created by the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine led to widespread protests by transport and shipping workers in 2022-2023. Furthermore, King Abdullah II has been viewed as out of touch with the needs of average Jordanains, an issue that became especially apparent in investigations which revealed the king’s massive net-worth, including luxury properties abroad and off-shore bank accounts. The influx of cash and defense resources that would accompany a NATO liaison office would provide Abdullah with the resources and political capital to help stymie public dissatisfaction within Jordan.

NATO members also approved new military aid to states in the region. The official text of the Vilnius Summit Communiqué states that NATO will be “implementing the Defence Capacity Building packages for Iraq, Jordan, Mauritania, and Tunisia.” The Defence Capacity Building initiative (DCB) was launched by NATO in 2014 to work with strategic partners outside of the alliance to aid the development of the recipient country’s defense and security apparatus to accomplish goals in areas of mutual interest. In Tunisia, DCB has mostly focused on counterterrorism, cybersecurity, and defense against weapons of mass destruction. The DCB for Iraq has been much more specialised, with initial efforts in 2015 focusing on NATO military experts engaging in “train-the-trainer” operations within Iraq, as well as demining efforts, technical training on the maintenance of Soviet-era Iraqi military equipment, counter-IED trainings, and civil-military operations planning. In 2018, this initiative was expanded by request of the Iraqi government to include NATO’s aid in non-combat capacity building, including training and advising Iraqi security officials to “develop more effective national security structures and professional military education institutions.” DCB efforts in Jordan have focused on similar initiatives to Tunisia’s DCB, but also include border security and the hosting of the 2017 NATO Regional Exercise, the first in a Mediterranean Dialogue Country.

Despite the War in Ukraine taking center stage in Vilnius, the Middle East and North Africa was very clearly on the minds of NATO leaders, as seen in the Communiqué: “Strategic competition, pervasive instability and recurrent shocks define our broader security environment. Conflict, fragility and instability in Africa and the Middle East directly affect our security and the security of our partners. The People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) stated ambitions and coercive policies challenge our interests, security and values…” China’s recent diplomatic efforts in the region, such as the Saudi-Iran Rapprochement, making Saudi Arabia a dialogue partner to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, offers to moderate Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, and inviting Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the UAE to join the BRICS group, have rightly been a wake up call for NATO, not wanting to cede its own influence in a strategically important region of operations. Thus, by strengthening ties with regional allies – Jordan, Tunisia, and Mauritania – and reaffirming its commitment to capacity building in Iraq, the Western alliance can begin to push back against China’s expanding economic and diplomatic influence in the Middle East and North Africa.

In conclusion, many important commitments and announcements were made at the 2023 NATO Summit that will affect the alliance’s relationship with partner states in the region. As NATO seeks to expand its operations in the Middle East and North Africa, it will become ever more important to engage with larger states, such as those of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), if the alliance seeks to maintain its influence against outside forces such as China.

Matthew J. Smith is a recent MPhil graduate in Modern Middle Eastern Studies from St Antony’s College. His research focuses on tribal-state relations in twentieth and twenty-first century Jordan and great power competition in the modern Middle East. His MPhil thesis focused on the 1923 Balqa’ Revolt and its influence on the Tribal-State social contract in modern Jordan.