After enjoying a generation of relative peace, the Mediterranean Sea is quietly heading towards a major maritime crisis. Somehow, the “peaceful” Mediterranean has become one of the most militarized oceans in the world. Only a tired, sclerotic NATO–and possibly a somnolent European Union–remains to hold the five largest Mediterranean-based navies together. For seventy years, the united front of NATO has been enormously successful in maintaining relatively good order in the Mediterranean Sea. Without it, the specter of a newly-balkanized Mediterranean raises the prospect of maritime conflict and trade disruptions on a scale unseen since World War II.

NATO’s success has facilitated a sense of complacency–and a sense that the regional tectonic plates won’t come apart quickly. It’s easy to overlook and dismiss the threat of impending crisis. A united NATO overmatches every potential maritime risk and has a great record of damping-down regional crises.

NATO’s Mediterranean armada is big. Comprised of major naval contributions from Spain, France, Italy, Greece, Turkey and occasionally Britain, the United States, minor contributors (Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro, Albania) and other transient NATO forces, NATO’s mutual security umbrella has helped keep the crowded and fractious Mediterranean waters free of major trade-disruptions or region-spanning crises. Even though NATO shares the Mediterranean with Israel’s formidable Navy, a large Egyptian force as well as a the modernizing Moroccan and Algerian Navies, NATO’s united maritime forces can easily overwhelm unaligned Mediterranean nations. Of course, maritime heavyweights, Russia and China, loom, but, at the present time, NATO’s regional forces can keep those risks in check.

NATO’s bonds, however, are fraying. As leaders of the 29 NATO nations prepare for an early December summit, it may do well to focus upon the consequences a broken NATO will inflict upon the region and the globe. Despite the emergence of other large shipping centers, the Mediterranean remains a locus of Western maritime commerce, accounting for fifteen percent of global shipping activity in 2013. Without NATO guaranteeing order in the Mediterranean, the Med’s maritime commerce is at risk, leaving Russia and China as the primary beneficiaries.

Trouble Everywhere:

In the Mediterranean, challenges facing NATO are getting harder and harder to paper over. To the West, NATO members Spain and Britain warily eye each other over the status of Gibraltar. Should Britain withdraw from the European Union, this dispute will re-emerge under any flimsy pretext, and there will be few European mechanisms left to moderate things.

The potential for Spanish-British tension extends beyond Gibraltar. Britain and Spain regularly come to blows over fishing rights and practices. In 1994, Spanish fishing crews surrounded and attacked Cornish fishing boats, cutting nets and trawling gear. At about the same time, Britain sided with Canada in the Turbot War, when Spain and Canada squared off over fishing rights. Once Britain leaves the European Union, Spanish fishing in British waters will undoubtably re-emerge as an issue, further exacerbating the Gibraltar situation.

To the East, resource exploitation has increased tension as Greece, Cyprus, Israel, Egypt, Turkey, and even Russia posture over a broken Libya and Eastern Mediterranean gas fields. Egypt and Turkey, two of the larger regional Navies in the Mediterranean, are squaring off, waging a proxy conflict in Libya while jousting over plans to exploit natural resources in Cyprian waters.

Turkey, as a somewhat rogue member of NATO, offers a particularly under-appreciated challenge to the tired NATO diplomacy. An autocratic state, flirting with Russia via arms deals and through regional collaboration in Syria, Turkey is drifting into some sort of unaligned status, contesting islands, disputing neighboring exclusive economic zones in the Aegean Sea and aggressively jockeying for hydrocarbons.

With NATO, Turkey is pursing national self-interest. On one hand, Turkey is an active participant in NATO exercises, including the ongoing NEMO 2019 electromagnetic warfare exercise off the United Kingdom, but, in the maritime, Turkey is also charting it’s own route, hosting NATO units as well as other friendly allies in an exercise of it’s own, the “Eastern Mediterranean Invitation Exercise of 2019”. The challenge for NATO will be in demonstrating that NATO offers more to both Turkey and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan than the alternative, the allure of being an un-aligned country of strategic “significance”, might.

The region is beset with political instability–one coup away from a massive shift in the maritime balance of power. A single successful coup, deposing Turkey’s Erdogan or Egypt’s President, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, changes the Mediterranean maritime outlook virtually overnight. But Israel, Italy, Greece, Britain–even France–are facing domestic challenges that may also dramatically shift the balance of power in the Mediterranean.

Naval expansion is another potential irritant. As the regional maritime forces of the Mediterranean look to expand beyond their various sectors and Russia and China look for a means to enter or enhance their Mediterranean presence, basing will become an issue. China would be foolish not to exploit regional tensions by building a base of operations and then moving to serve as the region’s security arbiter.

Don’t Dismiss The Potential For Trouble:

A look at the numbers shows that the Mediterranean Sea is an armed camp. In the undersea domain alone, as of 2018, eight Mediterranean countries field almost sixty attack submarines. Russia, the United States and Britain contribute others.

While NATO-affiliated countries operate well over half of the Mediterranean submarine fleet, Mediterranean undersea forces are set to grow on all sides. Turkey is rapidly modernizing the country’s submarine fleet and setting a course towards an indigenous submarine production capability. Italy is on the road to developing an indigenous submarine production capability as well. Egypt is receiving a set of four new German-built submarines. Algeria is steadily adding Russian-built Kilo Class Submarines. Morocco is adding submarine capability. The list of undersea naval projects is endless.

Surface ship trends in the Mediterranean are following a similar path, with local navies adding larger and newer combatants and racing to add new capacity. Flat-deck amphibious platforms as well as larger and more capable destroyers and patrol craft are entering service at a rapid clip.

These are not trends exhibited by a region expecting a peaceful future. It is a buildup befitting a region expecting serious maritime instability—the pace is outstripping even the Baltic Sea, a region under direct threat from Russian adventurism. Conventional policymakers may laugh, but, in most cases, navies are built to be used, and it would behoove more governments to sit down and figure out just what the Mediterranean navies are all building for. The Mediterranean is engaging in a full-fledged naval arms race, and the world is being polite and “sotto voce” about it.

The challenges are real. And imminent. Should Turkey leave the NATO alliance, an abrupt emergence of an independent-minded Turkish Navy would pose a real burden to already over-stressed U.S. Navy and NATO forces working to maintain maritime ties to Romania and Bulgaria, new NATO members on the Black Sea. If the prospect of a rogue Turkey is ugly, conflict between Britain and Spain over Gibraltar would pose a fundamental rupture within NATO’s bedrock states, threatening the entire alliance. And, without NATO, the doors are open for regional attempts at maritime hegemony, maritime arms races and regional maritime conflict–offering Russia and Chinese naval forces an opportunity to emerge as guarantors of Mediterranean stability.