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Algeria
EXTERNAL SECURITY PROBLEMS AND POLICIES
The Algerian leadership's perceptions of the outside world--
including its views on what constituted a threat to national security--have
historically been strongly influenced by ideology. The War of
Independence contributed to a set of beliefs that emphasized Algeria's
identification with the newly independent, less-developed countries.
Dividing the globe into the rich industrial nations of the North
and the poor, former colonies of the South, Algerian leaders asserted
their strong opposition to what they saw as a world infected by
imperialism, Zionism, colonialism, and economic domination by
the former colonial powers. By definition, these attitudes implied
a measure of suspicion and hostility toward the capitalist states
of Europe and North America, and sympathy for liberation movements
whose struggles mirrored Algeria's own.
By the early 1990s, ideology was no longer the guiding principle
of Algeria's national security outlook. The views shaped by the
War of Independence were tempered by more than two decades of
experience as a sovereign state as well as by President Benjedid's
more cautious, pragmatic style. Under him Algeria adopted an active
posture as a mediator of disputes between Western nations and
the more radical states of the Arab world. At the same time, Algerian
external security objectives narrowed. The goals of reducing differences
with its neighbors, the Maghrib countries of North Africa, and
especially of settling political and economic disputes with the
bordering states of Morocco and Libya, predominated.
Data as of December 1993
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