“True power in the 21st century no longer lies solely in the strength of arms, but in the ability to connect resources, routes and people.”
“In the Middle East, reality changes faster than perceptions, and perceptions often shape reality.”
General (Rtd) Corneliu Pivariu–IFIMES
1. Introduction – MENA as a Key Space of Global Rebalancing
The Middle East and North Africa – known under the acronym MENA – represent, more than ever, a crossroads of history, religion, energy, and geopolitics.
Here, millennial civilizations, contemporary ideologies, and global economic interests collide and reshape themselves in a continuous process.
We live in an era where transformations unfold at the pace of a historical revolution, and developments in this region have repercussions that reverberate worldwide.
After more than seven decades of almost uninterrupted conflict, MENA now stands at the centre of a new strategic competition where energy, technology, and political influence intertwine within a transforming architecture of power.
The region has become the symbol of the emerging multipolar world – one without a single hegemon, but with a complex network of regional and global powers that cooperate, compete, and condition one another.
This multipolarity does not signify fragmentation, but rather a redistribution of decision-making centres and their adaptation to logic of strategic interdependence.
2. Energy and Strategic Interdependence
Energy remains the keystone of power in the Middle East. The Gulf States – Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates – still hold a dominant share of the world’s oil and gas reserves.
However, they no longer play the passive role of resource suppliers. Over the past two decades, these countries have evolved into strategic decision centres, diversifying their economies and investments in technology, infrastructure, defence, and green energy. A new form of power is thus emerging: not the one that merely extracts the resource, but the one that transforms it, directs it, and connects it.
Green hydrogen, solar energy from the Maghreb, trans-Saharan interconnections, maritime corridors, and port infrastructures now form the circulatory system of the global economy. Energy has become not only the source but also the language of contemporary geopolitics.
As shown in my previous analyses on BRICS and “Globalisation 2.0”, the redistribution of energy and technological flows is shifting the global centre of gravity from the Atlantic to the Indo-Pacific, with MENA serving as the critical interface between the Global South and the industrialised North.
Energy corridors – from Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb to Suez and the Eastern Mediterranean – are the arteries through which not only energy, but global stability itself, flows.
Europe, faced with its own energy vulnerability since 2022, is rediscovering MENA’s strategic role – not merely as an alternative source, but as an indispensable partner for energy transition and global security.
3. Strategic Competition among Major Powers
Nowhere is the new global contest for influence more visible than in MENA.
The United States, China, Russia, the European Union, and regional actors – India, Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Egypt, and others – simultaneously compete for space, resources, and narrative control.
The United States seeks a balance between partial disengagement and sustained influence, relying on selective partnerships and the consolidation of the Abraham Accords.
China promotes a subtle strategy: through the Belt and Road Initiative and its mediation role (e.g., between Iran and Saudi Arabia), it asserts itself as a major economic and diplomatic actor – without direct military presence.
Russia, though weakened by the war in Ukraine, maintains strategic anchors in Syria, Iran, and Algeria, cultivating asymmetric networks of influence.
The European Union remains the main trade partner, yet still lacks a coherent security strategy for the region.
Meanwhile, India discreetly expands its economic and technological footprint in the Gulf and East Africa, while BRICS+ increasingly emerges as an attractive platform for Arab states seeking to diversify their financial and energy partnerships.
Regional actors are also asserting greater autonomy:
- Iran capitalises on the “axis of resistance” (Hezbollah, the Houthis, Shiite militias);
- Saudi Arabia diversifies its partnerships and aspires to a global role within BRICS+;
- Turkey adopts a flexible stance between NATO, Russia, and the Muslim world;
- Israel, as I have shown in the study “Super Sparta”[2], strengthens its technological and intelligence superiority, but faces a serious erosion of image and growing diplomatic isolation amid the Gaza crisis.
In the logic of the new realpolitik, competition is no longer purely military but also narrative: each actor strives to define the meaning of world order, to impose its own framework of legitimacy and its own version of international normality.
4. Security and Instability – Fragile Equilibria
The Gaza crisis remains the epicentre of tensions. After a year of open conflict, the human and political toll is tragic: tens of thousands of victims, massive destruction, a paralysed peace process, and a climate of hatred fuelling new generations of radicalism. The elimination of Hamas and Hezbollah leaders has not brought stability, only a pause between two phases of the same confrontation.
The war in Gaza has become a symbol of a world increasingly unable to negotiate lasting peace – the latest agreement concluded in Egypt being a telling example.
Behind the military confrontation lies a battle for narrative control: who is the aggressor, who is the victim, and who defines the legitimacy of action? This is the purest expression of the strategic narrative – a concept that redefines the relationship between power and perception in the 21st century.
The expansion of the conflict through attacks from Yemen and the pressure on Red Sea maritime routes shows that regionalised warfare has already become a reality.
Against this backdrop, Egypt, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia attempt cautious mediation efforts, but the lack of consensus among major powers keeps peace as a more declarative as substantive objective.
Security in MENA today is a fragile mosaic in which local stability depends on global balances, and each conflict represents a link in a broader geopolitical chain.
In a deeper historical sense, we are witnessing a reactivation of post-Ottoman fragmentations, where symbolic frontiers have returned stronger than geographic ones.
5. Romania and MENA – Between Experience and Opportunity
Romania has a solid and long-standing tradition of dialogue and balance in the Middle East, dating back to the Cold War era.During the 1970s and 1980s; Romanian diplomacy was respected in Cairo, Damascus, Tehran, and Tel Aviv – as well as in Washington, Beijing, and other capitals – for its capacity to maintain open channels between antagonistic camps. After 1990, this vocation gradually faded. Foreign policy focused almost exclusively on the Euro-Atlantic vector, while regional expertise diminished.
Nevertheless, the current context provides a genuine opportunity for strategic re-engagement – even if the present diplomatic leadership seems little, if at all, concerned with seizing it.
Romania could act along three main directions:
- Energy and infrastructure – through the Port of Constanța and the Rail2Sea and Danube2Sea projects, which could logistically connect Eastern Europe with the Mediterranean and MENA, strengthening its position within the Three Seas Initiative.
- Education and cultural diplomacy – by expanding university cooperation with Arab states and creating a framework for training regional specialists, continuing the former tradition of expertise and balance.
- Mediation diplomacy – by reviving a foreign policy based on credibility, continuity, and active balance.
A major advantage for Romania is that it is a European state without a colonial past in the region, a trait that offers it genuine potential for credible partnership with the Global South.
As highlighted in Global Geopolitical Evolutions up to 2050, Romania has the vocation of a bridge between North and South, between Europe and the Orient, provided it assumes a pragmatic, not merely declarative, role within the global architecture.
6. Conclusions – MENA as the Laboratory of the New World Order
The Middle East and North Africa have become the testing ground of the multipolar order. Here intersect the new forms of power: economic, energetic, technological, and informational. Here, too, the parameters of European security are indirectly being shaped. The region is no longer merely an object of great power competition, but an autonomous actor capable of influencing global trends.
For Romania, the challenge is clear: not to observe these transformations from the sidelines, but to take part in them – through dialogue, expertise, and vision.
In a world where the “force of arms” is increasingly replaced by the power of connections, true influence will be measured by the ability to understand, anticipate, and connect. The future will not belong solely to the greatest powers, but also to those who can build bridges between them – and Romania has the chance to be among these, if it ceases to act merely as a docile executor of directives from Brussels or elsewhere, and instead acts with professionalism and strategic vision.
