On July 31, with little fanfare or attention, France formally recognized Morocco’s sovereignty over Western Sahara, abandoning its decades-long support for the United Nations-mandated referendum process to determine the territory’s final governance status. Long seen as the West’s diplomatic leader on the Western Sahara conflict, France is the most important country to fully throw its weight behind Morocco’s unlawful, unilateral annexation of the territory.
But it is hardly the first to do so. Israel did the same in 2023, and Spain shifted its stance on the conflict to align itself more closely with Morocco’s position the year before. But it was the United States under then-President Donald Trump that opened the floodgates in 2020, recognizing Morocco’s sovereignty over Western Sahara in exchange for Rabat’s normalization of relations with Israel under the Abraham Accords.
This formal recognition of Morocco’s de facto sovereignty over the territory—a massive swath of mainly desert that is home to a mere 600,000 inhabitants—may not at first glance appear to have global ramifications. But it will indeed have reverberations around the world, eroding the rule of international law that prohibits the acquisition of territory by force as well as the recognition of such an illegal act by other states. For occupying powers, including Russia and Israel, it provides invaluable precedent as well as encouragement that, sooner or later, their “might” will also one day “make right,” as they observe how even states that profess commitment to the rules-based international order abandon it for their short-term political and economic interests.