Hugh Lovatt’s ECFR has published again a piece on the European Council on Foreign Relations that serves best as a textbook exercise in selective framing and pro-Algeria and pro-Moscow advocacy dressed up as European strategic advice.
Lovatt portrays the end of MINURSO as a reckless American “miscalculation” that risks war, while casting Morocco as the potential aggressor that Europe must restrain with economic and military pressure.
Algeria appears almost as a reluctant bystander that might be “drawn in,” while the cold war-minded Polisario is treated as a legitimate national movement whose “power-sharing framework” deserves equal weight with Morocco’s autonomy plan.
This is not analysis. Lovatt is rather engaging in advocacy with the facts rearranged to suit Algeria’s and Russia’s anachronistic view on the conflict.
Core distortions are visible in form first. Lovatt repeatedly calls the territory “occupied” and says Morocco “illegally annexed” it in 1975. The UN, which he worships, has never described Morocco as such. He is using Polisario terminology.
He ignores Morocco’s pre-colonial history and the historical context of Spanish withdrawal, the Green March, the Madrid Accords. More importantly, he has never visited the territory, or the southern provinces, he claims expertise on.
He claims the diplomatic ground has not shifted. The EU backed autonomy following the UN Security Council resolution 2797. Multiple EU heavyweight member states, such as Spain, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and others, have explicitly described Morocco’s autonomy plan as the most serious, realistic, and credible basis for the territory.
The European Council and successive EU-Morocco partnership documents have moved in the same direction.
But for Lovatt this European consensus does not exist! He arrogantly urges “Europe” to “restrain” the very partner most of the EU backs.
Second, Lovatt demands that Europe threatens Morocco with costs. He offers no equivalent pressure on Algeria, the state that created, armed, hosted, and still directs the Polisario hostile acts.
He turns a blind eye to Algeria’s relationship with the Polisario, a classic proxy strategy.
Third, Lovatt insists any settlement must ultimately be put to a “Sahrawi referendum.” He knows the identification process collapsed decades ago precisely because Polisario and Algeria rejected voter lists that did not deliver their preferred outcome.
The UN itself moved away from the referendum track toward political realism for a reason. The Security Council ceased referring to that unfeasible option and put a final nail in referendum coffin by describing autonomy as the only basis for talks.
Pretending a clean self-determination vote is still viable in 2026 is nostalgia, not policy.
In a show of strategic ignorance mixed with academic arrogance, Lovatt’s solution is to pressure the status-quo power (Morocco) while preserving “constructive engagement” with the spoiler (Algeria).