220 Journal of the Spanish Institute for Strategic Studies Núm. 13 / 2019 that form it are sovereign and, therefore, free to act according to their national inter-ests, and not subject to any superior authority. Imposition is not possible, since the states concerned have no obligation or incentive to accept it, nor does the system exert sufficient coercive pressure to invite cooperation through the signing of treaties, or the establishment of regional supranational institutions and, therefore, the dom-inant states, Morocco and Algeria, can easily hide and avoid fulfilling their acquired commitments. This does not mean, however, that the functioning of the Maghreb as a regional system lacks any form of order, nor that its member-states can do whatever they want, but it does mean that the order is created by the states themselves and is normally made up of a set of power relations and agreed rules of behaviour - status quo - to which they voluntarily adhere17. The fact of belonging to the structures of the macro-system made up of interna-tional organisations such as the United Nations, or the African Union, as well as the influence of major powers such as the United States, or the Soviet Union in the past, and even new actors such as the European Union or China, serve to condition the behaviour of Morocco and Algeria, which look upon their usefulness in order to re-ward their own behaviour and punish the behaviour of others, without implying that they necessarily agree to adapt their behaviour to the guidelines demanded by these organisations. International institutions such as the United Nations, the AU or the EU are not capable of imposing their authority coactively18 to protect Morocco from Algeria and vice versa. These organisations serve to moderate the most perverse ele-ments of their security policies, but they are not sufficient to modify them. The two states accept these patterns of behaviour only because they understand that they are beneficial to them and offer them a greater likelihood of “rising to the summit and staying there”19. Hence, international law and standards can only be applied with the consent of states, and for this it is required that they have a direct material interest in the result of their application. It is not the rules themselves that determine how the Maghreb states behave; their behaviour is determined by their geopolitical interests and by the relative power relations between them. It is precisely this useful form of selfish behav-iour that explains how Morocco’s and Algeria’s security policies work from an extraor-dinarily pragmatic, realistic perspective. International law thus becomes a symptom of the behaviour of both states, and not its cause. Consequently, the inability of the international system to regulate cooperative relations between Morocco and Algeria, in view of the desire for power on the part of both states, reflects a pessimistic view of international institutions, since they neither restrict nor condition their behaviour in relation to one another. 17 BULL, H. (2012). The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics, New York, Columbia University Press, pp.97-156. 18 MEARSHEIMER (2014). Op.Cit. Pp.3. 19 WALTZ, K (1979). Op.Cit. P.21. Revista del Instituto Español de Estudios Estratégicos n.º 13 - Año: 2019 - Págs.: 213 a 242
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