240 Journal of the Spanish Institute for Strategic Studies Núm. 13 / 2019 parable national powers, both understand that, if one of them breaks the equilibrium and is defeated, the winner takes all and the loser becomes subjected to the stronger. In this way, the balance between these two states, each with a leadership vocation, means that when one of them potentially appears to be the winner, the other tends to “compensate” it, expanding territorially, increasing its own capacities, or forming alli-ances with other regional actors (Tunisia, Mauritania) or extra-regional actors (United States, France, Spain). In these circumstances, balancing becomes the most logical behaviour, given that the cost of alliances are low and the security of the system is not put at risk. In the Maghreb, the main cause of regional competition that can eventually evolve into confrontation between the two states is their territorial voracity – the singular expression of which is the conflict in Western Sahara – and not their sense of inse-curity as advocated by the security dilemma. However, the fact that both states have expansionist desires does not mean that the security dilemma has disappeared. This would require for both of them that their security policies be peaceful and aimed at defending their own national territories and also each of them be convinced of the benevolent intentions of the other. But this is not the case in the Maghreb, not only because of the expansive nature of their security policies, but also because both states behave like a sort of “black box-es” that do not provide enough information on the internal processes that regulate their security policy: therefore each state can only deduce the intentions of the other through its observable external behaviour. Morocco and Algeria are never sure of each other’s intentions84 and so they have to move in the realm of uncertainty and design security policies based on mutual distrust. The result of such a high degree of uncertainty about each other’s intentions is the negative mutual perception based on mistrust. That explains the decisions of both states to initiate expansive security policies and arms races, thus giving credibility to the postulates of the most offensive realism. As Randall Sweller points out “States ac-quire more weapons not because they misperceive the security efforts of other benign states, but because aggressive states really want to harm them”85. The hegemonic ambition in a regional context that guides the security policies of Morocco and Algeria serves to explain the confrontation between the two much better than the approaches to the security dilemma, the advantages of the offensive security policy, their perception of insecurity, or the permanent arms race taking place in the Maghreb. In an environment in which each of them has a high degree of uncertainty about the intentions of the other, mistrust, rather than the ideological difference be-tween Morocco and Algeria’s political regimes, becomes the main obstacle to improv- 84 MEARSHEIMER (2014). Op.Cit, p. 31. 85 SCHWELLER, Randall L. (1996). Neorealism’s Status-Quo Bias: What Security Dilemma? Security Studies, Vol. 5 (3), p. 104. Revista del Instituto Español de Estudios Estratégicos n.º 13 - Año: 2019 - Págs.: 213 a 242
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