Western Sahara: Policy or Propaganda?
When Propaganda Becomes Security Policy: Western Sahara and the Limits of US Analysis
In Washington, distant unresolved conflicts can easily become files on a national-security map. But when such conflicts are read only through the language of security, investment, alliances, and geopolitical competition, the risk is that political narrative replaces legal fact. Western Sahara is one such test: will U.S. policy approach the dispute as an unresolved question of self-determination, or will it allow certain circles to turn it into a security and economic pressure file serving the narrative of one party?
Western Sahara is not an ordinary border dispute. It remains listed by the United Nations as a Non-Self-Governing Territory. The United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara, MINURSO, was established in 1991 under Security Council Resolution 690 as part of a process linked to the ceasefire and self-determination. These are not historical details; they are the legal foundation that cannot be erased by changing the language of policy.
https://digitallibrary.un.org/
The International Court of Justice’s 1975 advisory opinion did not grant Morocco sovereignty over the territory. Rather, the Court found that the materials before it did not establish territorial sovereignty ties between Morocco and Western Sahara. Any responsible reading of the dispute must therefore begin from this fact: at its legal core, this is a question of a people that has not yet fully exercised its right to self-determination. https://www.icj-cij.org/case/
Since the Trump administration’s December 10, 2020 proclamation recognizing Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara and supporting autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty, the file has entered a new American phase. That proclamation was an official act and cannot be ignored. But it does not erase the fact that, under international law and in the United Nations record, the dispute remains unresolved. Nor does it necessarily mean that this direction reflects a deep, long-term institutional assessment of U.S. interests. In some respects, it may also reflect the influence of lobbying networks, private interests, and policy actors close to Morocco’s preferred narrative. https://
The criticism here is not directed at the United States as a country, nor at the American people, nor at the traditions of U.S. diplomacy when they operate through law and institutions. The concern is directed at a channel of influence in Washington that may confuse U.S. interests with the interests of an allied government. Morocco is an important U.S. partner, but partnership does not mean that Rabat’s narrative should become Washington’s only truth. Serious policy distinguishes between cooperation with an ally and adoption of that ally’s position in an unresolved legal dispute.
For that reason, the United States, as a great nation whose political and legal language is grounded in liberty, the rule of law, and human rights, should not be used by lobbies or private interests to justify policies that place it in tension with international law and with the values it claims to defend. America’s strength lies not only in its alliances or global influence, but also in its ability to distinguish between genuine strategic interest and narrow agendas that seek to use its name and institutions on behalf of one party in an unresolved conflict. Drawing Washington into policies that pressure a people that has not yet exercised its right to self-determination does not serve long-term American interests; it weakens U.S. legal and moral credibility.
In this context, the bill introduced by some U.S. senators regarding the Polisario Front matters beyond its immediate legislative fate. The deeper problem is not only the legal text itself, but the political function such initiatives may serve: turning security accusation into a pressure tool inside Washington to push the Polisario Front and the Sahrawi people toward accepting Morocco’s autonomy plan, not through a balanced legal debate on self-determination, but by raising the political and security costs of refusal. Senator Ted Cruz’s office announced a bill targeting the Polisario Front through a conditional security-designation process, making the initiative part of a wider debate about the use of security language in a legal file that remains unresolved. https://www.cruz.
This shift is dangerous because it moves a self-determination question into the space of security accusation before there has been an independent and objective understanding of the dispute, the society, and the region. More troublingly, the tools of pressure may be built out of propaganda, exaggeration, and unverified suspicion, with the purpose of weakening the Sahrawis in the face of their legitimate legal claims. When security narrative replaces objective inquiry, and when suspicion becomes a political instrument, Washington does not only risk weakening a people with limited means of pressure; it also risks weakening the quality of its own security analysis in North Africa and the Sahel.
The Sahrawi people should not be read as a manufactured security threat. They are a people with an unresolved political and legal case. It is true that the conflict included a period of war before the 1991 ceasefire. But the Sahrawi national movement has not historically been known as a transnational ideological project, nor as a movement seeking to export violence beyond its own field. The core Sahrawi claim has remained tied to a specific demand: that the people of Western Sahara freely determine their political future.
This distinction matters for U.S. security analysis. In the Sahel and North Africa, where rumors mix with interests, propaganda with reports, and borders with identities, an entire people should not be reduced to a security image produced by its adversaries. Serious security analysis begins with basic questions: who produces the information? Who benefits from its circulation? Is it verified? Does it explain reality as it is, or does it manufacture a political reality that serves one party?
There is also a social fact that any serious American or European reading should consider. The Sahrawi people are not an isolated human island. They are part of a wider Hassaniya-Saharan social and cultural space, with linguistic, cultural, and social extensions in Mauritania, southern Morocco, southern Algeria, and historical links to Sahelian spaces, including northern Mali and Niger. This wider social geography does not erase Western Sahara’s distinct legal status. But it does mean that any imposed or unjust solution will not remain confined within the territory.
In such regions, political and legal solutions are also long-term security solutions. When a people with broad social extensions is denied a settlement that respects its dignity and rights, instability does not remain local. Over time, it becomes a regional question. Sahrawi society, in its social experience, has not been defined by ethnic or racial hostility toward its surroundings. It has historically lived within a broad space of mobility, social ties, mediation, memory, and interaction with diverse environments. These features should be understood as stabilizing assets, not weaknesses.
The economic dimension makes the issue even more sensitive. When companies and investors are encouraged to treat Western Sahara as open territory for investment under the authority of the status quo, investment becomes a political tool, not a neutral economic activity. In September 2025, Reuters reported that U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau said Washington would support U.S. companies seeking to invest and operate in “all of Morocco, including Western Sahara,” while Morocco continues developing infrastructure, energy, and port projects in the territory. https://www.
Yet this economic language conceals a deeper legal and ethical question: do such investments become tools for entrenching the status quo and providing a practical structure for exploiting the territory’s resources without the clear consent of the Sahrawi people and without their fair benefit from those resources? Development is not legitimate simply because it carries the name of investment. It becomes legitimate when it is grounded in consent, transparency, and respect for the territory’s legal status.
Foreign companies, including American and European firms, should understand that operating in a legally unresolved conflict territory is not an ordinary commercial decision. Western Sahara is not an open market without a people, memory, or rights. It is a territory whose final status remains unresolved, and whose people have been divided for decades between those living in refugee camps and those living inside the territory under continuing security, economic, and political pressure. Sahrawi civil society, human rights organizations, and natural-resource monitoring groups will therefore seek to use legitimate legal tools, in Europe, the United States, and international forums, to question any economic involvement that benefits from the resources of a territory whose people have not expressed their free and clear consent.
The Court of Justice of the European Union confirmed in October 2024 that applying EU-Morocco agreements to Western Sahara required the consent of the people of Western Sahara, and that such consent had not been given in the agreements at issue. The Court also made clear that consulting the population present in the territory is not, by itself, sufficient to establish the consent of the people of Western Sahara. This principle matters beyond Europe because it links resources to consent, development to legitimacy, and economics to law. https://curia.europa.eu/
The greatest danger, therefore, is not that Washington may disagree with the Sahrawis. The danger is that Washington may build its disagreement on unbalanced narratives, lobbying pressure, or security classifications before verifying the facts. U.S. policy can be friendly toward Morocco without becoming an instrument of Morocco’s narrative. It can seek stability without emptying self-determination of its meaning.
Western Sahara is not only a test of slogans; it is a test of analytical quality. Can Washington see beyond a ready-made narrative? Can Congress distinguish between genuine security and the use of security as a pressure tool? Can Europe and the United States speak about the rule of law when the rule of law is inconvenient for a close partner?
In the end, Washington does not need to adopt a Sahrawi discourse in order to be fair. It only needs to remain faithful to its own declared logic: law, accuracy, verification, and long-term interest. When it comes to Western Sahara, these principles lead to a clear conclusion: propaganda should not become security policy; investment should not become a substitute for consent; and partnership with an allied state should not become a mandate to alter the legal nature of a dispute that the people concerned have not yet resolved.
