Reading Sabteh-Ceuta through Camus

The defining feature of contemporary geopolitics is no longer power. It is paradox. Wars continue without decisive victories. Allies increasingly compete while rivals quietly cooperate. Migration has become both a humanitarian tragedy and an instrument of statecraft. Security, energy and trade now overlap in ways that defy traditional geopolitical categories. In such a world, Albert Camus's philosophy of the absurd offers an unexpectedly powerful guide to understanding international affairs.

The recent Morocco-Spain standoff over Sabteh-Ceuta is a case in point. It is often portrayed as a dispute over migration, sovereignty or border security. It is all of these. But at a deeper level it is a tragedy of geography — one that exposes the limits of ideology and the enduring tension between power, justice and human dignity.

Born in Algeria, Camus belonged to both Europe and North Africa, yet fully to neither. He experienced colonialism, the struggle for independence and the violence that accompanied both. Unlike many of his contemporaries, he refused ideological certainty. He distrusted every political cause that demanded human lives in the name of historical justice.

His often-misunderstood remark during the Algerian War still resonates: "Between justice and my mother, I choose my mother". It was not a rejection of justice. It was a rejection of abstract justice when it ceases to recognise human reality.

Sabteh-Ceuta embodies precisely this dilemma.

Spain invokes sovereignty, territorial integrity and European law. Morocco invokes history, decolonisation and territorial justice. The European Union prioritises border security. Migrants seek dignity, safety and opportunity. Each position contains truth. None contains the whole truth.

Camus would urge us to resist turning this complexity into a contest of heroes and villains.

His philosophy begins with what he called the absurd: the collision between humanity's search for certainty and a world that refuses to provide it. Geopolitics often unfolds in much the same way.

Geography is indifferent. The Mediterranean does not recognise political maps. It neither distinguishes Europe from Africa nor chooses between competing historical claims. Those are political constructions imposed upon an indifferent landscape.

Sabteh-Ceuta is therefore less an anomaly than a geopolitical paradox. A European city stands on African soil. A colonial legacy coexists with contemporary international law. A humanitarian corridor doubles as a security frontier. A local border incident reverberates through Brussels, Washington and Nato headquarters.

These contradictions cannot be permanently resolved. They can only be managed.

Camus also warned against ideologies claiming to possess final answers. Whether colonialism, revolutionary violence or totalitarian politics, he believed certainty often becomes the enemy of humanity.

That warning remains remarkably relevant.

To portray Morocco as entirely justified ignores Spain's legitimate security concerns. To portray Spain as entirely justified overlooks the unresolved historical questions surrounding Sabteh-Ceuta and Melilla. To reduce migration solely to border enforcement ignores the human desperation that compels people to risk everything for a better future. Each narrative illuminates one part of reality while obscuring another.

Here Camus unexpectedly converges with realpolitik. Both reject comforting illusions. Realpolitik rejects moral illusions about power; Camus rejects philosophical illusions about certainty. Together they remind us that sound statecraft begins by seeing the world as it is before imagining what it ought to become.

The Sabteh-Ceuta episode also cannot be understood in isolation from the wider transformation of the Mediterranean. Since normalising relations with Israel under the Abraham Accords, Morocco has become an increasingly important strategic partner for both Israel and the United States.

Yet the Gaza war has complicated this equation. Morocco must reconcile expanding strategic cooperation with Israel with strong domestic and regional solidarity for the Palestinian cause. This balancing act illustrates another Camusian insight: politics is rarely a choice between good and evil. More often, it is the difficult management of competing moral and strategic imperatives.

Israel itself gains little from instability across the western Mediterranean. A stable Morocco strengthens one of its most important regional partnerships, while prolonged confrontation weakens a broader architecture of cooperation linking North Africa, Europe and the Middle East.

Perhaps the deepest lesson of Sabteh-Ceuta is one that both Camus and geopolitics recognise.

Morocco and Spain are not merely neighbours; they are partners condemned by geography to cooperate. Trade binds them. Migration binds them. Counterterrorism binds them. Energy increasingly binds them. Even their disagreements bind them. Neither can escape the other. The challenge, therefore, is not to prevail over one's neighbour but to manage an enduring relationship shaped by geography and sustained by mutual dependence.

There is also a broader lesson for middle powers. Oman offers one illustration. For more than half a century, Omani diplomacy has sought to convert strategic geography into strategic trust. Rather than treating leverage as an instrument of coercion, Muscat has generally used it to preserve dialogue, facilitate communication and reduce regional tensions. Whether one agrees with every policy or not, the broader principle is worth noting: influence becomes more durable when it is associated with predictability rather than pressure.

Camus believed that wisdom begins by accepting the world as it is rather than as we wish it to be. Geography has made Morocco and Spain permanent neighbours; history has made them uneasy partners. Neither reality can be changed. The challenge is to manage both with restraint, imagination and humility.

Ultimately, the lesson of Sabteh-Ceuta is not that power triumphs over morality, or morality over power. It is that enduring statecraft requires both. In an international order increasingly defined by paradox rather than certainty, that may be Albert Camus's most enduring contribution to the study of geopolitics.