Thread by @geoffdporter

With #Algeria in the news, with back-to-back delegations in Algiers, and with lots of folks writing about Algeria for the first time, here are some thoughts.

A short thread 🧵

1/9

One of the problems with #Algeria analysis (and by extension, other countries’ policies toward Algeria) is that it is prone to misinterpretations (at best) and conspiracies (at worst) because so little is known or understood about the policymaking process in Algeria itself.

2/9

It is said that nature abhors a vacuum and the same applies to #Algeria analysis. The absence of explanations for (and understandings of) how Algeria makes policy creates (compels?) a space for unfounded or ungrounded interpretations.

3/9

And because those in #Algeria who are privy to how policy is made don’t or won’t talk (which is why they’re privy to it in the first place,) the aforementioned misinterpretations and conspiracies never face any pushback.

4/9

Absent pushback, these misinterpretations and conspiracies become de facto *true.* Afterall, no one is saying otherwise. They take on a life of their own. And then they become the basis for other countries’ policymaking toward #Algeria.

5/9

#Algeria subsequently argues that it is misunderstood or its intentions are being misconstrued, but the root of the problem – a poorly understood decisionmaking process rife with intermediaries and baked in plausible deniability – remains the same.

6/9

Hence the problem of misinterpretation, and by extension miscalculated foreign policy toward #Algeria, persists.

7/9

On the one hand, this is what is ailing Madrid at the moment. On the other hand, Rome doesn’t care about the policymaking process in #Algeria and accepts Algiers’ positions at face value. This in part explains why Italy is succeeding vis-à-vis Algeria and Spain is failing.

8/9

In short, forget what you think you know about the policymaking process in #Algeria.

It’s probably wrong.

Embrace the void.

Resist the urge to fill it just because you think you can.

9/9