Migration of rural populations to urban agglomerations is generating serious challenges, the most immediate being declining agricultural production, and social dysfunction within a floating lumpen proletariat . While Arab nations acknowledge that the Arab-Israeli peace process holds the prospect of reducing regional military tensions, they continue to focus on the threat they perceive to be posed by a growing Israeli nuclear arsenal and the refusal of Washington to pressure Tel Aviv to cap their program and consider arms control measures. The Maghreb states, however, do not consider Israel's nuclear program as among their major security threats, but they do regard U.S. preoccupation with the possible acquisition of WMD by radical Arab regimes as misplaced. At the same time, they did not consider that emerging security challenges in North Africa would impact directly on U.S. security interests. Potential instability of centralized power.
Authoritarian regimes tend to be brittle.
The more stable a non- democratic polity appears, the more that stability is vulnerable to the domestic challenges enumerated above. Centralized systems of power stand tallest but fall hardest. The American participants stressed the need for greater efforts by the regional states themselves to form a more tangible security union. The UAM has made very little progress in achieving a consensus defining the future threat environment or toward adoption of regional measures to meet anticipated challenges. The Tunisian formulation was more positive in outlook and tone than the American.