The US president, who asks to shore up the weight of the Rota base by increasing the destroyers deployed from four to six, identifies Spain as “an indispensable ally” of NATO
It was a long-awaited image and Pedro Sánchez has also managed to give it the packaging of a joint declaration with the president of the United States, Joe Biden, which “updates” and “strengthens” relations between Spain and the United States a decade later and in a “historical” trance marked by the expansionist invasion of Vladimir Putin in Ukraine. The head of the Spanish Government has held a one-hour meeting with Biden at the Moncloa Palace that has led to a common appearance in which both leaders have endorsed the emblem of the NATO summit that has been long today in Madrid -“unity” in the face of the new shared threat represented by Russian “aggression”- and they have focused their agreement on defending, together and with the rest of the Alliance partners, “a world with rules” that it intends overthrow, in the words of the leader of the world’s leading power, Putin’s autarkic regime.
Sánchez has thus won the long-sought accolade for an international role that has been focusing on the European institutions in which he cut his teeth in politics at the beginning, without participating, until today, in the small nucleus of elected officials that he dispatches with the president of USA. The head of the Spanish Government has been compensated for those disdainful 49 seconds that his guest gave him a year ago in a cold corridor of NATO in Brussels and has managed to shine this afternoon his turbulent mandate, which is going through a delicate moment in the domestic field , with the dramatic effect of an interview at the height of Spanish diplomatic aspirations. Sánchez and Biden have exchanged gestures of complicity in their brief presence before the media, without questions, in which the US leader has praised the “leadership” of the socialist leader as host of the Madrid summit on up to two occasions. Forty years after joining NATO, Spain is an “indispensable partner,” Biden flattered, congratulating himself on the fact that both countries have built a “reliable and solid” alliance.
The satisfaction externalized by Sánchez – the appointment constitutes “a milestone”, he congratulated himself – has framed the seriousness of a historical moment that both he and his interlocutor have wanted to underline. Today’s, under the tangible threat of Putin, is a time of world unrest that demands rearmament – military and verbal – to send the Russian president the message that NATO will react in a cohesive way to defend “the rules” against the greater ” provocation since World War II,” Biden described. Faced with such a “violation of international rights and shared values”, it is necessary, in Sánchez’s words, to “redouble” the commitment to a “revitalized” Alliance in the face of this crisis that has returned warmongering to the gates of the EU. A clear message from the president about where the role of Spain is now -he has glossed, among other things, the participation in the operation of the Atlantic entente in Latvia-, with an implicit burden on his partners from United We Can who have expressed their displeasure for the Madrid summit and the prior shipment of weapons to the Ukrainian resistance by a Velodímir Zelensky who will be present tomorrow, telematically, at the Madrid conclave.
Biden had gone to Moncloa with a prior demand shared by European partners – that Spain allocate 2% of GDP to defense spending as established by NATO – and an announcement unveiled by the US Security Adviser on the plane that was transporting the tenant of the White House since the G-7 summit in Germany: that the North American country intends to increase the destroyers deployed in Rota from four to six, which is a boost, in military terms and for the economic return for the area it represents , to the Cadiz base where the NATO missile shield is located in southern Europe. The decision, which must be approved by the Spanish Council of Ministers, would underpin the barracks, which together with the Sevillian one in Morón de la Frontera add up to around 6,000 US troops, among those in common use used by the US outside its borders.
The strategic commitment to Rota, which was once in question, reinforces the potential naval response of the American power and NATO to threats in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic; which is complemented by the marines oriented towards the Sahel, one of the global nests of jihadism, in Morón. The expansion of the military resources available with these six destroyers anticipates a possible new screeching in the Government of Sánchez with United We Can and with other parliamentary allies reluctant to the militarism of the Alliance. But the harmony staged by Sánchez with Biden highlights the value that the majority partner of the Executive grants to relations with the United States. Vital commercial relations -the country is, together with the United Kingdom, the main commercial destination of Spain outside the EU; in terms of energy, once the Americans have become our main supplier of liquefied gas, as a result of the war in Ukraine and the bankruptcy with Algeria due to the pact with Morocco on Western Sahara; and also, obviously in the diplomatic, from Putin’s current challenge to Latin America, passing through the Maghreb. It is not trivial that in the background of the agreement with Rabat there is the recognition by Donald Trump, later assumed by Biden, of Moroccan sovereignty over the Saharawi camps.
Sánchez has promised to gradually increase investment in defense, challenged by the war in Ukraine. The Budget project for 2022, anticipated in Brussels, contemplates an “allocation of resources” to Defense of 10,155.26 million, an increase of 7.9% compared to the previous year. In a report from three months ago, NATO found that Spain spent an insufficient, according to its parameters, 1.03% of GDP on military spending.
#Sánchez #Biden #commit #defend #world #rules #Putin