In the image
The President of the Spanish Government, Pedro Sánchez, appears at a press conference at the end of the NATO summit [Fernando Calvo].
After the NATO summit of heads of state and government in The Hague at the end of June, the Spanish Prime Minister's unusually high profile for his public resistance to increasing the security and defense expense to the 5% determined by the allies and sculpted in the final statement is still echoing.
Much has already been written about what the President agreed, and about whether or not Spain is subject to the expense commitment set at the summit; it does not seem necessary, therefore, to dwell on the same topic, nor on the fact that the possibility that the Spanish position might derail the meeting was finally aborted by the dialectic juggling of the letter from the University Secretary the Alliance.
What may be useful is to make some clarifications to help clarify the discussion. Without wishing to exhaust the possibilities, here are a few. In the first place, it is true, as the Minister of Defense said, that the summit statement is a political declaration that does not have the weight of a signed and ratified international treaty, and therefore lacks the same legal value. This, however, cannot be an argument that blurs the idea that the statement expresses and conveys the firm and unanimous commitment of all the allies to its content. And what did the allies agree? Well, in addition to devoting at least 5% of their respective GDPs to strengthening their own security and defense - and therefore that of NATO - by 2035, in the first paragraph of the statement they decided to reaffirm their commitment to the principle of collective defense and to maintaining the transatlantic link.
Such an agreement may not have legal force but, undoubtedly, it has moral force; no ally would be supportive if it joined in public with the unanimous commitment, while keeping hidden from the others its firm purpose to breach it, nor would it be so if it publicly disavowed what was agreed -and included- in the final statement . What judgment and what confidence would we have in a NATO member that had made C statement thinking that, in any case, it would not come to Spain's call in case it needed it?
Secondly, it is also true that the 5% may be an arbitrary figure, not sufficiently supported by a deep analysis of the strategic environment of the Atlantic Alliance. It is also possible that an expense of 2.1% in defense will allow Spain to meet its part of the Capabilities goal defined by NATO; this has been stated by the President of the Government, using this reality as an argument to justify the intention of not exceeding this level of expense, almost a point and a half below the 3.5% agreed in The Hague by all the allies in this concept. But, beyond meeting that Capabilities goal ... is 2.1% enough to cover all our defense needs? That is the really important question.
The discussion on specific percentages hides the ultimate goal behind the 5%, which is not to satisfy a whim of the President of the United States, but to rectify decades of low defense expense to provide what the national security of each state requires in the current security environment, and to guarantee a sufficient and credible deterrence against threats that, in the case of Spain, are, in addition to those shared with the rest of the allies, others that it must confront alone in territories not covered by article 6 of the Washington Treaty.
As a side issue, but also worth reflecting on, the President of the Government claims, in defense of the 2.1%, that the data comes from the professional analysis of the Armed Forces in which, he declares, he places his trust. It is good that this is so. In this respect, however, it should be pointed out that discussions between politicians and the military in the performance of their technical advisory duties should take place behind closed doors, and should not transcend outside the circle in which the two levels are related. The politician is not obliged to follow the recommendations he receives from his military advisors -although he must listen to them- but, if he accepts them, he makes them his own in full, and cannot, therefore, use this argument as a justification. The possibility that the professional may see his honest advice exposed to the public may condition the frankness due to the political decision-maker, and erodes the mutual trust on which civil-military relations must be built in a democracy.
Thirdly, it must be recognized that, even if the government had the strongest determination to reach 5%, it would not be able to do so immediately, otherwise it would provoke a tsunami that would drag the national Economics into chaos and certain collapse. To do so requires a progressive effort of adaptation, as NATO itself recognizes, setting a target date of 2035. The effort, however, must be made; It probably involves an increase in fiscal pressure or indebtedness but, first and foremost, a rigorous security discussion involving the civil service examination - with whom it would be advisable to reach a consensus on core topicdecisions core topic, which determines how and where the state should spend the available resources, eliminating superfluous, duplicated or less urgent items, and avoiding the temptation to confront defense investment with social spending, as if the defense effort were not a social expense , perhaps the most important of all. Then, it is essential to have a multi-year budget that allows the Armed Forces to plan the expense in order to get the best out of it, and the defense industry to meet the needs of its customers at the best possible cost.
Regardless of the level of investment decided upon, a nation like Spain should not continue to hold the dubious distinction of being the ally that spends the least on defense in comparison with the size of its Economics. An leave in its own security ostensibly limits its capacity for agency in the international system, making it difficult to protect and advance its interests; and, moreover, it conveys an image that can be interpreted as one of lack of solidarity with the security and social problems of its allies, which weakens the nation. By participating in NATO, Spain has decided to pool its defense with that of other countries, whose security problems it can no longer ignore, especially if it expects its financial aid in the future.
Salvador Sánchez Tapia is Brigadier General (res), Professor of International Security at the University of Navarra.
*Text previously published in the ABC newspaper.