Join on WhatsApp
Join on Telegram
Rabat – The diplomatic crisis between Madrid and Rabat brings to mind the expression “when times are tough you discover your true friends.” Spanish officials love to lavish their “partners” with praise and support during typical diplomatic exchanges. But two of Spain’s key partners have recently discovered that they should not put too much faith in such words.
Even the slightest internal political dealings within the Iberian nation can result in the outright abandonment of key foreign partners.
Spain’s disregard for its foreign allies has become undeniable in recent times. Its key security partners across both the Atlantic and the Mediterreanean were left frustrated after Madrid refused to assist when it had the opportunity to. The countries in question, the US and Morocco, have expressed their astonishment with the treatment they have received.
Reliable international support
Spain is no stranger to issues surrounding separatism and foreign security threats. For years, Madrid has struggled with first the Basque independence movement and then the sudden uprising in Catalonia against the Spanish government. In response, Spain has relied on its allies for support, issuing arrest warrants to pursue Catalunian leader Carles Puigdemont and relying on foreign powers to treat the Basque movement as a terrorist organization.
On security issues, Spain similarly depends on its allies for support. The US protects Spain with its mighty arsenal as part of the NATO alliance. Morocco helps protect Spanish borders, a key political issue in Spain and the EU, even when these borders are on the African continent. The US and Morocco have both mobilized their national resources to prevent terrorist attacks in Spain and both gave Madrid their full support and sympathy following the tragic Madrid bombings in 2004.
“Morocco is a source of stability for Spain,” the Spanish foreign minister Arancha Gonzalez Laya said in September, 2020. In recent months, however, Spanish politicians have managed to produce a full blown diplomatic crisis with their southern neighbor – just like they did with the US before.
When times get tough
For Spain’s international partners it is a no-brainer to support their ally, particularly when they are in need of support. Yet when the time comes for Spain to reciprocate, when spanish politicians have the opportunity to assist their allies, internal politics quickly overrule and negate all promises made and rhetoric espoused in better times.
The Spanish government has managed to offend its key partners twice within a few years. Such abdications of responsibility have led some in the US to call for sanctions on the Iberian nation, while Morocco has expressed its discontent amid a full blown bilateral crisis.
The reason for both issues appears to be the cowardly prioritization of internal politics that overrule even the most important priorities of some of Spain’s most allies. Twice now Spain has abandoned its allies, apparently because it elevated its own internal political divides far above the most central, strategic interests of its allies.
Case studies in deceit
Spain’s abandonment of its partners is evidenced in two clear cases where Madrid appeared to overrule top strategic priorities of its allies to appease domestic political actors.
The ongoing diplomatic conflict between the US and Venezuela is a top priority in Washington. Similar to the Western Sahara, international opinions are divided on what the correct approach to adopt when resolving key disagreements between the two nations. For the US, the issue is a national and bipartisan priority – driven by Washington’s existential fear of the encroachment of socialism in its Latin-American backyard.
When the strategic priorities of the US conflicted with Spanish internal political squabbles, Madrid’s foreign partner was swiftly cast aside. When Venezuelan former intelligence chief Hugo Carvajal entered Spain in 2019, the US asked Spain to reciprocate on decades of strategic collaboration.
Yet internal disagreements amid a domestic political standoff in Madrid overruled international partnerships. Spanish officials had Carvajal within their grasp, yet an initial court decision blocked his extradition. However, the day when a second court decision was due to rule for his extradition, an internal leak attributed to high-ranking officials in the Spanish intelligence community facilitated Carvajal last-minute escape from Spanish authorities. Once Carvajal was out of the country, Spain finally acceded to the US’ extradition request while it could no longer act on it.
The Miami-based news outlet PanAm Post asserted that Caravajal’s escape was facilitated because the Venezuelan had forged close ties with Spanish intelligence officials to “cover up a drug trafficking route that led to the Spanish autonomous community of Galicia.” In addition to the Miami-based liberatarian newspaper, El Independiente also claimed that Spanish leftwing political party Podemos is directly financed by Venezuelan revenues from the illicit drug trade.
US Special Envoy Elliot Abrahams described Carvajal’s escape as a “disgrace,” calling it a “scandal for the Spanish government.”
The case mirrors the current stand-off with Morocco. Similar to US-Venezuela geopolitics, there is no international consensus on the resolution to the Western Sahara conflict.
Just as in the case of Carvajal, Spain collaborated with a direct enemy of a key ally. Not only did Spain allow separatist leader Brahim Ghali to enter its territory, it organized the operation with Algeria, Morocco’s long-standing regional rival and the main sponsor of the Polisario Front’s statehood aspirations in Western Sahara.
And just as with the Carvajal case, Madrid had the ability to make a significant impact on its allies’ conflict and further the prospect of peace. In both cases, however, the Spanish government blatantly chose not to. Ghali and Carvajal both escaped Spain, despite being in direct contact with the Spanish justice system.
Domestic political games
Both cases of geopolitical cowardice and negligence appear to stem from a prioritization of petty domestic squabbles over the top priorities of key allies. Carvajal’s escape was driven by domestic politics, coming just as the Spanish Socialist Workers Party was about to form a governing coalition with the Podemos party.
The two left-wing parties, firmly on one side of the debate of the US-Venezuela confrontation, appear to have greenlighted Carvajal’s escape. Similar disagreements on the Western Sahara debate appear to have fueled the current standoff with Morocco after Polisario leader Ghali escaped from Spain after receiving medical care.
Spain’s contentious political scene appears to undermine any commitments it makes on the global stage. While opposing parties in the US are often accused of having a nearly identical foreign policy agenda, in Spain internal politics leads to the country becoming an unreliable partner, even to its most important allies and partners.
As long as Spain’s foreign policy decisions are governed by the petty squabbling that dominates Spanish politics, which country could truly count on any agreement with Madrid? If Spain had intervened on behalf of its international friends, its partners could have taken an important step towards a political resolution of its lingering conflicts.
That Madrid is an unreliable international partner has been made manifest in both the Ghali and Carvajal cases. Its allies must be taking into consideration that when the going gets tough,you cannot expect Spain to be your friend.
