There are a few questions on the table, many do not have easy answers and some are not simple to formulate. Let’s try to bring order to this confusing panorama of security and defense, but before that, certain preliminary questions. One, the Russian aggression in Ukraine is not the only key to clarifying all these questions. Two, it is not about creating a European army overnight. And if I may, three, Minister Margarita Robles is making a great effort (and she has merit) to explain to the media that the matter is not going back to mandatory military service.
Russia is in the hands of a 21st century dictator, who uses 20th century weapons to wage a war with 19th century plans. With little imagination, he has formulated the Aznarian thesis, according to which the recent massacre in Moscow, come on, all right, was the work of Islamists in Central Asia, but the inspirations could be those of the death of John Kennedy in Dallas and Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo.
And geopolitics, derived from geography and violence, does not help. For example, in recent years compulsory military service has been restored, even for women, in Finland and the Scandinavian and Baltic countries. What do they have in common? The proximity to Russia, which has given a decisive incentive to some societies that have accepted the invitation without blinking. Two of the countries entering NATO as well. This has to do with some wars of the 20th century and some memory of the Soviet Union. It must be remembered that Putin said that his disappearance was the greatest misfortune of the 20th century and continues to think about it with closed eyes.
On the other hand, the problem for Spain and for the Minister of Defense is that public opinion does not want to hear about restoring the military; nearly 60% are totally against increasing defense spending (1.2% of GDP, according to the tail in the NATO list) and there is no social conscience to support it with public policies appropriate to the need to strengthen collective security at national, European and global level. Here people love to invoke “peace” in the papal way (“Ukraine should have the courage to raise the white flag”).
But it could be argued that the NATO country that spends the most on defense (3.55% of GDP) is not the United States, it is Greece, because of an old dispute with Turkey (1.3% of GDP ) for several centuries or millennia, depending on how you look at it.
If we analyze the strategic panorama rigorously (the argument applies to Spain or any other country of the Alliance), the issue is not about returning to compulsory military service, or not mainly. The issue is for governments, experts and (serious) media to deepen their understanding of three things: in the case of Spain, what are the differences between factors of uncertainty, threats and risks. They are three unequal components of this international environment (the political system) that governments perceive as potentially (or directly) dangerous. And it also proposes how to approach the issue by simultaneously promoting appropriate public policies, international alliances and with indispensable international organizations, without forgetting the education of public opinion with great efforts (and in Spain, at least, without expecting great results in the short term ).
Almost all the countries around us have been providing themselves with official documents called, more or less, “National Security Strategy” and which have quite similar structures. For Spain, for example, are Gibraltar or Ceuta and Melilla risks or threats? Or nothing at all? We (ordinary citizens) can move on, governments cannot. Are migratory flows, at the scale of the entire Mediterranean basin, risks or threats? Will the European Union create a European army?
About thirty years ago, a very ambitious (and very expensive) project was launched to build the Eurofighter, the European combat fighter. How many countries have now replaced their own fighter jets with this European plane? The so-called battle groups of the European Union were created years ago, in theory to be able to deploy them quickly in very urgent tactical situations. On paper there are many, in practice, how many times have they been deployed and where. As far as I know, never.
It’s simple: what is the difference between risk and threat? A threat is a risk with credible intent. Each government prefers to administer its reflection, although the final decision may coordinate or syndicate it with others. Managing insecurity is very complex for any government.
