Spain's Atlantic option.

• Author: Puig, Valenti
• Position: Relations with United States, Latin America

THE UNEXPECTED victory of the Spanish socialists in the general elections last March, just a few days after the bombing attack in Madrid, has changed the face and direction of Spanish politics. Its most obvious and immediate impact has been on the U.S.-led War on Terror, and in particular on Spain's participation in the coalition of the willing. Rodriguez Zapatero, Spain's new prime minister, had diametrically opposed the U.S. intervention against Saddam Hussein, and since the election he has fulfilled his electoral promise to withdraw the 1,300 Spanish troops from Iraq. By doing so, however, he will almost certainly make it impossible for Spain to form prudential alliances for global security and so be compelled to take refuge in dreams of a "moralpolitik."

Yet as subsequent events have proved, it would be a catastrophic error to think that Al-Qaeda will switch its attention from Spain merely because a general election has changed the government. Osama bin Laden had proposed the "reconquest" of Spain long before the Iraq War. Indeed his express purpose is to revive the Caliphate, the golden dream of Islam, and to restore the Moorish rule of Al-Andalus that ended with the fall of Granada. His terrorist ideology stems from an extreme pathology of anti-Westernism coupled with the desire for revenge against a world that, in Bin Laden's eyes, has been corrupted by freedom and hedonism. In the end, this reality of a terrorism that cannot be appeased by gestures of non-belligerence will inevitably shape Spain's foreign policy--as it had done under the government of conservative prime minister, Jose Marfa Aznar.

After September 11, Aznar had firmly aligned Spain with the United States with a policy of considered and resolute Atlanticism. That alignment had triggered tensions with the Paris-Berlin axis in the European Union; it was also opposed by a socialist opposition that thought warmer relations with Washington conflicted with Spain's commitment to the European Union. Aznar's realignment was without doubt a substantial adjustment of Spanish foreign policy in both positioning and influence. But it was rooted soundly in Spanish national interests.

For some time, the main problem for Spanish society has been Basque terrorism. A closer relationship with George W. Bush encouraged the United States to help in the Madrid government's fight against it. The United States also helped smooth the sometimes ominous relations between Spain and neighboring Morocco--ominous because the Spanish-Moroccan border is where the European Union meets North Africa, and where illegal immigrants start their journey across the continent. These were immediate and pressing reasons why Spain collaborated with the global strategy of the United States against terrorism. ETA (the Basque terrorist group) wishes to destroy Spain, and the Al-Qaeda attack on Madrid on March 11, 2004, was the start of a campaign to Lebanonize Europe--to hold it hostage and punish it for being the land of cathedrals and the Enlightenment. These were sufficient reasons for Aznar's Atlantic strategy.

Even before September 11, however, Aznar had been working towards this shift in foreign policy. His premise was that, in order to grow both economically and politically, Spain's engagement with the rest of world needed to be wider and bolder. He wanted to confront Spanish society's traditional fear of commitments abroad. He believed that this fear gave no weight to the costs of isolation. As the early 20th-century statesman, Count Alvaro de Romanones, warned: "Being everyone's friend means not having any friend at all at a time of danger or need." And that dictated closer relations, political and economic, with Spain's former colonies and the United States across the Atlantic.

It must be said that many factors in Spanish society worked against this reorientation: the reluctance of Spanish public opinion to face the realities of foreign policy, the systematic anti-Americanism of the Left, and the public's low opinion of Bush. Even so, Aznar's conservative government opted firmly for a wider Euro-Atlanticism rather than a...