Abstract
This chapter presents the immediate and longer-term objectives of the Zapatero government (2004–2011). The PSOE reasoned that one could no longer rely exclusively on unilateral measures, Cold War alliances or a “Spain first” approach. It is against this background that the new government developed a new strategic concept called “effective multilateralism” or “multilateralismo eficaz.” This new approach not only foresaw increased collaboration with several of the world’s emerging powers. It envisaged that Spain would work alongside different players of international politics, big and small, and in regions where Spain did not traditionally have a strong foothold.
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Notes
- 1.
Moratinos Files: Interview, Miguel Ángel Moratinos.
- 2.
Ibid.
- 3.
Fernando Reinares, ¡Matadlos! Quién estuvo detrás del 11-M y por qué se atentó en España (Barcelona: Galaxia Gutenberg, 2014), 8. Based on the written sentence of the Audiencia Nacional, No. 65 of 2007.
- 4.
Cf. Sect. 2.2 of this book.
- 5.
Cf. Tim Hames, “The Spanish Elections: A Landslide Win for Bin Laden”, The Times, March 16, 2004. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/the-spanish-elections-a-landslide-win-for-bin-laden-rnp707rvc7n.
- 6.
José Manuel Romero, „El desconcierto del Gobierno sobre la autoría del atentado,“ El País, March 13, 2004. https://elpais.com/diario/2004/03/13/espana/1079132404_850215.html; “Security Council Condemns Madrid Terrorist Bombings, Urges All States to Join Search for the Perpetrators,” United Nation Security Council, Resolution 1530, adopted unanimously, March 11, 2004. https://www.un.org/press/en/2004/sc8022.doc.htm. See Chapter 2 for further information.
- 7.
Condoleezza Rice, No Higher Honor: A Memoir of My Years in Washington (New York: Broadway Books, 2011), 203.
- 8.
On several occasions, the Australian prime minister, John Howard, had to reject calls by either the Stop the War Coalition (StWC) or the Australian Greens for troops to withdraw immediately from Iraq. Cf. “Spain stands alone on Iraqi pullout,” ABC, March 16, 2004. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2004-03-16/spain-stands-alone-on-iraqi-pullout/152288.
- 9.
Morten Heiberg, US-Spanish Relations After Franco. Will of the Weak. vol of Harvard Cold War Studies Book Series (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2018), 196–197.
- 10.
Ibid., xiii.
- 11.
As Dean Rusk and Robert McNamara coolly reminded President Kennedy in 1963: “…Spain has allowed us to use these bases for practically any purpose the US deemed necessary…This lack of restraints makes our bases in Spain particularly valuable whether in time of peace, increased tension or war.” Cit. in ibid., 25.
- 12.
Despite positive signals from Konrad Adenauer in particular, the European left effectively barred the inclusion of Spain through a serious of initiatives, among others the so-called Birkelbach report of 1962 presented by the West German Socialists of the European Parliamentary Assembly. The message was that if Spain wanted to join the European family, the dictatorship would have to be dismantled first. Cf. Antonio Muñoz-Sánchez, Von der Franco-Diktatur zur Demokratie. Die Tätigkeit der Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung in Spanien (Bonn: Dietz, 2013), 21. On the anti-communist affinities between West Germany and Spain, see Carlos Sanz Díaz, “España y la República Federal de Alemania (1949–1966): política, economía y emigración, entre la guerra fría y la distensión” (PhD Diss., Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 2005).
- 13.
Angel Viñas, “Años de Gloria. Años de sombra, tiempos de crisis,” in 40 años con Franco, ed. Julián Casanova (Barcelona: Crítica, 2015), 90–91.
- 14.
After the landslide victory of the PSOE in the general elections of 1982, Prime Minister Felipe González redefined Spain’s membership of NATO through a referendum in 1986. In fact, the PSOE had vigorously campaigned against the Spanish adhesion to the Alliance in 1982, but inherited from the UCD a de facto membership which could not have been realistically undone. By striking a new bilateral agreement with Washington in 1988, he also managed to diminish the US military presence in Spain significantly, and—from a Spanish view—clarify the conditions of US employment of the remaining military facilities in Spain. Cf. Angel Viñas, En las garras del águila: Los pactos con Estados Unidos, de Francisco Franco a Felipe González (Barcelona: Crítica, 2003), 500; Heiberg, US-Spanish Relations After Franco, 185–187.
- 15.
This summary owes to Charles Powell, El amigo americano. España y Estados Unidos: de la dictadura a la democracia (Barcelona: Galaxia Gutenberg, 2011), 637–644; Viñas, En las garras del águila, 505–510; Ibid., “Los pactos con los Estados Unidos en el despertar de la España democrática, 1975–1995,” in España y Estados Unidos en el siglo XX, ed. Lorenzo Delgado and Maria Dolores Elizalde (Madrid: CSIC, 2005). See also Heiberg, US-Spanish Relations After Franco, 199–200. For a short, yet very useful overview of Spanish foreign policy after 1975, see Juan Carlos Jiménez Redondo, De Suárez a Rodríguez Zapatero. La política exterior de la España democrática (Paracuellos de Jarama: Editorial Dilex, 2006).
- 16.
Celestino Arenal, Política exterior de España y relaciones con America Latina. Iberoamericanidad, Europeización y Atlantismo en la política exterior español (Madrid: Fundación Carolina, 2011), 313, 324–325, 367.
- 17.
Javier Rupérez, La Mirada sin ira. Memoria de política, diplomacia y vida en la España contemporánea (Córdoba: Almuzara, 2016), 309.
- 18.
This view has also been accepted by some scholars. Cf. Cristina Crespo Palomares, La alianza americana. La estrategia antiterrorista española y las relaciones hispano-norte-americanas (1996–2004) (Madrid: Catarata, 2016).
- 19.
George W. Bush, Decision Points (New York: Crown Publishers, 2010), 246.
- 20.
It has even been argued that Spain under Aznar became a “revisionist” state in the sense that it coveted more than it currently possessed. Cf. David García Cantalapiedra, “Spanish Foreign Policy, the United States and Soft Bandwagoning,” in Contemporary Spanish Foreign Policy, ed. David García Cantalapiedra and Ramón Pacheco Pardo (Abingdon & New York: Routledge, 2014), 94.
- 21.
Jorge Dezcallar, El anticuario de Teherán. Historias de una vida diplomática (Barcelona: Península, 2018), 564.
- 22.
Rice, No Higher Honor, 203.
- 23.
Magone, José M., Contemporary European Politics. A Comparative Introduction (New York: Routledge, 2011), 581. On the role of the EU see José M. Magone, The New World Architecture. The Role of the European Union in the Making of Global Governance (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2006).
- 24.
Moratinos thoroughly explained the concept in his interventions before the Spanish Parliament on May 19, 2004. Cf. Diario de Sesiones del Congreso de los Diputados, Comisiones, Asuntos Exteriores, Año 2004 VIII Legislatura Núm. 24, Sesión núm. 2, May 19, 2004. http://www.congreso.es/public_oficiales/L8/CONG/DS/CO/CO_024.PDF.
- 25.
On the 2003 European Security Strategy and its influence on Spanish multilateralism see David García Cantalapiedra, “Spanish Foreign Policy,” 97.
- 26.
Moratinos Files: Interview, Javier Sancho.
- 27.
Moratinos Files: Interview, José Eugenio Salarich.
- 28.
“Castro’s Man in Europe,” Editorial, Wall Street Journal, October 20, 2009. https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704500604574484923135150240.
- 29.
Luis Ángel Sanz, “‘The Wall Street Journal’: Moratinos es el ‘hombre de Castro en Europa’,” El Mundo, October 21, 2010. http://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/2009/10/21/espana/1256145330.html.
- 30.
Cf. the well-pondered methodological considerations in Tuomas Forsberg and Antti Seppo, “The Russo-Georgian War and EU Mediation,” in Russian Foreign Policy in the 21st Century, ed. Roger E. Kanet (Houndsmill, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 124.
- 31.
Sebastian Conrad, What Is Global History? (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016), 5, 116.
- 32.
Ibid., 9, 12. See also Conrad’s chapter four for a more elaborate discussion.
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Heiberg, M. (2019). Introduction. In: Spain and the Wider World since 2000. Security, Conflict and Cooperation in the Contemporary World. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27343-9_1
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