U.S. and Morocco: the grand alliance

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United States and Morocco: the grand alliance

by Ernesto Milà

The U.S. have strengthened their links with Morocco, moving towards considering Morocco a "preferential allied" and taking the Alawite kingdom away from the French sphere of influence. Morocco has become an important piece of the North American strategical display in Africa. At the same time, the Spanish Socialist Government has let itself go by anti-American verbal attacks which have led to a freezing in the relations between Spain and the U.S. The Spanish Socialists are in a blind alley: they have not succeeded in reconstructing the relations with the U.S., but neither have they managed in fading the threat of a crash with Morocco. In fact they have not even been able to build up a new network of alliances in the European Union.

On November 8, 2002, U.S. sub-secretary of State Marc Grossman travelled to Morocco to reinforce the relations of friendship and economical cooperation between the U.S. and Morocco. The reason for the visit was to prepare the new free trade agreement between the two countries. The U.S. Congress had given its agreement for this plan on October 2002, and in Rabat Grossman praised Morocco which he called a "friendly country and a fundamental allied for the U.S." About the internal situation of Morocco, Grossman highlighted "the transparence in the organisation" of the last general elections in Morocco, and at the same time he recalled the interest of the U.S. Government in the economical reforms carried out by Morocco in the last years.

The free trade agreement had implications which ZP (Zapatero, Spanish Socialist Prime Minister) could not ignore. For example the buy of armament by Morocco. Immediately after signing the agreement, George W. Bush talked of Morocco as one of the "main allies of the U.S.", adding that the North African country could opt in the future to military contracts with the Pentagon. Bush took this decision "to recognize the strong links that unite both countries and to thank Morocco for his support in the war against terrorism, as well as the role of King Mohamed VI, visionary leader of the Arab World". According to the official new agency of Morocco, MAP, the status of main allied outside the NATO would allow Morocco to present itself as a candidate to take part in some U.S. military contracts, military researches, and development programmes controlled by the Pentagon. Therefore it is the North American weapons the ones that one day could be threatening the territorial integrity of Spain, pointing to Ceuta and Melilla, or to the Canary Islands.

On our book Marruecos: el enemigo del Sur (Morocco: the enemy from the South), we presented a theory which was contradicted by the Government of PP (Christian Democrats); we maintained then that the intervention of Colin Powell in the conflict of Perejil, far from being neutral, he vastly benefited the positions of Morocco, as until that moment Perejil was, beyond any doubts, a territory under Spanish sovereignty and, from that moment onwards, Spain continued holding the titularity of that sovereignty... but was compromised to not show it.

Powell, by the way, three years after the conflict, during an interview by QG --a small North American publication-- answered the question of the publication directo about the "incident of Perejil" saying that "it is a small and silly island to which I had to dedicate two days of my life". It must be reminded that the intervention was taken to effect after the proposal of Ana de Palacio, a friend of Powell.

Given that, from that moment on, Aznar strengthened his links with the Bush administration, the impression was that our theory was wrong. For good or for bad, time has come to agree with us: the U.S. were inexorably reinforcing their weight in Morocco and progressively drifting away from the alliance with Spain. This process was reconducted by former PM Aznar during his second mandate (2000-2004), but when ZP came to office with his mistakes and his lack of diplomacy, the favourable nature of the North American foreign policy towards Morocco started flourishing again.

ZP in Morocco. An anteater in the South Pole

One of the first gestures of Zapatero where he voluntarily showed evidence of his rupture with the former foreign policy of Aznar, was to Rabat, shortly after the declaration of Powell about Perejil.

The Grupo de Estudios Estratégicos wrote a note after this visit, of which we highlight the following paragraphs: "The diplomatics know better than any other that words are loaded by the devil, and that one can be anything but innocent. The recent declaration of the American Secretary of State to the magazine GQ about Perejil, the tiny island that he calls ridiculous, as well as his much worked intermediation between Rabat and Madrid, are not spontaneous nor will they be anodynes. On the contrary, they can only be interpreted as a clear gesture of critical distancing with respect to the current Spanish Government, and like a warning that the U.S., after the Spanish defection from the side of the allies, finds in the Kingdom of Morocco a more reliable speaker. (...) It is possible that the gracious visit of Zapatero to the Moroccan monarch, full of concessions to the Moroccan demands on nearly everything, including the Sahara, will see this new reality soon. In fact, the analysis made from Morocco of this visit could not be more hopeless for the national Spanish interests, since after the much famed "new talant" of Zapatero, what was perceived was weakness, lack of interest and appeasement."

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The new African policy of the U.S.


What had happened in reality is that the U.S. had approved a new foreign policy in Africa, which included preferential agreements with Morocco. While Aznar was in office, this approach was discreet, measured and prudent, but things changed after the March 14 elections. From that moment the support of the U.S. to Morocco passed from being a strategical, giddy and transformed, like a desired co-lateral effect, to being a gesture of distancing from the government presided by Zapatero.

Two months after the limited electoral victory of Zapatero on March 14, it was crystal clear that Morocco was turning into the preferential allied of the U.S. Morocco had signed a treaty with the U.S. on June 15, 2004, by which they constituted a free trade area between the U.S. and Morocco. The agreement had been launched in April 2002 (the incident of Perejil was on July of the same year) by the King of Morocco, Mohamed VI, and the President of the U.S., George W. Bush. This way Morocco became the first African country which had such an agreement with the U.S., a country which had only signed similar agreements with its neighbours (Mexico and Canada) or with countries with which it had privileged strategical relations (Israel and Jordan).

The agreement is not just concerned with trading. In fact, the U.S. is only in the sixth place among the commercial partners of Morocco, and the volume of exports from Morocoo to the U.S. is only of 3%. Nothing we compare it to the 69% of the E.U. Neither are significative the purchases of Morocco in the U.S. (3,1%), nor do they justify such an agreement. We will be clear: the agreement is, in the first place, a step in the strategical design of the U.S. with relation to Africa, and in the second place a slap in the face of the government of Zapatero. But the shiny chief of the Spanish Government didn't think of it that way and pretended to make as if it was of little importance, as we shall see.

A few weeks before the U.S.-Morocco agreement, on March 14, 2005, the newspaper El País published an article entitled "Washington extends the anti-terrorist fight to the countries of the Sahel", where the author described the project "Initiative Pan Sahel", which had been put to work by the U.S. "to equip, train and coordinate the security forces of Mauritania, Mali, Chad and Niger, and in which are also involved Algeria, Morocco and Tunis".

During those days, the Algerian newspaper Le Quotidien from Oran revealed that in early April and in a U.S. military base in Germany, there had taken place an anti-terrorist summit with the chiefs of the armies of Chad, Mali, Morocco, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal and Tunis. In that summit, the commander-in-chief of the European Command, General Charles Wald, was in charge to expose the plan established by the Pentagon "for the security of the region of the Mahgreb and Northern Africa". Once again the anti-terrorism was used by the U.S. to reinforce its presence in areas of strategic interest. This plan, besides of the equipment, training and coordination of the police and army forces, included cooperation in the organisation of joint patrols, and a clause of automatic help in case of a terrorist attack.

The intiative included the establishment of U.S. military bases in the area. In the Algerian area of Tamanrasset, for instance, the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) had just installed a base of electronic spionage of the Echelon network. And at the time of writing these lines, the Pentagon negotiates the logistical bases for its air force in Senegal and Uganda, at the same time that they contemplate new military agreements with Algeria, Tunis and Morocco, and that the U.S. military presence in Mauritania and Chad has consolidated.

It is obvious that the "war against terrorism" is a mere excuse and that all these manouvres have to do with the African policy of the North American administration, implanted and approved already since the times of the Clinton administration, and therefore much predating the start of this strange "international terrorism". Clinton's Secretary of Trade, R. Brown, summarized it clearly and with the brutality of a bison, in 1996: "The era of the economic power and of the European commercial hegemony in Africa has ended. Africa is of our interest." It wasn't strange, therefore, that since that time the French influence in Morocco had gone in decline, while at the same time the North American presence has been increasingly reinforced.

The Clinton administration had put its eye on AFrica after five years of disinterest for this continent. During the Cold War, the coastal African countries located in the route of the oil were courted both by the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., but when the latter tumbled Africa was forgotten and, literally, thrown out of history. Later, when pockets of oil were found in the Atlantic Coast of Africa, especially in the Gulf of Guinea, as expected, the North American interests in the area were redefined. The National Security Strategy, issued in September 2002 --an already under the Republican administration-- turned officially Africa in "a priority for the national security" of the United States.

As we shall see in the next chapter, in front of the coasts of Western Africa there are huge oil fields. The control over such fields would decrease the dependence of the U.S. on the oil fields controlled by the OPEP and of the oil fields of Central Asia. The analysts calculate the in no more than eight years, the U.S. will import a fourth of their oil necessities from Western Africa. Well then, that is the area where both the coasts of Western Sahara and the Canary Islands are located.

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The reaction of the Government of Zapatero

It was obvious that the agreements between Morocco and the U.S. were directly directed against Spain. The problem is that the new Socialist government lacked of any foreign policy whatsoever (and it still lacks of any at the moment of righting this text). The trip of Zapatero to Rabat and the signature of bi-lateral agreements which benefited Morocco in particular, gave the feeling that the relations were friendly, but in reality this was a fiction. Morocco was searching an alliance with a "big brother", and the U.S. had the intention of penetrating in areas which had belonged to the francophone area of influence.

It is no wonder that Paulino Rivero, in the name of the Parliamentary Group of Coalición Canaria (regionalists of the Canary Islands) asked the government "what could be the effects of the designation of Morocco as a privileged allied of the U.S., on April 24 in Casablanca". In his answer, visibly annoyed, Zapatero said that "by effect of his meeting with the King of Morocco, the relations with the neighbouring country had clearly improved", and recalled that there had already been contacts between the ministries of both governments, and that the cooperation in trade, security, and in the fight against illegal immigration and against terrorism had increased. He highlighted that the relations of Morocco with the U.S. are something that started "many years ago", and explained that the agreement adds to the one that Washington already has with other countries in the region, like Egypt, Israel or Jordan, and with The Philippines, which also has that status, in a colaboration which in the military field dates back to 1982. "Everything geared towards the modernisation of countries like Morocco, towards the aperture and a better relation with the Western world, is without doubts good for Spain and for Morocco", said the president. He then concluded that for all those reasons he valued that agreement as a favourable news. Rivero answered --with much reason-- expressing his concern for that agreement with the U.S., with the lifting of restrictions in the sale of armament, and with a joint military manouvres that had taken place in the area. The truth is that Zapatero had, in the best of cased, lied, or in the worst of cases he was wrong: the U.S. did not have agreements of the level of those signed with Morocco with any of the countries that he mentioned and, besides, in the following months it was evident that the "Moroccan cooperation" in immigration (not to speak of the fight against narco-traffic) was absolutely nil to the point that on October 2005, a E.U. delegation had to travel to Rabat after the "crisis of the fences"...

With regards to the mentioned military manouvres, they took place between the 11th and 15th of July of 2004, in the Atlantic waters between the Island of Madeira and the Western coast of Morocco, with the participation of the U.S. VI Fleet, and Spanish and Italian units. The peak point of the operations was the disembarkment of land forces near the Moroccan town of Tan-Tan, just 135 nautic miles from the Canary Islands.

It was no innocent war game. The manouvres answered the possibility of a conflict inside Morocco --nothing unlikely, a political upheaval caused by the action of Islamic extremists-- or of a convulsion in the region of the Mahgreb which would inevitably lead to a North American intervention in the Atlantic façade of Northern Africa. But there was one detail which could not be forgotten: the manouvres had been programmed before the defeat of Aznar...

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The bi-lateral agreement as seen from Morocco

Officially, in Morocco the bi-lateral agreement was applauded by the leading class, considering that it would have important repercusions in the institutions, reflected in a wider opening of the Moroccan economy in the international market, and a support for the current economic reforms. In the economic and trade levels, the official media agreed in that it would bring "a bigger penetration in the U.S. market, an incentive for foreign investors, and a reinforcement of the vocation of Morocco as platform in the crossroads of the big commercial routes", as published by an official editorial. In the political level, they bragged that this agreement would concede a "benevolent neutrality" by the U.S. or, in other words, a support to the Moroccan policies in Western Sahara and a counterweight to the political and commercial influence of the E.U. in its relations with Morocco. The official media could speak, rightly so, of the birth of a "strategical partnership" between both countries.

However, some party spoilers saw the agreement as a prejudice to Morocco. The new agreement, as feard by many Moroccans, will make that the generic drugs needed to fight AIDS become less accesible than in the U.S. According to the Association de Lutte contre el Sida (Association of fight against AIDS) of Morocco, a public organism, the agreement coud increase in 20 to 30 years the effective lasting of patents in that country. Joseph E. Stiglitz, 2001 Nobel Prize of Economics, explained that "in the field of telecommunications, both in Morocco and Chile as well as in other parts of the World, we [the U.S.] have made demands (like those concerned with the utilisation of transmision instalations and to the sale of capacities of transmision) to which we would have undoubtedly opposed if someone had tried to impose to us. From the point of view of the developing countries, these negotiations have been extraordinarily unbalanced, with all balance inclined in favour of the interests of the U.S."

Samir Gharbi reminded that the agreement was much more strategical for the U.S. than for the Mahgrebian country. The oposition, and even some media of the Istiqlal, had the certainty that, more than a bi-lateral agreement, it was a first step inside the strategy presented by George W. Bush for whom the Grand Middle East started in Morocco (of which it was its Atlantic façade) and it was a part of the goal to build a free trade area in the Middle East (MEFTA). According to Robert Zoellick, representative of the U.S. Foreign Trade, this agreement is "a concrete example of the American compromise to support the prosperous and tolerant Muslim societies", forgetting that assuming that the Moroccan society is "tolerant and prosperous" is a bit too much to assume.

With Western Sahara in the background

Mohamed Benabdellah, Moroccan Minister for Communications, speaking of the U.S.-Morocco bi-lateral agreement said that "this decision is an indicator of the place occupied by Morocco, of its strategical role, and a mark of consideration to the political, economical, and social reforms started by King Mohamed VI". But, aside from this rethoric, this status will allow the Alawite kingdom to opt to U.S. military contracts, and to military programmes of research and development controlled by the Pentagon.

The Morocco-U.S. axis was nothing new; Zapatero was right when he reminded of it in his answer to Paulino Ribero. Since decades ago there had been ongoing joint military manouvres between both countries, but never until now --and this was the new part here-- this relation had been considered as privileged and showed in a difficult moment in the relations between Spain and North America.

In 2004 the U.S. had approved the concesion of 53.8 million dollars for Morocco (6 millions in concept of help to development, 20 millions destined to the Economic Fund for Help, 6 millions for the vigilance of frontiers, and 20 millions for military cooperation for the financing of the equipment, and the rest for military formation). During the period of 2002-2004, the total of the North American military help to Morocco had increased to 50 million dollars, but after approving the new agreement with the U.S. the help had multiplied by two.

The new North American foreign policy of 1995 focused its attention in Africa, as we have already said, and more exactly in the area called "Sahel stripe". Since 2004, the U.S. has increased its military presence in that area with discretion: they have sent military contingents to Mali and Djibuti. The brain behind these policies is Paul Wolfowitz who, once again, uses terrorism as the excuse to implant the Initiative Pan-Sahel.

In its content, the North American strategy of approaching Morocco has got much to do with this initiative, and it is not just an operation of retaliation against the Spain of Zapatero, but while during the Government of Aznar the plan was being held thanks to the "reliability" showed by the leader of the Partido Popular, the new Spanish Government has only succeeded in provoking the distrust and, since the withdrawal from Iraq, a desire of revenge.

The dimision of James Baker as the special negotiator of the United Nations in Western Sahara has much to do with this new chapter in the diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Morocco. It is the best show of support from the U.S. to the Moroccan theses, just as it was highlighted by the Moroccan newspaper Aujourd´hui le Maroc. The Foreign Minister of Morocco, Mohamed Benaisa, declared that the dimision of Baker is "a success of the tenacity of the Moroccan diplomacy", or in other words, that the aproximation to a solution for the question of the Western Sahara negotiated with Algeria is out of the frame of the U.N.

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Zapatero and the U.S.

Since the days when Zapatero was the candidate to the presidency of the Spanish Government, his relations with the Bush administration were not good. In the Department of State it is still remembered when he remained sat when the flag with the bars and stripes passed during the military parade, a sacrilege for a country which revers its national ensign. Things didn't improve when Zapatero, in one of his first decisions as head of the Spanish Government, ordered the Spanish troops in Iraq to return home, just 1,500 men, but the defection had an impact, especially in the Pentagon. The recording of the Spanish Defense Minister José Bono, calling Blair an idiot, the loyal Anglo-Saxon allied of the U.S., did not help to improve things. It was even worst when Zapatero appeared on the picture together with Chirac and Schröder, announcing an incredible "spanish-french-german" axis which was seen by the North American strategists as a new offense. In that anti-American climate, product of the political ingenuity of Zapatero, during the NATO summit Spain supported the French veto to the proposal of Donald Rumsfeld to satisfy the petitions of Hamid Karzai, Prime Minister of Afghanistan who had requested the intervention of the newly created Force of Fast Intervention. Shortly earlier, Zapatero had accepted before France to vary our policies in relation to the problem of Western Sahara, traditionally proped in the resolutions of the United Nations, in favour of the Plan Baker and of the direct negotiation between Morocco and the Polisarian Front. With Zapatero and Moratinos at the head of the Spanish Foreign Office, Spain proposed the celebration of a four-way conference for the Western Sahara, with France, Algeria, Morocco and Spain. The U.S. was not in the proposition. To further complicate things, during the summit of Brussels the debate on the repartition of votes corresponding to the different European countries within the frame of the Constitution, concluded with Zapatero thanking France for lowering our institutional presence and put us in front of the group of the small countries, without being able to veto the decision of the three big countries, a decision which the damages that can produce in the future have not yet been valued. Right after that, Zapatero understood that the more or less visceral anti-Americanism had high costs, especially when the expected backing from France and Germany was tepid, or rather inexistant. It was then when he started to go back on his steps. But it was too late. The North American administration had adopted the strategy of ignoring him, especially after the electoral victory of Bush in 2004.

The recomposition of the foreign policy towards the U.S.

The task to recompose the foreign policies with regards to the U.S. was, since then, a task for titans, a race that neither Zapatero nor Moratinos, and much less Bono, belong to. The three of them passed from a very basic anti-Americanism, to be all nice with the Bush administration, in especial since his victory over Kerry (with who, on the other hand, it would have also been hard to re-establish normalcy seen that his stance on Iraq was the same as his oponent). Obviously, the U.S. administration did not take notice to the attempts from the Spanish Socialist Government. Around early 2005, when the victory of Bush had already happened (in which Zapatero did not want to believe until the last minute), the Spanish Government understood that it was before an abyss: anti-Americanism is costly, not just in contracts for the service of the VI Fleet, but in international matters. It was something that Aznar had calculated: he prefered to carry the unpopular pro-American option in the war against Iraq, than to risk that Morocco could press over Spain, enjoying a preferential alliance with the American giant, while our country was met with the indiference from the E.U., and with the hostility of France in the North African policies.

The problem for Zapatero was that his attempts to be nice were of no use if they didn't come accompanied by real gestures: for example to send back the troops to Iraq, or to support the North American proposal for a direct intervention of NATO in Iraq, breaking all ties with Fidel Castron and Hugo Chávez, etc. Zapatero had to limit himself to promise an increase of Spanish troops in Afghanistan, a gesture clearly limited and insufficient which, needless to say, did not seduce Rumsfeld nor Condoleezza Rice, and much less Bush.

In the moment of writing this text, the politics of trying to be nice is the most that the Socialist Governmen can do in their policies towards the U.S. Any other attitude would have an electoral cost so high that would sink Zapatero in the abyss of the polls like it has never been seen since the times of the UCD in 1983. And not to speak of the oposition that he would find in his political partners --let us not forget the precarious situation of Zapatero in the Parliamnet-- who, without assuming positions in the Government, can afford the luxury of practising that basic anti-Americanism usual in the left which guarantees a certain electoral quota: from Carod-Rovira (ERC, left Catalan independentists) to Llamazares (IU, communists), etc. And further to that there is the relations with France and the Germany of Angela Merkel, to whom Zapatero stupidly called "a failure" in the night of the German general elections, a childish behaviour that the PP (Christian-Democrats) regularly refreshes the memory of the public opinion. Any move in the position of Zapatero towards the U.S. could have grave consequences in Europe. It appears as if neither Zapatero nor Moratinos, nor Bono, were aware of the situation nor what was (and still is) at stake. International politics is not just a real of words, but an empire of deeds. And in this sense the Spanish Government has a poor balance to offer to the U.S. Department of State. Much less that the Alawite kingdom.

Zapatero, while trying to anihilate the era of Aznar in all the terrains, has clashed unnecesarily with the U.S. and, what is worse, without demanding the Franco-German axis anything in return, he has showed his weakness in Europe believing that the photos and the shaking of hands are enough to modity the correlation of forces. After his effusive greeting to Chirac and Schröder, the weight of Spain in the European Union diminished down to reality.

Such is the balance of the management of the relations with the U.S. by Zapatero. And while this happens, Morocco continues reinforcing his alliance with North America.

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Moroccan blackmail in action

On October 4 2005, while the dramatic events of Sub-Saharans taking to the assault the border fences of Ceuta and Melilla was taking place, the Moroccan diplomacy left engraved in marble two messages related to the future of the relations with Spain. In our country, the media --worried with the dramatic impact of the Sub-Saharans-- gave little notice to those messages. One of them affected Spain direct and exclusively: it was the petition to start conversations about the future of Ceuta and Melilla; the other message was the usual Moroccan call to the European Union: a new petition of help to overcome the situations of underdevelopment generated by the migration flows. Both proposals went hand in hand and, in reality, they were a real blackmail: in exchange for the money given to Morocco, the Alawite monarchy compromised itself not to bring back the issue of Ceuta and Melilla for some time, to establish and to regulate the pressure over the illegal boats for immigrants crossing to Spain (know as pateras) and over the Sub-Saharans who assaulted the border fences. If the money requested does not show in the forthcoming months (this writing if from October 15, 2005), the blackmail will be effective: Morocco will raise to the International community their claims over Ceuta and Melilla, and will turn a blind eye to the transit of illegal Sub-Saharans and even stimulate the migration to Spain among its own population.

Which are the problems with the Moroccan proposals? Basically two: the first is that any help sent to either Morocco or to Sub-Saharan Africa is lost in the way, and goes to the pockets of the local oligarcs. For such a help to be efficient, it would have to be distributed under European direct control. A control which would necessarily put a big question mark on the sovereignty, the independence and the honesty of the African governments, starting with the Moroccan government. The second difficulty put by this petition for help is that, historically, the Western financial help recieved in the Arab countries has always been used as an excuse to stimulate Islamic fundamentalism. These helps usually have the effect of strengthening highly unpopular regimes, true local dictatorships which generate more and more represion and, therefore, more and more oposition. From the moment in which Marxism and the Communist parties went to the dustbin of History, the only movements able to mobilize the energies of protest against the local dictatorships have been the Islamic fundamentalists.

It should be remembered that Felipe González already granted big financial help to Morocco, and that the proposal of a "Marshall Plan" for Northern Africa was one of the conclusions in the Mediterranean Conference in Barcelona, and of the peri-pathetic Alliance of Civilisation proposed by Zapatero. In short: to calm things down via filling the pockets of local dictators. A middle-run bad policy.

José Bono: "dying before passing away"

There was still a worse news for Spain: having a Minister of Defense who is a pacifist. ...

During the mid of May 2005, the Minister of Defense José Bono toured the U.S. trying to explain the unexplainable Spanish foreign policy, and to fill the gaps left after the first year of Socialist administration. During a press conference he said a sentence which was a shock on the other side of the Ocean: "I'd rather die than killing", a big paradox when such sentenced is pronounced by a presumed Ministry of Defense and which could even be considered as an insult, given that many of the North American presents in the said press conference were military personnnel. The military men who, by definition, has sweared to defend his flag and is ready to die and to kill in defending his country. The attitude of Bono was praisable, especially from the point of view of a primitive Christianism. But it was not acceptable from his post as Ministry of Defense. And, besides, it was a notorial exaggeration: only a fool, in the XXIth century, would prefer to die in the hands of any unscrupulous individual than to kill in self-defense, and only a fool could renounce to risk his own life and that of others before a threat against himself, his family, or his community. The sentence of Bono was worse than a mistake. It was, in the best of cases, a lie. And in the worse of cases an insult to those who his words were directed. That despite his father having been a Falangist.

That first trip was organized to probe the American over the purchase of various armament, and to try not to worsen the friction between the government of Zapatero and the Bush administration through commercial agreements. There was not a single work spoken of the most important issue, Morocco. Bono had signed the cesion to Morocco of a party of North American M-60 combat tanks with a clause that prohibited that they were deployed in Ceuta and Morocco.

The North American military men and civil servants of the Pentagon who met Bono must have wondered what kind of a Ministry of Defense was him that, before a surprise attack, loyal to his ideal of dying before killing, would command an immediate retreat. They didn't know that in that right moment the government of Zapatero was already known by many as the one of the "preventive retreat" in any terrain: before Maragall and his Statute, before ETA, Before Morocco, and before the problems with the E.U. and so on.

There are moments and situation where it is necessary to risk your life, and others where one must make reinforce the safeguard and the territorial integrity of a nation. The first part is for the military men to ensure, the second for the man in charge of the Defense: what kind of a minister was one who, if he was coherent with his own words, sould retreat before any threat against our national space? A useless fool lost in a post too big for his profile. The worse part of this whole story is that, in Morocco, they know perfectly that the person in charge of the Spanish Defense is someone without the sufficient courage to assume the costs --always high-- which would imply a conflict for Ceuta, Melilla or the Canary Islands.



(c) Ernesto Milà - InfoKrisis

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Article translated and published with permission of the author.