Intelligence

Spain pulls in its horns - and forfeits its influence

Spain pulls in its horns - and forfeits its influence - International Herald Tribune

By Victoria Burnett Published: August 17, 2007

MADRID: As the international media followed every
detail of Nicolas Sarkozy's American vacation last week, it was
difficult, from Madrid, not to marvel at the very different scenario in
Andalusia, where José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero was taking his holiday.

Unlike the French president, for Zapatero there was no hobnobbing
with other world leaders, no pack of foreign paparazzi clicking in his
wake and certainly no public appearances in his swimming trunks. He
walked on the beach, fully dressed, and was snapped kissing a young
immigrant boy.

That's about as international as the summer vacation is likely to
get for Spain's stay-at-home leader, who, both at work and at play,
shows little interest in globetrotting.

A decade of soaring economic growth and corporate expansion overseas
has put Spain in the big leagues, but the country's political profile
is shrinking under the leadership of a man deeply preoccupied with
domestic reform and lacking in international experience.

"He is not there. It's as if he were not interested," says José
María de Areilza, a former foreign-policy adviser to Zapatero's
predecessor José María Aznar.

"This is a media-driven world, and you have to stay in the picture."

Zapatero leaves it to other heads of state to clock up the air
miles, receiving far more official visits than he makes. Though broadly
liked, diplomats say, he has annoyed a handful of foreign capitals -
most recently Tokyo - by repeatedly postponing visits or cutting them
short.

In the first seven months of the year, he was visited by nearly 20
foreign leaders, plus Ban Ki-Moon, the United Nations secretary
general; Condoleezza Rice, the U.S. secretary of state; and Tony Blair,
the former British prime minister, who had just become Middle East
envoy. For Zapatero's part, he traveled a few times to Brussels and
Berlin, and visited Poland, Mexico and Panama.

Charles Grant, head of the Center for European Reform, a think tank
based in London, says the decline in Spain's influence on Zapatero's
watch has been "astonishing."

During the governments of the Socialist prime minister Felipe
González and the conservative Aznar, who followed him, Spain punched
above its weight, he says. But despite a team of respected diplomats,
like Miguel Ángel Moratinos, Spain's current foreign minister, and
Alberto Navarro, the secretary of state for European affairs, "Spain is
not one of the key players who decides what happens" in Europe.

"The way the EU works, the prime minister is very important," Grant says.

Zapatero's limited language skills and a career in domestic politics
go some way to explaining his low international profile. The
47-year-old prime minister won his first seat as a Socialist deputy in
1986 and is fluent only in Spanish.

But it is also a question of priorities. Since he came to power in
April 2004, Zapatero has been consumed by domestic politics: his
attempts to broker peace with the violent Basque separatist group ETA,
and a series of social and political reforms.

Some of Zapatero's supporters say he pulled in Spain's horns partly
to correct what they see as Aznar's missteps. Aznar cultivated a close
alliance with the United States at the expense of Spain's relations
with some European allies. He took Spain into the deeply unpopular war
in Iraq, for which the country was punished by an Islamist bomb attack
in March 2004 that cost 191 lives. Icarus-like, Spain flew too close to
the sun of international influence and burned its wings.

Where Zapatero has put energy into foreign policy initiatives, he
has chalked up some successes. The government's commitment to engaging
sub-Saharan Africa - where Spain has opened half a dozen new embassies
in the past three years - has won plaudits from international officials
and African leaders.

Zapatero deftly negotiated a generous allotment of EU development
funds for Spain between 2007 and 2012, despite the country's rising
economic status. The government also won help from other European
countries for Spain's efforts to intercept migrant boats from Africa.

But Spain's reluctance to allow its troops to deploy in the
dangerous southwest of Afghanistan, where NATO forces are fighting the
Taliban, has frustrated other members of the alliance. Spain has about
700 troops under NATO's command in Afghanistan's relatively stable
western corner and some 1,100 in the United Nations peacekeeping force
in Lebanon.

The fact the government sells its overseas deployments as
peacekeeping missions, rather than combat operations, has done little
to strengthen the Spanish public's weak stomach for military casualties.

Meanwhile, well-intentioned but nebulous initiatives like the
Alliance of Civilizations are unlikely to yield concrete results in the
short term, while Spain's proposal last year for a new Middle East
peace plan - announced as a joint initiative with France and Italy -
seems to have been stillborn.

José Ignacio Torreblanca, an expert in foreign policy at the Royal
Elcano Institute, a Madrid-based think tank, says Zapatero's domestic
efforts are diplomacy of a kind in that they are converting Spain into
a reference for other countries. The ease with which Spain has absorbed
Europe's fastest-growing immigrant population, and laws that extend the
rights of women and gays, have caught the eye of other European policy
makers.

Some diplomats and analysts think Zapatero will start flapping his
diplomatic wings in the run-up to the March general election, and
concentrate more on the outside world if he is re-elected.

For Spain to make its mark, says Areilza, the former foreign-policy
adviser, it needs a bigger, more effective foreign-affairs apparatus
and a larger military budget so it can contribute meaningfully to
overseas military and peacekeeping operations.

Zapatero will have to get stuck into some of the strategic debates
that keep other European leaders awake at night, like Iran's nuclear
ambitions or how to handle Russia, says Grant of the Center for
European Reform.

But Zapatero is not a Great Game diplomat.

"He's not a Winston Churchill. He doesn't feel comfortable in these
strategic debates about that hard world out there," says Torreblanca.
Zapatero is most at ease in the role of listener and conciliator, who
builds up his interlocutors' support before convincing them they can
give him what he needs and get what they need in the process.

Torreblanca says Zapatero sees international politics as a
"non-zero-sum game," one in which everyone can come out ahead:
"Zapatero says, 'Let's make the cake bigger for everyone, and then I'll
get my piece at the end of it all.' "

August 20, 2007 at 09:37 AM in Europe | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home