Sánchez’s Spain is, for Trump, “a lost case”

«“Spain is a lost case.”. With this phrase he sent donald trump to our country during the first day of the NATO summit held in Ankara, before publicly ordering to study commercial retaliation and ensuring that it does not want to maintain any commercial relationship with Spain.

In the last year or so, I think we have all learned to put the North American president’s bravado into perspective and the probability that he will carry out this latest threat is, to say the least, slim, especially since trade policy corresponds to the European Union. But that is not the question in this case and other similar ones in recent months; The point is that never before had a US president made Spain the preferred target of his attacks within the Atlantic Alliance. Said another way: It’s not Trump, it’s Sánchez.

Ankara has not been an isolated episode, but the last chapter of a sequence that has been building for months. First came the clashes over the increase in military spending demanded by Washington. Then, Spanish criticism of the US strategy in the Middle East. Later, the Government’s refusal to facilitate certain operations related to the conflict with Iran. Finally, the NATO summit turned that disagreement into a public confrontation with names and surnames. Spain, traditionally one of the most discreet allies of the United States, has become the child terrible of the Alliance.

And we are not even facing an erroneous but coherent geopolitical attitude or even one based on ideological criteria. It responds to the main motivation of our president, perhaps already the only one: the electoral calculation. Sánchez seems to have found a very profitable political space: presenting himself to a part of the international left as the Western leader who most clearly challenges Donald Trump, questions Israeli policy and demands European strategic autonomy from Washington. Just as you can decree that our Parliament decides from Buenos Aires or Havana or suddenly bring in millions of strangers from the four cardinal points, everything to continue in Moncloahas decided that playing the bold knight who demolishes imperial giants can get him votes.

It makes sense, if you think about it. Every clash with Trump generates international headlines. Each disagreement with Israel reinforces an image of moral leadership among certain progressive European and Latin American sectors. Foreign policy thus ceases to be an area reserved for the permanent interests of the State and becomes an extension of the national political battle. But at what price.

The United States is among Spain’s main economic partners. The trade exchange between both countries greatly exceeds 40,000 million euros annually, while American investments support tens of thousands of jobs in industrial, technological and financial sectors. Added to this is military cooperation that has been articulated for decades around the bases of Rota and Morón, essential pieces for both Spanish defense and the US presence in the Mediterranean. Israel, for its part, has become a top-level technological partner in recent years in areas such as cybersecurity, artificial intelligence applied to defense or surveillance systems.

And now comes the ridiculous part: little, if any, of this anti-American cockiness goes beyond rhetoric. The great structures of the relationship remain practically intact. Spain is still part of NATO. US bases continue to operate normally. Diplomatic relations with Israel have not been broken. Nor have the strategic agreements with Washington been denounced. The distance is enormous between the language used in the speeches and the prudence that ends up being imposed when the time comes to make irreversible decisions.

That doesn’t mean words are without consequences. International relations also work on perceptions, trust and expectations. Governments pass. The alliances remain. AND Each episode of public confrontation leaves a small sediment that can condition future negotiations. on trade, defense or investments.

President Theodore Roosevelt summed up in one sentence what the United States’ attitude should be in international politics: speak softly and carry a big stick. Our president has turned it around to apply it to our relations with the United States: He rants like a bar thug and doesn’t have half a slap.

It’s a risky bet. Because electoral campaigns last a few weeks. Relations between states usually last decades. And when a government turns foreign policy into another arena for partisan confrontation, the immediate returns can be considerable. The question is who ends up paying the bill when the lights go out and it’s time to sit around the same table again.