The Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, believes that Europe has to integrate its defense industry to have its own means of deterrence “without depending on third parties” and even “move towards a European army.”
In an interview with EFE, Albares analyzes the current global context and recognizes that with the United States’ intervention in Venezuela or its threats against the Danish territory of Greenland we are witnessing, “without a doubt” “an attempt to change the rules of the international order.”
And it is now that Europe must become aware “of its own strength” and reaffirm its principles, which include not allowing war on the continent and “never using coercion as a foreign policy tool.”
Albares ratifies Spain’s support for Ukraine, defends respect for its sovereignty and territorial integrity and is committed to participating in an eventual peace mission in the future.
Moscow has warned that it would interpret a deployment of international troops as a threat: “The only threat to Ukraine and to the security of Europe is precisely the Russian troops in Ukraine. Neither Ukraine, nor the EU, nor NATO have ever been a threat to Russia.”
Europe should not resign itself to the United States
The minister, who claims Spain’s “leadership” in the European Union, regrets that after “decades of a solid alliance” between Washington and Brussels, based on common values and beneficial for both parties, there is a government in the United States, that of Donald Trump, that has “other postulates.” Faced with this attitude, he insists, what Europeans have to do is “not give up.”
In his opinion, those who seek to undermine the international order are the same ones who “want to destroy the European project”, a group in which he places all the extreme right forces, also in Spain, that try to “weaken” the EU and “crack democracy.”
Will Trump’s threats lead to a breakup of NATO?
In any case, he is sure that for the majority of the planet’s inhabitants “the great hope is Europe”, the only one that can transform its economic power into a political power and “sit firmly at the table of the great powers.”
The minister does not want to go into assessing the absence of a forceful response from the Secretary General of NATO, Mark Rutte, to the claims of the United States over Greenland, part of a member state of the alliance -Denmark-.
And he does not believe that Trump’s threats will lead to a breakup of NATO. “I’m not considering it even as a hypothesis,” he says before emphasizing that only Greenlanders and Danes can decide on the territorial integrity and sovereignty of the country.
Update the functioning of the UN
During the interview, José Manuel Albares assures that the UN is “more necessary than ever” although he admits the need to “update its operation.”
“You have to adapt who sits at the table, but never the objectives or the rules of the game,” he says in an implicit allusion to the United Nations Security Council in which, remember, there is a permanent member, Russia, which began its war of aggression against Ukraine in 2022.
After remembering that at the end of this year the UN must elect a new secretary general, since, as he points out, it would be appropriate for him to be from Latin America, he defends that it should finally be a woman, and assures that this is what the Government of Spain is going to demand.
