Policies Developed
Official documents acknowledge Spain’s commitment to managing international crises and conflicts. Among others, the strategies for national security and external action include references to the WGA concept as the preferred way to accomplish the country’s goals when it comes responding to multidimensional crises. Nevertheless, Spain’s contribution to WGA commitments is heavily influenced by the country’s strategic culture and its preference for working within multilateral frameworks.
First, Spain’s strategic culture determines the level of ambition it has about using force in international commitments because decision-makers and the public tend to disapprove of the use of military power for historical and political reasons (cf. Arteaga 2013). This, in turn, makes it difficult for Spanish governments to carry out tasks within the more demanding part of the military spectrum of WGA operations. For the same reason, regardless of its actual relevance, they tend to overemphasise the humanitarian dimension of international commitments in order to prevent potential social or political opposition to Spanish military interventions.
Indeed, legitimation matters because Spanish governments must acquire the authorisation of the Congress of Deputies before deploying troops abroad. Securing legitimation is easier when the specific WGA operations fall under a wider European umbrella, as this allows governments to emphasise the EU’s role as a global actor and the need for Spain to do its fair share to help Europe live up to its supposed responsibility to provide security worldwide, even in military terms. In this regard, unlike other international constellations that have carried out international crisis-management operations without obtaining legal authorisation from the United Nations Security Council, the EU is perceived as a reliable legitimiser.
That said, Spain’s strategic culture will continue to influence its military commitments. For instance, Spanish governments are reluctant to transfer their authority over Spanish military contingents to foreign commanders without caveats (whether to avoid combat operations or so-called ‘mission creep’). This bias will also impact Spain’s contribution of troops to EU military initiatives even though it would be easier under a Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) framework than under any other multinational framework.
Returning to the second major influence on Spain’s contribution to WGA efforts, one can say that Spain generally prefers to contribute to international crisis management within the framework of international organisations, such as the EU, NATO or the UN. This preference for multilateral frameworks results from two factors: the aforementioned need to legitimise the military operations and the lack of national capabilities to conduct unilateral crisis-management operations. Indeed, acting within a multinational group helps Spanish governments to legitimise their military and civilian commitments because it is easier to justify them in terms of ‘international responsibility’ than of ‘national interest’.
Furthermore, Spain understands that national contributions are needed to achieve ‘effective’ multilateralism, such as the one called for in the European Security Strategy of 2003. For this reason, Spain has accompanied the development of the European WGA concept and supported the elaboration of the European Security and Foreign Policy strategies, the development of external security instruments for the CSDP, and the effort towards EU strategic autonomy to act with others partners whenever possible or alone if necessary. Spain has also supported every initiative to develop the EU’s crisis-management structures, including an operational headquarters (currently the Military Planning and Conduct Capability for non-executive missions), and its commitment has been more visible in the core of the development of the Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO), together with France, Germany and Italy.
In terms of contributions of manpower, Spain is the top-ranking contributor to CSDP operations and missions. In fact, over the last decade, it has provided roughly 30 percent of all the men and women in uniform serving in EU-flagged operations and assumed a dozen mission commands, and Spain is the only country to have supplied troops to all EU military missions and operations since 2003 (Gómez Castro 2018: 33). Spain also takes part in the rotations of the EU battlegroups, assumes the command of naval operations (Atalanta at this moment), and contributes to the paramilitary forces of the Euro Gendarmerie Force by providing members of the Guardia Civil for CSDP missions and operations. Finally, Spain is contributing to the CSDP missions and operations in Africa, where the WGA is being implemented.
Regarding humanitarian and development aid, Spain is the fifth- largest contributor to the European development-cooperation funds. In the 2013–2017 period, it provided USD 5.273 billion, or 43 percent of the total funds (USD 12.405 billion). After being accredited in July 2011 as an executive agency of the European Commission, Spain’s Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID) has been managing EU funds associated with the Common Foreign and Security Policy (delegated cooperation). Spain allocates 30 percent of these funds to Africa, 23 percent to the Americas, 15 percent to Eastern Europe, and 14 percent to Asia under EU programmes (Olivie and Perez 2019: 2–5).
Africa is Spain’s preferred setting for applying a WGA to prevent and manage international crises and conflicts. Its national security strategies have identified North Africa and the Sahel as the areas posing the greatest risk to its national security, and the MAUC’s 2019 plan for Africa (MUAC 2019b) highlights the need to address the migration and security challenges in sub-Saharan Africa. Since Spain does not have the capacity to develop a unilateral WGA in these regions, it must contribute to the CSDP missions and operations in those areas and, as noted above, even boxes above its weight in these efforts. Outside these areas, Spain only carries out bilateral military, humanitarian or development-aid projects, devoting the greatest individual effort to Latin America (37%) and Africa (20%), roughly reversing the order of its contributions to EU-funded projects: 30 percent in Africa and 23 percent in Latin America.
Despite its support for and contributions to the European WGA, Spain faces serious obstacles to developing a national WGA. Without a centralised crisis-management system under the presidency of the government, ministries and agencies must use their own means to fulfil international commitments, and they do not receive any common funding or additional resources for WGA from the government. Limited resources, in turn, make ministries and agencies reluctant to take part in WGA missions and operations. What’s more, in addition to financial resources, they also encounter difficulties finding human resources for such efforts. In the military sphere, the problem has to do with the increasing cost of maintenance and operations (around 20% of defence expenditures). In the civilian sphere, the government can neither force officials to participate in WGA missions nor does it have the necessary funds to recruit external experts. Given these circumstances, it is easier for Spain to contribute to the European model of WGA management than to develop its own model, as other European powers (e.g. France and the UK) have done.