Bismarck –who said that laws are like sausages and it is better not to know how they are made– wrote that there are times when the strong are weak because of their scruples and the weak are strong because of their audacity. I do not believe that the problem in Ceuta in recent weeks is that Spain errs on the side of being too scrupulous. I fear it is something less noble. Scruples, at least, arise from a moral conviction, and Spain’s issue seems more prosaic: mere absence of strategy.
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It is hard to find a more eloquent example than Morocco. A country whose economy barely reaches a tenth of Spain’s, with limited resources and a modest but growing military capacity, has managed to maintain a privileged relationship with the U.S., normalize its ties with Israel, turn its proposal for the Sahara into the position adopted by much of the Western powers, and gradually introduce into the international debate the idea that Ceuta and Melilla are the last European colonial enclaves in Africa. Not bad for a country we continue to look at with that very Spanish mix of condescension and concern.
Spain responds to these undeniable achievements with arguments of a different kind. Such as reminding that Ceuta and Melilla have been Spanish since before the current Moroccan state existed. It is an idea as true as it is reassuring, but intellectually poor. Before 1956, where Morocco is now, there was a political, dynastic, religious, and cultural continuity perfectly recognizable for centuries, and any Moroccan can identify with it without consulting an international treaty or believing that in 1956 Moroccans landed from Mars. Moreover, that argument leads to a labyrinth from which it is then difficult to escape. Mexico City was Spanish for three centuries, longer than it has been Mexican. Bosnia was under Ottoman rule for centuries. If we start distributing sovereignties according to who arrived first, history will become a rustic estate with too many owners.
The important question is not who can show the best chronological argument, but who has a state policy. And there the difference is abysmal.
Spain needs to know what it wants from Morocco and what it is willing to pay to achieve it
Morocco knows what it wants. The Sahara is a national policy that survives governments and generations. The approach to Washington, the relationship with Israel, control of migration routes, economic expansion towards Africa, and pressure on Ceuta and Melilla are part of a recognizable strategy. Its legitimacy can be debated. The difficult part is debating its coherence.
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Spain, on the other hand, practices a less known form of diplomacy: pompous improvisation. One day it talks about firmness, another about strategic friendship, and the next it discovers some new reason not to upset Rabat. Morocco moves its pieces thinking about the next decade; Spain usually moves its pieces to solve the problem of the week.
The difference between the two policies is not ideological. It is structural. There is also a reason, quite more uncomfortable, to understand Spanish –and European, let us not forget– caution. It is not necessary to admire the Alaouite monarchy to recognize that its disappearance does not guarantee a liberal democracy on the other side of the Strait. Just look at Iraq, Syria, Libya, or the Algerian experience. Kissinger already warned of the danger that these states could disintegrate into tribal, sectarian, or confessional units, and where the state disappears, Switzerland rarely appears. That is why Morocco has an argument that Spain cannot afford to ignore: it is, with all its flaws, a state. And a solid state in that part of the world has a geopolitical value that Europe cannot give up.
What is reasonable, then, is not a policy of hostility towards Rabat, which would also be unrealistic, nor that permanent appeasement that ends up confusing prudence with fear. Spain needs something much more difficult: to know what it wants from Morocco and what it is willing to pay to achieve it. Morocco has been playing its game for decades while Spain continues discussing the rules of the previous one. In foreign policy, the one who has fewer pieces does not necessarily lose. The one who loses is the one who does not know what the hell he is playing at.
