Going back to the origins and the values of always

Since Spain missed the train of modernity and its role at the forefront of nations at the Congress of Vienna in 1815, the country has wasted no opportunity to demonstrate its resistance to innovation and its attachment to the most obsolete experiences and values. In this respect, it was certainly heart-stopping to see the demonstration by those nostalgic for Stalinism and communist totalitarianism, led by no less a Secretary of State than Enrique Santiago, protesting against the NATO summit in Madrid. Slogans such as "Out of Rota, out of Morón, Yankees out of the Spanish state" or "Against NATO and its violence, now and always, resistance! Warlords, out of Madrid", took us back to the most tense moments of the Cold War, when the European left anathematicised all the achievements of the West while praising and extolling the egalitarian paradise enjoyed in the Soviet Union, in its European satellites, in Mao's China or in Castro's Cuba. 

History does not stand still, but the decisive NATO summit in Madrid nevertheless has much to do with the resistance of totalitarian powers to accept that the main aspiration of individuals and peoples is to live in freedom and true democracies - the very values and principles that led to the creation in April 1949 of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, NATO, the military alliance charged with preventing Stalin, the Soviet dictator at the time, from gobbling up the whole of Europe. 

It was Winston Churchill who first warned of Stalin's true intentions when in 1946, in a speech at Westminster College, Fulton, he proclaimed that "from Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has fallen across the continent. Behind it lie all the capitals of the old states of Central and Eastern Europe". 

From the twelve founding countries of that time, we have grown to thirty today, including the former satellites of the USSR which, after the painful experience of surviving under the boot of Soviet imperialism, sought refuge in droves under the umbrella of NATO as soon as that regime collapsed, whose crimes, incidentally, have been put on a sad footing with those of Nazism by the European Parliament.

Almost nothing: freedom and democracy

In addition to the peace and security that its members seek in the Atlantic Alliance, therefore, its members embrace the organisation's founding values, namely the right of its citizens to develop their capacities in full freedom and democracy. Almost nothing!

Despite all its imperfections, this Western model remains the most powerful magnet attracting people from all over the world, whose ultimate aspiration, whatever the hardships to be endured, is to reach the territory of free Europe or the United States and Canada. By way of contrast, it is worth noting that Vladimir Putin's Russia, to which the EU and NATO have not ceased to offer cooperation and integration formulas, has recorded a diaspora of more than two million people since the beginning of 2022. Such is the estimate by Carmen Claudín of CIDOB, and undoubtedly Spain's leading specialist on Russia, who estimates the repugnance of those fleeing Russia to living under the regime of terror reinstated by Putin and his former colleagues in the KGB. 

In drawing up the new Strategic Concept that will govern NATO's missions in the coming years, it is certain that the heads of state and government gathered in Madrid will also recall Churchill's own diagnosis of the Russians in 1945, which is surely also valid for 2022: "From what I have seen during the war, I am convinced that they [the Russians] admire nothing more than strength and respect nothing less than weakness". 

If in 2010 the Strategic Concept agreed in Lisbon revolved around jihadist terrorism and instability in the Middle East, in the Strategic Concept to be signed in Madrid, and without neglecting the previous ones, Russia will be at the centre of the threats, while China will be viewed with the suspicion that its unequivocal moves towards becoming the new superpower to replace the United States will arouse, even if, as Thucydides warned, this will lead to an inevitable clash between the two giants, with the inevitable consequences for the rest of the world.