Felipe González says that Spain would have to spend more on Defense if it were not in NATO

The former Prime Minister Felipe González together with the Defense Minister, Margarita Robles, at the Center for National Defense Studies (Ceseden) this Monday in Madrid.MINISTERIO DE DEFENSA (MINISTRY OF DEFENSE)

When, 40 years ago now, Felipe González became President of the Government, the military of that time, trained in loyalty to Franco, received him with a mixture of expectation and suspicion.

This Monday, in the Aula Magna of the Higher Center for National Defense Studies (Ceseden), more than 200 military commanders gave him a warm ovation.

Twice as old as then, he has put the audience in his pocket recognizing that the Armed Forces and the Civil Guard "do a lot with scarce resources and that is called efficiency";

and urging them to continue making an effort because “Spanish and international society will thank them”.

The president who opposed Spain's entry into NATO and ended up calling a referendum to stay, has thrown a cape at the Defense Minister, Margarita Robles, sitting next to him, by defending the increase in military spending, but not because NATO asks for it, which claims to dedicate 2% of GDP to Defense, but because there are security problems.

"If we were not in NATO, we would have to make a greater effort to have the same," she warned.

González has recalled that there are neutral countries by their own decision and others by external imposition.

Some of the latter are so neutral, he has underlined, that "they cannot even decide on their own affairs."

“Whoever decides to be neutral must know that neutrality is expensive”, he concluded, arguing that these countries have to bear costs alone that are shared in alliances.

Finland and Sweden, which have asked to join NATO in the wake of the Ukraine war, he has cited as examples of forced and voluntary neutrality.

Although a master conference had been announced as the opening of the new academic year at the center for advanced military studies, González has warned that his would be a talk in which he has claimed "recent memory", better than historical memory, to orient himself in a world dominated by uncertainty.

As a direct witness, when not a protagonist, he has recounted some of his most relevant episodes.

For example, when at the Peace Conference on the Middle East, held in Madrid in October 1991, the then US president, George W. Bush, told him that Gorbachev had only a few weeks left as Soviet president.

González himself transmitted to Gorbachev, recently deceased, Bush's confidence, which he received with surprise, since he was unaware that "the grass was being mowed under his feet."

he resigned,

Faced with Moscow's account that NATO has been cornering it with its expansion to the East and that the invasion of Ukraine has been a self-defense movement, González has assured that the Russian Federation was in an "existential crisis" after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and that Western countries provided aid, including food, to stabilize it and prevent an uncontrolled dissolution that would spin off scientific-military talent to produce weapons of mass destruction towards countries willing to acquire it at a low price.

“The territorial integrity of the Russian Federation has never been threatened by anyone from the West”, he has bluntly sentenced.

González has blamed the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, for having created a Ukrainian national consciousness that until now did not exist and has attributed the invasion fiasco to the corruption of the Russian oligarchy, which steals up to 40% of its defense budget. from the neighboring country.

Instead, he has exonerated former German Chancellor Angela Merkel from dependence on Russian gas;

a decision that, he assured, was not only made by Germany, but by all the European countries that mistakenly believed that the interdependence between the EU and Moscow (the first for energy, the second for financing) was insurance against military adventures like Putin's.

On the contrary, he has suggested that Merkel could have made a mistake in abandoning nuclear energy and has agreed with those, from the right, who advocate "reviewing" this decision, at least with regard to extending the life of nuclear power plants. that have completed their operating cycle, despite the fact that he himself paralyzed the start-up of the Valdecaballeros plant (Badajoz).

González has been convinced that the war in Ukraine "is going to be long", unless Putin is overthrown from within, and has criticized those who defend women's rights, "except if they are Iranians", alluding to the program that at the time he had Pablo Iglesias on a television financed by Tehran.

He even drew a laugh from the audience when he suggested that although he belongs to the same generation as US President Joe Biden (in fact, he is almost nine months older), he remains more lucid.

In the end, he has warned, in a more serious tone, that "the insufficiency of resources [in Defense] ends up having a cost".