Silence of the lambs |
IN a brazenly lawless world, it might have been futile to expect that the indisputable illegality of the US-Israeli aggression against Iran would encounter much resistance even from nations that regularly pay lip-service to the concept of a rules-based order. The paucity of resistance to an international outrage is nonetheless striking.
There are barely any exceptions across Europe apart from Spain’s commendable stance. The government of Pedro Sánchez denied the US use of joint military bases, established more than 70 years ago during the heyday of the Franco dictatorship, to be used for a criminal mission. Donald Trump threatened to break off ties and block trade. Soon afterwards the White House declared that Spain had capitulated. Madrid dismissed that as nonsense, secure in the knowledge that tariffs could not arbitrarily be raised without targeting the rest of the EU.
The Sánchez government is something of an outlier in the EU as well as Nato, defying the trend (alongside Ireland) towards ignoring Gaza genocide, while also refusing to increase its military budget to five per cent. There are domestic considerations, too. The Socialist Party (PSOE) relies on left-wing allies for its parliamentary majority. Beset by scandals, it’s........