Pepe Díaz
commanders. The work of NATO’s
Military Staff (IMS) is vital here as the
Military Committee’s working body.
The process is similar in the European
Union, with some differences due to the
distinct nature of this organization. In any
case, both the political sphere —rep-resented
by the Political and Security
Committee—, and the military sphere
—the EU Military Committee and the
Defence Staff—, work together creat-ing
synergies between the political and
military strategic levels. Both organiza-tions
seek complementarity between
the political and military fields, with
a constant exchange of information in
different areas, such as intelligence, op-erations,
crisis-management exercises
or logistics.
—Brussels insists that a stronger Eu-rope
leads to a stronger NATO….
—Although both organizations are
autonomous, in the case of the EU, 21
of its states are also NATO members.
This means that almost 90 per cent
of the EU population are also NATO
members, or that nearly 80 per cent of
the total defence budget of the 27 EU
Member States is also a NATO bud-get,
all of which results in the clear
idea that the more united the 27 EU
partners stand, the stronger NATO
will be.
The European Union must be a
true global actor and have consider-able
strategic autonomy. The EU has
huge potential for crisis management,
offering global solutions thanks to a
wide variety of diplomatic, economic
and humanitarian assistance mecha-nisms,
as well as for the development
of the justice, legal, security and de-fence
sectors. NATO, for its part, may
be more suitable for collective defence
and the use of the essentially military
instrument, without forgetting NA-TO’s
other two primary tasks: cooper-ative
security and crisis management.
However, the European link can never
replace the transatlantic link. The idea
of creating a European army is good,
although it must be done in an atmo-sphere
of collaboration, integration
and maximum cooperation between
NATO and the EU. Increasing the
capabilities of the Armed Forces of
the European countries undoubtedly
reinforces the security and defence of
both organizations. The bottom line is
that NATO and the EU are two sides
of the same coin, and this coin is the
security of our societies.
—What is your opinion about Spain’s
role in these two organizations?
—We are reliable contributors and part-ners
in both organizations. Obviously,
although the scale of our contributions
is similar, our specific weight is higher
in the EU than in NATO. If we analyse
it from the objective viewpoint of or-der,
according to certain studies Spain
ranks 20th in the world in terms of the
importance of its Armed Forces. We
Lt Gen Montenegro
points out that Europe
has “enormous
potential for crisis
management, offering
global solutions”, and
that NATO’s greatest
asset is “collective
defence”.
April 2020 Revista Española de Defensa 47