LAST WEEK, Spain undertook its largest unilateral military operation since 1939. In the wee hours of July 17, 28 Spanish special forces, backed up by four naval vessels and six helicopter gunships, reconquered the 500-yard-long uninhabited island of Perejil, part of the Spanish enclave of Ceuta on the north African coast, which a dozen Moroccan soldiers had occupied for six days. Was the island worth fighting for? Yes, if you think of it as the place that Homer used in the “Odyssey” as the model for Ogygia, the paradise where Calypso keeps Odysseus entranced for seven years in her enchanted grotto. No, if you consider that the grotto is now used as a hideout for drug traffickers and that the island is given over to goats and sheep rowed out to the place by locals to avoid paying shepherds. Spain debated simply giving up the island as recently as 1994. Obviously, what arose with the Moroccan occupation was a question of principle. Here is what happened. On the afternoon of July 11, during the wedding celebrations of Morocco’s young king Mohamed VI, a dozen Moroccan soldiers landed on the island and raised their country’s flag. Spanish officials believe the king ordered the incursion himself. Whatever the case, it violated Spain’s sovereignty. Ceuta and Perejil have been under European rule since 1415, when a Portuguese protectorate was established there. Spain took over those and other Mediterranean possessions at different times in the seventeenth century. Under a bilateral agreement made by Spain and Morocco in 1960, neither country is to establish permanent settlements there. When Spanish civil guards approached the island, they were held off at gunpoint. Spain sought to resolve the standoff through diplomatic channels. First, it requested an explanation from Morocco. This request was met with silence. Then European Commission president Romano Prodi and the Danish government, which controls the European Union’s revolving presidency, requested the removal of Moroccan troops. This request was met with derision. The Moroccan minister of foreign affairs, Mohamed Benaissa, called the international press together and attempted to treat the situation as a joke. The maneuver, he said, was merely an operation aimed at foiling smuggling and controlling illegal emigration from Morocco. “We’re not going to invade the island with a dozen soldiers,” he added, as the Moroccan flag waved over Perejil. Then NATO issued a communiqu describing the Moroccan occupation as an “unfriendly act.” Days of negotiations followed, in which American envoys played an informal role, exerting heavy pressure at the royal wedding festivities. When Morocco affirmed it had no intention of removing its soldiers, Spain attacked at dawn on July 17. It captured all six Moroccans remaining on the island. As is usual when the First World comes in violent conflict with the Third, the responses were asymmetrical. Morocco and its allies in the Arab League made mighty claims of implacable irredentism. Morocco called the Spanish operation a “flagrant act of aggression.” The newspaper Aujourd’hui le Maroc said the raid “revealed to the world the true face of a Spain that is dominating, arrogant, and colonialist.” Spain, on the other hand, proclaimed a desire to compromise even as its troops were landing. It promised to pack up and go home if Mohamed VI would only give a “clear and unambiguous statement” that he would not invade again. He refused. Then Benaissa let drop in an interview with SER radio that Morocco wouldn’t reinvade if Spain simply left. The Spanish government said it would indeed leave if only the Moroccans would make that same statement officially. They wouldn’t. Spain’s minister of foreign affairs, Ana Palacio, reiterated that her country was ready to leave the island. “We just don’t want a Moroccan politics of faits accomplis,” she said. Spain’s Western allies, meanwhile, responded with a subtlety verging on agnosticism. The European Union countries, under Denmark’s leadership, sought to issue a statement backing Spain’s right to defend itself, but they were blocked by France. After Spain’s recovery of Perejil, European Commission president Prodi said, “We continue to be worried by the events on the island”–as if the situation had been exacerbated rather than resolved. Prodi did not refer at all to the original Moroccan landing–an omission that rendered the Commission’s statement even weaker than the one Kofi Annan issued from the United Nations (Annan condemned “all unilateral actions adopted up to this moment”). By Friday, July 19, the U.S. State Department was the key go-between. It sounded a decidedly French note, describing the standoff as an “unfortunate situation that involved two nations that are the United States’ friends.” Colin Powell said that any troops that remained on the island “would only make negotiations more difficult.” El Pais, flagship paper of Spain’s left intelligentsia, warned that taking back the island would start a whole new round of troubles. The Financial Times, while calling Morocco’s invasion “ill-advised,” called Spain’s an “act of folly.” Did they have a point? It depends how you look at it. Spain’s insistence on continuing to claim a tiny chunk of Africa may weaken its position in negotiations over the British possession of Gibraltar, which abuts its territory. But Spain also would have run a big risk by doing nothing. Fernando Arias Salgado, Spain’s ambassador to Morocco, worried that Morocco was releasing a trial balloon, hoping to threaten Spain’s two large African enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla. He was right. Benaissa upped the ante in a press conference in Paris on Friday, warning that negotiations should begin on the status of Melilla; and Moroccan soldiers have taken to blocking pedestrian (but not tourist) access to Ceuta, whose economy depends on Moroccan shoppers. MOROCCO is one of the more trustworthy nations in the Islamic world. That’s not saying much, but the country does have a large, educated middle class and a semi-free press. France has deep economic ties with it. Spain rerouted an energy pipeline from Algeria through Morocco out of neighborly spirit not long ago (and has disavowed any intention of now seeking economic sanctions against Morocco). The Bush administration is interested in negotiating a far-ranging free-trade treaty with Morocco, of the sort negotiated with Chile after NAFTA. Most important, Morocco is cooperating in the war against al Qaeda. Perhaps because of this, Mohamed VI and his government believe they can get away with trying to shake concessions loose from the West. The recapture of Perejil was a Spanish mission; the country sought no help or endorsement either from NATO or from any of its allies. This was exactly the sort of unilateral mission that “Europe,” when regarding the United States, professes to deplore. But it has been met with unconditional support from NATO and widespread approval within Spain. As such, this military and diplomatic success, though miniature in scale, is a standing rebuke to the multilateral, post-national, Kantian utopianism that is the prevailing style of European Union diplomacy. This ought to raise questions among the Europeans, whose “dialogue”-based foreign policy leaves them almost wholly defenseless against what Ana Palacio calls the politics of faits accomplis. What if next time Morocco, aiming its appeal to native nationalists, sends a much larger force, with heavy weaponry? Spain has answered that question in spades–it will fight, and it will prevail. But what if Morocco, aiming its appeal at the “European human rights community,” decides to occupy Perejil with a gang of children throwing stones? That is Europe’s question to answer–and the answer is shrouded in doubt. Christopher Caldwell is a senior editor at The Weekly Standard.
