EUROPE should invest in shared values instead of nuclear weapons in order to stave off the threat of Russian aggression, Spain’s prime minister has told key allies.
Pedro Sanchez made the comments over the weekend as he became the first Spanish prime minister to ever attend the Munich Security Conference, a forum first held in 1963 that brings together more than 200 government representatives from 120 countries to discuss matters relating to defence.
Quoting former US president Ronald Reagan, who famously said that ‘a nuclear war cannot be won’, Sanchez warned that nuclear rearmament would fail to provide a safety blanket from the dangers posed by confrontational world leaders such as Vladimir Putin.
Instead, Europe should prioritise values and investment in conventional military, with Sanchez reassuring allies that Spain is ready to ‘collaborate with whatever is necessary’ after tripling its spending on defence and doubling the number of deployed troops.
He also highlighted the extortionate costs of maintaining a nuclear arsenal, with the United States alone poised to spend around €800 billion on nukes over the next decade.
“That is enough to eradicate extreme poverty in the world,” Sanchez pointed out.
Nine countries currently possess nuclear weapons: the United States, Russia, the UK, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea.
Russia and the US are home to an estimated 90 per cent of the total number of more than 12,500 nuclear weapons held worldwide.
The Spanish premier’s comments come as tensions between the United States and the European Union hit an all-time high with President Trump’s repeated threats to annex the autonomous Danish territory of Greenland putting him at odds with European leaders, who instead argue that the mineral-rich island’s future must be decided by its people.
The Trump administration has also called on Europe to shoulder more of the burden for its own defence as the war in Ukraine enters its fifth year.
In an effort to reassure European allies that the United States remained committed to collective defence, US secretary of state Marco Rubio told the conference: “The end of the transatlantic era is neither our goal nor our wish […] we will always be a child of Europe.”
“The fate of Europe will never be irrelevant to our own,” he added.
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