Spain’s Sánchez Looks Like A Realist – But He Is Clinging To False Hope In UN Reform

Recently, I wrote about the modern fad for politicians in the West to proclaim new variants of realist thought, some of which were a sham. But recent weeks have revealed Spain’s PM Pedro Sánchez is operating according to a fundamentally realist perspective on international politics, though he makes no direct reference to realist thinking. 

In the pages of Le Monde Diplomatique, Sánchez recently appealed to defend multilateralism against the products of “what passes for realism.” As a European statesperson offering strident criticism of Russia, Israel, and the USA for breaches of international law, there are no surprises to be found in Sánchez’s insistence that “disorder and chaos” are “the only real alternative to a multilateral order.” 

But Sánchez’s theoretical premise was solidly realist, maintaining that “nation-states remain the central actors of international politics,” and the organisation of relations between states is key to making “life in society possible.” Multilateralism, for Sánchez, “is not an abstract ideal – it is an everyday reality,” rooted in the material world and manifest in the myriad trade and regulatory threads which are woven into a dense global web. 

There is no talk of partners sharing one another’s values; interests drive states’ actions and cooperation goes as far as self-interest carries it. In the case of Europe for example – the apogee of cooperation, integration, and development – the institutions of international law were “not idealistic aspirations. They were instruments of survival first – and later of prosperity.” 

In policy terms, and following from the well-publicised divergence of Spanish and US foreign policies, early April saw Sánchez visit China and have high-level meetings with China’s premier Xi, in which they discussed the strategic benefits that will accrue from Spain and Europe’s close relations with China, and even tried to make ground on economic ties. 

Becoming highly porous to China’s influence is not necessarily good for long term strategic security, but allowing China the space to compete with the influence of the USA could yield valuable results, especially when one scans the horizon for the material and technological needs of the future, which appear to rest in China’s hands. 

Later the same month, Sánchez also hosted Latin American and European leaders for a conference on the defence of democracy and an event called the Global Progressive Mobilization. Two of the biggest hitters in Latin American politics, Brazil’s Lula and Mexico’s Sehinbaum, were in attendance, demonstrating the importance they place on developing common recognition and solutions to many issues under this umbrella. 

And this makes sense, given that, behind all the progressivist rhetoric, the leaders at this meeting were giving consideration to things that are real threats to their common foundations as states. The point, as Sánchez made it in LMD, is that for most (or at least many) people on the globe, cooperation through worldwide rule-governed multilateral institutions is beneficial and does serve core interests. His argument, however, was that it is an “illusion” that multilateral institutions can effectively interrupt the “real” dynamics of power; instead they “must reflect the balance of power of the twenty-first century” and therefore need reforming.

Sánchez sees the primary means of doing this as reform of the UN Security Council. But what he misses is that the design of the UNSC involved a complex layering of aims, the most important of which was to avoid a global conflict between great powers, and definitely to avoid the UN itself – which initially hoped to control its own military forces – being involved or weaponised in a conflict between great powers. 

In his Power and International Relations, Inis Claude likened the Security Council veto and the associated paralysis to 

“a fuse in an electrical circuit – a deliberately created weak point in the line, designed to break the circuit and interrupt the flow of power whenever circumstances make the continued operation of the circuit dangerous… it is better to have the lights go out than to have the house catch fire”

Therefore, while attempts at both procedural and constitutional reform of the Security Council have been multiple in recent years, none has borne much fruit to speak of. For constitutional change, the bar is very high. Under Article 108 this would require consent of each of the five permanent members of the UNSC, as well as two thirds of the non-permanent seats. That sort of consensus does not get reached often, especially on such a big-ticket item with the potential to enshrine a new global balance of power in the institution. 

On the procedural front, a 2015 declaration presented by France and Mexico for permanent members to voluntarily restrict their use of the veto in cases of mass atrocities did not receive the backing of other permanent members. And a 2022 Lichtenstein-led initiative (with widespread international support) to invite vetoing members of the Security Council to explain their actions to the General Assembly has ultimately, in the words of a Security Council Report, “not curtailed the use of the veto.”     

Sánchez does not use the language of realism, but it is there to see. It is discernible in his theoretical writings about the international stage, in his pivot to China and banding together with states threatened by similar sources of insecurity.  Sánchez is grasping the nettle where many of his counterparts appear not to be. But his main hope for a reformed UNSC will leave him disappointed, for it goes beyond what any realist should expect.

Image: Wikimedia Commons/Ministry of the Presidency. Government of Spain (Fernando Calvo Rollán)

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