Gustavo de Arístegui: “El mundo saharaui es cambiante, mucha gente que estuvo en el Polisario ha dejado de creer en él”

In the latest edition of "De cara al mundo", on Onda Madrid, we had the participation of Gustavo de Arístegui, diplomat and international analyst, who reviewed current international affairs, with the focus on North Africa, the current world situation with the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the energy crisis affecting European governments.

The UN Security Council resolution urges the parties to return to the negotiating table. Do you think this could help Algeria open new doors to a resolution of the conflict?

We have seen that Staffan de Mistura's efforts have borne fruit because during the 30 years that MINURSO's mandate has lasted, the resolutions tend to be a copy of the previous ones, with very few variations on the previous one. I think there are several novelties in this one, not only the support for the Special Representative of the Secretary-General, but there is more real willingness on the part of the Security Council to support Staffan de Mistura's efforts. I met him when he was Italian Secretary of State and he was negotiating with India for the release of some Italian carabinieri who were under house arrest in the residence of the Italian ambassador there, and he handled it very well. Then he was the special representative for Syria, where he did an excellent job as well. I think he is one of the best examples of old diplomacy in the best sense of the term. 

On the other hand, the second novelty that I see in the resolution is that it really gets serious about the issue of negotiation, but there is a rejection by one of the parties that was in the programme's briefing and that has to make people think. I believe that the war in Ukraine and the division of the world - we are not going to say into two blocs because there are no blocs - but the division of the world around Putin's war against Ukraine, Russia's invasion of a sovereign country that is a member of the United Nations, has clearly laid out the cards that are not marked, as was the case until now and as was unfortunately the case throughout the post-Cold War period. 

People longed for the clarity and ease of geopolitical analysis in Cold War times because everything was Manichean and today it is not Manichean at all. However, the war in Ukraine makes it very clear who is for international law and who is against it, who really believes in the concept of state sovereignty and who does not, who is for the territorial integrity and freedom of real peoples or who is for the invasion and oppression of peoples. 

And this has divided the world into two clear camps and a grey zone: those who do not want to get angry with Russia for many reasons. Either because they have strategic interests in Syria, or because they have complicated borders, as is the case with Turkey, or because they are very close to them and feel very insecure, or because they were once Russia's orbital countries and are becoming less so, and so on. And all of this has a direct bearing on the Sahara conflict. This digression is fundamental to understanding it because today we cannot continue to maintain a Cold War discourse and we must clearly place ourselves in the sphere of the United Nations, of international legislation, of the negotiated resolution of conflicts. One side has put forward a proposal which has passed through the Security Council and which has been accepted as a serious proposal, and the other has done nothing more than say that it will not sit down to negotiate. I think that says it all.

Furthermore, we must analyse that, within the Saharawis, the Polisario Front, although it claims to be the sole representative, there are organisations such as the Movement Saharawi for Peace or the Sahara Human Rights Association, or even the former tribal leaders, who may also have a place at the negotiating table.

We have said this many times in this programme, in the magazine Atalayar and in other media. The Sahrawi world is not univocal; above all, it is changing. Many people who were in the Polisario have stopped believing in it, many people who have been in Tindouf and who had positions and responsibilities have returned, as in the case of the Sahrawi ambassador to Spain, who had been a very senior Polisario official and ended up being Morocco's ambassador to Spain. Others have simply returned to do business or to retire as retirees and have no responsibilities whatsoever.

Personal families are divided. I know of many personal cases of one family member who is in Tindouf and another who is in Dakhla or Laayoune. One speaks with great joy of settlers, non-settlers or the sole and legitimate representation of the Sahrawi people. There are people who are nowhere and who just want there to be an agreement at last, for the borders to be opened, for families to be unified and for the people living in the Tindouf camps to have the right and the possibility to choose where they want to live, because at the moment this is not the case.

Will King Mohammed VI attend or not the Arab League summit in Algiers? There are absences such as that of the leaders of Saudi Arabia, the Emirates and Kuwait. The presence of the King of Morocco in Algiers will be very representative. 

I am reluctant to speculate on this. It was indeed an unprecedented coup, especially at a time when formal diplomatic relations are broken, because Algeria wanted to break off diplomatic relations with Morocco. 
In any case, I think it is very important to note the absence of countries that are the undisputed leaders of the Gulf and the Arab world. Saudi Arabia is a leader of the Arab world. It is a power as the custodian of the holy places of Islam and as a country of enormous economic dimensions, not only because of its oil but also because of its absolute geostrategic situation. Let us remember that it is one of those countries with two seas, that it dominates several straits that are fundamental to world geo-strategy and that it has a decisive weight. The absence not of the king, who is in very poor health, but of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, or of the new president of the United Arab Emirates, the emir of Abu Dhabi, Mohammed bin Zayed, is very significant. 

And Kuwait, a country that is increasingly neutral, that has no conflicts with anyone, that when there are clashes in the Gulf always tries to mediate. Even Kuwait, as I said, which is a very special country and which very few people know about since the end of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, is a country with a 25% Shiite population, which has a parliament, fairly free elections, where women play a very important role. I was an observer of the elections, in the first elections there was an overwhelming presence of men and the women wore hijab, and in the second elections I went to, the women candidates, Shia or Sunni, wore jeans and no hijab. 

These are things that are happening in the Gulf in a very clear way and that have a direct impact on the Arab League summit. In my view these absences cannot be overlooked. The Arab League is going through a bad time with its internal divisions. Let us not fool ourselves, there has not been a global pan-Arab brotherhood either. There are more rivalries than brotherhoods and all the attempts of the United Arab Republic, Syria, Egypt, have all failed miserably, because there are always so many interests and frictions, especially between bordering countries with poorly healed wounds from the past. They are often the same people, but artificially divided, and yet they end up getting along very badly. Therefore, I think it is very difficult for the King of Morocco to attend the summit at this time of very significant absences.

Let's go back to global geopolitics. You talked about the Russian invasion. What is your feeling when you hear Putin say that we are in a very dangerous situation?

I have just re-watched Putin's speech on CNN in its entirety and the truth is that it is, if I may make a comparison, like a man walking around with a flamethrower near a powder keg saying that "we have never been in such a dangerous situation". It is you who are the cause of our being in such a dangerous situation. The most important part of the speech, which I have not seen commented on in almost any Spanish media, is that Putin says that they have never said anything related to the use of nuclear weapons.

I believe that this problem is not in words or intentions. Unfortunately it is going to be in the actions, and the actions are going to be dominated by escalations, and escalations are unpredictable. The more territory Russia loses, the worse it gets on the military front, the more generals and colonels it loses - which it is losing every day - the more incompetent the forced conscript troops that are inevitable, the more escalations there will be.

If the Ukrainians have very effectively defeated the Russian professional troops, what will they not do to the conscripts? If the most prestigious generals, some dead, some dismissed, some still simply reaping the failures at the front, have been replaced by less experienced generals and colonels who are simply in static units in Siberia, on the borders with Mongolia or China, and are in command of nuclear missiles that have never seen action, when they are at the front, how effective are they going to be? In my opinion, none. The problem is that this war for Putin is existential, but for him, not for his country. When he says that Russia is fighting for its very existence, he does so. The only one who has an existential risk in this war is Vladimir Putin. If he loses the war, the scenarios, in my opinion, are extremely bad. I don't want to alarm either. 

The first scenario is that things go very badly in Ukraine and there is an escalation that ends up ending in the use of a tactical nuclear weapon which, in my opinion and unlike what I have heard from some very experienced military officers, whom I admire and respect very much, is not only going to be used against critical infrastructure - they are already doing that with conventional weapons and with enormous lethality - but it is going to be used against concentrated Ukrainian units. Taking out a brigade or an entire regiment with a tactical nuclear weapon is a real possibility on a day-to-day basis. If the units are not deployed in attack formation, they are concentrated in their barracks. If they hit their barracks with a tactical nuclear weapon they will wipe out an entire unit and that if they do it several times will decimate the real operational capability of the Ukrainian army and change the shape of the war. But it will also provoke an escalation, because there will necessarily have to be a response that cannot be limited to sanctions, but will have to be much more forceful. Even Borrell himself said that it would be the annihilation of Russia, and yet Borrell does not represent a military power, because the European Union has no real military capabilities, only some coordination. In other words, when a man as sensible as Borrell says such a thing, we are clearly, unfortunately, at risk of escalation. 

The second scenario is a coup d'état in Russia. But the coup d'état, contrary to what some analysts say, who have an optimism worthy of better mention, is that it will be for the worse. The coup in Russia would be for the local hardliners to depose Putin because they feel he is not being tough enough in the war against Ukraine. And there the use of tactical nuclear weapons will not be one-off, but widespread, because they will want to end the war in one fell swoop.

And the third scenario is very bad: if the West starts to waver and forces Zelenski into a bad negotiation that involves ceding certain territories that he would have done at the beginning of the war and that would be unthinkable today. That would trigger a popular revolt by Ukrainians against their president. That would also be a disaster because after so many tens of thousands of deaths, after having ruined the country's economy, after having subjected part of the Ukrainian territory to exile, to hunger, to pressure from Russia, the Ukrainians will never accept unfavourable negotiations with Russia. Therefore, all three scenarios are absolutely catastrophic.

The only alternative to all three is a Ukrainian victory and that sanity prevails in Russia, and that if there is a coup d'état or if Putin is deposed, it will be the moderates and not the radicals.  

Finally, we wanted to hear your analysis of the political situation in Europe, such as in the UK and Italy.

To get to the heart of the matter, I would like to talk about how we got here. The energy crisis has caused the inflation crisis that is weighing down European economies, and many are entering technical recession and others are going into recession in the next quarter. 

I heard this morning a surprising statement from the CEO of a Spanish oil company saying that the energy transition is not the cause of the energy crisis we are suffering but the solution. I profoundly disagree. The energy transition, as designed by the Europeans, was relying on the doping they had of cheap gas from Russia, which seen from a distance cannot otherwise be considered as a kind of bait to hunt grizzly bears. It is obviously impossible to resist and we have clearly fallen into the trap. We have taken the bait and have been brutally hunted down. The energy transition, if it is not the cause, which I have my doubts, it is a part of the causes, but at least it is the biggest catalyst. 

It must also be said that the economic crisis, the political crisis, the social crisis, the institutional crisis that Europe is experiencing predates the war in Ukraine, and predates the energy crisis that was aggravated or provoked by the war in Ukraine. We are living through very complicated times and we are seeing this in the United Kingdom, in Italy, in France, in Germany, with a truly alarming decline in the quality of the political elites. In some countries it is less serious because they have stronger civil societies or because they have a public function with a long tradition. But we are seeing how, for example, Macron, who is perhaps the least bad of the political leaders at the moment, is destroying his public administration, which was one of the prides of the Fifth Republic, has dissolved the diplomatic career and is giving entry to professionals who are not civil servants and who have never gone through any of the schools that prepare civil servants for public office. And this in France, which is in a less bad situation. 

The UK is truly extraordinary. When one compares the CVs of government ministers not twenty years ago, but five years ago, with those of today, it is truly astonishing. At least this Prime Minister who, although very young - he was born in 1980 - is someone with experience in the private world. I am increasingly sympathetic towards him. 

I am extraordinarily envious of the Greeks because they have an enormous political class. I think it is the best in southern Europe, and Greek Prime Minister Mitsotakis is a man who speaks several languages, who has studied at Harvard, who has several prestigious degrees and who was spectacularly successful in the private world, in private banking, before returning to politics, to which he belonged by lineage, because his father was also Prime Minister of Greece. 

And all this leads us to what is happening, that is, Italy has a strong civil society and a strong civil service. So far no government has touched the Italian civil service and it has been noticeable in the civil servants in the different ministries, the parliamentary support staff, the Italian diplomatic career, the tax inspectors, the Italian adjudicatura or the public prosecutors. One of the reasons, let's not fool ourselves, is that quality people go to the civil service in Italy because they are well paid. Back then, the good, the best, as was the case in Spain in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, were tax inspectors, state economists, state lawyers, diplomats and so on. Today this is less and less the case, and this is a sort of safety valve that allows states with unstable politics, as is the case of Italy, to continue to grow and maintain international stability.

We left out how investment in advertising space is changing and how the Democratic Party in the United States is investing heavily in the campaigns of Senate candidates that they thought they had won hands down, for example, in the state of Washington. It's an issue I'd like to talk about because the midterm elections, which are in two weeks' time, are going to throw up a lot of surprises.