Javier Rupérez: "The world needs the disappearance of Trump"

Francisco Javier Rupérez Rubio (Madrid, April 24, 1941) is a Spanish politician and diplomat who has served as Spain's ambassador to the United States (2000-2004), as well as to the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (1980-1982) and to the NATO (1982-1983). His extensive professional career has led him to work as Deputy Secretary-General of the UN in New York, (2004-2007), where he directed the Security Council's Anti-Terrorism Committee. In the Spanish Congress of Deputies he was chairman of the Foreign Affairs and Defence Committees and has been president of the Parliamentary Assemblies of NATO and the OSCE. He reviews with Atalayar's team the main keys of the world that has suffered the impact of the coronavirus pandemic and the world that will come after it. The changes in international geopolitics, the crises in the United States or the role of Europe on the global board are some of the topics discussed in this interview.

How is the world we have today with the coronavirus crisis? And what world will come out after the pandemic?

We are installed in the uncertainty. We don't know what's going to happen. And it is a global crisis that affects all levels: security, the economy, social life. To begin my schemes of analysis, I always remember what George W. Bush's Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, said: we must take into account three levels of analysis, which are the things we know that we know, the things we know that we don't know and the things we don't know that we don't know. I think we're at this third and final level: we don't know what we don't know, we don't know what's coming at us. And, therefore, we do not know what is going to happen. On the other hand, there are things we do know, such as the immediate economic impact, and we know this because it is very painful for everyone, seeing how there are people who have nothing to eat and who have to queue for help. There are people who can die of hunger and there are people who have already died from lack of medical care. And the biggest problem is not the dead, but all those who are going to suffer the economic consequences of the pandemic in the first person. The economic, political and social consequences will be the most serious we have seen since the Second World War.

Is the world becoming more convulsed?

All this is set in an enormously complicated international context where we are already seeing, regardless of the economic and social effects, geopolitical repercussions on the structure of the world. Today we know that China has lied to us and that it wants to continue lying to us; that the United States, for political reasons, has not wanted to deal with the pandemic in a coordinated fashion; and that Europe has managed it in an uncoordinated way.

Even so, I believe that we are going to continue to live with what I have called the consensus of the Second World War, which is the multilateral consensus generated through the United Nations. 

Are you pessimistic?

I don't think the world is going to collapse, as some prophesy. We must investigate and find out what we do not know and repair the cracks that have been created, because it would be extremely serious if, as a result of the pandemic, the authoritarian systems, which already assume that they are the good ones and that the bad thing is democracy, were to resurface. I also believe that it is necessary to be active and to seek the application of a certain model of reconstruction. Its success will depend on the will of the actors, which is all of us. It would be terminal to passively welcome calamity as our future. 

How will the "new normality" be?

I do not believe at all in the new normality', I believe in the normality that we already had: a system formed by the social market economy, parliamentary democracy and the multilateralisation of international relations. That this can collapse? Obviously. What must we do everything to prevent this from happening? Also. 

What can we do?

We have to know how to react, how to manage the layers of what many now consider to be a "war". And if it is a war, let's think about the previous models to end it. In the case of the First World War, a bad model was used: there was a lack of leadership - the United States withdrew from the Versailles agreements and did not allow the League of Nations to prosper - and this led to the emergence of nationalisms and populisms that resulted in fascisms that led to the Second World War. And in it, the model was just the opposite. The United States kept in peace the leadership they had practiced during the war and the victorious powers agreed on a model of national and international norms of behaviour that have fundamentally guaranteed world peace and stability since then. The UN, with all its limitations, is a good example of this. I would strongly recommend that the latter model be followed if we apply the figure of war to the pandemic. 

So, do you think the coronavirus crisis could be identified with a third world war?

I don't like to think of this as a war. It is true that it is a very complicated crisis. China has to give explanations and the rest of the world has to demand them. The Chinese have to be aware that the rise in their international profile as a result of their growing economic importance today has been seriously affected in terms of reputation.

What is your view of the origin of the coronavirus?

There are different versions. Was it the result of poor hygiene practice in the "wet markets" or a mistake in the management of the only epidemiological laboratory in China, which is located in Wuhan? I think it was a mistake on the part of the scientists who were handling the virus, among other reasons because a delegation of American experts who visited the facility last year had already warned of the poor practices employed there and the incorrect working conditions. 

Some people talk about biological warfare …

This has led certain international sectors to establish a comparison with the war and even with the consequences of the war. In other words, exactly as happened in World War I and World War II - with substantial differences - we must demand, just as we demanded from Germany, reparations as a result of the aggression. I believe that this system is not being maintained because it is not exactly the same thing, although this does not prevent there having to be a demand for what happened to be clarified so that it can be prevented from happening again.

How does the pandemic affect the rest of the world's relations with China?

We knew before that as a consequence of the difference in production prices between China and the Western world there had been a shift in production activity to the Asian giant, in textiles, automobiles, etc. And now we know that this has a series of consequences that need to be rethought, such as intellectual property. China's theft of intellectual property from Western scientific and industrial knowledge has been barbaric. 

China's influence in the world is very relevant...

What we cannot forget either is that China exists as the second world economic power, already the first in terms of trade above the United States. Ten years ago, the Asian giant was engaged in trade, but not in ideological propagation.

What we do talk about is of cyberwar …

Obviously, there are currently a number of projections of cyber attacks, of cyber war, which are intended to exaggerate the two possible extremes of the problem: one, that it has been the Chinese who have voluntarily invented the coronavirus to weaken the Western world; and two, the alternative version, that it has been the Americans who have created it. I believe that neither of these is true, and that it has been more of a Chinese mistake, either on the issue of "wet markets" or on the issue of the epidemiological laboratory in Wuhan.

Do you think that, after the coronavirus, there will be a group of "winners" and another group of "losers"?

I honestly think we're all going to lose. I also believe that this is a reflection that needs to be made, both collectively and individually. Will we be better off after the coronavirus? I don't think so. No one has gained anything except the knowledge of our own weaknesses, but that doesn't make anyone stronger than the rest. We're all in the same unfortunate story and we're going to see if we can all come out of this calamity together and well. This is pretty complicated.

How is the coronavirus crisis affecting Donald Trump's management in the United States? Do you think that multilateralism will be able to recover in the face of the global crisis in which we are immersed? 

There is an English expression, "wishful thinking", which I will use to answer. Trump may lose the election, and I would prefer that he did. Domestically, he has sought to substantially alter many of the balances of power in the Constitution. Internationally, he has helped to undermine many of the consensuses achieved after World War II. It has broken with multilateralism, withdrawing the United States from several international organisations -the latter being the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and the World Health Organisation (WHO)-, in addition to having departed from such significant agreements as the nuclear agreement with Iran and having sown doubts in transatlantic relations. The world, which was defined by permanent relations at various economic, political and security levels between Europe and the US, has been weakened. The complicated problems that NATO has to face as a result are obvious.  

Does Trump act with a predetermined plan?

Observing Trump's behavior day by day, one realizes that it does not correspond to any planned plan, there is no structure. Why do you say that you are going to withdraw the American soldiers from Germany? Simply because he is angry with Angela Merkel, who has said that she cannot go to the G7 summit at Camp David in July for health reasons. This has nothing to do with any strategic vision.

So, how would you rate Trump?

Many analysts - John Bolton is the most recent of them - that describe him as a psychopath. Psychopaths act through impulsive movements that have to do only with their own personality. One day he is angry with China and the next day he asks for financial help to save his elections; one day he is angry with Russia and the next day he forgets that Russia has seriously violated the rules of international law and invites him to participate in the G7 meetings. The examples are infinite. That is why the US needs Trump's disappearance and the world needs Trump's disappearance, and a return to that previous normality.

Could Trump lose the next election?

At the moment the polls are quite unfavourable, but in this election business, as we know well enough, anything can happen. Even if you actually lose them. I believe that, if this happens, and knowing well the personality of the Democratic candidate, Joe Biden, both the US and the world could imagine a substantial return to the previous situation. I also know that the world can evolve, and that the demands of the moment are different. I, for example, have lived through the phases of Obama's mandate, and I remember well his hesitations, marked at some point by a clear desire to withdraw from the international scene, for example, in the European intervention in Libya, after the fall of Muammar Gaddafi, when Obama announced that he would not participate directly, but would do so "driving from behind", that is, in the back seat. The same thing happens with the announcement of the withdrawal from Iraq or Afghanistan. 

How can this behavior be explained?

There' s a justification in part, and that is war. The United States has been at war for 20 years, and the war means deaths, injuries, cripples, personal and collective suffering, and an exponential increase in medical care and expenses. All of this is very visible in American society.  

Did Obama have different goals?

Obama had also initiated a slight reordering of the country's strategic vision, thinking more of the East than the West, of China, Japan... But this had its logic, debatable as so many other things, but it did not imply a total break with the system because NATO, which is a fundamental element of international stability, continued to have full American support, in addition to its progressive coordination with the EU's European defence policy. In this chapter, it should be remembered that the first steps towards the unification of European countries were taken by the Marshall Plan, with its desire to add reconstruction aid to a project of continental economic cooperation.

Do you think Biden could win the election? 

It would certainly be good if Trump left the White House and Joe Biden, who is likely to be the Democratic candidate, won the election. I am not saying that this would mean an immediate return to all multilateralism, but it would be a step towards regaining the basic trust. It is not so much a gamble as an analysis. I hope and wish not to make a mistake.

Everything has coincided …

Of course, holding an election in the midst of the pandemic is forcing the US to reconsider many aspects, including its own economic situation. When the coronavirus crisis broke out, unemployment stood at 3.5%, in other words, it was practically non-existent. Two months ago, it stood at 17%, which was similar to the percentage the country had in the Great Depression of the 1930s. And now, it is at 14%, which is still a bad number.

In this sense, what lessons could Spain learn from the coronavirus crisis?

We also have to look at ourselves. Spain has about 14% unemployment, which has become the usual percentage. We have to think about how to proceed in order to change our productive model and make it more efficient: we cannot have an economy with that level of unemployment, or with 95% of the business fabric made up of SMEs, or with a tourism sector that represents 13% of GDP, or with debt levels that, according to the Bank of Spain, can reach 120%. If there is one positive thing about the pandemic, it is precisely that it is forcing us to find answers to an obvious economic and social challenge.

Against this scenario, should Europe also assume its own defense?

It should be noted that Trump's notion of the United States being "the paymaster of this world" has a double reading. They, too, are taking advantage of these relationships with their partners and allies. To think only that NATO is a system where the US helps European countries for free without receiving anything in return makes no sense at all. The US also needs a European fortress, precisely to attend to its strategic needs.

Do you think that the economic reconstruction plan announced by Brussels will support or destabilise the Community project?

I think that the EU's plan is excellent and I hope that it will succeed. I also agree that the huge mass of money to be disbursed comes with two aspects: on the one hand, the character of the Marshall Plan, with grants without return; and, on the other hand, the conditioning. This system that has been created can greatly favour the sense of Europeanist projection.

Do you still believe in the European Union?

I am an absolute and total European federalist. I also know that we are a long way from achieving this, we are not yet the United States of Europe that I would like to be, but I am convinced that in the long term the European countries will iron out any kind of local tribal preference and will eventually understand that the only solution lies in union, because anything else is openly a disaster, for the Lithuanians, the Dutch, the Danes, the Belgians ... for everyone. From this point of view, I believe that the steps being taken by the Commission and the proposals being made by the European Central Bank are important. 

The pandemic has relegated to a second place the other crises that have plagued the Old Continent, such as Brexit, the populisms of the East...

I deeply regret that Boris Johnson has become Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. I believe that the British have made a very serious mistake in the elections and I also believe that they will have realised that they have the worst possible prime minister in the worst possible international circumstances. Moreover, the US, which seemed to set itself up as Britain's best alternative to Europe by signing a free trade agreement, has, for the time being, put the negotiations on hold, to the extent that it considers that a pact will be impossible before the November elections. From time to time the people go mad. The Brexit is the most recent and most emphatic manifestation of this. 

On the oil market, with the price at negative for the first time in history on April 20, what is your view?

Mobility has been affected by the standstill and mobility is cars, planes... And this has an impact, without a doubt, on oil producers. But we are already seeing the different sectors being revived. I would also like to highlight how the vision of the car industry has changed after the pandemic: before it was committed to clean energy and now I think we will keep a little more diesel and petrol, because car factories need to recover quickly, and that, for the time being, can only be offered by oil. That is why the whole industry that depends on oil is very important. In any case, I believe that we are not going to recover normality in the broad sense of the word for another two years. 

With the pandemic, cyber attacks have also intensified …

Totally, the cyber-attacks more or less jointly between Russia and China against the Western world are obvious... We will see what happens with the November presidential elections in the US, but we will probably witness a similar spectacle, and probably corrected and increased from what we already saw in the 2016 presidential elections, which brought Trump to the White House.

How do you see that Latin America has become the epicenter of the pandemic?

The lack of coordination is total. I am fundamentally concerned about the situation in Brazil, with Jair Bolsonaro at the top, which is a Trump 2; and in Mexico. There is one exception that I would like to highlight: Costa Rica, which, although it is a smaller country, has had a negligible death toll: 12. 

What are the overall effects of the coronavirus crisis in the Middle East?

Firstly, Russia is taking advantage of the situation. With the departure of the US from Syria, the Russian Army is settling in the bases left by the Americans, who are filling that gap with rather serious intentions. We also have Erdogan's Turkey, which is a totally unpredictable factor in the region. 

To continue with the world geography, should Europe pay much more attention to Africa, taking into account the destabilization in the Sahel and in the north of the continent with the civil war in Libya, which threatens the neighboring countries?

Africa is the great unfinished business of Europe and the Western world as a whole, both from an economic and industrial point of view and from the point of view of security. There are several Africas, so the approaches have to be calibrated, which cannot be the same in Morocco as in Ethiopia or South Africa. But, in any case, what we must try to do, by all economic and social means, is to fix the African populations where they are. The idea that Africa should become exclusively a migration passage zone for Africans is bad for Africans themselves and bad for the western world, as we are seeing every day.

I think that the Sahel deserves special attention, because apart from the French remnants still left over from the colonial era, nothing serious has been done. So does South Africa, because the situation is not going well, and certainly Libya, because it has ceased to exist by becoming a failed state with the civil war. This type of case requires military participation and intervention, even if it is not particularly popular, because it affects us in a very direct way.

That is why I feel it is essential to bring us closer to Africa, so that it can make progress at all levels, economically and politically, and also so that democracy will be respected and political pluralism adopted.

On the specific case of Libya, what role should Europe play in resolving the crisis?

Honestly, I don't know. We must remember several things before answering that question: Europe does not have a common foreign policy, it does not have a common defence policy, it does not have a common army... And in Libya, which I believe has disappeared, there are essentially security problems. I therefore believe that NATO would be better equipped to deal with this situation than the EU, although in the short term I am not at all optimistic.

What about America's role in Africa?

A significant change of attitude should also be achieved on the part of the United States, which continues, as Obama would say, "driving from behind". They have withdrawn their troops from most African countries and they seem to be happy with the regional context, with Egypt, with Tunisia - where they do absolutely nothing, as far as I know - and with Morocco, a country with which they have excellent relations, even at the expense of Spain on some occasions. Furthermore, it should be remembered that Rabat is the United States' fundamental ally in the southern Mediterranean.

You' ve just mentioned it. Do you think US-Spanish relations are above the governments?

I would bet anything that, at this moment, the US intelligence services are thinking a lot about transmitting information to the Spanish Government because of the presence of Podemos and Pablo Iglesias in the National Intelligence Centre (CNI). Even so, I believe that relations between the United States and Spain are above governments, or should be. In addition, the Spanish business economic presence in the US is very important, more so than the US presence in our country; and cultural, although we are now seeing how they are trying to erase it in the framework of the demonstrations against racism. The Spanish government should be much more active in defending what is not only our history, but also that of the United States. 

I would indeed like to mention that the state of relations between Washington and Madrid is influenced by the political sign of the governments. For example, with José María Aznar, we had the best relations with the United States of all times, while with José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero they were among the worst, and I can certify this because I was an ambassador during both governments.

Finally, what will be the future of the democracies after the pandemic?

Democracy is composed of a number of forms that have institutional translation, such as the vote, but do not exhaust themselves with it. Democracy is also based on the ethical values that support it and on the formal respects without which the rule of law would not exist. There is room for a whole series of schemes such as human rights and fundamental freedoms, and individual and collective behaviours that affect interpersonal relations: trust, mutual respect, empathy in social relations. The urgency of the confinements dictated by the states of alarm has undoubtedly restricted some of these manifestations and it is not rare for groups of power to try to take advantage of the circumstance for their own political benefit. We must be aware of the urgencies of the moment, but also of the full recovery of our rights. Anything else would give victory to the pandemic and to those who want to take advantage of it. But I do not believe that democracies will be affected in any fundamental way by the calamity of the moment.

How do you evaluate the behaviour of the governments?

Because of the coronavirus, we have been subjected to a radical censorship of our basic freedoms, fundamentally that of the movement. And in some countries, governments have wanted to take advantage of the situation to impose their own programs. All this, together with the appearance of fear in personal and collective relations, the fractures that have occurred in basic freedoms and the mistrust that has been generated, has not affected democracy, but some elements of it have been put in a "freezer" for understandable needs. And that is why it is necessary to return to normality, not to the new normality.