Javier Colomina, NATO’s special representative for the Southern Neighborhood, is the most powerful Spaniard within the Atlantic Alliance. This diplomat, who is now focused on the Alliance’s southern border, is clear that, although Ceuta and Melilla are excluded from Article 5, the partners would respond if Spain invoked the application of the text.
During his attendance at the Security Dialogues ‘European Defense in a World in Crisis’, at the headquarters of the Higher Center for National Defense Studies (CESEDEN), in Madrid; this diplomat did not avoid the question about Ceuta and Melilla even though in the month and a half since the attempt to violate territorial sovereignty no NATO representative had spoken out.
“Hybrid war is one of the issues that has concerned us the most for years. It is that gray area that has gradually been worked on from a conceptual and practical point of view,” he began to develop his response. Thus, the diplomat recalled that “from a conceptual point of view it was decided a few years ago that Article 5 could be applied in the case of hybrid war campaigns.” Although he acknowledged it is somewhat undefined when to apply it, he stated that “the use of irregular migration as a weapon of hybrid war is a reality.”
In that sense, after clarifying that what happened in Ceuta is “an internal political issue” and that NATO does not comment “on those issues, unless the ally decides to bring it to the Council table,” he did emphasize that “it is hard not to think that there is not indeed a component of hybrid war behind it.”
Although Colomina has acknowledged that the area of responsibility of SACEUR – the second highest military position within NATO, only below the president of the NATO Military Committee – “does not include Ceuta and Melilla,” the Washington Treaty “is very clear and includes the territory of all allies.” That is why Colomina makes a very clear interpretation of Article 5.
This is the article that establishes the principle of collective defense, which means that an armed attack against one of the member countries is considered an attack directed against all of them. Although the invocation of the article is political. Colomina explained that “Spain would have to first decide to invoke the article and then there is no automatism. The Atlantic Council would decide whether to support or not support that ally,” he explained.
He then was very emphatic in stating: “I have no doubt that if Spain at some point decided to invoke Article 5 for something that happened in Ceuta and Melilla, the Alliance would respond, because Spain is a committed ally, it has always been, with a state policy in relation to NATO, with a sustained military presence, which today is also in its hands; and with a general commitment to practically all NATO activities,” he justified.
