The effects that the Russian invasion of Ukraine could have on the future of Ceuta and Melilla

"Russia is not our enemy. Ukraine is far away and what happens to it is not our problem. We should only be concerned about Spain."

Patriotism and the Russian invasion: Do you ask of Ukraine what you would not accept for your country?
How to know if someone supports peace in Ukraine or making war profitable for Russia

Pro-Russian slogans to favor the invaders

In recent years, I have read many Spaniards making statements like these on social media and in some media outlets. Many of these messages have been spread by openly pro-Russian users, who with these words only had one very obvious purpose: to demobilize military aid to Ukraine.

Indeed, Ukraine is more than 1,600 kilometres from Spain. Geographical distance always helps those who promote isolationism or, rather, apathy. Today, according to these apostles of indifference, we should not be concerned that a military power commits all kinds of crimes against a neighbouring country. They believe that this will never happen to us because we are not neighbours of Russia, and they even believe that it is morally defensible for us to associate with a terrorist regime like Vladimir Putin's while it commits all these atrocities in Ukraine. They are like a person who does not care that there is a rapist attacking women as long as it is in another neighbourhood, in another city or in another province.

The problem these people have is that the world is smaller today than isolationists believe, and things that happen in other countries can end up happening in our own. The clearest example is Islamist terrorism, which has been perpetrating its crimes in different countries, including Spain, regardless of borders or distances. Russian terrorism also affects us, starting with our national defense.

The role of patriotism in national defense

At this point, some might think that I am talking about the possibility of Russian troops landing in Spain. This is not the case. One of the main challenges for the defence of a country is that its people are willing to defend themselves. Morale plays a very important role in military matters. It was this factor that influenced the humiliating defeat of France in 1940 against Nazi Germany, and this factor has also had an extraordinary weight in the heroic Ukrainian resistance against an enemy with far superior resources.

One thing that every civilized country should do in relation to national defense is to promote patriotism. Love of the homeland, the feeling of belonging to a national community and the need to risk one's life in defense of one's nation, if necessary, has historically been a determining factor in the outcome of a war. In the West, the virtue of patriotism has been systematically denigrated by the left, who consider it to be something typical of fascists. For any conservative, the display of patriotism by the Ukrainian people should be a reason for hope, because it shows that the enormous moral damage done by the left has not succeeded in destroying this virtue that is so essential to our collective survival.

Putin's success: many conservatives look down on patriotism

Significantly, the Putin regime’s great success has been to promote disdain for patriotism among many conservatives, who are that part of society where patriotism has remained strongest. Such promotion has been a great success of the psychological operations division of the GRU, the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Federation. Moscow has succeeded in getting many Western conservatives to parrot slogans that were previously common only on the far left, slogans aimed at degrading the morale of self-defense in the West.

Many people are repeating these slogans without knowing where they come from. These are slogans like those that some people are asking if you are going to send your sons to die in Ukraine, in response to those of us who defend the right of that country to defend itself from an unprovoked invasion, even though Ukraine is asking for material military aid, not soldiers. These are slogans like those that criticize Ukraine and those who support it for the deaths caused by the Russian invasion, instead of criticizing the invaders, as if they had nothing to do with those deaths. These are slogans such as calling those invaded "warmongers" for defending themselves, and not the invaders for invading a country that is not theirs.

Without a doubt, the most effective of the pro-Russian slogans is the one that tries to convince us that a piece of land is not worth dying for, a slogan that is directed against the defenders of that territory, and not against the Russian leaders who have sent their compatriots to die for invading another country, a country over which they have no right. In the end, all these slogans end up composing an anti-patriotic discourse that differs very little from the one that the left has been promoting for decades, but this time promoted by conservatives who boast of a fervent patriotism.

Slogans that could be used against Spain in the event of a Moroccan attack

Obviously, all these slogans will survive the Russian invasion of Ukraine, regardless of its outcome, but especially if Putin manages to take a part of Ukrainian territory. Putin has provided other countries with the psychological warfare slogans they need against the West, and one of those countries is not more than 1,600 kilometers from Spain, but is on our borders. I am referring, obviously, to Morocco.

This Muslim kingdom is today Spain's main strategic threat in its immediate surroundings, since Morocco claims as its own territories that have been Spanish for centuries, including the autonomous cities of Ceuta and Melilla in North Africa. Two cities in which Spain has strong military contingents precisely because we know that we cannot trust our Moroccan neighbour.

The government of Pedro Sánchez has done part of Morocco's work, by allowing waves of illegal immigrants from that country, immigrants who, instead of being returned to Morocco, are distributed throughout Spain, allowing Rabat to use immigration as a weapon against Spain (as Belarus and Russia have been doing with Lithuania and Poland, but with a very different response to that of those two allied countries) and sending Morocco a message of weakness that is harmful to our national defense.

An anti-Western propaganda that degrades our defense morale

The more Spain shows weakness, the closer the possibility of Morocco invading Ceuta and Melilla becomes. If such a Moroccan invasion ever happens, the slogans that the pro-Russian Spaniards have launched against Ukraine would be turned against Spain. Is it worth dying for two pieces of land in North Africa? Ceuta is 764 kilometers from my city, Vigo. Following pro-Russian logic, should I care what happens at such a huge distance? And if we stick to pro-Russian slogans, wouldn't it be better to give up those two cities to avoid a great bloodshed?

Of course, pro-Russians from other countries would soon criminalize Spain for sending its soldiers to die in Ceuta and Melilla, just as they have done with Ukraine for the mere fact of doing something as decent and virtuous as defending their country from an invasion. Will the pro-Russians then ask those who support defending the Spanishness of Ceuta and Melilla if they are going to send their sons to die there?

With their slogans in recent years, Putin's propagandists have been degrading our morale in defending ourselves against any external aggression. Only an enemy nation does that when it wants to leave its rival defenseless. The most astonishing thing about this case is that Moscow has not only counted on the traditional enemies of freedom (communists and Nazis), but also on the complicity of some who claim to defend spiritual values, freedom and even patriotism, simply because many of them think that the enemy of their enemy is their friend. A grave mistake.