The Rock

The presence of an alien fleet in the Mediterranean Sea creates, as it always has, peculiar problems. These problems are aggravated, for the United States no less than for the Soviet Union, by the absence of any base within this landlocked sea under full national control. During the long period when the Royal Navy dominated the Mediterranean, temporary bases sufficed only in the era of sail. The more exacting requirements of the steam navy demanded no less than three permanent bases: Alexandria in Egypt, Malta, and Gibraltar. By the standards of those days, British control of all three was complete and politically secure. Britain could be denied the use of these bases only by an enemy capable of suc­cessful operations in outright war. A modem fleet, admit­tedly, is much less dependent on shore bases than its pred­ecessors of the steam era, but still there must be a base for the protracted operations characteristic of this era of vio­lent peace.

The administrative and logistical disadvantages of lo­cating that base as far away as on the eastern coast of the United States were emphasized by Commander P. T. Deutermann in his September 1982 Proceedings article, “Requiem for the Sixth Fleet?” Politically, however, this is unavoidable. There is no prospect of finding an alterna­tive base within the Mediterranean that would always be available to the United States. Base facilities may be granted by a friendly government, yet lost when that gov­ernment is replaced or changes its policy. For instance, in 1976, President Anwar Sadat completed his progressive expulsion of the Soviet Navy and Air Force from the Egyptian bases, which President Gamal Nasser had previ­ously granted them. In the early 1960s, Albania withdrew its earlier welcome for Soviet submarines at Valona.

Moreover, even the most stable and consistently friendly of foreign governments seldom grants a base without reserving the right to impose restrictions on its use. The base may be available for any operations that further the common purpose of the two governments or of the alliance to which they belong; but use of the base may be denied if the alliance is divided or if one ally is pursu­ing purely national ends. As long as units of the U. S. Navy are, as originally declared in 1946, stationed in the Mediterranean to carry out U. S. policy and diplomacy, those units must continue to rely on bases in the continen­tal United States. Support for Israeli policies, opposition to Libya, repression of revolutionary movements, or back­ing conservative rulers are all conceivable political objec­tives for which the Sixth Fleet may be employed but which may not command the full endorsement of the European allies of the United States.

Thus, the lifeline of the Sixth Fleet, the natural route for reinforcement or redeployment, will continue to run through the Straits of Gibraltar.

The Straits of Gibraltar provide an essential channel for the shipping of many nations but lie within the partly shared territorial waters of two: Spain and Morocco. Twelve miles is now the generally accepted extent of the territorial sea; the minimum width of the straits is less. The rights of these two states are circumscribed by the provisions relating to international straits in the draft Law of the Sea Treaty, but acceptance of this treaty has been blocked, for different reasons, by the United States and other nations. This has left enough uncertainty for Spain and Morocco to argue that international rights of passage do not extend to submerged transit by submarines or to overflight by military aircraft without permission.

These views may seem academic as long as both super­powers have a common interest in disregarding them. Almost all Soviet submarines in the Mediterranean, for instance, come from the Northern Fleet, and, whether eastward or westward bound, they regularly travel through the Straits of Gibraltar submerged. The issue may become significant only in certain crises. In major war, of course, legal considerations would be irrelevant, but the claims of coastal states to regulate passage over or under the sea could conceivably become an instrument of coercive di­plomacy or could even precipitate or aggravate a local conflict.

Two points should be emphasized at this stage. First, the rights in dispute—submerged passage and unrestricted overflight—are, in normal circumstances, important to only four countries: the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain, and France. Spain and Morocco have complete legal freedom, and the submarines and aircraft of other Mediterranean powers seldom need to pass the straits.

Second, the legal issues involved are quite unaffected by the status of Gibraltar itself, which is located inside the straits and farther from the African shore than the Spanish territory bordering the straits. Even if Gibraltar were granted its own 12-mile territorial sea, a claim unlikely to command international acceptance, it would be inadequate geographically to provide a legal pretext for opening or closing the straits.

On the other hand, the status of Gibraltar might either precipitate conflict over the use of the straits or else prove of practical importance in a conflict arising for other rea­sons but affecting the straits.

Sovereignty over Gibraltar has been disputed between Britain and Spain ever since the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, one of the seven treaties whereby Spain ceded the Rock. In recent years, however, the dispute has assumed much the same character as that concerning the Falklands in 1982. Spain wishes to repossess lost national territory; Britain insists that the wishes of the inhabitants should be paramount. Spanish pride confronts British sentiment. Only the Gibraltarians themselves have any material stake in the dispute. Britain no longer needs a subsidized Gibral­tar as a naval base, for Britain can no longer provide a fleet to use or defend it. Moreover, in 1980-81, the For­eign Affairs Committee of the British House of Commons confirmed the conclusion reached by their predecessors as early as 1903: Gibraltar is only usable in war if Spain is allied or neutral.

Compromise is desirable, but the Gibraltarians (who voted in favor of continued British sovereignty by 12,138 to 44 in 1967*) have been alienated from Spain by nearly

*This referendum was condemned on 19 December 1967 by a majority of the General Assembly as incompatible with a previous resolution calling for a settle­ment to be negotiated between Britain and Spain. No further referendum has been held, but in the 1980 elections in Gibraltar, none of the three candidates of the autonomy party, which favors negotiations with Spain, was elected.

30 years of Spanish harassment; by the contempt accorded to them in Spanish official pronouncements and in the Spanish media; and by their own observation of the violent disaffection that Spanish rule has engendered in existing national minorities—the Basques, for example. It will take time and a different Spanish policy for the people of Gibraltar to accept a compromise. Whether either condi­tion will be met is uncertain.

Spanish membership in NATO is often suggested as the factor that will not only persuade Spain to prefer compro­mise to coercion but actually provide a catalyst for resolv- ^lng the dispute. This may be overoptimistic. Not only is NATO membership still a controversial issue in Spain, but ^even its supporters view its obligations restrictively.

Spain is absolutely not allied to England in the Mal­vinas,” Spanish Foreign Minister Marcelino Oreja said in May 1982. He did not need to add: that goes in spades for Gibraltar. In August 1982, a public opinion poll in Spain revealed a minority of its Spanish respondents, 29%, in favor of the military seizure of Gibraltar. The turbulent Politics of Spain could create a situation in which military seizure would offer the best prospect of restoring an en­dangered national unity. The same poll, after all, esti­mated the “don’t knows” at 29%.

Even without such extreme measures, any sharpening °f the dispute might lead to Spanish efforts to deny British military aircraft or submarines access to Gibraltar. Madrid ^regarded the submarine HMS Splendid’s visit to Gibraltar ^ln April 1983 as almost as provocative as Prince Andrew’s ^Vlsit. Spain imposed restrictions on British aircraft flying ■n the vicinity of the Rock as early as 1966 and has subse­quently extended them. Further extension of these restric- hons might be regarded as a logical intensification of coer­^cive diplomacy.

Surface warships are more easily identified but, when “Etish, encounter no less opposition. Again in April ’983, the current socialist, and professedly more pacific, government of Spain, with the hearty support of the con­servative and nationalist Spanish opposition, vigorously protested the visit of British warships engaged in Exercise Spring Train to Gibraltar. Three Spanish warships were sent to Algeciras Bay to emphasize further these diplo­matic representations. A particular Spanish grievance was that one of the British ships, HMS Invincible, had partici­pated in the Falklands Conflict. This diplomatic unaccept­ability of particular ships is certainly a new concept. Might, then, the USS Nimitz (CVN-68) be “blacked” in neutral ports (though Spain is supposedly an ally), because her aircraft shot down two Libyan fighter aircraft?

The more Spain opposes, even obstructs, British air and naval forces’ visits to Gibraltar, the more difficult it be­comes for Spain to exempt the submarines and aircraft of other countries (nationality being always harder to identify than type) or to avoid a general disturbance of traffic through the straits, as occurred during the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s. Even if actual conflict did not result, the situation in the straits could become increasingly inconve­nient and embarrassing, not only to the United States, but to its Sixth Fleet. Whatever its warships did—even if they did nothing—the repercussions on the alliance and on U. S. policies and interests could be far-reaching. The “routinely neutral stance” preferred by the United States since its abstention in 1967, when the General Assembly of the United Nations censured Britain for holding a refer­endum in Gibraltar, would be difficult to maintain. The decisions then required in Washington would be as deli­cate as they are now unpredictable.

The straits could also figure in conflicts unrelated to the status of Gibraltar itself. So far, for instance, military tran­sit has enjoyed what might be termed bipartisan support, because both superpowers have needed it to maintain their naval presence in the Mediterranean. But Soviet leaders have occasionally flirted with the idea of reserving the Mediterranean to the navies of limitrophe powers. Al-

though this idea struck a sympathetic chord in some mem­bers of NATO and received a wider welcome along the southern littoral, making the Mediterranean a Sea of Peace has hitherto seemed to most European allies a poor ex­change for the presence of a stationed U. S. fleet. They would alter their opinion if it seemed the Sixth Fleet was going to withdraw from the Mediterranean. A correspond­ing withdrawal by the Soviets’ Fifth Eskadra would then become an objective capable of commanding a political price. Even if Soviet diplomacy were unwontedly dexter­ous, it is unlikely that any formal agreement closing the Mediterranean to the warships of the superpowers could be reached. But a mutual withdrawal from the Mediterra­nean, if this occurred, would alter the political climate for any future superpower naval deployment in that sea. A deployment there would no longer be regarded as the rou­tine manifestation of an established presence, but as an intervention, a provocation, a measure heightening inter­national tension. Insofar as such international reactions are inhibiting, they would be less a handicap to the Soviet

Also in April, Gibraltar demonstrated the worth of its facili­ties when the Uganda, formerly a British cruise liner, was converted to a hospital ship, complete with helicopter deck and painted to the Geneva Convention’s standards, in one weekend.

Union, which does not need a naval presence in the Medi­terranean to exert military influence in the Middle East, than to the United States.

None of this matters in major war, but, in the more likely contingencies of violent peace, superpower with­drawal from the Mediterranean could create obstacles when either power tried to return. The impact for the United States would be most acute if U. S. naval interven­tion was needed for some purpose that excited hostility on the southern shore of the Mediterranean without attracting support on the northern.

A U. S. naval force employed to reinforce or resupply an existing fleet in the area is another conceivable, though less likely, scenario that could prove troublesome to the United States. Admiral Horacio Rivero hinted at this in his May 1977 Proceedings article, “Why a U. S. Fleet in the Mediterranean?”:

nean unsafe unless the Algerian threat were countered by superior naval and air forces based in Spain.”

Also in Proceedings, Raphael Danziger emphasized the high nuisance value of Libyan naval forces and the unpre­dictably volatile political purposes for which they might be employed in his March 1983 Professional Note, “Med­iterranean: Qaddafi’s Choke Point?”

Unfortunately, as Admiral Worth H. Bagley pointed out in his article, “The Iberian Peninsula: Key to European Security,” in RUSI and Brassey’s 1976/77 Defence Year­book, even the 1976 treaty between the United States and

Spain “restricts base rights and compromises the credibil­ity of Alliance deterrence.” So far, no detailed analysis of the terms of the 1982 Agreement on Friendship and Coop­eration (ratified, with an additional protocol, by the Span­ish Parliament in April 1983) is available to the author. But nothing has yet happened to invalidate Admiral Bag- ley’s earlier judgment: “Events during the Middle East crisis in 1973 suggest that in another crisis Madrid will not open its bases for US support of Israel.” Nor is the stabil- >ty of a conservative monarchy in Morocco sufficiently assured to offer an alternative.

Thus, there is something to be said for retaining the option of using Gibraltar if Spain were to remain neutral in the type of limited conflict so far envisaged. The airfield, though constricted by the limited space available, is usable hy military aircraft. The port can accommodate substantial warships, and there is a useful naval dockyard. Official sources, British and American, are resoundingly reticent °n this subject, but there is evidence that the possibility has not escaped attention. Although Spain requested the United States, as early as 1968, to stop the Sixth Fleet from using Gibraltar, U. S. warships continue to occasion­ally visit the Rock. In 1981, a U. S. Navy team inspected Gibraltar dockyard, which the British Ministry of Defence Wants to close as part of its program of naval economies, though it was very useful in April 1982 when the Royal Navy’s Falklands task force was assembling.

In peacetime, too, Gibraltar could offer a stationed U. S. fleet facilities for rest and recreation. These are be­coming difficult to arrange elsewhere in the Mediterra­nean. Although the resources of Gibraltar may be too lim­bed for the entire fleet, Gibraltar could at least contribute ^to the support of detachments or individual ships.

The political obstacles to the United States establishing ^a base at Gibraltar are obvious. As long as Gibraltar is disputed between Britain and Spain, base facilities there Would often be less an asset than a liability to the United States. Agreement between Britain and Spain seems al­^most a prerequisite to the Sixth Fleet’s using Gibraltar as a base. Yet, the passage of time has only revealed more sharply the snags inherent in the 1966 Spanish proposal: base facilities for Britain and privileged treatment for the Gibraltarians in exchange for Spanish sovereignty. How can either condition be made to stick, or the first (base facilities) extended to the United States, once sovereignty |^s transferred? The Spanish foreign minister who declared, ^ln 1717, “It is a well-known principle that princes and states are not bound to observe a treaty contrary to their toterest” found both British and Spanish disciples in the centuries that followed.* Would Spain have a durable in­terest in maintaining foreign base facilities and maintain- ^lng a special status for the inhabitants in a Spanish Gibral- ter? Both policies would be a derogation from Spain’s sovereign rights.

Using Gibraltar specifically as a NATO base is superfi­cially attractive, but more as a sop to Spanish pride than as a concession to Spanish interests. If Spain needs naval

Cardinal Alberoni quoted in George Hill, Rock of Contention (London: Robert ^Hale & Co., 1974), p. 226.

support or NATO needs a watch on the straits, there are Spanish bases for these purposes. In conditions of Spanish solidarity with the allies, Gibraltar is a convenience rather than a necessity. It becomes indispensable, and then for rather limited purposes, only in the very situation when Spain would not want its allies to have the use of Gibral­tar: when Spanish bases are closed to the allies. Even when harmony prevails, it might be difficult to convince any Spanish government that an established NATO tenure in Gibraltar would so strengthen the alliance as to offer Spain a real advantage. And any such argument to that effect would be pitted against the more immediate exigen­cies of domestic politics and nationalist emotions.

The Spanish protest of April 1983 (described earlier) demonstrated that, whatever the political complexion of the government in Madrid, Gibraltar is a thorn in the Spanish side. So far, all the agreements intended to facili­tate the progress of negotiations toward a compromise so­lution between Britain and Spain have collided with one of two reefs: Spanish intransigence about sovereignty or Gibraltarian insistence on autonomy. As yet, there is little prospect that a navigable channel between these two ob­stacles will soon be found by reasonable men, who seem, in any case, in short supply.

Mahan emphasized the importance of Gibraltar as a base that enabled Britain to impede the junction of the Atlantic and Mediterranean fleets of both France and Spain. That function disappeared as the international situ­ation changed and the range of land-based artillery in­creased. In two World Wars, Spanish neutrality enabled Gibraltar to play a vital role in supporting protracted oper­ations in both the Mediterranean and the central Atlantic. Such operations are now unlikely in major war. Prevent­ing the transit of enemy submarines is a task which proved impossible in the past, for which Gibraltar is geograph­ically not the best base, and which, even today, would demand a considerable air and naval concentration. This objective would probably not be both significant and at­tainable in any conflict before nuclear escalation made purely naval operations irrelevant and brought the history of Gibraltar to a sudden and drastic end.

Today, in naval terms, Gibraltar is a luxury. In some of the conceivable conflicts suggested earlier, it might never­theless be valuable to the United States. And it would be of more value if Gibraltar remained under British control rather than if it came under Spanish control. It is hard to argue that these possible conflicts are so likely or the con­sequential value of Gibraltar so great as to warrant an an­ticipatory change in the policy of the United States. Stronger arguments concerning the Falklands did not pre­vail in London. The Sixth Fleet may one day need Gibral­tar, but the cost of acquiring an option may reasonably be regarded in Washington as excessive. Meanwhile, Gibral­tar remains a problem that will sooner or later be of con­siderable concern to the Sixth Fleet.

Sir James Cable, a retired British Ambassador, now spends his time writing on international relations and naval affairs. He is an occasional contributor to Proceedings, and the Naval Institute Press now publishes his book, Britain’s Naval Future.