Demilitarize Gibraltar, Ceuta and Melilla!

Why does a NATO ally, the UK, insist on keeping a military base on the territory of another NATO ally, Spain, against the latter's will? And why does Spain insist on doing the same in two locations in its neighboring country Morocco? The visit of a UK naval vessel, the HMS Westminster, in Gibraltar at the height of a diplomatic storm only a week ago recalled ridiculous associations with 19th century gunboat diplomacy.

Gibraltar, Ceuta and Melilla - tiny, militarized colonial enclaves - all are, in equal measure, historical anomalies that should be done away with - the sooner the better. They serve no purpose other than to aggravate local relations and maintain needless animosities across artificial borders. It is hard not to see all the involved parties in the wrong here. Of course, there is money involved, in particular in the case of Gibraltar.

Also, these supposed geopolitical strong points watch over the Straits of Gibraltar, but the strategic significance of the Straits is not what it used to be. There are no longer any guns in place with the range to cover the passage. The passing merchant ships are hardly fewer or smaller than before, nor are the naval vessels. But securing the freedom of passage there has very little to do with who controls the enclaves. The NATO navies are in command. In such a case the US navy will be in the vanguard jointly with Britain and Spain and NATO allies Portugal and France, among others.

There are parallels which suggest demilitarization. At the approaches to St Petersburg, the Åland Islands have since 1800 successively been under Swedish, Russian and Finnish sovereignty. A strong fort in the islands, Bomarsund, built by Russia in the 1830s, was subsequently destroyed by Britain and France during the Crimean War. In 1856 the islands were demilitarized after Britain and France had defeated Russia in the Crimean War. The islands were once more occupied and remilitarized by Russia in 1916, then again demilitarized after World War I. Today the Åland Islands are demilitarized and have extensive autonomy under Finnish sovereignty, including a favorable special tax status under the EU.

Another parallel is Svalbard, the Norwegian archipelago in the Arctic that the Soviet Union claimed after World War II. Svalbard was at that time already governed by an international treaty (1925) which limited Norwegian sovereignty and demilitarized the islands. The Norwegian government dismissed the Soviet claim in 1947 and normal relations ensued in which the USSR developed a considerable mining activity. When Norway joined NATO in 1949 Svalbard remained outside the deal. During the Cold War the US remained highly suspicious of Soviet intentions in Svalbard - the Soviet manpower there seemed much greater than required by the mining activity. Thus, during the 1980s the US was claimed by some to have been prepared to undertake a preventive attack to throw the Russians out, in which case Norway would just have been left dangling. Be that as it may, the demilitarized status of Svalbard has remained intact and - like Åland - answers many difficult questions before they can be raised.

Hence, demilitarization is a live option that should be examined more realistically in these three cases. Raise it in an ad hoc multilateral forum. Join that move to the introduction of a wide-ranging autonomy in each locality, and sovereignty loses its sensitivity. If a local parliament can run the “country” pretty much as they please, the question of national sovereignty becomes moot.

You don't believe me? Let them try it.