I’m with you there. But I don’t see European governments using that time well at all. Where is the EU-wide ambition? The joint initiatives? The defence answer to Airbus? Instead it’s the same old fragmentation, soothed by the belief that lip-service to 5% will keep the old American protector sweet.

This was Merkel’s defence of NordStream 2! Buying time to disengage from an unreliable partner, but too busy humouring said partner to actually actually use the time gained. (An analogy which, if I’m
not mistaken, makes Sanchez a latter-day Habeck).

Why on earth should the primary goal be “keeping” Trump engaged in Europe? As opposed to building European military-industrial sovereignty?

The sort of entrenched European vassalage you’re advocating will hurt Spain a lot less than the eastern flank states actually exposed to Russia.

I hope you’re right. But I rather fear that it won’t be honest Spain, but rather the governments that blithely signed up to 5% with no intention whatsoever to deliver it, that will undermine NATO in the long-term.

I fundamentally disagree on 5%, a fantastical Trumpian goal that is purely designed to fill the order books of American defence firms.

By contrast, Sanchez has proposed a reality-based goal: smaller sums, spent together, in ways increasing European military-industrial sovereignty.