Nations Have Agency & Sovereignty Over Their Territory

...you are only one election away...

Everyone should be familiar with what a “stress test” is, like your doctor gives you if he thinks you have a problem with your ticker. That or if you served, a “smoke check” with either a piece of equipment or a person.

If you really want to find out where there is a weakness in a system is so you can make changes, reinforce, or simply know where the limits are—you need to stress the system to its design limit. The problems will reveal themselves.

Even weak and suboptimal systems can get along just fine as long as they are not under stress. Do that too long, and you never really know if the system will function fully as designed when you need it at full performance. Heck, it can get existential if your assumptions are wrong.

Along those lines, a good secondary effect of Operation Epic Fury has been to point out where our allies stand.

Much of our planning around the globe is centered on the assumed access to various bases hosted in allied nations, and an understanding that we will stand up for them when they need us, and they will stand for us when we need them—or at least not get in our way.

Oops.

At the end of the day, we really only have use of those bases if the host nation is gracious to allow us.

Spain and the United Kingdom, really, have done us a favor here. They’ve reminded us of the fragility of many of our planning assumptions when it comes to overseas bases.

You are only an election away. Let’s start with Spain.

The Spanish government on Monday said that it had denied the use of its military bases to U.S. forces involved in the attack on Iran, including key refueling aircraft that departed Spain for other countries on Sunday.

At least 11 U.S. KC-135T and KC-135R tanker aircraft left the southern Spanish bases of Rota and Morón late Sunday evening, after the left-wing Spanish government objected to an operation it considered outside of international law.

“Spanish military bases will not be used for anything that falls outside the agreement with the United States and the United Nations Charter,” José Manuel Albares, Spain’s foreign minister, said Sunday in an interview on Spanish television. He called the U.S.-Israeli operations “unilateral.”

The new policy is the latest criticism of the United States from Spain, which has stood out in Europe for its consistent opposition to the Trump administration, including American immigration policies, support for Israel’s war in Gaza and the military operation to abduct and arrest President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela.

Given that the party of Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party, is the same one that joined the Popular Front with the communists in the 1930s—no shock here.

The Labour Party in the UK (seeing a trend here) isn’t covering itself with glory.

It started where you would expect and has wobbled over the weekend and will probably wobble again. Weak.

Sir Keir Starmer has told MPs that the government “does not believe in regime change from the skies”, putting him at odds with President Trump over the joint US-Israeli strikes on Iran.

In his first statement to Parliament since the strikes, Sir Keir defended his decision not to permit the use of UK bases for the initial wave of attacks.

“President Trump has expressed his disagreement with our decision not to get involved in the initial strikes, but it is my duty to judge what is in Britain’s national interest,” he told MPs.

However, the situation changed on Sunday when Iran’s “outrageous” response became “a threat to our people, our interests and our allies”, the PM said.

Canada started strong—but then it appears that their Prime Minister got different marching orders from his backers.

When Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada met with reporters for the first time since the start of airstrikes against Iran, he swiftly qualified the statement of support he gave in the immediate aftermath and called for a de-escalation of the conflict.

He said that Canada’s support for the military action comes “with regret, because the current conflict is another example of the failure of the international order.”

Speaking on Wednesday in Sydney, where he is on an official visit, Mr. Carney said Iran had persisted in its nuclear ambitions in defiance of years of diplomatic efforts. But he also criticized the United States and Israel, which “have acted without engaging the United Nations or consulting with allies, including Canada.”

He also made the conflict another case for his call to “middle powers” to strike new alliances.

Carney, another man of the left, is quickly turning into one of the worst bad-faith actors on the First World stage. Oh, Canada, indeed.

On the other side of the coin, I must admit I am impressed by the German Chancellor.

German politicians scrambled to interpret the situation in the Middle East this weekend. Conservative voices in government urged caution in assessing the strikes by Israel and the United States on Iran.

Although the German government had long anticipated that US President Donald Trump might act against Tehran’s regime, German politicians were initially as stunned by the events as observers worldwide.

On Sunday, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz of the center‑right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) delivered a brief statement to the press. His spokesman, Stefan Kornelius, said Merz had been informed in advance about the military actions and had also spoken by telephone on Saturday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Over the weekend, Merz met with his cabinet’s security ministers before declaring: “The mullah regime is a terror regime, responsible for decades of oppression of the Iranian people.” He warned that Iran threatens Israel’s very existence and bears responsibility for the terror carried out by groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah. “Together with the United States and Israel, we share the goal of ending the terror of these regimes,” he said.

Note that part in the middle, “…Merz had been informed in advance about the military actions…”

What does Carney say again, “…United States and Israel…have acted without … consulting with allies…”

Huh. Place your bets.

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte is also solid.

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte on Monday praised ​U.S. and Israeli military action ‌against Iran, saying it was degrading Tehran’s ability to get its ​hands on nuclear and ​ballistic missile capability, but he said ⁠NATO itself would not ​be involved.

“It’s really important what the ​U.S. is doing here, together with Israel, because it is taking out, ​degrading the capacity of Iran ​to get its hands on nuclear capability, ‌the ⁠ballistic missile capability,” he told Germany’s ARD television in Brussels.

I hope everyone is keeping score here. I can guarantee you the Trump Administration is.

We have about 6,000 Americans of one stripe or another stationed in Rota, Spain alone—mostly related to our destroyers stationed there. Why are they there? Why, they are doing ballistic missile defense for <checks notes> Europe, while Spain only spends 1.4% of her GDP on defense. Hey, that is 0.1% of GDP more than Canada.

Ahem.

Perhaps Italy would be a better place to station those destroyers. Maybe Portugal. Maybe we can just transfer everyone back to CONUS (my preferred option).

Either way, this is a useful exercise. If your bases are not on your territory, you can only use them with the agreement of the host country. When you have entire political parties, mostly of the left, as part of the political systems of our allies, then you have to consider the reality that they may decide that we will not be able to use them when we want to.

If you are lucky, they’ll let you leave. If you are unlucky, they won’t. Don’t snicker at the latter. As the leftist parties continue to align themselves with the worst Islamists in their nations, this problem will only become sharper.

What is a way to avoid or mitigate this problem with access to foreign bases? You guessed it—a properly resourced and capable Navy backed up with an exceptionally capable and robust logistics and replenishment force.

We are a 10 carrier Navy in a 15 carrier world…maybe more.

You can add to the risk of precision long-range strike becoming a common threat to all your static bases to the political risk of the nations who host our bases we just assume will always be there for us to use them when our national security requirements need them.

This is a gift, regardless of the next election in the UK and Spain, if we are willing to take it.