Joe Biden does not trust Pedro Sánchez and prefers to remove him from the international summit with allies that the United States organizes this week, a meeting in which up to 30 countries will be present: from powers such as the United Kingdom, Germany or Japan, passing through key states in the fight against cybercrime such as Israel, Romania or South Korea, to nations such as Kenya, Nigeria or Estonia. From Spain, no sign.
That Spain is not exactly a priority for the Biden Administration is something about which, more and more, evidence abounds. The joy with which the hosts of the Spanish government welcomed the arrival of Biden to the White House has not been, far from it, reciprocated from Washington. On the contrary, the disdain of the current US government towards the Spanish Executive, which was so explicitly illustrated in that chase through the corridors of NATO in Brussels from Pedro Sánchez to Joe Biden does not stop materializing with uncomfortable periodicity for national interests. The last example we have in a cybersecurity summit organized by the United States this week in which up to 30 allied countries participate and in which Spain does not appear anywhere .
The call has been made by the White House and it is a virtual summit organized by the National Security Council of the United States to deal with the threat of ransomware from a global point of view. Nor will Russia participate in the meeting, a country that could currently pose the greatest global threat in terms of cybercrime from a political point of view, while the Kremlin usually appears as a direct or indirect regular suspect in operations around the globe. . Biden does not trust Putin, nor does he trust Spain, a country that he did not consider appropriate to include in the meeting.
These are the countries, in alphabetical order, that are part of the lineup: Australia, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Czech Republic, Dominican Republic, Estonia, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Lithuania , Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Poland, Republic of Korea, Romania, Singapore, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates and United Kingdom.
Spain “out of democracy”
These countries are, as a White House representative explained this week, “only close allies.” Today Spain can hardly be considered a close ally of the United States when a few dates ago a senator accused the Sánchez government of “adopting points of view that are outside of democracy and Human Rights.”
And, furthermore, who made these accusations was not just any senator, but the head of the International Relations Committee of the United States Senate, Bob Menendez, and, to make matters worse, also a member of the Democratic Party. These statements were made at the nomination ceremony of the new ambassador that the Biden Administration sends to Spain, Julissa Reynoso, who arrives in Madrid with a clear mission: to try to redirect the international projection of the Spanish Government, which is being watched from the United States with suspicion. And not only because of the presence of some faithful partners allied with Bolivarianism in Latin America, but because the United States follows with concern the work of a former president like José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero in the whitewashing of the drug dictatorship of Nicolás Maduro.
Failed candidacy for the European center
A little less than a year ago, Spain suffered another international setback in terms of cybersecurity when León wanted to be chosen as the headquarters for the European Cybersecurity Center. The Castilian-Leonese city, headquarters of the National Cybersecurity Institute (INCIBE), aspired to continue growing as an important hub in this matter, but fell in the vote that was held in December of last year 2020.
The Romanian capital, Bucharest, was the one that took the cat into the water to host the community center. Romania has become a thriving pole in the cybersecurity industry internationally and, of course, is one of the 30 countries convened by Biden for this summit in which Spain does not appear.
