Word: nato
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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González called the vote a "triumph for the Spanish people." It was also a triumph for González. He had taken office in 1982 on an anti-NATO platform, but then changed his mind and supported continued Spanish membership. During the campaign, he hinted that he would resign and call early elections if he lost. "I always said that the final result depended on Felipe's final address, and I wasn't far wrong," said Foreign Ministry Spokesman Inocencio Arias. After lying low for much of the prevoting skirmishes, González pulled out all the stops in the last...
Even so, to many the effort seemed hopeless only two weeks ago. Anti-NATO activists were attracting hundreds of thousands to rallies. Also, Manuel Fraga Iribarne, head of the Popular Alliance, the main conservative opposition party, urged people to abstain, claiming the referendum was just a political ploy by the Socialists. One prominent voter who ignored the boycott was popular King Juan Carlos, who said he was doing his "civic duty" when he and Queen Sofia cast ballots amid television cameras at a school near their Madrid palace. The King does not vote in municipal and general elections so that...
...helicopters and ten S-3 Vikings for antisubmarine warfare. By 1991, Secretary Lehman is all but assured of having three new Nimitz-class nuclear carriers. Lehman makes clear that he wants a carrier force that can engage and defeat the Soviet navy. At the outbreak of a war between NATO and the Warsaw Pact in Europe, he would send carriers storming toward Norway to block the Soviet fleet from reaching the North Atlantic. Sinking the Soviet navy, Lehman argues, would turn the battle of Europe, just as the Battle of Trafalgar ended Napoleon's dream of conquering England...
...first mass demonstrations against the U.S. since the pacifist wave of 1983 erupted last week around U.S. military bases and in major West European cities from Milan to Madrid. Thousands marched through streets, calling President Reagan a murderer and demanding that their country withdraw from NATO. The protesters mirrored the official positions of most European governments. When the U.S. planes went into Libya, only the British government of Margaret Thatcher actively supported Reagan. The Mitterrand-Chirac administration in France, like Felipe González Márquez's government in Spain, refused to let U.S. aircraft overfly the two countries. The Italian...
Perhaps the strongest case for Western Europe's opposition to the U.S. retaliation is the military one. European officers, indeed even some senior NATO figures, argue that the U.S. strike was not strong enough to attain its military objectives. It neither destroyed nor destabilized the Gaddafi regime. It may, instead, have compelled moderate Arab governments to rally behind Gaddafi. Mitterrand and Chirac complained to U.S. Envoy Vernon Walters that a limited bombing raid could stir up a new wave of Islamic extremism. "With a victory like that, who needs a defeat?" said Dominique Moïsi, a French strategic expert...