Restrainers in the West have found themselves homeless. President Donald Trump ’s catastrophic decision to launch a war against Iran has displaced the non-interventionist voices on the American right . In Europe, meanwhile, the bland Atlanticist centrism and, worse, the aggressive moralism represented by the German Greens, has accentuated the perceptions of hypocrisy and double standards: determined pushback against the Russian aggression in Ukraine and yet shameful silence on Israel’s crimes in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran.
In this desolate landscape, the restrainer’s attention now turns to Madrid. And emerging, improbably, as the leader of the restrainer coalition is the prime minister of Spain, Pedro Sánchez.
Sánchez has been prime minister since 2018, and for most of that time, he hasn’t distinguished himself with a grand foreign policy vision. After all, he is a member of the mainstream, center-left, conventionally Atlanticist Socialist party. It led Spain to join NATO in 1986, and a party member, Javier Solana, was the alliance’s secretary general at the time when it bombed Serbia, without United Nations Security Council authorization.
However, since the start of Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza, in response to Hamas’ terrorist attack in October 2023, Sánchez has emerged as Tel Aviv’s leading critic in Europe. In doing this, he broke decisively with the Western consensus: He demanded that the European Union-Israel association agreement be suspended, propelled Spain to recognize Palestinian statehood, and permanently withdrew the Spanish ambassador from Israel. Sánchez has emerged as Tel Aviv’s leading critic in Europe. When Trump attacked Iran, Sánchez publicly and immediately opposed it, warning that another Middle Eastern war would destabilize the entire region. He prohibited the use of military bases in Spain and closed Spanish air space for attacks on Iran, drawing the ire of Trump and his allies. Again, he was ahead of other European leaders who hesitated , wavered and offered, at best, lukewarm lip service to international law.
As Almut Rochowanski, a European analyst, said to me in a conversation about Sánchez, this may have been a moment for the prime minister when “greatness was thrust upon him.” Recent events have transformed a centrist manager into a visionary leader.
This vision found its fullest expression in Sánchez’s address at Tsinghua University during his recent visit to China. Sánchez told the West a hard truth: The unipolar moment is over. “What is happening today,” he argued, “is not a transfer of hegemonies. It is a multiplication of poles.” He invoked Matteo Ricci, a 16th century Italian Jesuit, who traveled to China with a map that placed Europe at the center only to discover that China did not see itself on the periphery.
For restrainers, this is a vital pivot. Sánchez argues that peace is achievable not through American enforcement or Atlanticist liberal internationalism, but through a world where the West deals with others based on respect and equality. Multipolarity, he insists, is not a hypothesis. It is a fact. Sánchez’s vision explicitly rejects zero-sum moralism, the view that “the growth of some is a loss for the rest.” This challenges the neoconservative habit of framing every rising power as an existential threat requiring military containment. Treating every competitor as an enemy to be destroyed, rather than a rival to be managed or a partner to cooperate with when mutually beneficial, is a recipe for endless war. Sánchez’s opposition to the Iran war flowed from this instinct.
To understand why Sánchez matters, contrast his language of respect with the hegemonic vision of the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen. In a recent interview , she declared: “We must succeed in completing the European continent, so that it won’t be influenced by Russians, Turks or Chinese.”
This is not statecraft. It is imperial fantasy. “Completing the continent” — what does that even mean? The continent is already complete. Von der Leyen imagines a Europe that excludes other powers by fiat, treats them as immutable adversaries. She speaks of “influence” as if it were a contamination to be purified. The inclusion of Turkey — a NATO ally and long-standing candidate for membership — reveals the racist undertone. This is not about strategic competition. It is about civilizational exclusion.
The rest of the Atlanticist consensus is equally stale. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz offers frozen orthodoxy, for he is a man incapable of saying anything that might disturb submission to Washington’s priorities. French President Emmanuel Macron makes noises about independence then retreats , his talk of European strategic autonomy remaining mostly that, talk. The EU High Representative for Foreign Policy Kaja Kallas is a monothematic Russia hawk. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer struggles to have it both ways: defend international law and preserve transatlantic loyalty , at best offering a measure of managerial competence, not leadership.
Sánchez is not perfect. But he is the only European leader willing to say that the world has changed and the West must adapt — not by dominating, but by learning to share.
A restrainer would see flaws in his vision. Sánchez calls for “reinforced multilateralism” and a more “democratic” Security Council. But the U.N. does not constrain great powers. The focus on the institution’s architecture — reform of the Security Council, charter, representation quotas, etc. — does not in itself address the hard work of the power management. The seats for Brazil or India will not necessarily stop a U.S.-China war over Taiwan or bring peace to the Middle East and Ukraine.
Sánchez’s throwaway line about wanting a female U.N. secretary-general is a nod to identity politics — but Von der Leyen and Kallas are both women, and both are fundamentally opposed to everything he stands for. Multipolarity, he insists, is not a hypothesis. It is a fact. But Sánchez is not wrong that multipolarity without rules leads to war. The Cold War was managed by rules — not by the nebulous “rules-based international order” the Atlanticists invoke when convenient, but by specific arrangements: international law, arms control treaties, crisis channels. Those rules did not abolish rivalry, but they prevented catastrophe. Can Sánchez lead the restrainers? He has certainly earned the right to try.
He opposed the Iran war when he was almost the only one in the West to do so. He condemned the genocide in Gaza when nearly every other Western leader looked away. He went to Beijing and repudiated the European narcissism while prudently acknowledging that on “some issues, we won’t agree,” such as trade deficits. These are not the actions of a man who confuses wishful thinking with strategy.
His Tsinghua speech may have raised skepticism over U.N. reform, global public goods, institutional salvation. But a fair reading allows that he may be using the vocabulary of multilateralism to describe a harder reality: The unipolar moment is dead, the West must learn to share power, and without agreed strategic rules the coming multipolar competition will turn catastrophic.
Against von der Leyen’s hegemonic fantasy of a “completed” continent purged of foreign influence — a vision that is not only impossible but dangerous — Sánchez offers respect for multipolar reality. That is not idealism. It is the only sane posture available to a continent that is no longer the center of the world.
For now, the restrainers watch Madrid — and for the first time in a long time, they watch with something other than pure skepticism.
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