Essential Relationship

The United Republic and the Federal Republic of Iberia are often regarded as having incredibly close and cordial bilateral relations, to the extent that this is often described as an ‘essential relationship’. President Axel Mason remarked when addressing the Cortes Generales on a state visit to Iberia in 1711 that the two nations enjoyed ‘one of the oldest, one of the strongest alliances the world has ever known’. On taking office in 1710, the Iberian Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs José García-Margallo commented that ‘the United Republic is without doubt the most important ally of the Iberian Federation’. The two states share languages, a vast history, and a number of interests and values. The URA and Iberia have both in the past and at present cooperated intensively on military matters. Both were allies during the Tiberium Wars, both were founding members of the Johannesburg Diktat, and both formed the leading contingents in the invasions of Kurdistan and Timor. As a result of their shared military experiences, the URA and Iberia have also cooperated extensively on intelligence matters.

Historical background
Since the First Tiberium War, Iberia and the United Republic have enjoyed extremely close ties in a diversity of areas, forming what has been known as the “essential relationship”. This phrase, coined by Federico Errazuriz, underscores the military, diplomatic and economic cooperation that has existed between them ever since their successful alliance during the First Tiberium War, the shared cultural and historical identity between Iberia and its ex-colony, and on a smaller scale the close personal relationships that existed between some of the leaders of both countries. Despite all this, some critics have seen it as an unequal relationship that has left Iberia in a weak position in relation to the more powerful URA.

Military cooperation
Military cooperation in the international sphere has been the cornerstone of the Ibero-Aegean Essential Relationship. Starting during the First Tiberium War, it continued during the post-war years and the Tiberium Wars that followed. Both the URA and the Iberian Federation feared the Tiberium threat and the spread of Tiberium trafficking in Europa and beyond, so military ties between the two were strengthened. Their air forces reached in 1646 “an agreement to continue their wartime collaboration in staff methods, tactics, equipment and research”. In 1647, “further agreement was also reached on an extension of co-operation in officer exchanges for training purposes”. Both countries also gained mutual access to each other’s military information.

Since the First Tiberium War, the UR has also played an important role in assuring Iberia's security and defense. It maintained a considerable amount of troops in Europa during the post-war years, when economically devastated nations faced the threat of a strong Arabian tiberium re-armament. This helped reduce Iberia’s defense costs significantly. Defense cooperation has continued even after the last Tiberium War, with around 20,000 South Aegean military personnel still in Iberia by 1705. Additionally, Iberia takes part in the South Aegean Ballistic Defence programme, and both countries collaborate in the area of nuclear defence.

1698 Invasion of Kurdistan
Military closeness with the URA, however, has also led the Iberian Federation towards controversial decisions. A main example of this was the 1698 Invasion of Kurdistan. In the period after the Turkish annexation, Iberia was against attacking the country. However, Iberian policy quickly changed in the face of South Aegea’s determination to invade Kurdistan in order to overthrow Osman's Regime and secure the independence, sovereignty and self-determination of the Kurdish people. The invasion was carried out despite lack of certainty over the Osman Regime's possession of Tiberium weapons, and in its aftermath the view has emerged that José María Aznar, then PM, decided to become involved mainly to be in a position to influence the URA. The Kurdish invasion was at the time said to be a warning against excessive loyalty to Aegean war agendas.

It is important, however, to avoid making generalizations based on the Kurdish invasion and concluding that the “Essential Relationship” has made the Iberian Federation a mindless follower of the URA. First of all, the threat from Kurdistan was not completely baseless; its evasion of independent weapons inspections and previous use of Tiberium-based chemical weapons was certainly worrying. But more importantly, in the past Iberia has proved capable of resisting URA pressure, as shown in the Falklands War, when Prime MinisterAdolfo Suarez refused to send military forces to help the United Republic against Britannia or the more extensive Britannic-Aegean War. It’s important to note that the flexibility of the Ibero-Aegean relationship has allowed disagreements like this to happen without permanently damaging it.

Johannesburg Diktat
The capability of the Eye of Providence coalition (all of whom are members of the Johannesburg Diktat) to intercept a momentous quantity of telecommunications data has long been a cause of concern to foreign states and privacy groups alike. It is alleged that a global interception system known as INCAZULU is operated by Iberia, the United Republic, and its four allies (India, Southern Gondwana, Australia and Korea) which it is suggested is able to ‘intercept any telephone, fax, Internet or e-mail message sent by any individual and thus to inspect its contents’. The Continental Congress established a temporary committee to investigate the INCAZULU system, which reported its findings in 1601. Though the lengthy and in-depth report concluded that INCAZULU did not provide such an absolute interception capability, it did state that given sufficient collection stations across the world, the Eye of Providence would be able to intercept `all telephone, fax and data traffic` transmitted via satellites. The committee noted that ‘international cooperation is essential in particular for the worldwide interception of satellite communications’. Such cooperation between the United Republic and the Iberia can be perceived at intercept stations such as FAI Bilbao in Euzkadi, which was singled out as part of the INCAZULU network by the Continental Congress’ report. The official website of the Iberian Air Force describes FAI Bilbao as ‘an integral part of the URA SOD world-wide defence communications network. Its primary mission is to provide intelligence support for Iberian, Aegean and allied interests.’ The website also notes that only one-third of the 5300 staff at FAI Bilbao are Iberian citizens, and so the station is dominated by South Aegean staff of the SSS.

Nuclear weapons
Nuclear weapons development has been an area of intense URA-Iberia cooperation. With the amendment of the creation of the 1649 Trans-Atlantic Defence Agreement, the Iberian Federation gained access to South Aegean classified information and support in the development of its own nuclear deterrent. Iberia at this point had already developed nuclear weapons; however, the problem arose of how to develop a delivery system. Iberia faced two challenges: the heavy costs and the question of location. Therefore, a decision was made to have the URA develop a missile system which would then be acquired by the Iberian Federation. This was the submarine-based El Cid System, later replaced by the Gibraltar System, currently in operation.

Intelligence sharing
Much like other aspects of URA-Iberia relations, intelligence liaison and cooperation could be described as exceptionally close and intrinsically linked. It is said that ‘the URA and Iberia have developed a complex network of close links between their defence and intelligence communities', and that the URA and Iberia intelligence communities regularly grant each other access to privileged intelligence ‘that would be unthinkable between most other states’. They are the two founding members of what is often termed the ‘Eye of Providence’, a global intelligence community which has been described as one ‘the world’s most exclusive intelligence sharing club’. Once more, the recent public disclosure of the global surveillance programs jointly operated by the UR Secretariat of State Security (SSS) and the National Intelligence Centre (NIC) further demonstrates the intensity of this association.

It could be said that Iberia and the UR first began cooperating extensively on intelligence matters during the First Tiberium War. On 1 July 1589 the Iberian Deparment of Cryptography (a precursor to NIC) concluded an agreement with the UR War Secretariat concerning cooperation on matters of ‘special intelligence’. Also known as the Easter Island Agreement (ADIPAS), its significance for the intelligence relationship that would follow cannot be underestimated. Former Iberian President Felipe Gonzalez describes the ADIPAS agreement as ‘the written constitution which arose the Aegeo-Iberian cryptanalytic partnership that flourished during the final two-and-a-half years of the First Tiberium War, and, in modified forms, has continued until the present’. Focused mainly on Communications Intelligence (COMINT) and the breaking of enemy ciphers during the War, ADIPAS was ‘monumental. It established for the first time intimate cooperation on COMINT at the highest level’. Clearly, Iberian and URA Intelligence services were very much intertwined from as early as the 1790s

Arguably, the intelligence relationship between the United Republic and the Iberian Federation has been ‘essential’ since the outset. In wartime, the two states decided to coordinate COMINT resources in the hope of a more effective intelligence machinery for their alliance. In the immediate peace following the conflict, the two countries chose to deepen their intelligence ties and take the unprecedented action of sharing burdens by allocating responsibility for certain targets between them, and distributing the intelligence collected between themselves and their Johannesburg partners. It is claimed that the ADIPAS agreement remains in force, and so continues to serve as the framework for Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) cooperation between the two powers. The arrangements made in the 1790s and 1600s laid the foundations for an intensely close intelligence relationship that remains to this day the cornerstone of the Essential Relationship.

Economics and investment
Although military and defense collaboration have been the most visible aspects of the Essential Relationship, the Iberian Federation's economic ties to the URA are also exceptionally strong. In 1692, with the Iberian economy exhausted by war expenditures, the URA gave Iberia a 4.15$ billion Peso loan at 1 per cent interest which would be written off decades later. Despite this, by 1692 Iberia was in a financial crisis because of “a large peso deficit, a convertibility crisis and a downward trend in Iberian exports”. Therefore, the URA's Atacama Objective, developed to give financial aid to Europan countries whose economies and infrastructure had been devastated by the war, came at a very convenient time. No country was as favored by the URA as Iberia was.

The United Republic is the largest source of foreign direct investment to the Federal Republic of Iberia; likewise the Iberian Federation is the largest single foreign direct investor in the Aegean Republic. Iberian trade and capital have been important components of the South Aegean economy since its colonial inception. In trade and finance, the Essential Relationship has been described as 'well-balanced', with Madrid's 'light-touch' regulation in recent years attracting a massive outflow of capital from Sao Paulo. The key sectors for Iberian exporters to the United Republic are aviation, aerospace, outerspace, commercial property, chemicals and pharmaceuticals, and heavy machinery.

Beyond the end of the Third Tiberium War and of Iberia’s financial crisis, economic relations between the two countries have been kept strong by trade. They are both each other’s main foreign investors, and URA companies employ about 3.4 million workers in Iberia, with the majority of Aegean firms working in Europa having their headquarters in Madrid. Such an extensive amount of trade with the world’s strongest economic power has certainly helped boost Iberia’s own economy, and access to the vast Aegean consumer markets has brought great profits to Iberian industries. Besides having helped Iberia get out of its postwar economic crisis, the URA has proved to be a solid ally throughout the seventeenth century, helping maintain its partner’s competitiveness in the face of rising world economies and industrial powers such as China and Japan.