If there was no NATO would Spain attack Gibraltar during the Falklands War?

I read somewhere that Gibraltar was included in the NATO treaty but the Falklands weren't? So if there was no NATO would Spain attack Gibraltar? Perhaps in this timeline instead of NATO there is a less formal security alliance and Spain might hope that the US will only care enough about mainland Britain. How easy is it to butterfly NATO away? Perhaps in this timeline the West does not want to antagonise the USSR as much and so they haven't formalised their mutual defence?
 

Flubber

Banned
Perhaps in this timeline instead of NATO there is a less formal security alliance and Spain might hope that the US will only care enough about mainland Britain.


Formal security alliance or not, the US is still going to be extremely interested in the Mediterranean and unfettered access to the same.
 
Also if relations were that bad the RN more than likely wouldn't be allowed to get as small as it did in OTL
 
No they wouldn't, because they know the UK is pulling its weight in the EU, while they aren't, thus any attack would be economic suicide.
 

Pangur

Donor
Formal security alliance or not, the US is still going to be extremely interested in the Mediterranean and unfettered access to the same.

Why would the Spanish interfere with access to the Med for the US? You have also forgotten about both Rota and Moron - two key US bases in Spain. However I can see the US putting a spot to this as where as they want to keep the Spanish in NATO they sure a h%ll will want to keep their UK bases as well. My money is on some severe banging of heads together by the US
 

Flubber

Banned
Why would the Spanish interfere with access to the Med for the US?


That wasn't my point.

You have also forgotten about both Rota and Moron - two key US bases in Spain.

Seeing as I served in Rota, I haven't.

However I can see the US putting a spot to this as where as they want to keep the Spanish in NATO they sure a h%ll will want to keep their UK bases as well. My money is on some severe banging of heads together by the US

And that was my point.

NATO or not, there's a Cold War on and the US isn't going to allow two allies in Western Europe to get into a squabble over a few square miles of rock.

The US needs those bases in both the UK and Spain. While the ones in Spain are important transhipment/supply points for US forces deployed in the Med, the various bases in the UK are also vitally important. The US isn't going to allow any situation to build to where it has to choose between the UK and Spain.
 
Wouldn't there need POD before/during WW2 that we can even butterfly NATO away? And on 1982 Spain had democracy and it hardly is so much intresting for Girbraltar that it would go to war. And even Franco wasn't so mad that he would have would go to war with UK.
 
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