When arms embargoes become procurement problems: Spain, Israel and normative decoupling in defence acquisition

Arms embargoes are usually analysed as foreign-policy decisions or export-control instruments. This article argues that, when the targeted state is also embedded in the sanctioning state's defence acquisition system, an embargo becomes a domestic procurement-governance problem. It develops the concept of normative decoupling: the attempt to reduce, suspend or terminate dependencies on a politically or legally unacceptable supplier while preserving military capability, industrial continuity and fiscal governability. Using Spain's post-2023 disengagement from Israeli defence technology as a theory-building case, the article examines how a restrictive policy, subsequently codified in law, interacted with pre-existing supplier dependence to produce differentiated programme-level outcomes. Spike/MELLS, SILAM and Airbus reveal three pathways: contested rerouting, capability-disruptive reconfiguration and exceptional authorisation. The variation is traced to the interaction of political visibility, technological embeddedness, operational-industrial criticality and substitutability. The article shows that legal disconnection and technological disconnection move at different speeds, and that unmanaged selectivity can turn normative rupture into selective opacity in contemporary European defence procurement systems under pressure.