Posted on 12/23/2004 5:58:34 PM PST by maui_hawaii
The Pentagon is increasing pressure on European allies over weapons sales to China, warning that lifting the European Union arms embargo on Beijing could lead to a curtailment of military technology co-operation between the US and Europe.
The EU signalled at this month's Brussels summit that it intended to lift the embargo - in place since Tiananmen Square in 1989 - perhaps as early as the first half of next year.
But Pentagon officials said EU members should expect a "very powerful reaction", particularly in Congress, if the embargo was removed. "This has the potential to be a big brawl," said a senior Pentagon official involved in China policy.
"They're talking about helping the Chinese kill Americans more effectively," said the Pentagon official. "This is not what Europeans should be doing."
Defence officials said the most likely reaction would be a withdrawal of Bush administration backing for new measures to improve military technology transfers to European allies.
"If a situation arises where European systems are pointed at American personnel and platforms, one cannot just assume we're going to continue our arm sales," said a second senior Pentagon official. "Efforts we've made to open, widen, deepen transatlantic defence industrial trade are going to be circumscribed."
Such a move would hit the UK harder than any other European ally because of its increasing reliance on US military technology to keep its weapons systems at the cutting edge. Just three months ago, Britain won congressional backing for special preferred status when applying to gain access to US military technologies, a status that could be rescinded.
Any US retaliation could also hit the UK defence industry disproportionately hard because the two biggest foreign Pentagon suppliers - BAE Systems and Rolls-Royce - are British.
In recent weeks, the UK government has tried to defuse the brewing transatlantic row by mounting a diplomatic offensive aimed at convincing Washington that the embargo's end would not lead to a flood of new exports to Beijing.
The UK effort, which consisted of a mission to Washington last week, has included British promotion of an EU "code of conduct" and other restrictions that would purportedly limit and track weapons sales to China even after the end of the embargo.
The standoff has once again put the UK in the awkward role of transatlantic intermediary, a position it has repeatedly found itself since the war in Iraq. British officials have argued that US backing for a transparent export control regime would stymie French efforts to make weapons sales more opaque.
But Pentagon opponents said the UK-backed measures were inadequate, and expressed frustration with British efforts. "The British are sort of going with the flow, and that we're disappointed with," said the senior Pentagon official. "They pick issues on which they want to be good Europeans; this is not a good one to pick."
The UK foreign office declined to comment on the specifics of last week's mission to Washington.
The Stalinist EU will, no doubt, ignore our warning and continue to arm the communist red Chinese.
At their own peril.
Since your flag indicates you "belong" to the EU,I thought you'd like to see some more of their nonsense.
Thanks for the thread.
An embargo would put the NATO organization in a strange position, no?
It would put Europe's scientific community in the pot ASAP. They would lose lots - o - money too.
Most likely what would happen is all joint development programs would cease rather immediately.
It would put Europe's scientific community in the pot ASAP. They would lose lots - o - money too.
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Absolutely. But the stupid wanna-be emperors of the EU, Chirac, et al, are so drunk with arrogance and anti-USA strategy, that they are blind to such moronic actions. Let them try it, and choke on it. China would love the opportunity to influence and control, even in the slightest degree, to begin with, the EU. Stupid move Napoleon Chirac....the move is just another move "in the face of the USA"...fools.
As I understand export control laws, if the EU lift their embargo, they then move by extension onto the embargo list since arms could transit through the EU. It's the law.
Yup. Pretty clear. EU are gonna be hurtin' if they go through with this.
Basically yeah. All that uni polar world garbage...
This is not happening in a vacuum, and it isn't an accident. What France and Germany are doing, mitigated only by ocassional UK diplomacy, is smacking down U.S. military and economic power at every turn.
France and Germany are playing this game against Russia, too. They are doing this by formenting a Ukrainian breakaway from Moscow.
Likewise, France and Germany are behind the diplomatic opposition to the U.S. in Iraq, against the U.S. position to side with our own economic interests instead of jumping into the Kyoto Global Warming nonsense, attacking our sovereignty via the International Criminal Court, pounding us diplomatically for ending the U.S. - CCCP ABM treaty, and in general opposing the U.S. at every turn, militarily and economically (e.g. sanctions against MicroSoft, Boeing, etc.).
France and Germany are making a central European powerplay; a traditional, historically repeated move that re-occurs every few decades in war-mongering Europe. In Talleyrand-esqe fashion, they are pitting Russia against the Ukraine, China against the U.S. (as per this thread), as well as opposing the U.S. directly in Iraq and Iran.
Why do they care about Kyoto? Answer: because it imposes economic penalties on the U.S.
Why do they care about the International Criminal Court? Answer: because it shifts the power of the world's legal systems to Europe.
Why do they care about the Ukraine? Answer: because 75% of Germany's oil and gas flows through there via Russian contracts...effectively holding France and Germany's anti-Russian moves hostage until such time as the Ukraine switching allegiances.
Why do they care about exporting a meager amount of military technology to China? Answer: because this puts America on the defensive with yet another global power in yet another far-flung sphere (i.e. making weaker via over-strech).
Every single action that France and Germany are taking matches the consistent pattern of building up Franco-Germanic military, economic, and diplomatic power at the direct expense of the Russians and Americans.
The sane voice has been the UK, but at some point France and Germany are going to demand that the UK pick sides. Poland, Italy, and Spain had better hope that the UK chooses well, as France and Germany will no doubt go for their jugular veins post-haste should the UK choose poorly.
1)Actually they are following the British strategy: convince the US that lifting the embargo would cause only small sales and technology transfers to China, and a better tracking of China's arsenals. At the same time British and EU companies of countries that took part to the Iraq campaign will try to win more military orders from the Pentagon.
2)If it doesn't work and US authorities seem serious about retaliation, it will pass the French strategy: mantain the embargo and sell to China in the dark,disguising militar equipment and technology as civil.
In any case in the EU they are going to full hedge their bets,on politics, military and economics.
I hope that this embargo won't be lifted, but Russia sells very advanced weapon to China anyway.
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