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WaPo: Why is Europe Eager to Sell Arms to China?
EFL The European Union is on the verge of lifting the arms embargo it imposed on the People's Republic of China following the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. If the E.U. carries out this threat -ââ¬" and make no mistake, this would be a genuinely hostile act against the United States -- the transatlantic tiffs of recent years could come to seem minor, and Bush could be saying a final farewell to old allies rather than renewing strategic bonds. Over the past 18 months, Europeans have been asserting that the embargo, as French President Jacques Chirac told Chinese leader Hu Jintao during the latter's visit to Paris early last year, ''no longer makes any sense.'' On a return visit to Beijing last October, Chirac went further, declaring that denying China advanced arms was ''motivated purely and simply by hostility.'' German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder chimed in recently, telling Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao -- as the two signed another set of business deals -- that he, too, favored lifting the embargo. It's hard to know at this point whether the Europeans are acting like fools or knaves in this drama. Chirac makes no secret of his dream of an E.U. that acts as a ''counterweight'' to American hyperpower, and he's often able to convince Schroeder that what's good for France is also good for Germany. On its own, Europe can do very little to balance the United States, as the experience of Iraq suggests, but it can accelerate the pace at which China may emerge to play that role. But in preparing to lift the embargo, the Europeans are failing to take into account the potential blowback from the United States. Their myopia is understandable, given that the White House has said little about the consequences of arms sales to Beijing -- Rice was certainly in no mood for confrontation during her recent trip. Not to mention that the Bush administration has made plenty of sunny pronouncements about the overall state of Sino-American relations; last November, then Secretary of State Colin Powell called them "the best in 30 years." In the short term, ending the ban on trading arms to China is almost certain to undermine what transatlantic defense cooperation remains after the Cold War -- and there's still quite a bit of it. The United States would have no choice but to assume that technology transfers to Europe would be likely to end up in Chinese hands. This should especially concern the British government, which has invested more than $2 billion in the $200-billion-plus Joint Strike Fighter program. The long-term geostrategic implications are even more profound. European weapons in the hands of the PLA would help tip the balance in the Taiwan Strait against Taipei and pour fuel on smoldering Sino-Japanese relations. It's ironic that a Europe that takes pride in having extracted itself from centuries of great power rivalries could now exacerbate precisely such tensions in the Pacific. There is still time for sanity to prevail. President Bush has an opportunity this week to speak frankly about the costs and consequences of lifting the embargo. He should propose a U.S.-E.U. strategic dialogue to keep an eye on China's threat to regional security and its human rights and proliferation records. Europe, in turn, would postpone its decision on the embargo as leaders from both sides work together to grapple with China's rise. Opening such a dialogue will help preserve a translatlantic relationship based, as Rice put it, on the "values that unite us." Posted by: Mrs. Davis 2005-02-21 |
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