UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw has defended plans to end the European Union's arms embargo on China, despite opposition from the US and Japan. Mr Straw, visiting Beijing, noted arms embargoes applied to China, Burma and Zimbabwe but not to North Korea, which he said had a terrible rights record. The EU imposed its arms ban on China in 1989 after troops opened fire on protestors in Tiananmen Square. Mr Straw also signed a deal on China-UK tourism. It is expected this would increase the number of Chinese tourists by 40,000 per year, providing $120m in revenue. ......snip Opposition But Mr Straw faces tough opposition to the move. When he was in Tokyo earlier this week, Japanese Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura told the British minister that his plan to remove the embargo was " a worrying issue that concerns the security and environment of not only Japan, but also East Asia overall". Washington argues that if the embargo is lifted, it could lead to a buying spree for arms that China could use to threaten its diplomatic rival Taiwan. Beijing says Taiwan is part of Chinese territory and wants to unite it with the mainland, by force if necessary. The US is bound by law to help Taiwan defend itself. Should we be worried about this? Full story here
Depends. It's all conflict investment again: can the West make more money off China than off Taiwan? Can it make more money off Taiwan if it is independent, or part of China?
yeah its a tough call either way you look at it. I would call it a no win situation. YOu will make some people happy and others... well not so happy. I dont think i would be able to offer a solution that wouldnt invoke much flaming from the community here, as im sure not many other people would be able to do. Taiwan obviously wants to be free so i see no reason why they shouldnt be. Granted if cali for example wanted to be free from the US would we allow it? probably not, its always harder to think of a middle solution when you have both sides to consider.
Is it? Hmmm, I seem to remember Nixon formally recognising Mainland China instead of Taiwan back in the 1970s. Does this mean that despite that treaties remain in place for Taiwan? Interesting. China has had the power to crush Taiwan like an ant for years, if they could get away with it they would, but just as the US wouldn't go to war with the Soviets over Poland, China wouldn't risk attacking Taiwan.
Arms embargo or no, when you have that many people you are a force to be respected. They could arm thier army with bolt action rifles and still over run and hold most of thier neighbors. Any conflict with China will involve WMD, because they have the M's.
There should be an arms embargo set upon all countries. Seeing as that will never happen, unless 3/4 of the world is annihilated. I dont trust China quite yet... seems like a loose cannon waiting to go off (excuse the pun); I can see an arms embargo being lifted as only a negative event in the current world climate. I wait for the day that a WMD is a man with three stones in a slingshot.
We seem to have a history of selling weapons to countries that inevitibly turn them against us. Yeah lets arm a potential aggressor In saying that surely China is in a position to arm it's self. Sod the arms treaties and work on economic trade instead, but i suppose there's more money to be made in weapons.
China's military is already pretty damn strong and with the rapid pace of advance in their own defence industry, I foresee them being the next superpower anyway. Selling them advanced weapons is only going to speed this up - personally I see China as a potential aggressor above any other nation in the region, and strengthening them doesn't seem wise to me. In time they will rival the US, but speeding up the process when they are still so beligerrant over Taiwan and still don't give a damn about any concepts of human rights or freedom seems like a bad idea to me.
It's just market forces at work, baby! Where money's to be made, weapons are sold, with or without embargo. The West has been selling weapons to Iraq for years, even after they were embargoed and sanctioned post the first Gulf war.
Doesn't make it right though . We have a history of shooting ourselves in the foot with such things. Iraq for one, though the majority of their armaments came from the USSR and France. In the Falklands British forces could have been faced with British built Type 42 destroyers fielded by the Argentine Navy. In East Timor we were left with a state whereby the UN mission, backed by Britain, was considered under threat from British manufacturer BAE Hawk jets sold to Indonesia. Then there was the embarrasment caused by arms exports to Zimbabwe. Then there was Rolls Royce selling the Soviets a jet engine shortly after WW2, which brought on their aerospace industry in leaps and bounds as producing a good jet powerplant was the biggest problem they had at the time.....just what we needed before the cold war The harsh reality is as you say - where money is to be made, morals go out the window. Some would suggest that politically its better for them to get weapons off us than someone else, and economically the same applies. I can't help but feel one day it'll bite us in the backside in a big way though, as if it hasn't enough already.
Sorry, I was being sarcastic. I agree with you wholeheartedly. Iraq, by the way, did not only get its hardware from the Soviet Union and France. Iraq started the Iran-Iraq war with a large Soviet-supplied arsenal, but needed additional weaponry as the conflict wore on. (sorry for the cut-and-paste job that follows from earier posts I have made on the subject, but we might as well lay out the facts By mid-1982, Iraq was on the defensive against Iranian human-wave attacks. Having decided that an Iranian victory would not serve its interests, the US began supporting Iraq. Donald Rumsfeld's trip to Baghdad opened of the floodgates during 1985-90 for lucrative U.S. weapons exports--some $1.5 billion worth-- including chemical/biological and nuclear weapons equipment and technology, along with critical components for missile delivery systems for all of the above. Some 771 weapons export licenses for Iraq were approved during this six year period by the U.S. Department of Commerce. Iraq received massive external financial support from the Gulf states, and assistance through loan programs from the U.S. The White House and State Department pressured the Export-Import Bank to provide Iraq with financing, to enhance its credit standing and enable it to obtain loans from other international financial institutions. The U.S. restored formal relations with Iraq in November 1984, but the U.S. had begun, several years earlier, to provide it with intelligence and military support (in secret and contrary to this country's official neutrality) in accordance with policy directives from President Ronald Reagan. Reports by the US Senate's committee on banking, housing and urban affairs -- which oversees American exports policy -- reveal that the US, under the successive administrations of Ronald Reagan and George Bush Sr, sold materials including anthrax, VX nerve gas, West Nile fever germs and botulism to Iraq right up until March 1992, as well as germs similar to tuberculosis and pneumonia (note that Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, and the First Gulf War was in 1991!). Other bacteria sold included brucella melitensis, which damages major organs, and clostridium perfringens, which causes gas gangrene. Classified US Defense Department documents show that Britain sold Iraq the drug pralidoxine, an antidote to nerve gas, in March 1992, after the end of the Gulf war. Pralidoxine can be reverse engineered to create nerve gas. The Senate committee's reports on 'US Chemical and Biological Warfare-Related Dual-Use Exports to Iraq', undertaken in 1992 in the wake of the Gulf war, give the date and destination of all US exports. The reports show, for example, that on May 2, 1986, two batches of bacillus anthracis -- the micro-organism that causes anthrax -- were shipped to the Iraqi Ministry of Higher Education, along with two batches of the bacterium clostridium botulinum, the agent that causes deadly botulism poisoning. One batch each of salmonella and E coli were shipped to the Iraqi State Company for Drug Industries on August 31, 1987. Other shipments went from the US to the Iraq Atomic Energy Commission on July 11, 1988; the Department of Biology at the University of Basrah in November 1989; the Department of Microbiology at Baghdad University in June 1985; the Ministry of Health in April 1985 and Officers' City, a military complex in Baghdad, in March and April 1986. Interestingly, shipments to Iraq went on even after Saddam ordered the gassing of the Kurdish town of Halabja, in which at least 5000 men, women and children died. The atrocity, which shocked the world, took place in March 1988 but a month later the components and materials of weapons of mass destruction were continuing to arrive in Baghdad from the US. Iraq has deployed Israeli-developed, sold-to-China, then sold-to-Iraq PL-8 missiles in the no-fly zones. A Chilean arms manufacturer sold Saddam deadly cluster bombs--reportedly with technical assistance from U.S. companies, The US allowed Sarkis to sell Hughes and Bell helicopters. The U.S. government approved the sale after Iraq promised that they would only be used for civilian purposes, but the helicopters were used as transportation during Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. Same with US-sold military trucks. Eighteen American corporations provided Saudi Arabia with military hardware which included TOW missiles. The Saudis then delivered MK-84 2,000 pound bombs to Iraq in violation of the Arms Export Control Act. And former US officials report that both Israel and the Dutch company Delft made unauthorized sales of US thermal-imaging tank sights to, among others, China. The sights were installed on China's 69 MOD-2 tanks, some of which were sold to Iraq. It's a small world after all...
I know, its just that as far as I am aware the *majority* of their weaponry was from the Soviets and the French
Yea, it could be the US wants arms to be sold to china by Britain - that way it knows exactly what China will get (cause anglo-US relationship) and has the excuse to arm itself to the neigh as well as get the go ahead with projects like Star Wars. War creates money, especially for western countries - research, development, manufacturing all have to be done within its own country. An arms race, however subtle will never constitute to war with a major power unless someone becomes incredibly stupid. There's not a chance in hell a western, or developed eastern countrys in this day will risk an attack on their own soil - bad for the economy, wont see their president in power at the end of it. Wars are fought abroad in countries noones ever bothered to think about outside of their geography class. Sad, but true. At the end of the day, people are selfish - if the countries doing well and they are making money, their leaders must be doing something right??
That is also why the US keeps boycotting Cuba but gives China favoured trading status. China has to be kept on the good side, as it is potentially dangerous, but Cuba is just a nice little harmless "token communist" four hours away from Miami, that'll keep civilian paranoia going strong enough for the Dept. of Defence to justify their investment. It's more involved than that. Look at the Third World countries. Look at the raw resources they sit on, unable to mine or exploit them for themselves. Wouldn't it be nice to get your Western hands on that, hmmm? So you check out the economy and the politics which drive it. Who is in power. Who wants to be in power. Who is likely to win, and would they do business with you if they did? So you back whatever wannabe dictator, rebel forces, aspiring leader is going to be favourable to that idea of to doing business with you (usually under the banner of endorsing Capitalism, or more euphemistically, "Democracy"), with money, weapons, resources. If they win, they owe you business contracts, export deals, a sizeable chunk of their Gross National Product. War, and selling weapons is a way for the West to make sure that, in a profitable Third World country, a government will end up in power that will allow that country to be exploited by the West. Conflict investment. You back a side, you reap the profits. Of course, other powerful nations will do the same and strike their own bargain with another contender to the throne. Thus bloody, protracted civil wars keep being fought in the Third World as major Western nations keep investing resources and weapons into their factions in an effort to try and gain control over those countries' economies and resources. The payoff is not just massive, but absolutely vital to keeping a hungry Western economy from starving to death. The cost to Third World citizens... well, you've all seen the pictures of Sudan and Ethiopia. Of course once you made this pact with the Devil, you better not welch on the deal. My theory is that Saddam Hussain did just that --he was helped in power by the US in the 80's, and when in the 90's he suddenly turned anti-US, he had to be made an example of. If his persecution by the Bush government sort of seems almost personal, that is because it was. True... true...
Absoultely agree mate. Only reason Korea hasnt been invaded again is that it's so close to China n all.
