03-28-05
So said the French ambassador to the U.S., Jean-David Levitte, in a recent speech at Yale University. Well, then. I am glad that was settled, aren't you? Heck, why should the we in the U.S.A. get all uptight about Europe wishing to sell China, our greatest enemy (so proclaimed by them), all the arms the Europeans can dump on them? What IS all the fuss about, anyway?
It certainly is difficult to imagine what the French think will happen once the current European ban of selling high tech arms and arms systems components to the Chinese is lifted. One presumes that they imagine that nothing "bad" will happen. But one cannot shake the feeling that they secretly hope that such sales will be their best avenue to their much ballyhooed goal of "counter balancing American hegemony" that they have so dearly wished for these recent decades. Then again, maybe that hope isn't so secret after all.
The Bush administration has warned the Europeans (and since France imagines herself to BE Europe she has graciously responded) that lifting the ban of these weapons sales to the Communist Regime will destabilize East Asia in short order.
But France has been swayed by China's plaintive claims that the U.S. supported ban is merely a viscous political discrimination and totally illegitimate. Apparently we should believe them that they would play nice with these new weapons and just as apparently France and many Europeans do take them at their word.
Ambassador Levitte has been reported as saying that he sees no reason why Europe should slow down or reconsider lifting the weapons ban. "There's no reason at that stage to change what we have in mind, but there are many reasons to increase our efforts of explanation," he said.
Yet this was after the Chinese "parliament" passed an anti-secession law that would legalize military force against Taiwan if that Island nation were to decide to stand on it's own as a sovereign nation and seek formal Independence from the Mainland.
Ambassador Levitte doesn't see an escalation of saber rattling by the Chinese even before they are the beneficiary of European arms sales as something to worry about. It seems all he thinks they need do to convince the U.S. that these sales are harmless is to "explain" it better.
Simply amazing, isn't it?
In some of his remarks later the Ambassador said, "The last thing we need between the U.S. and Europe now is another crisis, and a crisis that is based on a real misunderstanding." Just what is that "misunderstanding"? It could be that the U.S. is just being mean to those poor, innocent Chinese. It might be that France is just right... as far as France is concerned. But, what is really being misunderstood is that Europe could not care less about destabilizing East Asia if their actions cause it as long as China is able to rise as a direct threat to the power and might of the United States. France is casting it's lot with a despotic, oppressive government instead of the United States.
But, can we ever expect less of the French?
By Warner Todd Huston
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