Our good friend Saru the White Wizard recently had this to say about reports of French Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie defending arms sales to China:
No time to write this up as a blog, so if any of you want to pick it
up, have at it.I don’t think any of you know this, but I can speak a little bit of French. Or at least, I can understand a little bit of it. For example, I read in the FT this morning that the French Minister of Defense, one Michele Alliot-Marie (Condi, she ain’t) told an FT reporter:
“The lifting of the [EU arms] embargo could be a better protection forus than maintaining it… China is rapidly developing its industry, and today our experts say that in five years China could make exactly the same arms that we have today. And they will do it if they cannot
imports. So maybe if we can sell them arms, they will not make them. And in five years’ time, they will not have the technology to make them.”English translation: “If we don’t hurry and sell the Chinese arms, think of all the business we’ll lose out on!”
Is this woman fucking serious? First of all, in what way does China threaten France such that it needs “better protection.” And who the hell is this “us” to whom she refers?
And isn’t her logic flawless? “If we sell them arms, they won’t make them. And, the won’t have the technology to make them” Great idea! Only one small problem – the technology won’t matter because they’ll already have the arms!
Maybe if the French had just given Sadam chemical, biological, or nuclear arms years ago, he wouldn’t have tried to make them, and then this whole nasty war could have been avoided.
Anyone who thought that absurdism died with Ionesco (and yes, I know he was Romanian, but the French at him up) has a lot to be excited about with someone like this making public statements.
I mean hey, don’t they say, “give a man a gun, he kills for a day, teach a man to make guns, he kills for a lifetime?” Makes perfect sense if you think in terms of axioms.
Is France really so hard up for cash that they need to encourage a big bully brat of a government like the CCP? Or is it that they just don’t want to get on their bad side?
That could be the case. Maybe it wasn’t pure conjecture when she said that the Chinese wouldn’t develop weapons like this if the French sold them to them. What if the Chinese government made just such a promise to France? Would it matter?
Ahh, China and France, China and France. Certainly, the French are at least as scared of the Chinese as we in the US are. We need their growth, like their products, but chafe at their internal policies and potential power.
Part of me wants to say that China is no more of a threat to France than the US is. Cultural influence from the US, not China, is what ruffles feathers in France, isn’t it?
Chinese schools are popping up all over the world to make sure that there’s less friction when seemingly inevitable Chinese international expansion occurs. The Chinese military is modernizing, and China’s space program, aside from the purely nationalistic aims of manned space flight and putting a man on the moon, is set to develop its own sophisticated satellite system with its own version of GPS.
But which is worse? The profiteers in America who are rushing to open up Chinese joint ventures or sign with outsourcing firms, or those in France who want to sell them soon-to-be-obsolete weapons? Either could simply beef up a future threat to both countries.
I don’t think the French calculus of “threat” is quite the same at all. First of all, France does not have nearly 100,000 troops stationed in East Asia. Nor does France have a mutual security treat with Japan, (whose relations with China are currently abysmal and rapidly deteriorating) obliging it to come to the latter’s defense. And finally, France’s parliment is not full of elected officials who would demand reciprocal military action against China should hostilities break out with Taiwan. (Granted, the likelihood of these scenarios is not extremely high at the moment, with the possible exception of the latter, but there you have it.)
One final point, if I may. Joint ventures generally can’t be used to kill Americans. French Mirage fighters, on the other hand would do the job nicely.
YOu idiot.. It was the Americans that gave and sold Sadam the majority of his conventional weapons and unconvential weapons.. don’t forget the contract that the Americans had with Sadam. Let us buy your petrol for cheap and you can buy our arms at a good price. Hence one of the main reasons Sadam attacked Kuwait was because his government had gotten so poor from buying American arms while at the same time having cheap oil. so he was getting in debt. I bet the majorit of americans are too fucking ignorant to know the truth or even want to really seek it, as they are too lazy.. Hence GW getting re-ellected… WHAT A FUCKING JOKE & HOROR!!!!!