Thu, Mar 24, 2005 page9

• Lifting weapons ban on China could spark Asian arms race

  • By Per Ahlmark
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  When European unification was launched, it was thought that "ever closer union" would establish a community that would protect Europeans from political blackmail. Now we see -- though the lifting of the EU's arms embargo may now be delayed thanks to US pressure and Chinese aggressiveness -- that the EU has become merely a tool for corruption when France and China draw up joint action plans.

  The strategy is simple and ruthless. The world's largest dictatorship is preparing to crush and occupy the first Chinese democracy in history -- Taiwan. In order to do so, the People's Republic of China needs much more sophisticated arms than those it possesses today.

  The US naturally does not export such arms to China. Instead, the US is trying to deter China's rulers from launching a military attack on the democratic Taiwan. But if the EU ever begins to offer China extensive exports of powerful and offensive weapons systems, the military power of the People's Liberation Army would be able to defeat Taiwan's defense forces. Over 600 missiles, already deployed in southern China, are aimed at cities and military bases on Taiwan.

  The threat is more apparent than real -- for now. Russia currently sells certain arms to China, but avoids exporting its most sophisticated systems, since the Kremlin views China as a potential future threat. However, if EU countries start competing for a share of the Chinese market, the Russians could soon be tempted to sell their best arms to the communist regime in Beijing.

  China's new armaments, together with the North Korean crisis, will probably force half a dozen countries in the region to renew their armed forces. Thus, by whenever the union should decide to lift its ban on weapons exports to China, the EU could help fuel an arms race in East Asia.

  How did China and France manage to fool the EU into thinking that it should ever take part in this? When French President Jacques Chirac's government decided to expound its economic cooperation with China, arms became an important component in the strategy. Just as a ruthless then prime minister Chirac sold a nuclear reactor to former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein in the 1970's, so the President Chirac of today is being lured into doing big business with another aggressive dictatorship.

  The rest is a question of economic blackmail. French diplomats have of course informed China about the reluctance of other European countries about lifting the arms embargo, which was imposed after the massacre in Tiananmen Square in 1989. China then simply threatened to abandon or never to conclude trade deals with these EU members.

  To the Germans, the Chinese probably murmur something about Siemens and Volkswagen. To the Dutch their whispers are most likely about Philips. China follows the power game within the EU through its French friends, and therefore knows which governments need to be whipped into line. In Sweden, it has probably been enough to whisper "Ericsson" and "Volvo" to make Primer Minister Goeran Persson understand what is at stake for his country commercially.

  What European nation, indeed, dares to put at risk a Chinese order for several billion euros?

  Typically enough, no EU-country has mentioned Taiwan as a reason not to resume arms exports. Instead, the EU talks of a "code of conduct" (which probably does not mean very much, but sounds nice) and "free trade" (another charming euphemism for arms exports to dictatorships).

  This silence gives a hideous signal. For what the EU in practice says to China is this: "Taiwan's cause in not our own." If and when the union lifts the embargo, Europe will be refusing to take responsibility for the catastrophe that may be approaching. As usual, it is up to the US to protect a free nation that may otherwise be destroyed.

  Compare this situation to the drama 60 years ago. Then it was US troops and arms that liberated Western Europe from Nazism. Now it may be European arms in the hands of the Chinese that will be aimed at US troops protecting a democracy with 23 million inhabitants (in other words, as many people as in all the Nordic countries combined).

  As Tom Lantos, a Democratic US congressman, put it, the move to lift the ban on arms exports to China clearly shows that the EU has "lost its moral compass." Lantos knows about moral compasses: as a boy, he was rescued by Raoul Wallenberg from being deported to Auschwitz by the Nazis in Budapest.

  Wallenberg was a Swede. But now Sweden is revealing that it, too, lacks political morality. Several friends of mine in the Conservative party's parliamentary group have long been engaged in supporting a free Taiwan. Over the past 10 years, we have held Scandinavian conferences on Taiwan in the parliaments in Copenhagen, Oslo and Stockholm.

  But a call from Persson was enough to render the Conservative party leader Fredrik Reinfeldt docile. Persson had discovered that he lacked a majority in the Swedish parliament to lift the arms embargo on China. By whispering "Ericsson" into Reinfeldt's ear, it seems, Persson achieved the desired result. Reinfeldt became the first Conservative party leader in Swedish history to encourage arms exports to a communist dictatorship.

  But Reinfeldt, like Chirac, has forgotten something. Liberal-minded people may very well prefer not just to exchange one cynical prime minister for another at the next election. They may prefer a clear choice.

  Per Ahlmark is a former deputy prime minister of Sweden.

  Copyright: Project Syndicate
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