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2 Europe itching to lift China arms
ban By Federico Bordonaro
China has expressed strong disapproval of
the recent US decision to sell a variety of
air-to-air missiles to Taiwan. But while Beijing
may be genuinely unhappy with the sales, it does
provide China's leaders with a useful lever with
which to pressure Europe to lift the arms embargo
it imposed after the Tiananmen crackdown in 1989.
Some European military-industrial heavyweights
are more than tempted to kiss the ban goodbye and
to take advantage of the world's fastest-growing
defense market. Never mind that the United States
has a unique relationship and commitment to
defend Taiwan should mainland
China launch an attack.
In such a
framework, Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian's
recent declarations on the importance of the
European Union's arms embargo against Beijing came
as no surprise. As he visited Britain's Royal
United Services Institute for Defense Studies on
February 6, Chen expressed the hope that EU
pundits and scholars would be able to influence
the debate on the ban's future and warned against
its being lifted.
The reason for Chen's
insistence on the embargo is explained in a note
of the Taiwanese President's Office: [1]
"Intelligence information ... indicates that ...
by 2010 [the mainland] will have the ability to
undertake a large-scale war with Taiwan. By 2015,
China will have the ability to control the outcome
of a conflict, marking the third stage in its
three-phase agenda to ensure military preparedness
against Taiwan."
He also brought up a US
military report according to which the mainland
now has 900 missiles aimed at Taiwan. He
emphasized that any sale of European advanced
defense technology may thus help Beijing to
acquire strategic dominance over Taiwan and ruin
the island's hopes of maintaining its separation
from the mainland. The ambiguous
embargo The Council of the European Union
decided to interrupt military cooperation with
Beijing and the halt of military sales to China on
June 27, 1989, after Tiananmen. Brussels motivated
its decision mainly by pointing to Beijing's
violations of human rights. In recent years,
however, the utility of maintaining the arms ban
has been challenged many times by European member
states, especially in 2004-05.
If the
analysis is focused on the human-rights issue,
then it is fair to say that almost 18 years after
its introduction, the embargo seems to have failed
its official goals. If the ban's rationale was
that of forcing China to change its domestic laws,
favoring the emergence of a Western-style liberal
democracy, that objective has been clearly missed.
Beijing frequently points out that
Europe's embargo discriminates against China, in
that EU states consistently sell weapon systems to
such countries as Saudi Arabia or Pakistan that
are officially accused of rights violations as
well.
It shouldn't be forgotten that the
arms ban has exceptions. EU states are allowed to
sell China "non-lethal weapons" to be used for
civilian protection, institutions enhancement, and
humanitarian goals. However, as some analyses have
shown, weapons producers have been able to exploit
such exceptions to sell advanced weapons.
For instance, some EU defense firms have
created joint ventures with Chinese ones.
According to Jane's Defence Weekly, AgustaWestland
and EADS are allegedly selling the new Z-10
helicopter, which is officially a non-military
one. China's tightly linked civilian and military
industrial sectors made such a project possible.
The US, Japan and Taiwan also fear that
Europe's ambitious Galileo satellite navigation
system will help China (which joined the project
in 2003) to improve the coordination of its armed
forces in battle and, most of all, to enhance the
precision of weapons-guidance systems. More than
one observer has pointed out that Beijing's
participation in Galileo has decisively reduced
the effectiveness of the arms ban.
The
EU's code of conduct when it comes to weapons
exports encourages governments to examine the
requests of the buyers
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