Euros Plot to Arm China

(What are "political devotions"? Click here.)

Heritage Foundation scholar Peter Brookes opines on a looming threat which, regrettably but understandably, has been upstaged in the press by war news:

The French and the Germans are trying to stick it to us again. No, not over Iraq -- over China.

The 25-nation European Union (EU), led by Paris and Berlin, is giving serious consideration to lifting the post-Tiananmen Square arms embargo against Beijing.

Even though we've made our objections perfectly clear, from President Bush on down. (America's top Pacific allies, Japan and Australia, have also protested.)

This means that at some point in the future, the weapons of European allies may be used against American forces in the Pacific over the defense of Taiwan, Japan or even South Korea.

. . .

The EU's decision to change course on China is counterproductive and counterintuitive, but not surprising: Europe's security interests in Asia are minimal and, hey, there's cash to be made.

But if the EU goes ahead, our government should stop the flow of U.S. military technology to European firms.

In the end, the EU's folly will further increase the trans-Atlantic divide, give an imprimatur to dismal human-rights records everywhere and increase the likelihood of conflict in the Pacific, which is no one's interest -- not even the distant EU's.

Read the full article here. And for a link to and excerpts from another fine Heritage Foundation article on this issue, see our March entry Chinese to Order Out . . . to Europe.