Europe has certain demands that must be met before lifting the arms embargo:
On a two-day trip to mark 30 years of China-EU relations, External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner said Beijing's human rights record and a tough new law authorizing "non-peaceful means" against Taiwan were not helping its cause.
"Lifting the embargo will of course be easier if the climate is right. Above all, we need to help persuade our public opinion ... that China is making concrete steps to improve human rights," Ferrero-Waldner told a news conference.
The Europeans don't care if China is a baby-seal-clubbing, nuclear-arms-selling, brutal thug dictatorship. It would just be a much larger version of Saddam's Iraq in their mind--which means a much bigger market and not a much bigger threat. The Euros just want the right words to clear Chinese throats. That's all Brussels wants. Just soothing words to lull the public into the dream that they aren't immorally selling arms to thugs. Europe just wants to hear China say "we'll be nice to small animals and the Taiwanese--in the fullness of time that doesn't depend on interference in our internal affairs."
Luckily for us, the Chinese are too prideful to even say the meaningless words. And Europe apparently really needs those soothing lies even if they are cynically prepared to sell arms to butchers who would use them to kill Americans, Japanese, and Taiwanese.
It would be nice to have principled allies willing to defend Western civilization. I'll have to settle for what we have going for us--a China too blind to play the Euro game.
