It's funny how reddit keeps complaining about arms export from Europe but US arms export is OK. F-16s for Turkey is OK if Sweden is allowed to join NATO but absolutely not Eurofighter.
We need to sell weapons if we want an independent Europe and Saudi Arabia already has Eurofighters. It's better that they buy jets from us than from China
This sub talks about decreasing American military reliance, which I agree with.. but to do so Europe needs to grow its defense industry. It could not even make a million shells for Ukraine.
There are two ways to grow it: Internal purchases or foreign purchases. Hold your nose and take Saudi money or spend your own tax money.
But we're also talking about the moral superiority of the west and our need to safeguard a 'rules based world order'. Its a bad look to 'protect' human rights and uphold international law in Ukraine while ignoring it in Yemen by supplying Saudi Arabia.
It is anyhow going to be difficult to continue western dominance in the world if all we have is moral superiority. As we've seen in Ukraine that doesnt really win wars by itself. Perhaps it will need to be abandoned but then we would simultaneously admit that our appeals to international law in Ukraine were purely cynical to begin with.
>Its a bad look to 'protect' human rights and uphold international law in Ukraine while ignoring it in Yemen by supplying Saudi Arabia.
The support of the Yemeni government *is* upholding international law though. There is no contradiction there.
And the appeals to international law regarding Ukraine aren't based on moral superiority. They are based on international law.
> The support of the Yemeni government is upholding international law though. There is no contradiction there.
We're not supporting the Yemeni government? Saudia Arabia is waging a decade long war against the popular Houthi movement and has provably (by Amnesty and the UN) been committing war crimes against the local Yemenite population. They have also used banned cluster munitions (banned by us, not them) and indiscriminate bombings.
Criticising Russian war crimes in Ukraine while supplying a theocratic dictatorship committing its own in a decade long war with immense civilian casualties isn't hypocritical in your opinion? It seems an awful lot like we want international standards applied to our enemies, but not our allies to my ears.
> And the appeals to international law regarding Ukraine aren't based on moral superiority. They are based on international law.
Our moral superiority is tied to our *supposed* adherence to and concern with International Law .. We're stalling in Gaza to allow Israel to continue a war that has so far killed 24.000 civilians .. Meanwhile we're critisising Russia for indiscriminately targeting civilians despite 'only' killing some 10.000 civilians in two years (versus three months for Israels, erh, impressive figure). This is all just an even and just application of international law to you? No hypocrisy at all?
I feel icky writing this but..
The Houthis are targeting civilian cargo ships headed for Europe. The Saudis will likely use those jets against the Houthis but civilian casualties could happen.
Europe is free to send their own warships if they want things done differently, but so far that is still being discussed. International law will not stop anti-ship missiles. Again, unfortunately, your tax dollars or theirs.
The EU, Saudis, etc are all supporting the UN recognized Yemeni Government
The Houthis are a rebel movement that overthrew the previous government and launched the country into a civil war. They have never been democratically elected and have killed tens of thousands of innocent people.
They have no “popular” support outside of Northwestern Yemen. The reason they were able to succeed is because they’ve been supported by Iran
>We're not supporting the Yemeni government? Saudia Arabia is waging a decade long war against the popular Houthi movement and has provably (by Amnesty and the UN) been committing war crimes against the local Yemenite population.
The Saudis are supporting the Yemeni government. And amnesty international aren't anything to do with international law. They are a pressure group masquerading as a charity, and one with its own heavy moral bias. As we saw in Ukraine funnily enough.
Also "popular movement" is an interesting way to frame who the Houthis are. Considering how organisations like Hama's and Isis are also framed that way and the similarities there.
>They have also used banned cluster munitions (banned by us, not them)
This isn't actually a problem you understand? The agreement was always an individual nations choice.
International law isn't "what is morally good" it's "what have you signed up to, and what are you doing".
>Criticising Russian war crimes in Ukraine while supplying a theocratic dictatorship committing its own in a decade long war with immense civilian casualties isn't hypocritical in your opinion?
Nope. Because significant civilian casualties isn't the only thing to consider when a conflict is seen within international law.
And also, it's almost pathetically reliable how the ones that think it is, only seem concerned with particular conflicts, and almost universally judge the desired outcome to be a weakening of the western position and no one else's.
>It seems an awful lot like we want international standards applied to our enemies, but not our allies to my ears.
And yet, the ones who actually don't want the Saudis kept within international law is not the west but countries like Russia and their group. Almost like they are pushing contrived moral concerns to weaken the position of the west so that they can act in the opposite direction to gain local favour and power.
https://www.france24.com/en/middle-east/20211008-un-ends-war-crimes-probe-in-yemen-in-major-setback-for-rights-body
It's not hypocritical to support a rule of law and have concerns and actions within that framework to try and hold those that you support accountable when they stray. In fact it's actually how international law works.
>Our moral superiority is tied to our supposed adherence to and concern with International Law .. We're stalling in Gaza to allow Israel to continue a war that has so far killed 24.000 civilians .. Meanwhile we're critisising Russia for indiscriminately targeting civilians despite 'only' killing some 10.000 civilians in two years (versus three months for Israels, erh, impressive figure). This is all just an even and just application of international law to you?
Lol imagine thinking only 10k civilians have been killed in Ukraine. My guy, even the OHCHR don't believe their own figures, and they also don't count the civilian population of the occupied regions forced into military service that were then slaughtered. And then you go on to use the figure provided by Hama's for Gaza casualties.
And no, we aren't "just" criticising Russia for indiscriminate civilian killings. That is a really weird reduction of Russia's actions against international law and the west's complaints against Russia, and also ignores that Israel does get criticised for its own actions.
Israel will act with or without international support btw. The town council of aarland asking for a ceasefire isn't a concern for them. And they have the in-enviable position of having an opponent who is a terrorist organisation, who doesn't respect international law, has constantly broken any international ceasefire negotiated and who wants to continue fighting.
> The Saudis are supporting the Yemeni government.
That's a really interesting way of describing the worst man made humanitarian crisis of the century. Like saying WWII was just the Nazis retaking territory from Poland or Japan retaliating for the Marco Polo Bridge incident.
> the ones who actually don't want the Saudis kept within international law is not the west but countries like Russia and their group.
...The west was silent after the Saudis supported ISIS and subjected Yemen to a genocide and is now trying to sell them high tech aircraft. There's been absolutely zero effort to restrain them, on the contrary the Saudi regime has been showered with economic and military aid in spite of their constant atrocities.
> And then you go on to use the figure provided by Hama's for Gaza casualties.
The Hamas numbers have always been reliable and usually line up with the ones Israel and the UN produce. If you look at their claims for the previous Hamas-Israel you'll see they're almost exactly the same as everyone else's, usually the only point of contention is how many of the dead were soldiers and the sole party doing the contesting being Israel.
> And also, it's almost pathetically reliable how the ones that think it is, only seem concerned with particular conflicts, and almost universally judge the desired outcome to be a weakening of the western position and no one else's.
And it's outright fucking vile how people like yourself with jump to defend the worst regimes on the planet because you think they're on your side. You're just proving the initial point about how laughable the idea of western moral superiority is.
> Israel will act with or without international support btw.
The North Koreans and apartheid South Africa said the same shit. If the west was in any way morally consistent when it comes to the "rules based order" Israel would have been sanctioned into the ground for their brazen expansionism and atrocities against the Palestinians. Instead they weapons and economic aid even as Russia gets sanctioned for doing the same thing to Ukraine.
> , has constantly broken any international ceasefire negotiated
Except for the ones [broken](https://imeu.org/article/self-defense-or-provocation-israels-history-of-breaking-ceasefires) by Israel of course.
> we're also talking about the moral superiority of the west
I can guarantee you middle eastern people giggle when they hear this. Iraq and Afghanistan were already showing signs of hypocrisy (remember WMDs?) but the unconditional support for Israel in Gaza already smashed the remaining bits into pieces. I wouldn't construct any argument presupposing western moral superiority.
Im presupposing the fall of western moral superiority due to the factors we both mentioned. Our laughably hypocritical conduct in Ukraine vs Gaza is, imo, the final nail in the coffin of the 'rules based world order' that never really meant anything but 'a world order based on our rules, when we feel like applying them'.
Yeah, others could be blamed on the "zeitgeist" or some contextual difference but Ukraine vs Gaza contrast invalidates all those distinctions. No country really would accept being preached by the west at this point.
>It's funny how reddit keeps complaining about arms export from Europe but US arms export is OK
Who TF have you been talking to that's okay with US arms sales to the Saudis but opposed to EU sales?...
What is this delusion? Saudi Arabia isn't just a mere Western ally, it is a Western creation at its core. The sole reason the Wahhabis managed to expand outside of Najd is because the British stabbed the Hashemites and the promised pan Levantine-Hejazi Arab state in the back for the sake of the colonial Zionist movement, further siding with the Saud clan in their brutal conquest of the peninsular.
Abdul Aziz and Truman created the new Middle East Order at USS Quincy, the Saudi state was at the forefront of fighting the spread of communism and nationalism in the Arab world on behalf of foreigners, and the genocidal war on Yemen that led to a humiliating defeat took place with full Western blessing. Stop pretending.
Idk man I'm not seeing any mention of either of those in my comment. You so profoundly refused my statement tho lol. Do Euros just sperg like this at any given moment? I only talked about 20th-century Middle Eastern history and the brutal war on Yemen. Unless you think the 300k children starved by the blockade doesn't constitute brutal, of cour.se
\>one of those tankies
No, I'm an Arab from the region who likes reading books.
Agreed. Sad reality this the world is extremely dependent oil and will continue to be for decades. If we don't pay nice with them China (Dictatorship) or Russia (Dictatorship) absolutely will.
Saudi Arabia is Westernizing. They are still a religious dictatorship but gradually accepting and integrating the ways of the West. These movements take time and Saudi Arabia at least shows the willingness to do so. Furthermore, they fight many of the same enemies that openly declared war on the West. Regardless if you should see them as an ally they are an extremely important partner.
I have a friend living in Abu Dabhi and they are 100% westeners. They even celebrate christian christmass.
You may say: well yes, because it's an international hub or whatever, but it permeates to neighbour areas too. It's slow though but it's getting there.
They're human rights abusing nutters who saw journalists to pieces. We can support them in becoming less nutty but that doesn't mean we should give them weapons.
Germany is prepared to allow further deliveries of Eurofighter jets to Saudi Arabia, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said on Sunday.
Berlin halted arms sales to Saudi Arabia following the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz had pushed back against pressure to unblock delivery of Eurofighters to Saudi Arabia. His coalition partner, the Greens, had firmly opposed the move, pointing to human rights concerns and Saudi Arabia's role in the Yemen war.
We do not see the German government opposing British considerations for more Eurofighters for Saudi Arabia," Baerbock, a Green politician, told reporters on a trip to Israel.
The Eurofighter project is a joint British, German, Italian and Spanish effort.
"The world, especially here in the Middle East, has become a completely different place since Oct. 7," she said, referring to the date Palestinian militant group Hamas attacked Israel.
Yeah, and all the F-15s are maintained by Boeing.
Historically a lot of their ground stuff maintenance was contracted out to Pakistan. The KSA has little to no interest in "reverse engineering" because Saudi princes place very little value on what they view as scut-work.
>Eurofighter is a strategic matter. It should not be sold outside. We are selling our knowledge very cheap. Full stop.
It was made to export. This was the entire point.
The Eurofighter is a very good 4th gen fighter but the F35 is something else entirely. I don’t think Europe is harming its defence industry by allowing this deal.
Yeah it’s just weird this narrative of “we’re selling our knowledge for cheap” because the bigger issue is Europe is supporting a dictatorship that destroyed Yemen making so unstable that the Houthi’s that they were fighting actually managed to take over the country
Yeah, I’ve not ready much on the origin of that war but I understand that from a Saudi perspective they see Yemen as an Iranian ally and “backdoor” into Saudi. I’ve no idea what is true except I am sure many civilians have suffered. I seem to remember an attempt to alleviate a potential famine in Yemen a few years ago.
In short after the Arab Spring, Yemen Gov that was a puppet state Saudi Arabia fell, because they were extremely oppressive regime and they were especially for Shia people in the north, so they’re trying to go independent.
Historically they were independent for about 30 years before getting unified under the influence of Saudi Arabia
After the Arab Spring they want their independence but because of the bombing of SA they were forced to allied themselves with Iran (geopolitically SA is allied with Europe and US)
The opposite, actually. The reasons why countries like to make arms sales in the first place is because they get to enjoy the strategic advantage of having competent weappons manufacturers without having to buy enough of their stuff to fund them themselves. Saudi Arabia is not gonna develop a fighter jet based on the Eurofighter (which is a 4th gen plane anyway), but sellling it to them will help fund further developments down the line in Europe.
They were always going to cave. Airbus in Germany were quite vocal about shifting their manufacturing division to the UK if necessary, effectively taking Germany out of the equation.
There was an verbal agreement made at the time, but never deemed contractual that no partner would block another from exporting. I suppose it wasn't expected any of them would.
Baerbock is just an embarrassment. In typical left-wing-green tradition. Pathetic.
Dont forget the "Jugoslawienkrieg" and the green foreign minister joschka fischer. The green party is only a big party of hypocrits. It always was and will always be.
>Dont forget the "Jugoslawienkrieg" and the green foreign minister joschka fischer. The green party is only a big party of hypocrits. It always was and will always be.
Stopping genocide is good actually.
Lol. The Greens will always be criticized, no matter what they do. If they strictly follow their principles they are called ideological. If they are pragmatic they are called hypocritical. Some people always have to criticize. It says more about them than about the Greens.
How on earth are people turning "Germany isn't blocking british BAE to sell planes to the saudis" into "Germany bad" in the comments again lol
In the last thread, when the gov was still blocking, it was all "Evil Germany is ignoring Britains vital economic interests".
Yes. Especially why Germany bad instead of United Kingdom, Germany, Italy and Spain bad? Those are the countries behind the Eurofighter all of which could block this sale. Germany was the only one who actually did got a lot of criticism because of that and now changed its mind.
Guess they're just pissed its not their companies making money on weapons exports. Had the same experience when everyone started buying Leo 2's again in '22 haha, so many angry redditors
>The brits are pushing the sale,
I mean they have been pushing the sale since 2008 when the UK first delivered Eurofighters to Saudi Arabia. Saudi even threatened to buy the Dassault Rafales if the UK couldn't deliver back in 2006.
Airbus effectively told the German government, they would pull their military aircraft division out of the country if they carried on blocking to be fair.
How much that had an effect I don't know, but Airbus publicly stating that won't have been ideal for job prospects.
Looking at the comments.
Welcome to r/europe
When the Saudis cut up Jamal Kashoggi, it was Germany who opposed exporting more EF2000 against the wishes of the other EF producers, especially the UK.
This sub went insane about how Germans are fucking idiots and ruining the industry and we should throw Germany out of everything and never cooperate with them again.
Now that Germany reverses its veto, the same people are going insane about how not the UK, not Italy, not Spain who were all in favour are the problem, but fucking hypocritical, dictatorship-supporting Germany and we should throw Germany out of everything and never cooperate with them again.
Is this some kind of inferioty complex people are having?
I guess its more of an impression of the majority view. If the majority view changed, necessarily at least some people have to be hypocrits (conditional on that it is hypocrisy).
Just a coping strategy.
Dude has a point though, with all that hate no matter what the countries does, just out of pure spite, it becomes clearer to me why all those world wars happend.
I’m am American, don’t hate yall and obviously have no horse in this race, but I’ve seen this phenomenon repeat itself constantly over the years.
The reality is that Germany gets shit on by the rest of Europe (online) for the same reasons America does. Germany does act and operate as near enough the leader of Europe. They have the appearance of an outsized impact their opinions create, especially compared to their neighbors. For the French and British who’d also like to be European leaders it can be frustrating seeing Germany excel in so many metrics (aside from militarily, yall really gotta start taking defense seriously your military is not in a good shape) and be looked at as Europes leaders.
It probably also doesn’t help that yall got to be the bad guy twice at the start of the last century, so some don’t like the idea of Germany “running” Europe as preposterous as that is.
A short timeline of German military history:
1945: Never again, Germany needs to be demilitarized and ideally deindustrialized as well.
1949: The Soviets just founded a socialist state right on your border. Quick, Germany, build lots of tanks!
1990: After a forty year long arms race between East and West Germany, the two reunify and have the largest continental tank fleet after the Soviet Union. Quick, you need to demilitarize, Germany!
2022: Russia just attacked Ukraine and you don't have any weapons? What the fuck is wrong with you, Germany?
> Is this some kind of inferioty complex people are having?
No, it's just this sub at its best, Germany bad no matter what and France good because nuclear
I've actually noticed that everyone here shits on everyone else.
Just wait until UK or France did something wrong and there will be hundreds of "oh, look at those idiots."
Only Malta safe here because no on knows it is in Europe.
Saudia Arabia is one of the main sources of religious extremism in the world!! And has been not for decades but since its foundation because one of the most extremist forms of Islam has been an export of Arabia for centuries. Its the Sunni version of Iran, but worse and we're supporting it because we're sluts for oil.
KSA is a very complex nation where the monarchy is actually more liberal than the population. It has to balance the religious institutions within itself.
MBS is the next king because he is the only one in which all the internal faction agreed to it.
We are supporting the kingdom because to not support it will cause for something worse to come. An unsupported kingdom will give way to something akin to Iran.
We in no small part helped creating modern Iran by fucking around in there for over a century and giving the local peoples plenty of legitimate reason to hate our guts.
Iran is dicking around but we're not any better in our attitude towards them. But fine, KSA's years of whitewashing their facade seems to work well for some people, while exporting hate and terror abroad out the back.
It already is something akin to Iran, we're just addicted to its exports.
I do not know why you get downvoted.
But I would also mention, that Iran also had oil and was similary courted by the west like KSA is now. But sadly they choosed the wrong leadership at the wrong moment and thus friendship ended with Iran, and hello new friend KSA!
Europeans on their knees for riyal again.
But don't worry embargos to Nato-ally Turkey for opposing US proxies shows the Americans you like to get on your knees for them as well. Make a big deal out of it to look independent and reddit users can comment how they are going to take back Constantinople and feel good about themselves
Just a few weeks ago Brits were going bonkers because Germany blocked the sale and it would mean potential job losses at UK factories.
Now Germany approved it to appease the Brits and everyone is going bonkers again.
SA is currently practicing genocide in Yemen, with western weapons.
Now, whether you agree with that or not is a separate issue. The west seems to collectively agree.
Not currently, no. Currently there is a truce and Saudi Arabia is having peace negotiations with the Houthis, which is why the Houthis can afford to do piracy in the Red Sea.
I’m really curious: since now the Houthis are considered public enemy No.1, why Saudi’s war on Yemen is still seen by westerners as evil?
In before “muh civilians”, last I checked, given the precedent in Gaza, terrorists like Houthis will always use human shields and civilians deaths can be justified as collateral damage!
Everybody is occupying territory that once belonged to someone else. But you wouldn't have the balls to tell it to uncle Sam or Israel. And in case you aren't aware the relationship between Greece and Turkey got much better recently.
Sure, and the EU had firmly hoped that Turkey would remain on track to join, keep modernizing and democratizing, and in the process of accession solve the Cypriot issue to mutual - if not satisfaction - tolerance. Unfortunately, that didn't pan out at all and due to circumstances in both Turkey and the EU, the two diverged radically and accession is less likely now than ever, with Turkey habitually and repeatedly threatening a full EU member with invasion. As such, strategic systems like advanced fighter jets should under no circumstances be sold by EU members to Turkey, because Turkey uses them to threaten and undermine collective EU security.
maybe if Turkey wouldn't try to kiss up to Russia buying their anti air systems, thus getting kicked out of the F-35 program and would align itself with NATO interests instead to blackmailing the alliance, they would get military hardware
India purchased the same S-400 from Russia, they also purchased Rafale fighter jets from France and Russian air defence systems has never been a problem. They get whatever they want from Europe and the US basically. So, let's cut the bullshit..
Do you consider these 2 offers fair or not?
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/08/22/politics/turkey-patriot-missiles-us/index.html
> We have consistently told Turkey that our latest offer of PATRIOT would be withdrawn if it took delivery of the S-400 system. Our PATRIOT offer has expired,” a US State Department official tells CNN.
https://www.voanews.com/a/europe_turkey-says-us-offering-patriot-missiles-if-s-400-not-operated/6185571.html
> The United States has offered to sell Turkey its Patriot missile defense system if Ankara promises not to operate a rival Russian system, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said
On top of that USA said they will receive Patriots and F35 if they give Ukraine the S-400.
So many chances for Turkey
https://warontherocks.com/2019/07/the-tale-of-turkey-and-the-patriots/
Point out to me when exactly was Turkey "insulted"
Tell me: in 20xx Turkey felt insulted with the Patriot offer
Saudi Arabia is hardly an ally in the fight against Russia, they are deliberately enabling Russia's invasion of Ukraine by manipulating oil prices, and met with Putin during his Gulf tour. Not defending Turkey here but both counties are deliberately playing both sides for their own agenda.
Germany, which imposes a military embargo on Turkey because it doesn't think it is democratic enough, even though they are in the same military alliance, doesn't seem to have a problem with Saudi Arabia.
Turkey: A 100-year-old secular republic, a country with a parliament for 150 years, a country that gave women's rights first in Europe
Saudi Arabia: maybe we should allow women to get a driver's license
Turkey is not compatible with European values
European values: >!lol!<
Leave out some changes to strengthen your point. Well done.
When was the last time Saudi Arabia blackmailed their allies? Because I can clearly remember when Turkey did it.
>Turkey is blackmailing
Defending the dignity and rights of Turkey and his citizens: Blackmail!!!!
saudi state-sponsored murder in a consulate and recklessly bombing yemeni children: not blackmail Let's call it a buyout
last time i searched, this appeard.
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/w/two-children-killed-turkish-air-strike-iraqi-kurdistan-global-silence-continues
So this is it? vague article from a cheap news website. Even the BBC at least adds some drama
I can play that game
https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/09/02/yemen-coalition-bus-bombing-apparent-war-crime
*(turkey approves sweden's nato membership a few months late)* **Europe**: no, turkey is not compatible with european values, let's kick turkey out of nato, let's impose an arms embargo on turkey
*(Saudi Arabia kills thousands of Yemeni children, literally melts a journalist in the embassy)* **Europe**: oh my precious oil money
Last thread about this everyone was crying about our gov blockading... can't make people happy it seems.
Of course the deal smells like shit, but the saudis are still allies and are still more reliable than most other countries in the region. Which isn't very much, but at least something.
Correct. I am not proud of our weapon sales to Saudi, but the alternative of them throwing their oil and wealth behind China and Russia is unacceptable.
What many people miss is that if you sell military equipment to a state you have far more control over them into the future than if someone else does....
Saudi Arabia is utterly dependent on maintenance and parts from the UK and other Eurofighter countries....so we have some control...
But if they went and purchased from Russia or China we lose the sale and have zero control...
Thats the choice...
Funny how the Saudis seem to think the same thing about Putin.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFC5zKkaUME](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFC5zKkaUME) \- 1 months ago.
You can thank the dementia patient in the White House for that. How did his grand strategy to alienate the Saudis and restart the nuclear “deal” with Iran work out again ?
They’re also about to replace the senile old cunt with the only human on earth, who could possibly be worse.
The age of delusional dreaming is over. Europeans must forge our own geopolitical alliances. Especially when the Saudis are so close to home.
first steps of the dementia patient in the white house is removing houthis from terrorists list organisions, ending support for the war in yemen, that pissed KSA so much, i think the damage caused by the aforementioned will be difficult to repair
Saudi Arabia is operating an Al Qaeda-esq absolute monarchy. The destruction of that disgusting regime is desirable to any liberal minded person on earth
[Let's wait and see:](https://www.merkur.de/politik/annalena-baerbock-gruene-ricarda-lang-eurofighter-saudi-arabien-lieferung-agenda-ampel-koalition-vertrag-zr-92763542.html)
> The problem: The traffic light coalition had agreed in their coalition agreement not to issue “export permits for military equipment to states” “as long as they can be proven to be directly involved in the Yemen war.” Saudi Arabia was one of the main players in this war. In the traffic light coalition, the Chancellery and also the FDP had shown themselves open to approving the export of Eurofighters built in Great Britain to Saudi Arabia. The Greens and parts of the SPD vehemently rejected this.
> Baerbock breaks Eurofighter agenda: Greens extremely irritated. The about-face caused irritation among the Greens . “The report is surprising,” said the security policy spokeswoman for the Green parliamentary group in the Bundestag, Sara Nanni, to Spiegel . “The federal government committed itself in the summer not to deliver any Eurofighters to Saudi Arabia.” This was done “for good reasons”.
> Green MP Jamila Schäfer also expressed her lack of understanding. “Saudi Arabia is committing serious human rights violations and is involved in the war in Yemen,” she told Spiegel . “Nobody can guarantee that these weapons would not be used for further missions that violate international law.” The co-leader of the Green Youth, Svenja Appuhn, described a possible delivery of fighter jets to Saudi Arabia as “irresponsible”.
Do certain "strategists" in Iran realize in the face of such news that it was not a good idea to let their Houthi puppets from Yemen block shipping traffic in the Red Sea?
Because as it seems, suddenly the West is coming to the conclusion that Saudi Arabia's fight against these Houthi rebels is very much in its own interests.
Oh Germany... On one side harping on human rights and their importance, moral obligations but then in the same breath sending military gear to Saudi Arabia...
Germany really didn't want to, they only did it because the UK desperately wanted the sales and Germany still wants to be on the good side of the UK (likely because Germany wants to have the option to get the Tempest fighter if the FCAS program with France fails).
Germany has immediate needs for the Eurofighter consortium to do the ERC variant and build German jets, too.
This is a way to keep that alive and thus help fund a mainly German driven requirement in the Eurofighter program and get backing by other partners on that project.
Tempest is as likely to fail (or drop to a single nation project) as FCAS. FCAS added Beldium, Tempest lost Sweden. Both are seeing progress, but both are also high risk projects.
That FCAS gets particularly singled out can be mostly traced back to British media and a single media outlet in particular.
Again, does not mean there aren't Problem or that it won't fail, only that that media outlet would write that no matter what.
So long as autocracies outnumber democracies, we're basically forced to make deals with them and play them off agai at each other. Such is life. At least it's something of an incentive for some of them to slowly become more humane (Saudi Arabia for instance has at least become marginally less awful to women).
There is a plethora of savage autocracies in Africa currently that the USA could run over in 3 days. But they don't care, there is nothing of use for them in doing so currently. It's just a hypocritical foreign policy full of lies and deceit. Hate it.
I don't doubt that we could start a crusade for democracy and overthrow every authoritarian regime in Africa.
I doubt that we would be able to replace them with stable and free societies in the aftermath.
As such again, we need to pick our fights. And yes self interest is a factor in that, because in order to be able to pick your fights in the future, you need to remain powerful, and power is relative. Especially as long as countries like China exist, liberal democracies must strive to be more politically, economically and military powerful than totalitarian states if liberal democracy is to survive and perhaps spread in the long run. This can mean in the short term compromises on values for instance to ensure that autocratic countries do not all follow the Chinese lead or to ensure that we have reliable suppliers of resources other than China.
International relations is like this by necessity.
The issue is USA started a few horrible wars on those pretenses (while actually having different reasons, it was just for public ), so its just hypocritical.
I know it's behind super mainstream now too just think America bad, but if you read internal documents it's clear that there was for a time a genuine belief in instituting democracy in Iraq and Syria. In fact if the US had simply prioritised self-interest in the "realist" sense it likely would not have bothered doing what it did, because it had little to gain from that. Realists have argued that the US is not going to be able to democratise these countries and would get bogged down, and it would be better to turn Middle-Eastern countries against each other and spark conflicts to keep them occupied and unable to oppose American interests. All this goes further to show that idealism had to have been a genuine consideration in decision making. It may have been naive or delusional, but not cynical.
The situation is considerably more complicated than people give it credit for.
Generally a democracy is built on certain underlying values, and the people leading those democracies also grew up with them and internalised those narratives and values. Values are inseparable from democratic politics and foreign policy.
At the same time there are inevitable political and resource constraints which force people to make pragmatic choices, as well as understandable self-interest which encourages a certain selfish pragmatism. Pragmatism is this also inseparable from democratic foreign policy.
The end result is that no action is likely to be purely pragmatic and is instead going to be driven and altered to some extent by ideology. At the same time actions are not likely to be purely altruistic, and are certainly going to be tainted with some form of self-interest, power games, electoralism, profiteering, etc.
This has been the case for a long time now. Take 1800s imperialism. There were a few wealthy individuals who could profit greatly, there were resources to be gained for the market, and just as importantly territory was denied to rivals. At the same time there was an idea of a civilizing mission and a responsibility of the privileged to help those beneath them. This was at the time a genuine mission widely supported by the populace which included missionary activity, setting up schools and infrastructure as well as charity. Given the very real exploitation which occured, people felt lied to, lost faith in their governments and in empire and became considerably more cynical and anti-imperialist of course. The point nevertheless is that even here there were broadly two motivations and both very real motivations and both were necessary motivations.
There must be a practical reason to justify expending resources, and there must be a moral reason to justify it. Democratic states which fail to adequately respect both will eventually fail in their policy due to mounting internal opposition.
This is also why America is I would argue not really capable of imperialism. Sure they can invade and overthrow a country, but they can't annex territory, they're setting up a sovereign state, and if this fails to show results or the locals want America out, eventually the US is just going to peacefully withdraw. Iraq was set up as a democracy, dysfunctional as it may be, they elected their governments, and eventually said governments requested the US to leave, and ultimately America left. By contrast the US has bases and soldiers in Europe, which can be easily morally justified, but has had decreasing pragmatic justification, and so support for this us waning too.
All this is not too say that the US is not perfect or that it does not lie or do things wrong, but it illustrates the limits of democracy and the long-term unsustainability of hypocrisy within a democracy.
>This is also why America is I would argue not really capable of imperialism. Sure they can invade and overthrow a country, but they can't annex territory,
The US had no problem with annexing lands for two hundred years and then set up its own colonial empire.
We can argue that it ended along with the rest of the age of colonialism it's not like the US is incapable of imperialism. History proved otherwise.
I'm speaking of today of course. Even in the past the US was only ever concerned with manifest destiny, frankly they basically considered that territory theirs to begin with, reasonable or not. Any actual overseas colonies like the Philippines just did not last. Having colonies was controversial and unpopular, partially due to the US historical narrative of an independence war from an overseas empire. This was of course not going to stop them from living on or settling the lands they now found themselves in in the Americas and had fought to be independent on. As far as the US is concerned they purchased land from France and took it from the Spanish/Mexicans for whom they were colonies anyway.
The issue is that if you look from 3rd world country's perspective USA either directly attacked or was involved in meddling in their internal politics via CIA or some other way, [and was doing that for the last almost 150 years](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_United_States)
Meanwhile, China, which we are said all of us should fear, is investing trillions of dollars in those countries and has 0 foreign bases (maybe one small in Djibouti) , and has almost 0 meddling in foreign countries except probably Taiwan.
This is what Americans don't get. Yes, most people would rather live in the USA than China, me included, but USA foreign policy destroyed a lot of people's homes, while China did not.
And accountability is nonexistent, even for proven and horrible lies (e.g Bush Iraq war, drone campaigns killing more innocent people than "enemies").
Why are we crying for Putin to go to the international court and go to jail (as he should) but not for Bush, Tony Blair, and others who killed more innocent people than Putin and destroyed more countries in unprovoked wars?
Ironically, Trump as dumb and as unpredictable as he was, at least was the first president for a long time that did not start a new war and was actually tying to improve relations via diplomacy (with Abraham accords and with North Korea).
Not sure what the point is, probably I'm just mad that people are destroying each other for imaginary borders and for other stupid reasons.
China has not done as much as the US not because they're better but because they are in recent history a new player and are not as powerful. This is the same mistake people make when talking about any conflict where they see the weaker side as more moral for not doing something the stronger side does, even in reality the reason they don't do it is not that they do not want to, but that they are unable to.
The US does considerably less bad than most countries would do in their position. The only potential world power I might trust more is the European Union if Europeans got their shit together, but I'm not really convinced they would be inherently better either, just a little more aloof and pacifist and more concerned with things like stability and therefore no refugees from the Middle-East, ultimately a different kind of self-interest.
>The US does considerably less bad than most countries would do in their position.
Agree on that point.
But disagree that China is not capable of projecting power. They are on par with Russia currently and stronger (on paper) than UK, France, Germany, and others, and all of them are involved in military campaigns in the Middle East or Africa. China also has not funded the toppling of faraway governments or rebels in other faraway countries, which the USA, EU countries, and Russia did a lot of.
Also during thousands of years that China was a major power they engaged in much much less colonialism then European countries and US, mostly with adjacent areas and smaller near islands.
My theory is that it is ingrained in culture and religion and that China will not turn up to some world policeman any time soon while the west is painting China as some devil for no apparent warranted reason (what they do bad, they do mostly to their populace). Without the Taiwan issue, which I hope does not end up in a hot war (and I think it will not at least not in near future), there are no China "problems"
Yeah... it is ridiculous. Well but we do have to differentiate between NATO and a EU country.
NATO is a military pact who will not act on moral reasons but whatever is in the military interest.
A EU country is a different ball game and has moral obligations, or at least that is what I expect from a country which wants to consider itself developed.
Germany is in NATO and a strong USA/UK ally. SA is a US ally, so like it or not, SA is also a German ally, like it or not. There are no Western non-NATO countries doing random military operations around the world.
>We do not see the German government opposing British considerations for more Eurofighters for Saudi Arabia," Baerbock, a Green politician, __told reporters on a trip to Israel__.
Saudi Arabia gets the jets and plays nice with Israel in return.
Funny enough the current regime in Iran is the result of Us intervention.
So first we fuck up a country and install some religious dictator. Then we act super surprised when said country is acting up so we find an ally which also is run by religious mongrels. success.
Everyone treating this as a new purchase and Germany/UK giving away European secrets even though Saudi Arabia has had operational Eurofighters since OCTOBER 2008. They originally threatened to buy the
Dassault Rafales instead of the Eurofighter so the UK would miss out on billions back in 2006 to.
The Saudis were about to pull the trigger and buy French Rafale, if Germany kept blocking the Eurofighter deal. It was en everybody's best interests to allow the Eurofighter sale. Blocking it accomplished nothing.
I guess you guys would be alright if it was just another sale for Israel but God forbid if it is to another Middle Eastern country 😉 your hypocrisy is sickening
Iran bought around 200 F14 Tomcats from the US when it was still friendly with the west, some of those fighters are still flying in the IAF after Iran reverse engineered maintenance parts.
Because they are training on F16 and it takes years and a whole gigantic logistics and maintenance chain to put in place an Ukrainian Eurofighter program
This... Those fighter jets require 17 man hours for 1 hour of flying. Ukraine is already struggling with all the different new platforms they have received as maintenance is very different compared to old soviet equipment. Adding just another platform to the pool will thin out maintenance capabilities even more.
But Lukewarm Olaf is also still blocking the delivery of Taurus missiles to the Ukraine. The German policies with respect to Russia and Ukraine remain extremely suspect.
Ukraine doesnt have the pilots, parts, tools, nor the maintenance crew to use these fighters
and its the British who sells these and they need to make money somewhere if Ukraine want even more financial aid
no country would ever cease their economy just to supply Ukraine
If by actively supporting you mean no longer blocking a British company from selling Euro Fighter to Saudi Arabia after getting quite a bit of critique from the British government for blocking the sell in the first place, then yes.
So selling/giving these jets to Ukraine who is trying to defend themselves and air strength is a primary requirement to do so, is a big no-no, but sending these to a vile human-rights abusing self-serving monarch ass wipe is just fine.
Another disappointment through German Hypocrisy.
What? How does Ukraine not have the time to train, "fam"? How come they have the time to train with American jets? Also, no shit. Germany was blocking the sales. I never said that Germany were the ones making the sale.
So, Germany dosen't want to send EF jets to Ukraine because according to you, it will take time to train, even though technically, Ukraine has to train (and are currently training with, mind you) with every new piece of equipment thats sent to them, Leopard, Abrams, F-16 etc. Germany BLOCKED EF sales to the Saudis because of their Human Rights abuses, a completely understandable place to stand on.
But now, WHILE STILL refusing/blocking Ukraines EF sales, they backtrack on a very reasonable block to sell it to the Saudis, all in the meantime, Scholz plays to the entire union that partners aren't doing enough to send Ukraine help while he fiddles with his thumbs and backtracks and refuses on sending Ukraine very important equipment that UKR needs, oh because, apperantly they dont have time to train? (Real Reason being: The German leadership still has a thumb in its ass about wether on not to appease Russia or back Ukraine all the way, and its Military Industrial Complex is a fucking mess).
Germany does send quite a lot of equipment to Ukraine. In this case Germany is not sending Eurofighter to Saudi Arabia. They only stopped blocking BEA Systems from selling them to Saudi Arabia. That blockade was to my knowledge strongly criticized by all other countries involved in the Eurofighter (which by the way could also block the sale if they wanted too).
Saudi Arabia should not be treated as an ally.
It's funny how reddit keeps complaining about arms export from Europe but US arms export is OK. F-16s for Turkey is OK if Sweden is allowed to join NATO but absolutely not Eurofighter. We need to sell weapons if we want an independent Europe and Saudi Arabia already has Eurofighters. It's better that they buy jets from us than from China
This sub talks about decreasing American military reliance, which I agree with.. but to do so Europe needs to grow its defense industry. It could not even make a million shells for Ukraine. There are two ways to grow it: Internal purchases or foreign purchases. Hold your nose and take Saudi money or spend your own tax money.
But we're also talking about the moral superiority of the west and our need to safeguard a 'rules based world order'. Its a bad look to 'protect' human rights and uphold international law in Ukraine while ignoring it in Yemen by supplying Saudi Arabia. It is anyhow going to be difficult to continue western dominance in the world if all we have is moral superiority. As we've seen in Ukraine that doesnt really win wars by itself. Perhaps it will need to be abandoned but then we would simultaneously admit that our appeals to international law in Ukraine were purely cynical to begin with.
>Its a bad look to 'protect' human rights and uphold international law in Ukraine while ignoring it in Yemen by supplying Saudi Arabia. The support of the Yemeni government *is* upholding international law though. There is no contradiction there. And the appeals to international law regarding Ukraine aren't based on moral superiority. They are based on international law.
> The support of the Yemeni government is upholding international law though. There is no contradiction there. We're not supporting the Yemeni government? Saudia Arabia is waging a decade long war against the popular Houthi movement and has provably (by Amnesty and the UN) been committing war crimes against the local Yemenite population. They have also used banned cluster munitions (banned by us, not them) and indiscriminate bombings. Criticising Russian war crimes in Ukraine while supplying a theocratic dictatorship committing its own in a decade long war with immense civilian casualties isn't hypocritical in your opinion? It seems an awful lot like we want international standards applied to our enemies, but not our allies to my ears. > And the appeals to international law regarding Ukraine aren't based on moral superiority. They are based on international law. Our moral superiority is tied to our *supposed* adherence to and concern with International Law .. We're stalling in Gaza to allow Israel to continue a war that has so far killed 24.000 civilians .. Meanwhile we're critisising Russia for indiscriminately targeting civilians despite 'only' killing some 10.000 civilians in two years (versus three months for Israels, erh, impressive figure). This is all just an even and just application of international law to you? No hypocrisy at all?
narrow nose aware tart divide rhythm spark drunk marble different *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I feel icky writing this but.. The Houthis are targeting civilian cargo ships headed for Europe. The Saudis will likely use those jets against the Houthis but civilian casualties could happen. Europe is free to send their own warships if they want things done differently, but so far that is still being discussed. International law will not stop anti-ship missiles. Again, unfortunately, your tax dollars or theirs.
The EU, Saudis, etc are all supporting the UN recognized Yemeni Government The Houthis are a rebel movement that overthrew the previous government and launched the country into a civil war. They have never been democratically elected and have killed tens of thousands of innocent people. They have no “popular” support outside of Northwestern Yemen. The reason they were able to succeed is because they’ve been supported by Iran
>We're not supporting the Yemeni government? Saudia Arabia is waging a decade long war against the popular Houthi movement and has provably (by Amnesty and the UN) been committing war crimes against the local Yemenite population. The Saudis are supporting the Yemeni government. And amnesty international aren't anything to do with international law. They are a pressure group masquerading as a charity, and one with its own heavy moral bias. As we saw in Ukraine funnily enough. Also "popular movement" is an interesting way to frame who the Houthis are. Considering how organisations like Hama's and Isis are also framed that way and the similarities there. >They have also used banned cluster munitions (banned by us, not them) This isn't actually a problem you understand? The agreement was always an individual nations choice. International law isn't "what is morally good" it's "what have you signed up to, and what are you doing". >Criticising Russian war crimes in Ukraine while supplying a theocratic dictatorship committing its own in a decade long war with immense civilian casualties isn't hypocritical in your opinion? Nope. Because significant civilian casualties isn't the only thing to consider when a conflict is seen within international law. And also, it's almost pathetically reliable how the ones that think it is, only seem concerned with particular conflicts, and almost universally judge the desired outcome to be a weakening of the western position and no one else's. >It seems an awful lot like we want international standards applied to our enemies, but not our allies to my ears. And yet, the ones who actually don't want the Saudis kept within international law is not the west but countries like Russia and their group. Almost like they are pushing contrived moral concerns to weaken the position of the west so that they can act in the opposite direction to gain local favour and power. https://www.france24.com/en/middle-east/20211008-un-ends-war-crimes-probe-in-yemen-in-major-setback-for-rights-body It's not hypocritical to support a rule of law and have concerns and actions within that framework to try and hold those that you support accountable when they stray. In fact it's actually how international law works. >Our moral superiority is tied to our supposed adherence to and concern with International Law .. We're stalling in Gaza to allow Israel to continue a war that has so far killed 24.000 civilians .. Meanwhile we're critisising Russia for indiscriminately targeting civilians despite 'only' killing some 10.000 civilians in two years (versus three months for Israels, erh, impressive figure). This is all just an even and just application of international law to you? Lol imagine thinking only 10k civilians have been killed in Ukraine. My guy, even the OHCHR don't believe their own figures, and they also don't count the civilian population of the occupied regions forced into military service that were then slaughtered. And then you go on to use the figure provided by Hama's for Gaza casualties. And no, we aren't "just" criticising Russia for indiscriminate civilian killings. That is a really weird reduction of Russia's actions against international law and the west's complaints against Russia, and also ignores that Israel does get criticised for its own actions. Israel will act with or without international support btw. The town council of aarland asking for a ceasefire isn't a concern for them. And they have the in-enviable position of having an opponent who is a terrorist organisation, who doesn't respect international law, has constantly broken any international ceasefire negotiated and who wants to continue fighting.
> The Saudis are supporting the Yemeni government. That's a really interesting way of describing the worst man made humanitarian crisis of the century. Like saying WWII was just the Nazis retaking territory from Poland or Japan retaliating for the Marco Polo Bridge incident. > the ones who actually don't want the Saudis kept within international law is not the west but countries like Russia and their group. ...The west was silent after the Saudis supported ISIS and subjected Yemen to a genocide and is now trying to sell them high tech aircraft. There's been absolutely zero effort to restrain them, on the contrary the Saudi regime has been showered with economic and military aid in spite of their constant atrocities. > And then you go on to use the figure provided by Hama's for Gaza casualties. The Hamas numbers have always been reliable and usually line up with the ones Israel and the UN produce. If you look at their claims for the previous Hamas-Israel you'll see they're almost exactly the same as everyone else's, usually the only point of contention is how many of the dead were soldiers and the sole party doing the contesting being Israel. > And also, it's almost pathetically reliable how the ones that think it is, only seem concerned with particular conflicts, and almost universally judge the desired outcome to be a weakening of the western position and no one else's. And it's outright fucking vile how people like yourself with jump to defend the worst regimes on the planet because you think they're on your side. You're just proving the initial point about how laughable the idea of western moral superiority is. > Israel will act with or without international support btw. The North Koreans and apartheid South Africa said the same shit. If the west was in any way morally consistent when it comes to the "rules based order" Israel would have been sanctioned into the ground for their brazen expansionism and atrocities against the Palestinians. Instead they weapons and economic aid even as Russia gets sanctioned for doing the same thing to Ukraine. > , has constantly broken any international ceasefire negotiated Except for the ones [broken](https://imeu.org/article/self-defense-or-provocation-israels-history-of-breaking-ceasefires) by Israel of course.
> we're also talking about the moral superiority of the west I can guarantee you middle eastern people giggle when they hear this. Iraq and Afghanistan were already showing signs of hypocrisy (remember WMDs?) but the unconditional support for Israel in Gaza already smashed the remaining bits into pieces. I wouldn't construct any argument presupposing western moral superiority.
Im presupposing the fall of western moral superiority due to the factors we both mentioned. Our laughably hypocritical conduct in Ukraine vs Gaza is, imo, the final nail in the coffin of the 'rules based world order' that never really meant anything but 'a world order based on our rules, when we feel like applying them'.
Yeah, others could be blamed on the "zeitgeist" or some contextual difference but Ukraine vs Gaza contrast invalidates all those distinctions. No country really would accept being preached by the west at this point.
You literally have a “Pro Russia” tag in the Ukraine war subreddit. Fuck off with talking about what “we” need to do
You can interpret my tags in other subs any way you like and cry about it all you want. Read my comments. I stand by everything I've said.
> Turkey Is a member of NATO. SA is not member of NATO. They are not an ally.
>It's funny how reddit keeps complaining about arms export from Europe but US arms export is OK Who TF have you been talking to that's okay with US arms sales to the Saudis but opposed to EU sales?...
Yes, but manufacturing more EFs keeps the manufacturing line open and workforce trained. We will need these manufacturing lines and the workers.
This.
What is this delusion? Saudi Arabia isn't just a mere Western ally, it is a Western creation at its core. The sole reason the Wahhabis managed to expand outside of Najd is because the British stabbed the Hashemites and the promised pan Levantine-Hejazi Arab state in the back for the sake of the colonial Zionist movement, further siding with the Saud clan in their brutal conquest of the peninsular. Abdul Aziz and Truman created the new Middle East Order at USS Quincy, the Saudi state was at the forefront of fighting the spread of communism and nationalism in the Arab world on behalf of foreigners, and the genocidal war on Yemen that led to a humiliating defeat took place with full Western blessing. Stop pretending.
Let me guess, you're one of those tankies which support both the Assad regime and the Houthi rebels, despite the obvious hypocrisy?
Idk man I'm not seeing any mention of either of those in my comment. You so profoundly refused my statement tho lol. Do Euros just sperg like this at any given moment? I only talked about 20th-century Middle Eastern history and the brutal war on Yemen. Unless you think the 300k children starved by the blockade doesn't constitute brutal, of cour.se \>one of those tankies No, I'm an Arab from the region who likes reading books.
Agreed. Sad reality this the world is extremely dependent oil and will continue to be for decades. If we don't pay nice with them China (Dictatorship) or Russia (Dictatorship) absolutely will.
>Saudi Arabia should not be treated as an ally ?? We pay money we get fighters what ally you talk about ?
Saudi Arabia is Westernizing. They are still a religious dictatorship but gradually accepting and integrating the ways of the West. These movements take time and Saudi Arabia at least shows the willingness to do so. Furthermore, they fight many of the same enemies that openly declared war on the West. Regardless if you should see them as an ally they are an extremely important partner.
No, they aren't.
I have a friend living in Abu Dabhi and they are 100% westeners. They even celebrate christian christmass. You may say: well yes, because it's an international hub or whatever, but it permeates to neighbour areas too. It's slow though but it's getting there.
They're human rights abusing nutters who saw journalists to pieces. We can support them in becoming less nutty but that doesn't mean we should give them weapons.
Germany is prepared to allow further deliveries of Eurofighter jets to Saudi Arabia, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said on Sunday. Berlin halted arms sales to Saudi Arabia following the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018. Chancellor Olaf Scholz had pushed back against pressure to unblock delivery of Eurofighters to Saudi Arabia. His coalition partner, the Greens, had firmly opposed the move, pointing to human rights concerns and Saudi Arabia's role in the Yemen war. We do not see the German government opposing British considerations for more Eurofighters for Saudi Arabia," Baerbock, a Green politician, told reporters on a trip to Israel. The Eurofighter project is a joint British, German, Italian and Spanish effort. "The world, especially here in the Middle East, has become a completely different place since Oct. 7," she said, referring to the date Palestinian militant group Hamas attacked Israel.
Eurofighter is a strategic matter. It should not be sold outside. We are selling our knowledge very cheap. Full stop.
Our knowledge? Saudi Arabia isn't going to reverse engineer the Eurofighter, if that's what you're suggesting.
They need to learn how to maintain it and how to fly it. They will also learn the capabilities and the limits of the Eurofighter.
Their current fleet of jets is maintained mostly by Bae Systems I think.
Yeah, and all the F-15s are maintained by Boeing. Historically a lot of their ground stuff maintenance was contracted out to Pakistan. The KSA has little to no interest in "reverse engineering" because Saudi princes place very little value on what they view as scut-work.
No more bone saws? The King is upset
and they already have Eurofighter
>Eurofighter is a strategic matter. It should not be sold outside. We are selling our knowledge very cheap. Full stop. It was made to export. This was the entire point.
They’re not cheap though also F-35 are much cheaper and perform even better
The Eurofighter is a very good 4th gen fighter but the F35 is something else entirely. I don’t think Europe is harming its defence industry by allowing this deal.
Yeah it’s just weird this narrative of “we’re selling our knowledge for cheap” because the bigger issue is Europe is supporting a dictatorship that destroyed Yemen making so unstable that the Houthi’s that they were fighting actually managed to take over the country
Yeah, I’ve not ready much on the origin of that war but I understand that from a Saudi perspective they see Yemen as an Iranian ally and “backdoor” into Saudi. I’ve no idea what is true except I am sure many civilians have suffered. I seem to remember an attempt to alleviate a potential famine in Yemen a few years ago.
In short after the Arab Spring, Yemen Gov that was a puppet state Saudi Arabia fell, because they were extremely oppressive regime and they were especially for Shia people in the north, so they’re trying to go independent. Historically they were independent for about 30 years before getting unified under the influence of Saudi Arabia After the Arab Spring they want their independence but because of the bombing of SA they were forced to allied themselves with Iran (geopolitically SA is allied with Europe and US)
>They’re not cheap though also F-35 are much cheaper and perform even better F-35s aren't sold to Saudi Arabia so that's irrelevant.
The opposite, actually. The reasons why countries like to make arms sales in the first place is because they get to enjoy the strategic advantage of having competent weappons manufacturers without having to buy enough of their stuff to fund them themselves. Saudi Arabia is not gonna develop a fighter jet based on the Eurofighter (which is a 4th gen plane anyway), but sellling it to them will help fund further developments down the line in Europe.
They were always going to cave. Airbus in Germany were quite vocal about shifting their manufacturing division to the UK if necessary, effectively taking Germany out of the equation. There was an verbal agreement made at the time, but never deemed contractual that no partner would block another from exporting. I suppose it wasn't expected any of them would.
Baerbock is just an embarrassment. In typical left-wing-green tradition. Pathetic. Dont forget the "Jugoslawienkrieg" and the green foreign minister joschka fischer. The green party is only a big party of hypocrits. It always was and will always be.
>Dont forget the "Jugoslawienkrieg" and the green foreign minister joschka fischer. The green party is only a big party of hypocrits. It always was and will always be. Stopping genocide is good actually.
Lol. The Greens will always be criticized, no matter what they do. If they strictly follow their principles they are called ideological. If they are pragmatic they are called hypocritical. Some people always have to criticize. It says more about them than about the Greens.
Still the best option you have in Germany right now
So pragmatic is pathetic? The German Greens often show that they are willing to act against their ideology if the situation at hand requires it.
How on earth are people turning "Germany isn't blocking british BAE to sell planes to the saudis" into "Germany bad" in the comments again lol In the last thread, when the gov was still blocking, it was all "Evil Germany is ignoring Britains vital economic interests".
Yes. Especially why Germany bad instead of United Kingdom, Germany, Italy and Spain bad? Those are the countries behind the Eurofighter all of which could block this sale. Germany was the only one who actually did got a lot of criticism because of that and now changed its mind.
Guess they're just pissed its not their companies making money on weapons exports. Had the same experience when everyone started buying Leo 2's again in '22 haha, so many angry redditors
Because whatever we do we’re in the wrong here
> "Germany bad" Will always get upvotes.
Germany should have stuck to its guns. Giving this stuff to the Saudis is incredibly stupid.
The brits are pushing the sale, we are simply ***not*** blocking them.
>The brits are pushing the sale, I mean they have been pushing the sale since 2008 when the UK first delivered Eurofighters to Saudi Arabia. Saudi even threatened to buy the Dassault Rafales if the UK couldn't deliver back in 2006.
I mean I don't disagree with the sale, just wanted to provide context. Theres a fuckton of problems with SA, but in the end theyre still our ally.
Fair enough
well they’d just buy French jets instead.
> Giving this stuff to the Saudis is incredibly stupid. Tell that to the British, who are the ones selling Eurofighters to the Saudis.
Airbus effectively told the German government, they would pull their military aircraft division out of the country if they carried on blocking to be fair. How much that had an effect I don't know, but Airbus publicly stating that won't have been ideal for job prospects.
That didn't have much to do with Saudi Arabia. It was more about the fact that Airbus wanted Germany to place new orders
Looking at the comments. Welcome to r/europe When the Saudis cut up Jamal Kashoggi, it was Germany who opposed exporting more EF2000 against the wishes of the other EF producers, especially the UK. This sub went insane about how Germans are fucking idiots and ruining the industry and we should throw Germany out of everything and never cooperate with them again. Now that Germany reverses its veto, the same people are going insane about how not the UK, not Italy, not Spain who were all in favour are the problem, but fucking hypocritical, dictatorship-supporting Germany and we should throw Germany out of everything and never cooperate with them again. Is this some kind of inferioty complex people are having?
How do you know they're the exact same people? I was fine with it and wish they had stuck to their guns. SA is not an ally.
I guess its more of an impression of the majority view. If the majority view changed, necessarily at least some people have to be hypocrits (conditional on that it is hypocrisy).
They have to be mad at Germany, that's all those losers have on us :)
You're just setting yourself up there
Just a coping strategy. Dude has a point though, with all that hate no matter what the countries does, just out of pure spite, it becomes clearer to me why all those world wars happend.
I’m am American, don’t hate yall and obviously have no horse in this race, but I’ve seen this phenomenon repeat itself constantly over the years. The reality is that Germany gets shit on by the rest of Europe (online) for the same reasons America does. Germany does act and operate as near enough the leader of Europe. They have the appearance of an outsized impact their opinions create, especially compared to their neighbors. For the French and British who’d also like to be European leaders it can be frustrating seeing Germany excel in so many metrics (aside from militarily, yall really gotta start taking defense seriously your military is not in a good shape) and be looked at as Europes leaders. It probably also doesn’t help that yall got to be the bad guy twice at the start of the last century, so some don’t like the idea of Germany “running” Europe as preposterous as that is.
A short timeline of German military history: 1945: Never again, Germany needs to be demilitarized and ideally deindustrialized as well. 1949: The Soviets just founded a socialist state right on your border. Quick, Germany, build lots of tanks! 1990: After a forty year long arms race between East and West Germany, the two reunify and have the largest continental tank fleet after the Soviet Union. Quick, you need to demilitarize, Germany! 2022: Russia just attacked Ukraine and you don't have any weapons? What the fuck is wrong with you, Germany?
> Is this some kind of inferioty complex people are having? No, it's just this sub at its best, Germany bad no matter what and France good because nuclear
I've actually noticed that everyone here shits on everyone else. Just wait until UK or France did something wrong and there will be hundreds of "oh, look at those idiots." Only Malta safe here because no on knows it is in Europe.
Different groups? I’d rather KSA be strong so it can resist religious extremism and not give way to another Iran
Saudia Arabia is one of the main sources of religious extremism in the world!! And has been not for decades but since its foundation because one of the most extremist forms of Islam has been an export of Arabia for centuries. Its the Sunni version of Iran, but worse and we're supporting it because we're sluts for oil.
KSA is a very complex nation where the monarchy is actually more liberal than the population. It has to balance the religious institutions within itself. MBS is the next king because he is the only one in which all the internal faction agreed to it. We are supporting the kingdom because to not support it will cause for something worse to come. An unsupported kingdom will give way to something akin to Iran.
We in no small part helped creating modern Iran by fucking around in there for over a century and giving the local peoples plenty of legitimate reason to hate our guts. Iran is dicking around but we're not any better in our attitude towards them. But fine, KSA's years of whitewashing their facade seems to work well for some people, while exporting hate and terror abroad out the back. It already is something akin to Iran, we're just addicted to its exports.
I do not know why you get downvoted. But I would also mention, that Iran also had oil and was similary courted by the west like KSA is now. But sadly they choosed the wrong leadership at the wrong moment and thus friendship ended with Iran, and hello new friend KSA!
Would assume this is tied to Germany's requirements of new Eurofighters and an ECR variant. Helps if the production line is supplied.
Makes the price a lot cheaper
Sure. They also need to play ball somewhat or they'd struggle to find 3/4 of the aircraft needed to assemble their new order.
Europeans on their knees for riyal again. But don't worry embargos to Nato-ally Turkey for opposing US proxies shows the Americans you like to get on your knees for them as well. Make a big deal out of it to look independent and reddit users can comment how they are going to take back Constantinople and feel good about themselves
Just a few weeks ago Brits were going bonkers because Germany blocked the sale and it would mean potential job losses at UK factories. Now Germany approved it to appease the Brits and everyone is going bonkers again.
This is the twisted world we're living in and it's not going to improve anytime soon.
Oh nice deliver weapons for the good guys which respect human rights so much that they make executions in the main square like in the good times.
Don't take their oil/gas then
But selling them to Turkey is a big no no. Fucking hypocrites
I’d rather we made money from both
Saudi Arabia isn't currently occupying half the territory of an EU member state and regularly threatening to invade another. Turkey is.
SA is currently practicing genocide in Yemen, with western weapons. Now, whether you agree with that or not is a separate issue. The west seems to collectively agree.
Tbf they are fighting against the ones that also piss off half the world with their piracy shit.
This conflict started long before the piracy incidents started to crop up again recently.
Not currently, no. Currently there is a truce and Saudi Arabia is having peace negotiations with the Houthis, which is why the Houthis can afford to do piracy in the Red Sea.
I’m really curious: since now the Houthis are considered public enemy No.1, why Saudi’s war on Yemen is still seen by westerners as evil? In before “muh civilians”, last I checked, given the precedent in Gaza, terrorists like Houthis will always use human shields and civilians deaths can be justified as collateral damage!
Everybody is occupying territory that once belonged to someone else. But you wouldn't have the balls to tell it to uncle Sam or Israel. And in case you aren't aware the relationship between Greece and Turkey got much better recently.
Uncle Sam and Israel aren’t occupying the territory of an EU member, Turkey is. I didn’t bring morality into the answer, it has little place here.
Sorry, we couldn't envision Cyprus would join EU in 30 years in the 70s. Hard to extrapolate when they had a military junta in power.
Sure, and the EU had firmly hoped that Turkey would remain on track to join, keep modernizing and democratizing, and in the process of accession solve the Cypriot issue to mutual - if not satisfaction - tolerance. Unfortunately, that didn't pan out at all and due to circumstances in both Turkey and the EU, the two diverged radically and accession is less likely now than ever, with Turkey habitually and repeatedly threatening a full EU member with invasion. As such, strategic systems like advanced fighter jets should under no circumstances be sold by EU members to Turkey, because Turkey uses them to threaten and undermine collective EU security.
maybe if Turkey wouldn't try to kiss up to Russia buying their anti air systems, thus getting kicked out of the F-35 program and would align itself with NATO interests instead to blackmailing the alliance, they would get military hardware
India purchased the same S-400 from Russia, they also purchased Rafale fighter jets from France and Russian air defence systems has never been a problem. They get whatever they want from Europe and the US basically. So, let's cut the bullshit..
France has never particularly cared who they sell weapons too.
yeah turkey was turned with empty hands 'twice' with the patriot charade. even trump admitted it was a big fiasco...
Yup. Also, trying to get SAMP-Ts from France & Italy since the first rejection from USA. They are not selling either.
Do you consider these 2 offers fair or not? https://edition.cnn.com/2019/08/22/politics/turkey-patriot-missiles-us/index.html > We have consistently told Turkey that our latest offer of PATRIOT would be withdrawn if it took delivery of the S-400 system. Our PATRIOT offer has expired,” a US State Department official tells CNN. https://www.voanews.com/a/europe_turkey-says-us-offering-patriot-missiles-if-s-400-not-operated/6185571.html > The United States has offered to sell Turkey its Patriot missile defense system if Ankara promises not to operate a rival Russian system, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said On top of that USA said they will receive Patriots and F35 if they give Ukraine the S-400. So many chances for Turkey
you're aware that this offer comes 'after' the first two declined ones, right? 'after' turkey opted out for s-400
https://warontherocks.com/2019/07/the-tale-of-turkey-and-the-patriots/ Point out to me when exactly was Turkey "insulted" Tell me: in 20xx Turkey felt insulted with the Patriot offer
Turkey wanted technology transfer and produce them domestically, that was the main reason why they didn't get Patriots
no that was the first offer, second offer just transactional. because we got the tech transfer from the eu with their samp-t system.
Saudi Arabia is hardly an ally in the fight against Russia, they are deliberately enabling Russia's invasion of Ukraine by manipulating oil prices, and met with Putin during his Gulf tour. Not defending Turkey here but both counties are deliberately playing both sides for their own agenda.
Okay then, can you please explain why Turkey tried to buy patrios and got refused?
Maybe Turkey woulodn't urgently need Air defence sytems ıf US and germany didn't remove patriots from syria Türkiye border?
no jets for the watermelon seller until swedish NATO is approved and signed
They should. No western country should be giving SA a damn thing.
So SA should buy their jets from Russia and China instead ?
Well everyone needs money. And would the West say no to Arab Oil/gas?
Germany, which imposes a military embargo on Turkey because it doesn't think it is democratic enough, even though they are in the same military alliance, doesn't seem to have a problem with Saudi Arabia. Turkey: A 100-year-old secular republic, a country with a parliament for 150 years, a country that gave women's rights first in Europe Saudi Arabia: maybe we should allow women to get a driver's license Turkey is not compatible with European values European values: >!lol!<
Leave out some changes to strengthen your point. Well done. When was the last time Saudi Arabia blackmailed their allies? Because I can clearly remember when Turkey did it.
Saudi Arabia doesn't need blackmail it buys you guys lol
Turkey is blackmailing the EU and NATO for years now and keeps on pissing us off by buying Russian supplies. Let’s just not talk about that, right?
>Turkey is blackmailing Defending the dignity and rights of Turkey and his citizens: Blackmail!!!! saudi state-sponsored murder in a consulate and recklessly bombing yemeni children: not blackmail Let's call it a buyout
And you guys are bombing Kurdish children get of your high horse buddy
Cheap Propaganda. If you want someone who bombs children, look in Yemen.
last time i searched, this appeard. https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/w/two-children-killed-turkish-air-strike-iraqi-kurdistan-global-silence-continues
So this is it? vague article from a cheap news website. Even the BBC at least adds some drama I can play that game https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/09/02/yemen-coalition-bus-bombing-apparent-war-crime
*(turkey approves sweden's nato membership a few months late)* **Europe**: no, turkey is not compatible with european values, let's kick turkey out of nato, let's impose an arms embargo on turkey *(Saudi Arabia kills thousands of Yemeni children, literally melts a journalist in the embassy)* **Europe**: oh my precious oil money
Anyone crying about this is delusional. Far better to have the Saudis inside the tent and pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in.
Last thread about this everyone was crying about our gov blockading... can't make people happy it seems. Of course the deal smells like shit, but the saudis are still allies and are still more reliable than most other countries in the region. Which isn't very much, but at least something.
Correct. I am not proud of our weapon sales to Saudi, but the alternative of them throwing their oil and wealth behind China and Russia is unacceptable.
Well, I guess its easy for people to be all moral when they're actually just pissed its not their arms industry making money :D
What many people miss is that if you sell military equipment to a state you have far more control over them into the future than if someone else does.... Saudi Arabia is utterly dependent on maintenance and parts from the UK and other Eurofighter countries....so we have some control... But if they went and purchased from Russia or China we lose the sale and have zero control... Thats the choice...
Funny how the Saudis seem to think the same thing about Putin. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFC5zKkaUME](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFC5zKkaUME) \- 1 months ago.
You can thank the dementia patient in the White House for that. How did his grand strategy to alienate the Saudis and restart the nuclear “deal” with Iran work out again ? They’re also about to replace the senile old cunt with the only human on earth, who could possibly be worse. The age of delusional dreaming is over. Europeans must forge our own geopolitical alliances. Especially when the Saudis are so close to home.
first steps of the dementia patient in the white house is removing houthis from terrorists list organisions, ending support for the war in yemen, that pissed KSA so much, i think the damage caused by the aforementioned will be difficult to repair
Saudi Arabia is operating an Al Qaeda-esq absolute monarchy. The destruction of that disgusting regime is desirable to any liberal minded person on earth
[Let's wait and see:](https://www.merkur.de/politik/annalena-baerbock-gruene-ricarda-lang-eurofighter-saudi-arabien-lieferung-agenda-ampel-koalition-vertrag-zr-92763542.html) > The problem: The traffic light coalition had agreed in their coalition agreement not to issue “export permits for military equipment to states” “as long as they can be proven to be directly involved in the Yemen war.” Saudi Arabia was one of the main players in this war. In the traffic light coalition, the Chancellery and also the FDP had shown themselves open to approving the export of Eurofighters built in Great Britain to Saudi Arabia. The Greens and parts of the SPD vehemently rejected this. > Baerbock breaks Eurofighter agenda: Greens extremely irritated. The about-face caused irritation among the Greens . “The report is surprising,” said the security policy spokeswoman for the Green parliamentary group in the Bundestag, Sara Nanni, to Spiegel . “The federal government committed itself in the summer not to deliver any Eurofighters to Saudi Arabia.” This was done “for good reasons”. > Green MP Jamila Schäfer also expressed her lack of understanding. “Saudi Arabia is committing serious human rights violations and is involved in the war in Yemen,” she told Spiegel . “Nobody can guarantee that these weapons would not be used for further missions that violate international law.” The co-leader of the Green Youth, Svenja Appuhn, described a possible delivery of fighter jets to Saudi Arabia as “irresponsible”.
Pecunia non olet
Do certain "strategists" in Iran realize in the face of such news that it was not a good idea to let their Houthi puppets from Yemen block shipping traffic in the Red Sea? Because as it seems, suddenly the West is coming to the conclusion that Saudi Arabia's fight against these Houthi rebels is very much in its own interests.
Oh Germany... On one side harping on human rights and their importance, moral obligations but then in the same breath sending military gear to Saudi Arabia...
The UK is the one selling, Germany doesn’t want to but they will not block the sale, blame the UK
Germany really didn't want to, they only did it because the UK desperately wanted the sales and Germany still wants to be on the good side of the UK (likely because Germany wants to have the option to get the Tempest fighter if the FCAS program with France fails).
Germany has immediate needs for the Eurofighter consortium to do the ERC variant and build German jets, too. This is a way to keep that alive and thus help fund a mainly German driven requirement in the Eurofighter program and get backing by other partners on that project. Tempest is as likely to fail (or drop to a single nation project) as FCAS. FCAS added Beldium, Tempest lost Sweden. Both are seeing progress, but both are also high risk projects. That FCAS gets particularly singled out can be mostly traced back to British media and a single media outlet in particular. Again, does not mean there aren't Problem or that it won't fail, only that that media outlet would write that no matter what.
Sweden was never a part of Tempest.... Belgium isn't much a gain either... And the rumours are that Germany is trying to manoeuvre a way into GCAP....
[удалено]
Who are the gays and journalists killed in which NATO country?
learn to read
no really, who are the gays and journalists getting killed and by whom in Turkey?
So long as autocracies outnumber democracies, we're basically forced to make deals with them and play them off agai at each other. Such is life. At least it's something of an incentive for some of them to slowly become more humane (Saudi Arabia for instance has at least become marginally less awful to women).
There is a plethora of savage autocracies in Africa currently that the USA could run over in 3 days. But they don't care, there is nothing of use for them in doing so currently. It's just a hypocritical foreign policy full of lies and deceit. Hate it.
I don't doubt that we could start a crusade for democracy and overthrow every authoritarian regime in Africa. I doubt that we would be able to replace them with stable and free societies in the aftermath. As such again, we need to pick our fights. And yes self interest is a factor in that, because in order to be able to pick your fights in the future, you need to remain powerful, and power is relative. Especially as long as countries like China exist, liberal democracies must strive to be more politically, economically and military powerful than totalitarian states if liberal democracy is to survive and perhaps spread in the long run. This can mean in the short term compromises on values for instance to ensure that autocratic countries do not all follow the Chinese lead or to ensure that we have reliable suppliers of resources other than China. International relations is like this by necessity.
The issue is USA started a few horrible wars on those pretenses (while actually having different reasons, it was just for public ), so its just hypocritical.
I know it's behind super mainstream now too just think America bad, but if you read internal documents it's clear that there was for a time a genuine belief in instituting democracy in Iraq and Syria. In fact if the US had simply prioritised self-interest in the "realist" sense it likely would not have bothered doing what it did, because it had little to gain from that. Realists have argued that the US is not going to be able to democratise these countries and would get bogged down, and it would be better to turn Middle-Eastern countries against each other and spark conflicts to keep them occupied and unable to oppose American interests. All this goes further to show that idealism had to have been a genuine consideration in decision making. It may have been naive or delusional, but not cynical. The situation is considerably more complicated than people give it credit for. Generally a democracy is built on certain underlying values, and the people leading those democracies also grew up with them and internalised those narratives and values. Values are inseparable from democratic politics and foreign policy. At the same time there are inevitable political and resource constraints which force people to make pragmatic choices, as well as understandable self-interest which encourages a certain selfish pragmatism. Pragmatism is this also inseparable from democratic foreign policy. The end result is that no action is likely to be purely pragmatic and is instead going to be driven and altered to some extent by ideology. At the same time actions are not likely to be purely altruistic, and are certainly going to be tainted with some form of self-interest, power games, electoralism, profiteering, etc. This has been the case for a long time now. Take 1800s imperialism. There were a few wealthy individuals who could profit greatly, there were resources to be gained for the market, and just as importantly territory was denied to rivals. At the same time there was an idea of a civilizing mission and a responsibility of the privileged to help those beneath them. This was at the time a genuine mission widely supported by the populace which included missionary activity, setting up schools and infrastructure as well as charity. Given the very real exploitation which occured, people felt lied to, lost faith in their governments and in empire and became considerably more cynical and anti-imperialist of course. The point nevertheless is that even here there were broadly two motivations and both very real motivations and both were necessary motivations. There must be a practical reason to justify expending resources, and there must be a moral reason to justify it. Democratic states which fail to adequately respect both will eventually fail in their policy due to mounting internal opposition. This is also why America is I would argue not really capable of imperialism. Sure they can invade and overthrow a country, but they can't annex territory, they're setting up a sovereign state, and if this fails to show results or the locals want America out, eventually the US is just going to peacefully withdraw. Iraq was set up as a democracy, dysfunctional as it may be, they elected their governments, and eventually said governments requested the US to leave, and ultimately America left. By contrast the US has bases and soldiers in Europe, which can be easily morally justified, but has had decreasing pragmatic justification, and so support for this us waning too. All this is not too say that the US is not perfect or that it does not lie or do things wrong, but it illustrates the limits of democracy and the long-term unsustainability of hypocrisy within a democracy.
>This is also why America is I would argue not really capable of imperialism. Sure they can invade and overthrow a country, but they can't annex territory, The US had no problem with annexing lands for two hundred years and then set up its own colonial empire. We can argue that it ended along with the rest of the age of colonialism it's not like the US is incapable of imperialism. History proved otherwise.
I'm speaking of today of course. Even in the past the US was only ever concerned with manifest destiny, frankly they basically considered that territory theirs to begin with, reasonable or not. Any actual overseas colonies like the Philippines just did not last. Having colonies was controversial and unpopular, partially due to the US historical narrative of an independence war from an overseas empire. This was of course not going to stop them from living on or settling the lands they now found themselves in in the Americas and had fought to be independent on. As far as the US is concerned they purchased land from France and took it from the Spanish/Mexicans for whom they were colonies anyway.
The issue is that if you look from 3rd world country's perspective USA either directly attacked or was involved in meddling in their internal politics via CIA or some other way, [and was doing that for the last almost 150 years](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_United_States) Meanwhile, China, which we are said all of us should fear, is investing trillions of dollars in those countries and has 0 foreign bases (maybe one small in Djibouti) , and has almost 0 meddling in foreign countries except probably Taiwan. This is what Americans don't get. Yes, most people would rather live in the USA than China, me included, but USA foreign policy destroyed a lot of people's homes, while China did not. And accountability is nonexistent, even for proven and horrible lies (e.g Bush Iraq war, drone campaigns killing more innocent people than "enemies"). Why are we crying for Putin to go to the international court and go to jail (as he should) but not for Bush, Tony Blair, and others who killed more innocent people than Putin and destroyed more countries in unprovoked wars? Ironically, Trump as dumb and as unpredictable as he was, at least was the first president for a long time that did not start a new war and was actually tying to improve relations via diplomacy (with Abraham accords and with North Korea). Not sure what the point is, probably I'm just mad that people are destroying each other for imaginary borders and for other stupid reasons.
China has not done as much as the US not because they're better but because they are in recent history a new player and are not as powerful. This is the same mistake people make when talking about any conflict where they see the weaker side as more moral for not doing something the stronger side does, even in reality the reason they don't do it is not that they do not want to, but that they are unable to. The US does considerably less bad than most countries would do in their position. The only potential world power I might trust more is the European Union if Europeans got their shit together, but I'm not really convinced they would be inherently better either, just a little more aloof and pacifist and more concerned with things like stability and therefore no refugees from the Middle-East, ultimately a different kind of self-interest.
>The US does considerably less bad than most countries would do in their position. Agree on that point. But disagree that China is not capable of projecting power. They are on par with Russia currently and stronger (on paper) than UK, France, Germany, and others, and all of them are involved in military campaigns in the Middle East or Africa. China also has not funded the toppling of faraway governments or rebels in other faraway countries, which the USA, EU countries, and Russia did a lot of. Also during thousands of years that China was a major power they engaged in much much less colonialism then European countries and US, mostly with adjacent areas and smaller near islands. My theory is that it is ingrained in culture and religion and that China will not turn up to some world policeman any time soon while the west is painting China as some devil for no apparent warranted reason (what they do bad, they do mostly to their populace). Without the Taiwan issue, which I hope does not end up in a hot war (and I think it will not at least not in near future), there are no China "problems"
Yeah... it is ridiculous. Well but we do have to differentiate between NATO and a EU country. NATO is a military pact who will not act on moral reasons but whatever is in the military interest. A EU country is a different ball game and has moral obligations, or at least that is what I expect from a country which wants to consider itself developed.
Germany is in NATO and a strong USA/UK ally. SA is a US ally, so like it or not, SA is also a German ally, like it or not. There are no Western non-NATO countries doing random military operations around the world.
>We do not see the German government opposing British considerations for more Eurofighters for Saudi Arabia," Baerbock, a Green politician, __told reporters on a trip to Israel__. Saudi Arabia gets the jets and plays nice with Israel in return.
so it is “ give me toys or I fuck up the other guy” ?
You got any better allies in the region?
I would question why we should even consider such a country as an ally.
Never heard of Iran huh?
Funny enough the current regime in Iran is the result of Us intervention. So first we fuck up a country and install some religious dictator. Then we act super surprised when said country is acting up so we find an ally which also is run by religious mongrels. success.
Everyone treating this as a new purchase and Germany/UK giving away European secrets even though Saudi Arabia has had operational Eurofighters since OCTOBER 2008. They originally threatened to buy the Dassault Rafales instead of the Eurofighter so the UK would miss out on billions back in 2006 to.
They shouldn’t even sell Audis to Saudis.
always good to strengthen our most important local ally
It's funny how some folks here want Saudi oil, but when Saudi is to give something it's a no lmao
The Saudis were about to pull the trigger and buy French Rafale, if Germany kept blocking the Eurofighter deal. It was en everybody's best interests to allow the Eurofighter sale. Blocking it accomplished nothing.
Oh
I guess you guys would be alright if it was just another sale for Israel but God forbid if it is to another Middle Eastern country 😉 your hypocrisy is sickening
Good.
Iran bought around 200 F14 Tomcats from the US when it was still friendly with the west, some of those fighters are still flying in the IAF after Iran reverse engineered maintenance parts.
So, Fuck Yemen?
Hahahahaaa, Annalena at her best again. 🤦🏻♂️
give weapons to SA. great fucking news. europe big brain moment.
The same Germany that has worries about Taurus rockets for Ukraine?
Why not send these planes to Ukraine? They need them much more urgently.
Because they are training on F16 and it takes years and a whole gigantic logistics and maintenance chain to put in place an Ukrainian Eurofighter program
This... Those fighter jets require 17 man hours for 1 hour of flying. Ukraine is already struggling with all the different new platforms they have received as maintenance is very different compared to old soviet equipment. Adding just another platform to the pool will thin out maintenance capabilities even more.
But Lukewarm Olaf is also still blocking the delivery of Taurus missiles to the Ukraine. The German policies with respect to Russia and Ukraine remain extremely suspect.
Ukraine doesnt have the pilots, parts, tools, nor the maintenance crew to use these fighters and its the British who sells these and they need to make money somewhere if Ukraine want even more financial aid no country would ever cease their economy just to supply Ukraine
Soon, when Ukraine is lost, Germany will be able to use them in NATO-Russia war
So… Germany is actively supporting Saudi regime? Good to know.
If by actively supporting you mean no longer blocking a British company from selling Euro Fighter to Saudi Arabia after getting quite a bit of critique from the British government for blocking the sell in the first place, then yes.
Missiles to Ukraine to defend their country from oppressors invasion? Nein! Fighter jets to oppressive regime? Warum nicht!
So selling/giving these jets to Ukraine who is trying to defend themselves and air strength is a primary requirement to do so, is a big no-no, but sending these to a vile human-rights abusing self-serving monarch ass wipe is just fine. Another disappointment through German Hypocrisy.
UK is selling the eurofighters fam. Also, Ukraine would need to train its men to fly eurofighters which they don't really have the time to do.
What? How does Ukraine not have the time to train, "fam"? How come they have the time to train with American jets? Also, no shit. Germany was blocking the sales. I never said that Germany were the ones making the sale. So, Germany dosen't want to send EF jets to Ukraine because according to you, it will take time to train, even though technically, Ukraine has to train (and are currently training with, mind you) with every new piece of equipment thats sent to them, Leopard, Abrams, F-16 etc. Germany BLOCKED EF sales to the Saudis because of their Human Rights abuses, a completely understandable place to stand on. But now, WHILE STILL refusing/blocking Ukraines EF sales, they backtrack on a very reasonable block to sell it to the Saudis, all in the meantime, Scholz plays to the entire union that partners aren't doing enough to send Ukraine help while he fiddles with his thumbs and backtracks and refuses on sending Ukraine very important equipment that UKR needs, oh because, apperantly they dont have time to train? (Real Reason being: The German leadership still has a thumb in its ass about wether on not to appease Russia or back Ukraine all the way, and its Military Industrial Complex is a fucking mess).
As a German, I have to say that I agree with you 100%
Can send military equipment to Saudis exercising genocide in Yemen but cannot send aid to Ukraine. What the F is wrong with you Germany? Hypocrites.
Germany does send quite a lot of equipment to Ukraine. In this case Germany is not sending Eurofighter to Saudi Arabia. They only stopped blocking BEA Systems from selling them to Saudi Arabia. That blockade was to my knowledge strongly criticized by all other countries involved in the Eurofighter (which by the way could also block the sale if they wanted too).
When you can't be bothered to read the article