France and Russia in warship deal

[pampango]

Source: BBC

France has agreed to sell Russia an advanced warship and is considering a request from Moscow for three others, French defence officials say. It would be the first arms deal of its kind between Russia and a Nato member.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy had approved the sale of one Mistral, but Moscow naval officials had then asked for a further three ships, said Jacques de Lajugie of the French arms agency DGA.

With an estimated cost of up to 500 million euros, the Mistral is an assault ship that can carry troops, helicopters and armoured vehicles. Russia has reportedly been keen to buy the 980ft (299m) ship from France to modernise an ageing armoury.

The prospect that the ship could be used against Nato members or their allies has raised concerns in some parts of the alliance. A US official travelling with defence secretary Robert Gates to Paris on Monday said "we have questions" for France about the order.

Read more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8504045.stm

---

I didn't realize that Russia ever purchased ships or other large military items from other countries. Of course, they export a lot of military stuff, but I didn't know they imported anything as substantial as a large ship like this.

[dipsydoodle]

1. What Gates actually meant of course

was against the USA only he didn't say that.

[naaman fletcher]

3. not really...

Poland, Hungary,and the Czech Republic are very wary of Russia. An assault ship is very well a threat to Poland, and France as a Nato member should not be selling such a ship to Russia.

Now, we can question if Nato should exist or if Poland should be a part of it, but if you assume that France willingly is a part of this alliance that includes Poland, then this is a crappy thing for France to do.

[mitchtv]

5. Didn't Spain sell planes to Venezuela?

they had to replace US made parts if I remember correctly

[atreides1]

6. Why Shouldn't France sell to Russia

Hell we let our defense industry sell to other countries for a profit, and not all of them are officially allies of the US.

For instance we sell the F-16 fighter to 25 foreign countries, of which only 9 are NATO allies. Some of the others like South Korea, Israel, and Taiwan are allies also, but not members of NATO.

[naaman fletcher]

7. There is a difference between selling to someone who is not an ally..

And selling to someone who is an actual threat to an ally. Poland perceives Russia as an active threat, and they are probably right. Now personally I don't give a shit, I'm just pointing out that it's kind of shitty for France to call Poland an ally and then to sell stuff like this to Poland's number one threat.

But this is just a rhetorical exercise to me, I happen not to care one way or the other.

[14thColony]

2. You're right on that Pampango

They don't. The only analogy to this I can think of is the Albatros family of jet trainers, which were Czech imports and were the mainstay of the Soviet/Russian Air Force pilot training program for decades.

But that was a "within the Warsaw Pact family" deal, was one of the very very few of its kind, and was more about throwing a financial bone to Czechoslovakia than to fill some need the RuAF couldn't fill on its own.

Warships though, especially major units?! I can't think of a single example, and I know Soviet/Russia naval vessels pretty well.

I have a suspicion we're going to apply some tremendous pressure on France to stop this. If the DoD can find so much as a lightbulb or fusebox that's of US design or manufacture they'll try to scuttle the deal under the auspices of the ban on further export of US defense technology. It will be interesting to see what comes of this.

[harmonicon]

4. this "problem" could be simply fixed by what I think should be a logical international law:

One country, or business in one country, should never be allowed to sell arms outside of its own borders. That profit could be gleaned from international militarization should be a common sense instance of real evil in the world. If a country wants to donate arms to an ally, that's fine, but profiting from war is just plain wrong.

[muriel_volestrangler]

8. That would rather screw countries without a major aerospace industry

and leave them vulnerable to bigger neighbours that have enough resources to build advanced planes on their own. They'd either have to beg for free donations of planes, or bankrupt themselves in an attempt to create an industry that can compete with countries that might be 10 times as big, or more.

[harmonicon]

11. yep, that's the idea

If we're serious about caring about those type of countries, we could form alliances with them, donate arms to them and fight alongside them. Maybe you'd be happy with a rule that we can only sell arms to countries which we agree to fight alongside with a 1:1 ratio of soldiers? Anything less seems to be immoral. What is really happening is not that small countries are being invaded by large countries, but that land-mines made in the US are being used to kill poor people all over the world in internal and regional conflicts fought between the desperate.

[muriel_volestrangler]

13. So it'd suck to be Estonia, Lativa, Lithuania, Poland, Ukraine,

Finland, Norway, etc. The point is that they can afford to pay for some aeroplanes from their bigger allies that are large enough to organise aerospace industries; they just can't afford to set up their own industry. Saying the US, or Germany, must either donate the planes with no payment, or they get no planes at all, is silly. The larger countries are going to want more and more say in the control of the smaller countries defence and foreign policy if they're bankrolling them; or the less scrupulous ones will just bully their smaller neighbours who haven't become part of another country's empire.

A blanket "ban all arms sales between countries" restriction massively favours the biggest countries, like the US, Russia and China, and encourages them to be imperialist. With problems like landmines, we need rules tailored to landmines. Agreements to cut the flow of arms to unstable areas would be good; but arms sales to countries that are stable, democratic, and that can afford it, are not a problem.

[harmonicon]

14. Lithuania having an airforce is what's silly

If Russia decided to invade them now, as it has a few times in the past, who would fight them off? They wouldn't stand a chance without having allies coming to their aid. So, what countries are doing so well against the imperialists because they can buy weapons? Afghanistan? They've sure as hell fucked themselves up in a nearly 30 year civil war that has involved both major "super powers" at various times. Nothing can protect these countries - they will likely not have these industries, and that is fine. Even with them, they stand no chance against the US, Russia, or China, simply because of population and resultant number of people in the armed forces.

I think your argument is a straw man argument, because this situation you suggest doesn't really exist; never has existed. The only thing that selling arms to other countries benefits is the military-industrial complex which now runs the US and likely several other countries in the world (France now too, I guess).

[Xolodno]

9. I think NATO is dead.

Most of NATO countries are probably just as wary of the USA ever since Bush. The last nation Russia invaded was Georgia....and Georgia aggravated it mostly. Russia doesn't appear to be interested in military subjugation of other nations, but rather have other nations economically "tied" to them (which most of Europe is and waring neighbors don't pay bills). I'm betting a lot of the new military equipment they are acquiring is for protecting their economic interests over seas rather than their borders. They are slowly pushing out the colored revolutions on their borders with a simple fact, no matter what, they still need Russia and the USA is too broke to fill any void without them.

[Pavulon]

10. France has always been a reluctant nato member.

and russia has killed some people in very interesting ways in the UK.

[unkachuck]

12. "we have questions" for France....

....it seems the only time the neocons and gates have a problem with profiting from an arm sale, is when it isn't our contractors selling the arms....