this post was submitted on 27 Aug 2023
308 points (97.8% liked)
World News
32045 readers
497 users here now
News from around the world!
Rules:
-
Please only post links to actual news sources, no tabloid sites, etc
-
No NSFW content
-
No hate speech, bigotry, propaganda, etc
founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Sorry, but I'm going to be blunt. This is an ill informed comment. This is in fact normal with most weapons sales. For example:
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/swiss-government-refuses-re-export-arms-ukraine-2023-03-10/
By your logic, Denmark, Germany and Spain aren't independent of Switzerland, simply because they were able to refuse reexport. But of course that's nonsense. It's just that arms and weapons contract invariably include clauses which prohibit reexport without permission of the country of origin. To not include these clauses would make weapons trafficking far too easy. Simply export to a second country which isn't on the sanctions list, then have them re-export to another country, then another country, then another country, then North Korea or wherever because the second to final country doesn't have laws that prohibit it or has insufficient checks.
In this case, the US doing it publically bolsters US allies. The US has publicly said it's ok, so that if shit hits the fan, the US can't say "we didn't approve of this weapons sale, so it's their own problem".
Also, don't forget that the F16 is used as a delivery mechanism for nuclear weapons as part of nuclear sharing, so it's not a crate of automatic rifles. It's a serious escalation, given the Russians can never be entirely sure that the Ukrainian F16 flying towards their border isn't actually a Dutch F16 armed with nukes. In the case of the Netherlands the B61 with a yield of 300 kilotons of which IRC they have 200 of at their disposal if shit hits the fan. The US really isn't the bad guy for including stringent conditions on the reexport of a plane potentially capable of nuking Moscow.
TLDR The US may have undue influence on smaller NATO members, but this really isn't a good example of that.
By his logic the US isn't independent of Norway because they couldn't send NASAMS to Ukraine without approval...
So his "logic" might just be bullshit.
Since it's an arms deals via NATO, with weapons provided by the U.S., it seems fairly obvious the terms of the treaty include consent and/or approval when repurposing arms to non-member states.