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Comment by TitaRusell | Hacker News Reader

French Guyana is in South America and our Burger friends have reinstated the Monroe doctrine.

Another and more immediate concern is that anything which contains subcomponents/subsystems or parts from US origin companies runs into ITAR and MTCR [1] issues with the US federal government. There's a number of very complex European origin final aviation/aerospace industry products which are laden with US-origin components. I wonder about exactly how "non-US" this Isar rocket is.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missile_Technology_Control_Reg...

I would put it as a much greater likelihood that the US would decide to mess with export-control permits for various subsystems than a theoretical scenario where they begin intercepting western European flagged cargo ships on the way from Europe to French Guiana.

Agreed, the moment we allowed MBDA to put some american component in our (French) missiles made with european allies (Scalp, Meteor), the US blocked our sales to Egypt because they wanted to sell their own instead, using ITAR, forcing us to fix it for the french version.

The US has repeatedly proven that ITAR is for them as much of a military thing as it is an economic one, and that they're willing to use it against allies. If we refuse to learn that lesson, it's on us not them.

> The US has repeatedly proven that ITAR is for them as much of a military thing as it is an economic one, and that they're willing to use it against allies. If we refuse to learn that lesson, it's on us not them.

I'm actually surprised anyone ever thought it was not a military thing.

Maybe I phrased it wrong, it's not my native language ? I meant it "it's not just a military restriction thing when they think there is military danger, it's an economic thing for when they can take advantage over a seller, and who the buyer is doesn't even matter".

I mean it's expected behaviour in one sense but in another it's becoming a bigger geopolitical risk to rely on the US for defence components/technology in the current world, the risk always existed, it's just shifted more one way.

There are a whole bunch of military suppliers across Europe who are in the same boat as MBDA.

Simply put, the US as an ally is less predictable than previously and that has knock-on effects across every sphere.

The European and US weapons industry is heavily intertwined because of the cold war.

In hindsight the whole world should have planned for the "what if America goes Nazi" eventuality.

It's going to take time to unwind that and it's going to be a slow process (unless they do something so utterly stupid they make it a fast process).

I think Canada might recognize that it needs to be a much faster process than anyone expected. Europe is getting some pretty strong signals and should be accelerating the process. Ukraine is obviously already in a full war footing to accelerate as fast as they can. They are pulling Europe along simply because the U.S. has abandoned them and walked away from almost every promise they ever made.

How utterly stupid any individual action is will be a matter of discussion for decades. But the pace has moved towards urgent for at least half a dozen prominent countries.

US military products are also full of European parts.

Does Europe prevent the sale of US products based on that though?

We could if we wanted to. We just don’t have to behave like the biggest bully in the world in every geopolitical context.

Regularly, yes. On a lot of these sorts of products, nothing happens without governments making deals first. Mostly because governments have a need to make sure they get weapons too, not just money for the components they make.

Perhaps should be described as "sale is forbidden by default, but deals are common".

This goes 100% for either completed weapons, or components that can be directly used as a weapon, then you have "dual-use", and the less directly it's a weapon, the more free you are to do what you want.

Can you name any examples? European countries and the EU as a whole don't have an equivalent of the US's ITAR 'See-Through' rule, which lets the US control the usage of a system that has any US components.

I'm not aware of any sale of a US weapons system containing European parts being blocked by any European government. It has been done within Europe, but only for major components, such as Germany's blocking at one point of sales to Saudi Arabia.

The trivial example is the rules about selling weapons directly, so as a very simple example of this you could take:

https://www.brusselstimes.com/153970/wallonia-faces-new-chal...

But this is the one-component-is-the-weapon, with everything going in one direction version of such a rule. An F35 has 300,000 components from 19 countries, so you can imagine what a maze the agreements for that one are.

It's also not just about the weapons and the danger they pose. It's also about jobs. Know-how (both spreading and restricting know-how). And even the traditional "synergy" (you've designed helicopter blah, hence you make radio component so-and-so, so how about you manufacture NATO standard blah radios and antennas) and the occasional monopoly (it's kind of secret but there aren't many companies that can make the obvious alloy needed for the trust vectoring to name one obvious thing)

Our side is NATO, and we make weapons that are designed to push the global integrated worldview and human rights ("America and it's allies") that we espouse as an alliance. And this view permeates all weapons. For NATO guns, one, you'll never get ridiculous ammo stores (that would enable you to eliminate a population for example), we all work on these weapons together, design them together, and if you try to use your own ammo, everything will fail. Most NATO weapons are defensive. You aim a NATO weapon at a (small) target, it finds that target and either kills it or it disables itself and falls to the ground, essentially intact. Russian weapons are the total opposite: they're meant to kill and if they can't kill their target, they'll just kill whatever and whoever's nearby. Sometimes up to the point they kill the weapon's operators. They will fire "cheap ammo" and literally come with instructions on how to make it. They are meant to kill on a very large scale, without precision and they are most definitely not safe to use. This philosophical difference applies to everything from machine guns to nuclear weapons.

Your link is about limiting the sales of Belgian weapons on the basis of Belgian legislation.

A quick Google search will find you plenty of European legislation. And you should look at those laws like the Belgian laws here, like they were a company "Values" document. That is how the EU/Belgium (and other countries) react "by default", but specific treaties explicitly create exceptions to those rules between specific parties.

So like this: exporting guns and ammo is certainly not something any country allows their companies to do, but most/all countries make specific exceptions in treaties.

This just happens to have the advantage that it makes it extremely easy for politicians to deceive voters about weapons. "Belgian law says it's illegal to export weapons". 100% technically true, and totally misdirects people into believing Belgium doesn't export weapons, which is absolutely false.

Meanwhile, Belgium exports ~50 million euros worth of weapons. But Belgium is just an example, it's not like the Netherlands or France or (definitely) UK, or the EU as a whole are different.

You missed the point. The example asked for was this:

"I'm not aware of any sale of a US weapons system containing European parts being blocked by any European government."

That would be something like "Belgium says the USA can't sell F-35s to Israel because the wings are Belgian-made" similar to how the USA prevents ASML from selling their machines to China.

Oh that's what you want. In the clusterfuck with the Turkey involuntary withdrawal from the F35 program half the treaties were renegotiated (you see, can't have any Turk produce weapons unless he's a "genius", that would not be fair. In other news: the Turkish definition of genius is mostly being the son in law of Erdogan [1])

I believe this agreement is part of the restructuring after that cluster... Note that the agreement is both about production and buying. [2]

"Finland has required extensive domestic participation, with industrial cooperation valued at a minimum of 30 percent of the contract price of procuring 64 F-35A fighters. Under the agreement, Finnish firms will produce the F-35’s forward fuselage structures, including components intended for export aircraft. The agreement also includes ..."

As to how the EU is involved: https://defence-industry-space.ec.europa.eu/eu-defence-indus... (ie. that's where you go to ask for loans to start a factory for making F35 components, they have a page listing the deals ... somewhere). Note that this is one of the EU institutions that isn't in the budget (well, the loans aren't). They're not spending tax money to make those loans, they're printing money to make those loans.

So the Finnish government is making this deal, including details on export (and this is obviously weapons exports).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sel%C3%A7uk_Bayraktar

[2] https://militarywatchmagazine.com/article/finland-leading-ma...

How is it an example of European governments preventing American weapons from being sold? Are you saying the Finns unilaterally decided that Turkey can't have F-35s, even if the USA wants to sell F-35s to them?

You misunderstand. Everything is prevented by law, with the purpose to make any change in production involve negotiations with the government, who then negotiates weapons/jobs/local production/... Without those negotiations, and the resulting exceptions to the law nothing can be sold, even dual use items are restricted.

And, of course, the other side of that coin: weapons export regulation is Europe is not something that is meant to actually prevent weapons export. Rather it is used like a company policy: it makes sure everyone regularly has to give the government something they want.

Which is, to put it mildly, not how politicians present those laws.

No, you misunderstand. You keep talking about things irrelevant to the key point.

Look at the political pressure the USA puts on ASML in the Netherlands to prevent them from selling certain products to China because those machines contain some American parts.

The question is explicitly when the reverse has happened, not some general info about European weapon exports or legislation.

Things like Wassenaar Arrangement and MTCR(that applies to a lot of hobby stuffs I'm interested in) are multinational and global. The US implementation is the most painful, but they're like non-Linux unices, sameish in concept and not like first-worlders get free passes.

(And these regs aren't complete nonsense; the technologies regulated by these are useful for guided munitions. It just so happens missile technologies are fully commoditized by now and also happens to be immensely useful for totally peaceful purposes too)

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wassenaar_Arrangement

2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missile_Technology_Control_Reg...

These, again, are export control restrictions at the point of sale and transfer, and the US follows them too. It's not the same thing as what we're discussing regarding the US's changing requirements regarding systems that embed its components.

Note that dual-use items (which Wassenaar regulates) and MTCR are not the same as the US's ITAR 'see through' rule which it uses to block third party sales of systems that contain even small numbers of US components.

For dual-use items, the EU's Directive 2021/821 governs things and broadly authorises exports to the United States through EU General Export Authorisations (EUGEAs) that don't require individual approval.[0]

[0] https://policy.trade.ec.europa.eu/help-exporters-and-importe...

ITAR and EAR were built to keep U.S. military and dual-use technology from strengthening countries that could use it against the United States or its allies, like Europe

In theory the monroe doctrine, as it was originally written, requires the USA to remain neutral on existing colonies. It only prohibits the expansion of European colonies in the Americas.

Indeed. The interpretation that served as a justification for US interventionism came almost a century later (the Roosevelt Corollary in 1904).

In its original form, the Monroe doctrine declared attempts by European monarchies to reconquer the newly independent Spanish states to be an unfriendly act toward the US. It did not declare US domination over them, as it's commonly misunderstood nowadays.

Yeah but although the crazies in charge have been very negative toward our continent and my country (Frace), they've also steered very clear away from any seizing claim about any of our territory, despite going against anyone from Canada to Denmark to Spain to UK, to ...

Deep down, we're an annoyingly arrogant little country with delusions of grandeur salivating at the thought to prove to our EU neighbors how strong we meant it when we said we would accept to oppose the US in case of military attack and I think they knew we may actually mean it and not back down when it start (see also: Denmark leak about how France was essentially willing to provide whatever to help defend Greenland).

I'm not saying this in a "we're awesome" way, more like a hard case of the TACO, bullies avoid the ones who punch back. Nothing would be happening in Iran right now if they had not believed in advance Iran would lie down like Venezuela did after losing its leader, though most would say confusing the two situation makes no sense.

Ultimately this is so much lost time and resources for nothing of value, it's so utterly disappointing...

Who is "(Frace)" and what are you talking about?

You all need to watch actions more than what people say.

> Deep down, we're an annoyingly arrogant little country with delusions of grandeur salivating at the thought to prove to our EU neighbors how strong we meant it when we said we would accept to oppose the US in case of military attack and I think they knew we may actually mean it and not back down when it start (see also: Denmark leak about how France was essentially willing to provide whatever to help defend Greenland).

And the rest of Europe loves you for that! But we're also very worried if that'll all remain so if Le Pen or Mélenchon win next year.

Believe me, I'm even more worried than you. I think Melanchon would actually do more damage, as crazy as it seems, Le Pen is incompetent and a sellout, Melanchon actually believes the BS he vomits.

Macron finished the traditionnal left and right wing parties, which were too large and rotten to the core, but it's left us with a large center and two extremes, it's high time we have the normies left and right come back.

If the extremes are unelectable, the center party should split eventually. They'll find something to disagree about.

As long as they are more terrified of losing to the extremists they'll try to keep it together as long as they can. I hope they don't become too corrupt in the process.

If Mélenchon wins it will evolve to an even stronger stance against imperialism. He is labeled "anti-american"

...Against US imperialism anyway. His credentials when it comes to other empires isn't spotless.

The imperialism Europe suffers from in reality is not American and he's entirely on board with that.

> Deep down, we're an annoyingly arrogant little country with delusions of grandeur ...

The problem is France used to be the world's superpower, with an economy bigger than the one of the UK. Literally number one.

Then the monarchy fell and all it took was a mere 15 years for that little arrogant man that Napoleon was to get its arse (and France's arse) handed to him in Waterloo in 1815.

15 years to throw away centuries of greatness: what an amazing success the revolutionaries managed to pull. They fucked up so bad they realized it and tried to, peacefully, re-instate monarchy, but it was too late. Charles X was king of France after the Waterloo SNAFU (1824 to 1830) but it was too late to fix things.

It's nice and all, on paper, to want no king. But France is considered to have lost, forever, its place as the world's n 1 superpower when Napoleon lost in Waterloo.

I'm not saying monarchy is better: what I'm saying is that the french revolution coincides with France losing its status as the world's 1st super power.

And France has been arrogant ever since but it went from 2nd to 3rd to 4th to 5th to 6th to now 7th place.

It's a never ending fall.

With the biggest public deficit and the biggest public debt in the entire EU, and the level of primary education going down the drain (university is still doing OK), I fear it's only ever more pain ahead for France.

The country is literally crumbling left and right and communists, siding with islamists (the party of Melenchon are downright commies, who understood that if they were cozy with islamists, they'd get a chance a winning the elections), are planning to destroy the little that's left of France's past grandeur.

If you think those in charge now are negative towards their own country, you haven't seen anything should either the communists (Melenchon) or the national-socialists (Le Pen / Bardella: which are for a national preference with a deeply socialist program) win the next elections.

Besides an aching aircraft carrier France still has the atom bomb and that's it.

No more money. No more education.

France is toast.

P.S: the biggest success, from their leftist point of view, of french intellectuals is managing to present national-socialists as "far right" (as if they were fascists)

I have no idea what's your point but I have to say I find "The country is [...] siding with islamists" when we were literally the only country willing to defend the freedom to speech and caricature religion a couple years ago against islamism, with Quebec the outlier that sided with us (even though Canada did not).

Overall: I don't think any country should be on top. I'm glad France is not number one, and I hope it remains strong but never get in that position again. Part of why I love the EU is that no one, not even us or germany, is strong enough to fully impose its will without concession. Some would disagree with that, but they clearly don't know their history. So ... I'm not sure what your point is, but I think I disagree with it.

People who think everything is a zero sum game are mathematically destined to lose. Trump is finding that out in record time.

> Trump is finding that out in record time.

Given his age, I think any record would be in slowness, not quickness.

> P.S: the biggest success, from their leftist point of view, of french intellectuals is managing to present national-socialists as "far right" (as if they were fascists)

I wander how "national-socialist" sounds in other European languages, and whether it might have some history of referring to fascist movements. Say, what would the Germans call someone like that? Nationalsozialistische? I don't remember if there is any history about someone who called themselves that being a fascist...

Yeah, "when have national-socialists ever been fascist!" is all I read in GP's post after I got to that part. It's just a brain crash for me (I'm German)

I think it's ridiculous to write that much without realizing the most obvious thing that happened, that France had its birth rate drop first and very quickly, meaning that they lost their demographic advantage against the rest of Europe.

> 15 years to throw away centuries of greatness

Great for whom, exactly?

Am no expert at French history, but this feels like cherry-picking to me of what happened to France. From what I read, one of the biggest reasons (besides the defeat at Waterloo) for the downfall of France to Britain was that in the 1700’s, France had wild speculation in the colonies in the Americas, specifically, in the Mississippi Company. When the bubble started collapsing, the Prime Minister at the time (John Law), put a lot of the French treasury into trying to support that bubble, but it collapsed anyway. Now the French government was relatively cash poor, which eventually led to losing a lot of its colonies to Britain, a great deal of unrest in France and the French Revolution.

And I am no history expert, so am unsure of this myself, but in my humble opinion, the idea that monarchy is why France lost its place in the world doesn’t seem like a major factor.

> salivating at the thought to prove to our EU neighbors how strong we meant it when we said we would accept to oppose the US in case of military attack and I think they knew we may actually mean it and not back down when it start

No offense to France, I don't really care one way or another, but didn't Macron also say he would deploy French troops in Ukraine? Where are those troops? Surely Ukraine is an "EU neighbor". They're currently suffering from an actual aggressor (Putin), not merely theoretical (Trump).

France says a lot of things.

> didn't Macron also say he would deploy French troops in Ukraine?

No he did not, he said he refused to rule it out: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/27/french-preside...

So I would recommend making sure to inform yourself properly rather than assuming what you read (or thought you read) is correct

> Surely Ukraine is an "EU neighbor". They're currently suffering from an actual aggressor (Putin), not merely theoretical (Trump).

But as you said, they're NOT EU, not in an official military alliance with France. If you cannot see the difference between the two situation, I can't make it any clearer for you.

If you're saying "we should do the same for those that are out that for those that are in", what you are saying is "being in has no purpose, why take the commitment". I believe your point of view is as wrong as can be.

> The situation in Ukraine, which has been under invasion by Russian troops for the past two years, was deteriorating. The war was getting bogged down. "In any case, in the coming year, I'm going to have to send guys to Odesa," said the president before a handful of guests. [1]

This was 2+ years ago and in the years since Russia has captured even more territory and is now bombarding Kyiv. And still no French troops.

Again, France says a lot of things.

[1] https://www.lemonde.fr/en/politics/article/2024/03/14/war-in...

Read up on game theory. This was just tit for tat. At that time Russia openly contemplated invading EU countries.

Well, you'll notice how Russia just ignored what Macron said and proceeded with their attempted conquest of Ukraine anyway. Because it's just "game theory". It's just "tit for tat".

Everyone knows France says a lot of things.

You have events completly backward, Russia was already invading when Macron said it. If you can't even get years in the right order you're not really arguing in good faith.

The point is that Russia didn't just turn around and go home when Macron threatened to send French troops to Ukraine. Because everyone knew they weren't actually going to do it. And they didn't.

Did you notice they also haven't invaded other countries so far? And that France now supports Ukraine's long range strikes?

You're bad at noticing the tits for each tat.

> didn't Macron also say he would deploy French troops in Ukraine?

AFAIK, he said he didn’t rule out doing that while the war was ongoing (https://edition.cnn.com/2024/02/27/europe/france-macron-troo...), and he signed a declaration of intent to do that if a peace deal with Russia is made (https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c17zee20qpzo)

Neither are what you imply he said.

> he signed a declaration of intent to do that if a peace deal with Russia is made

Interesting. Thanks for letting me know a Ukraine-Russia peace deal will never be signed.

That’s a pretty childish take on a serious subject.

No, it’s a very strong indicator that a peace deal will never be signed until unconditional surrender. Because concerns about NATO troops in Ukraine is main reason why Russia started this.

Claimed reason.

If Russia is so afraid, perhaps they would be open to a peace deal guaranteed by NATO troops stationed on their ground?

That's literally what they don't want... so how does what you said make sense?

Putin said this, but he says a lot of things which are not true.

Regardless, his sucessor may be more relaxed. Especially considering how badly it went even without Ukraine having NATO membership.

Yes, they don't want that. Yet they still keep claiming fear as their excuse for aggression. Pathetic.

Good thing is that that Trump will never manage to figure out where French Guyana is on a map. Or worst case there is a 50% chance he’ll invade (non French) Guyana.

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