OXFORD, Britain — Good news: It looks as though the European Union will postpone lifting its embargo on arms exports to China, at least until next year. This is the right move.
The only thing wrong is that it took heavy U.S. pressure to make it happen.
Consider. Europeans claim moral superiority over George W. Bush's America on the grounds that we always favor the peaceful resolution of conflicts and respect for human rights. Earlier this month, China's National People's Congress passed a law that authorizes the use of "non-peaceful means" to prevent moves toward Taiwanese independence. "Non-peaceful means" is an Orwellian euphemism for war. These are not mere words. There is a serious Chinese military buildup, directed at Taiwan.
As for human rights, Amnesty International estimates that last year "tens of thousands of people continued to be detained or imprisoned in violation of their rights to freedom of expression and association, and were at serious risk of torture or ill treatment." Despite the occasional release of a well-known political prisoner, China's human rights record has barely improved since the Tiananmen massacre of 1989, the event that spurred the embargo.
We are right to be outraged by abuses at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, because the U.S., claiming to be a beacon of freedom to the world, deserves to be judged by a higher standard. But let's keep a sense of proportion here.
Now you may say -- and officials in Brussels, Paris and Berlin do say -- that such a reaction is naive. As it emerges from communist dictatorship, they say, this great country, with a culture and history very different from our own, is engaged in a process of modernization. We must patiently encourage positive change by dialogue, trade and constructive engagement, as we did with the Soviet Union. That is the European way: change through detente.
Fair enough. But then those officials claim that lifting the embargo is purely "symbolic." You don't think, they exclaim with expressions of outraged innocence, that because we propose lifting an embargo on selling arms to China we actually intend to sell arms to China? To which the only appropriate response is: Humbug and balderdash!
