You know, enemy territory... like Georgia, or Ukraine, or Moldova or something.ST. PETERSBURG, Russia -- A cutting-edge French warship sailed into St. Petersburg on Monday to show off its capabilities to potential buyers in the Russian Navy, whose pursuit of an amphibious assault capacity is frightening some neighboring countries.
Russia's once-mighty navy was severely degraded after the fall of the Soviet Union and it currently has no big ship with the power to anchor in coastal waters and deploy troops onto land.
Russian officials said this year that they were planning to make their first arms deal with a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization by buying a French vessel like the Mistral, a 299-meter ship able to carry more than a dozen helicopters, which would in turn be able to haul hundreds of troops into enemy territory.
Hey, you know I have no problem with the way you help yourself, France, but these guys are fast company. Seriously, WTF are they thinking? I'm sure they were just talking about pierogies and snow and shit, but let's cut that out. Make your money somewhere else, dude. The Georgians, of course, think this is awesome.
"We strongly oppose the sale of such ship to Russia," said Nika Laliashvili, a member of the Georgian parliament's defense-affairs committee. "It poses a serious danger to Georgia."Oh, wait.
Secret Defense has this:
ReplyDeletehttp://secretdefense.blogs.liberation.fr/defense/2009/11/le-mistral-%C3%A0-saintpetersbourg-en-escale-et-en-pr%C3%A9sentation-commerciale.html
Oh and this is the Mistral's webpage:
ReplyDeletehttp://bpcmistral.free.fr/russie2009.htm
Yes, I know I'm not saying anything.
I'm too lazy to research numbers, but doesn't the United States do more foreign military sales than any other country? I doubt 100% of those sales are defensive in nature.
ReplyDeleteYour point is fair. But we (Americans) shouldn't sell weapons all over the globe either.
I'm too lazy to research numbers, but doesn't the United States do more foreign military sales than any other country? I doubt 100% of those sales are defensive in nature.
ReplyDeleteYes, we do. By a long shot, too. But there's a big difference: we only sell to good guys. And if you weren't a good guy before we sold it to you, then you are now!
Seriously though, there are a lot of things to complain about in the way we sell materiel around the world, and it's easy to look at the top-line number and say "man, it shouldn't be so high." But we do tend to ensure that sales fit into some kind of at least broad and loosely-defined strategic concept, which is to say that we don't do things that destabilize our allies and partners or directly conflict with our other foreign and security policy priorities. We try to make sure that our arms sales are at worst indifferent to the accomplishment of our objectives or the attainment of desired endstates.
ReplyDeleteNow of course France's interests aren't precisely the same as our own, but it strikes me as grossly irresponsible to do something like this without first getting on the same page with NATO.