Newsletter 2012/11/16 – Trustworthy Partners
BERLIN (Own report) – The German government’s recent Arms Export
Report – like its predecessors – discloses the key global front lines
of Berlin’s foreign policy. If intervention to “maintain peace
throughout the world” is not possible, “trustworthy partners” must be
“supported” in doing this, declared the German chancellor recently in
reference to engaging foreign countries to advance German global
policy. This is explicitly also referring to “arming” allies. The most
important recipients of German weaponry include the dictatorships at
the Arabian Gulf – which are to be pitted against Iran – and several
Southeast Asian countries – being armed in confrontation to China. The
Sultanate Brunei Darussalam is leading the list of those receiving a
special kind of arms, formally classified as “weapons of war” in the
official statistics. Brunei and China are in a dispute over islands in
the South China Sea. The “Arms Export Report 2011” again demonstrates
that allies will be supplied arms, even if they brutally suppress
domestic protests, such as Bahrain or Berlin’s partner Saudi Arabia.
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