Federal Judiciary

Betrayed -- By: Arthur Herman

Barack Obama promised during the 2008 campaign that he would rebuild America?s image abroad and restore our ties to nations around the world. Now, more than a year later, we can take stock of the result.

The administration insulted Great Britain, first by returning its gift of a bust of Winston Churchill and now by challenging British sovereignty in the Falklands. The administration deliberately picked a fight with Israel over new settlements in Jerusalem, which has brought U.S.-Israeli relations to their lowest point since the mid-Seventies. The administration blindsided the Australians by canceling a presidential trip there in order to ram home the health-care bill. The administration infuriated the democracies in Eastern Europe by backing down on missile defense and getting into a fracas with India in Copenhagen over global warming.

Now there?s a major dust-up coming with the European Union over military air tankers. What may seem a rather obscure bureaucratic tussle at the Pentagon could not only damage our relations with Europe in the short run, but wreck our plans for winning in Afghanistan.

Air tankers are the planes that refuel our Air Force fighters and bombers in mid-air. They are essential to the Air Force?s global reach. The current fleet of KC-135 Stratotankers first entered service during the Eisenhower administration, and they desperately need replacing.

The contract to build 179 new air tankers is worth $35 billion in business. The technology isn?t sensitive or top-secret, so any company willing to meet the Pentagon?s specifications was allowed to present a design. Europe?s biggest aerospace consortium, EADS, had partnered with Northrup Grumman to offer a modified version of the Airbus, which would be built in the United States. The Pentagon initially signaled that it wanted the Airbus, but voided the choice last July and rewrote the rules, making Boeing?s slightly smaller plane the only possible winner.

It?s not just Northrup Grumman that?s furious. So is EADS, and so are European officials.

The normally pro-American Sarkozy government in France has been the most public in its rage. The French prime minister has called the rebuff of Grumman and EADS ?a serious breach of the rules? regarding fair trade competition, and he intends to hit back. His European-affairs minister, Pierre Lellouche, says it?s ?an affront? both to France and to Europe, since Spain, Britain, and Germany are also stakeholders in EADS. While the leaders of those countries have been less upfront about their feelings, and the Pentagon has said it would give EADS time to submit another entry, the damage to America?s image has already been done.

The flap is important for two reasons. The first is that Europe is one of America?s growing markets for defense systems and weaponry, from $1.2 billion back in 2002 to more than $6 billion and climbing in 2008. If they decide to cut their arms purchases from the United States, it?ll hurt a defense industry already suffering from budgetary changes and the recession.

Even more important, the U.S. military is finding itself in a weapons-procurement crisis. It?s not just the usual problems of cost overruns and a Pentagon weapons-purchasing bureaucracy that has grown more inefficient the larger it has become. It?s also been the shrinking number of contractors willing and able to build the arms America needs to stay on top militarily.

During the Cold War, the Pentagon had some 50 prime contractors to deal with. Today that number has shrunk to six. This is far too small a base to support genuinely competitive bidding and research for the planes, warships, and vehicles of the future -- including the coming generation of unmanned and robotic systems.

Diversity of sources and competition for contracts is one of the keys to a strong American military. We can find it by working with European military firms, many of whom are also developing breakthrough technologies. The Germans, for example, are creating new optical-sensing techniques that would significantly enhance our ability to see and identify enemies on land and at sea.

Britain?s BAE Systems has already bought mid-size businesses in the United States, as has a leading Italian firm. Missile maker MBDA and France?s Safran want to do the same. Now all those plans may be on hold, thanks to the air-tanker flap.

Nor will the damage stop there, if Europeans feel they can?t get a fair shot at the U.S. defense market (the biggest in the world). Analysts are quietly warning that lack of cooperation on weapons purchases might lead to lack of cooperation in Afghanistan, where France, Germany, and other NATO forces play a big part in President Obama?s plans for stabilizing the country.

Blackmail? Europeans already feel betrayed by Obama. New air tankers are only part of the issue. America is going to need European firms to keep itself armed and secure. It would be a big mistake to leave them, or our fighters and bombers, high and dry.

-- Arthur Herman's most recent book, Gandhi and Churchill: The Epic Rivalry That Destroyed an Empire and Forged our Age, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2009.

Full post as published by Bench Memos - National Review Online on March 29, 2010 (boomark / email).