The survey says that the USA, Russia and Germany are the world’s leading weapons exporters, with Germany’s latest weapons export piece of the pie profits coming in at around $3.395 billion. Damn, just think of all the ploughshares you could buy with that.

Taking a look at the numbers more closely reveals some interesting facts:

In 2007:
• The USA, Russia, and Germany held 31, 19, and 14 percent of global exports respectively

• France was the fourth largest arms exporter, with 11% of the global market


From 2006 to 2007:

All I can say is that it’s good to know that all of these German weapons are being used for goodness and niceness and purely defensive purposes (did you know that Wehrmacht meant defensive force?), not like some other countries’ weapons out there, if you know what I’m sayin’. Otherwise a whole lot of people in this country wouldn’t be able to sleep well at night.

By showing that France is America's trusted friend again, Sarkozy hopes to gain influence on American policy, and, in particular, on lifting the longtime U.S. veto on European defense.

… most of Sarkozy's proposals seem to be geared toward creating a rival European defense structure that over time will duplicate but not double NATO resources… Indeed, some of the more U.S.-leaning European states suspect that France's renewed interest in rejoining NATO is in fact a Trojan horse designed, ultimately, to destroy the Atlantic Alliance from within.

For most of the French ruling elite (the anti-American Left and the nationalist Right), the United States is considered to be the main problem in international affairs because of its reluctance to share its power. The only solution, in their view, is a French-led EU superstate that can counterbalance America on the global stage. And a unified EU foreign and defense policy that is completely independent of NATO (i.e., the United States) is essential to achieve equal status. Until then, anti-Americanism will continue to be the preferred means to accelerate the process of loosening the transatlantic link.

Nicholas Sarkozy stated last weekend that the issue of Kosovo's independence, "is not an affair of Mr. Bush or Mr. Putin, but one of Europe." (Le Figaro, in French). Another article by John Ward Anderson in the Washington Post reports:

"Kosovo's independence is inevitable," French President Nicolas Sarkozy told reporters after the summit. "It's an issue for Europe to sort out."

Does Sarkozy mean to say that despite a recent history thick with US political and military engagement in the Balkans, Kosovo is now strictly a European issue? Has Sarkozy forgotten so quickly that the United States bailed out Europe in the Balkans even after the 1991 declaration by Luxembourg's foreign minister Jacques Poos that "This is the hour of Europe?"

Joerg recently cited the Jacques Poos quote in an Atlantic Review post he titled "Kosovo: Is the EU Home Alone in the Balkans?" Perhaps another question is, "Kosovo: Whose House is it?"

What is the benefit for Sarkozy or the EU of preemptively decrying American support, especially when the US and EU strategy for Kosovo seem to be in sync? Why not declare this the "hour of the allies" or the "the hour of cooperation", or perhaps be more candid: "this is the hour we will hopefully not f*** up again in the Balkans, but if we do we are glad to have our American friends to back us up?"

Sarkozy's statement is particularly frustrating to America's proponents of transatlantic cooperation, because it is exactly the type of churlish bombast that leads American Europhobes to argue that the pubescent EU Common Foreign and Security Policy aims to build the EU as a counterweight to the United States, rather than as a stronger ally.

Kyle Atwell has joined the Atlantic Review. This is already his third post. All of his posts are here in chronological order. Kyle will introduce himself later. Let's have him get right into discussing the Russian elections, in particular France's reaction:

The topic of last Sunday's elections in Russia has flooded my news aggregator the past couple days, and what I originally intended to be a brief news summary on the elections has blossomed into several distinct thoughts. To keep to the short blog format, I have broken down my thoughts into three posts. This is the first.

The disingenuousness of the Russian elections has been almost comical at times.  For example, the Washington Post reports that in war-torn Chechnya, Putin's United Russia party won 99.36 percent of the vote with a turnout of 99.5 percent. Not laughing yet... here is where it gets really funny:

"It's a normal result. I'm pleased," said Ramzan Kadyrov, the strongman president of Chechnya and a Kremlin loyalist who has pacified large parts of the war-torn republic in southern Russia. "The most important thing to me is that people were voting with pleasure. Almost all people came to the elections. It shows the level of trust in the power."

These numbers are clearly inflated. I am pretty sure that you could not get 99.5 percent of Russians to a free vodka giveaway, much less the polling stations.

While many in the west (Corriere della Sera) have questioned the election's legitimacy, Sarkozy of France spared no time in calling Putin up personally to offer his "warm congratulations" (Le Monde). Sarkozy was the only western leader to congratulate Putin at the time this article was written.

Sarkozy's action took me by surprise. For a French president who has taken pains to demonstrate his affections for the US, I expected Sarkozy to speak out against Putin's power abuse, or at least keep mum about it. I wonder if a chance to boost strategic bilateral interests with Russia was too tempting to pass up for the French leader, even when it meant breaking western unity in opposing the dubious election results.

For regular readers: props to Joerg and his recent post, How to be a Good Ally of the United States? Just Smile: He must be having one of those 'I told you so' moments after having teased that an ally's smile and sweet talk (of which Sarkozy has plenty for the US) can be used as a better measure of its commitment to the US than its actual policy actions.