EADS: Friend or Foe?

The Center for Security Policy has released another in its "occasional paper series," this one an attack on EADS, the European defense company whose North American branch has teamed with Northrop Grumman to bid on the Air Force's KC-X aerial tanker replacement program. The KC-X competition pits Boeing's KC-767 against the EADS/Northrop Airbus A330, and the final bids were due on April 12. Barring any unforeseen problems, the Air Force expects to announce a winner in October, but, in this competition, problems are practically guaranteed.

As this document from the Center for Security Policy demonstrates, there's more to the competition than just deciding which airplane best suits the mission. There's a significant political dimension owing to the involvement of EADS, which is subsidized, and part-owned, by the French government. Worse yet, the Kremlin also has a stake in the European defense firm. All of which has led to some serious reservations among a certain segment of Washington policy analysts--specifically, "the Buy American, Old Europe-as-ungrateful-offspring, watchout-for-China-and-Russia crowd," according to Michael Bruno writing at Ares. That sounds like a smart crowd to us--count THE WORLDWIDE STANDARD among them.

So without further adieu, the "problematic issues" of awarding defense contracts to EADS according to the Center for Security Policy:

A would-be partner will be difficult to trust if, for example, its government-owner/sponsor and the locus of the corporate headquarters spies on this country, steals its secrets to the detriment of U.S. interests and uses bribery and other chicanery to undermine this country around the world. While EADS may not be directly responsible for such behavior, based on numerous sources - including a former director of the CIA, the U.S. Department of Commerce, and the European Parliament - there is no doubt that one of the governments that has such ties to EADS, France, has been.

Second, it would be dangerous for the United States to rely on the goods and services of a company that is part-owned by the Russian government, and in which Vladimir Putin's Kremlin wants a say in the management.

Third, Congress will be hard-pressed to justify sending the tax dollars of American workers abroad, to pay subsidized European workers who belong to militantly anti-U.S. labor unions that express hatred of our country and what it stands for, and who back politicians who work within NATO to undermine U.S. defense interests.

Fourth, it is a challenge, at best, to trust a major foreign supplier who deliberately seeks to circumvent U.S. nonproliferation laws and thumbs its nose at Washington while selling military equipment, over the strongest U.S. objections, to America's current and possibly future adversaries.