THE U.S. TURNS ITS BACK ON EUROPE,

ALLOWING RUSSIA AND CHINA TO APPROACH

EUROPE is at a pivotal point. Or, rather, it is at a point where its structural transformation can no longer be ignored.

Events in EUROPE have finally led us to the dénouement of the 20th Century. It may presage a new EUROPE tied more firmly into the EURASIAN heartland than old EUROPE. It is the end — ’though not without economic, social, and political pain — of the 20th Century form of ATLANTICISM. 

 US EASTWARD FOCUSES

Similarly, the UNITED STATES and much of the WEST is at a pivotal point, except that — by almost all public reaction — this reality can be, and is being, ignored. Within the morphing of the US, as it sidesteps the question of its own strategic pivot (and the signs of its own strategic mortality), Washington has — like EUROPE — walked away from the 20th Century form of ATLANTICISM, in favour of a PACIFIC orientation (but a PACIFIC orientation which continues to remain ignorant of the reality that it is the INDIAN OCEAN which is the dynamic).

The Presidential elections in FRANCE on May 6, 2012, and Parliamentary elections in GREECE on the same day — each overturning the status quo — brought some aspects of the EUROPEAN “crisis” back into international debate.

THERE IS AS YET NO REVOLUTION IN EUROPE, OR THE US, 

or elsewhere in the greater WEST, which will see massive transformation from one day to the next. The process of change is more gradual; more evolutionary than revolutionary. It is nonetheless profound. The election of a doctrinaire socialist, François Holland, to the French Presidency will not appear at first to yield dramatic change. Neither did the election of a doctrinaire socialist to the US Presidency when Barack Obama took office. And Holland knows that, however much he wishes to appease his electorate by offering to extend the benefits of government employment, he has little room for manoeuvre within the GERMAN-dominated EUROZONE. If anything, the removal of Nicolas Sarkozy as FRENCH President places GERMANY even more at the centre, and in control, of EUROPEAN continental power. 

 EUROPE HAS BECOME GERMANY

Arguably, now, more than ever, the EUROPEAN UNION is GERMANY. And GERMANY, which wishes this outcome above all else because it sees it as an alternative to a fratricidal, war-torn EUROPE, then has to accept that a high level of structural inefficiencies in most EUROZONE member states degrades the average economic performance of the whole. Even so, it gives GERMANY, essentially, a massive market and manpower base. 

Somewhat exaggerated US views on Germany "dominance" in Europe

So now, whatever Holland might do to cause FRANCE to retreat somewhat from EUROZONE diktat, EUROPE has become GERMANY. How long it remains thus is still open to question.

This structural shift, with CONTINENTAL EUROPE turning EASTWARD and the US turning Westward (with both actually gazing across the world to EAST ASIA), has some interesting ramifications for the continued viability of 20th Century alliances and even terms such as “WESTERNISM” and “EASTERN- ISM”. North Atlantic states, such as the UNITED KINGDOM and, to a degree, CANADA, and some of those EUROPEAN littoral states clinging to “WESTERNISM”, will need to look to their futures and decide how to ensure them. The UK, already facing a breakdown in internal sovereignty or cohesion as a unitary state, will have to consider whether it wishes to once again become a major state in its own right (and therefore resist the fissiparous tendencies of the Celts), or whether it will be content to be essentially a city-state built around the markets of London. [The Scottish local council elections, giving great impetus to the secessionist Scottish National Party, on May 3, 2012, were a significant indicator of the UK’s coming difficulties.] 

US HAS WALKED AWAY FROM WESTERN EUROPE

What is clear is that the present Government of the US has walked away from WESTERN EUROPE, and the GERMAN-led EUROZONE now turns its attentions toward its major trading partners across the continent: the RUSSIAN FEDERATION, with its control of oil and gas; and the PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA (PRC), with its markets. Clearly, if history is any guide, RUSSIA and the PRC will ultimately come to compete with GERMANY’S manufacturing. Eventually, restiveness within EUROPE — by such as the GREEKS, ITALIANS, and other “MEDITERRANEE” — may stir rebellion against Berlin. But for the time being GERMAN-led EUROPE is looking EAST, and RUSSIA and the PRC are happy to oblige.

WASHINGTON, MEANWHILE, PLAYS WITH NEW CLOTHES FOR WHAT IT STILL SUPPOSES TO BE ITS QUIESCENT PET, TURKEY, 

failing to recognize that TURKEY is neither stable nor obedient to the US. Nor will it, or can it, give Washington what it desires in the MIDDLE EAST or the Muslim world. When the Balfour Declaration was announced in 1919, one European Jew was heard to remark to another: “If Britain wanted to give us a land it did not own, why didn’t it give us SWITZERLAND?” Similarly, Ankara cannot give Washington — even if it wished — something it doesn’t own: the ARAB WORLD, the MAGHREB, or CENTRAL ASIA. So Washington toys with Ankara, and fawns to the radical Islamist Muslim Brothers (the Ikhwan), deceiving itself into believing itself still to be a player, if it ever was, in “the Great Game”.

GERMANY AND RUSSIA HAD THE BENEFIT OF “RISING FROM THE ASHES”

In all of this, RUSSIA, once again with Vladimir Putin in the Presidency as of May 6, 2012, has some advantages. RUSSIA was able to begin building a new state when the USSR collapsed to rubble in 1990. It could reinvent itself, and is now pushing to reinvigorate its manufacturing sector, so that it is not merely a font of oil and gas for WESTERN EUROPE. GERMANY’S success post-World War II was also that it could rise from the ashes, unencumbered by the bureaucratic sclerosis of the past. 

Why should AUSTRALIA, once a great manufacturing nation, not resume such a direction, instead of descending to become a Third World source of raw materials for the PRC? Because, as with much of EUROPE and the US, AUSTRALIA lacked the great blessing of a traumatic collapse, and government spending, rather than the stimulation of private investment, remains the focus. (Just as it is the case currently in ARGENTINA)

But the frustrations of societies mount in EUROPE and the US, over bureaucracies which rule undemocratically, and which extort “electorates” to pay for governmental gluttony. In ITALY, indeed, they wonder why the world has ignored the coup which replaced their elected government, and which threatens to drive away all investment and prosperity.

This is a new world.

By. Gregory R. Copley

Sweden, Switzerland cement Gripen pact

Saab Gripen

Craig Hoyle via Flight International

Food for thought for AUSTRIA, who had been a loyal Saab customer for years and then, for political reasons, sided for the more expensive Eurofighter, despite the fact that the Austrian Army’s infrastructure was cemented around the Saab aircraft and weapon platforms. Austria had been using Saab military aircraft since the creation of the Austrian Armed Forces. ( Austria does not have a Air Force per say, but rather an Army Air Cor.)

Background Info: http://forum.keypublishing.com/archive/index.php?t-2944.html

The Swedish and Swiss governments have signed a framework agreement to cooperate on the Saab Gripen E/F, with their air forces to potentially acquire up to a combined 82 of the new-generation combat aircraft.

Signed in late August, the pact is the result of discussions conducted between the nations since Switzerland selected the Gripen E/F last November for a planned 22-aircraft deal to replace its Northrop F-5 fighters.

Reaffirming its commitment in a 28 August report, the Swiss defence ministry outlined a plan to allocate an initial Swfr300 million ($314 million) to the acquisition in 2014, as part of a fixed-price deal worth Swfr3.1 billion. Bern expects to sign a contract with Sweden late next year, or by mid-2014 should it be required to hold a public referendum over the purchase.

If a deal is approved, the Swiss air force will receive its first 11 E-model fighters and F-model trainers between mid-2018 and 2019, with the remainder to follow within the next two years. Its aircraft would be capable of performing air-to-air, air-to-surface and reconnaissance tasks, the defence ministry says.

Switzerland's introduction of the aircraft could also be preceded by a proposed five-year lease deal for eight Gripen Cs and three Gripen Ds, which would be made available by Sweden for an annual cost of Swfr44 million between 2016 and 2020.

The Swedish government has, meanwhile, proposed including the acquisition of between 40 and 60 new Gripens in its Budget 2013 process, which will be launched on 20 September. The move would be supported in part by a suggested overall SKr2 billion ($300 million) increase in defence spending to be implemented over the next 10 years, it says.

Saab has already submitted a tender to Stockholm for the planned E/F deal, under which deliveries would commence with a first batch of three aircraft to be handed over in the second quarter of 2018, followed by five more fighters by 2020. The Swedish parliament will later this year debate the proposal, which the government says is necessary for the nation's defence capability, "but also positive for Swedish jobs, exports and research and development".

Flightglobal's MiliCAS database records the Swedish air force as operating a fleet of 180 JAS 39 Gripens, including almost 80 C/D-model examples. The service is expected to continue operating the type until beyond 2040.

Saab launched development activities on the then A/B-standard Gripen in 1982. Key aspects of the E/F variant include extended-range performance and supercruise capability, plus the introduction of an active electronically scanned array radar and MBDA Meteor beyond visual-range air-to-air missiles.

THE REMAPPING OF THE MIDDLE EAST

By Claudio Gallo

Jeremy Salt is a professor of History and Politics of the Middle East at Bilkent University, Ankara. His book The Unmaking of the Middle East is a brilliant history of the last hundred years in the region, not affected by "orientalist" cliches. We asked Professor Salt to explain the present transformation of the Middle East, including the Kurdish knot. The Kurds in Syria, Iraq, Iran and Turkey now can't stop talking about the emergence of a Great Kurdistan.

Claudio Gallo: Syria's President Bashar al-Assad gave a free hand to northern Syria Kurds. May this become a real casus belli with Turkey?

Jeremy Salt: It may be going too far - to conclude that Assad gave a free hand to the Kurds in Syria. It is more likely that in the

complete turmoil spreading across the country, he could not stop them from taking control of Kurdish areas close to the Turkish border. He certainly would not want to open up a front against the Kurds while trying to suppress the armed groups.

Whether this becomes a casus belli depends on how the Turkish government chooses to read the situation. But it is alarmed at the possibility of a Kurdish enclave being established in Northern Syria, strengthening the prospect of a "Greater Kurdistan" being created in the future. These complications should have been foreseen but apparently were not when Turkey decided to confront the Syrian government more than a year ago.

CG: Ankara is keeping a direct connection with the Iraqi Kurd administration, bypassing Baghdad. What in your opinion is the goal of Turkish diplomacy?

JS: It is very difficult to read Turkish diplomacy at the moment or to understand what the present regional policy is intended to achieve. If we look at Turkish policy until the beginning of 2012, we can see that "soft power" and "zero problems" [as pushed for by Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu] had worked. Turkey had a strong working relationship with all of its eastern neighbors. As a result of the decision to work for "regime change" in Syria all this has been turned upside down.

The US and the Gulf states may be grateful for the central role Turkey is playing in the campaign to dislodge the Syrian government but the costs for Turkey have been great. Apart from the complete rupture with Damascus, the relationship with Iran and Iraq has been undermined. Turkey has also put itself at odds with Russia.

Again, all of this should have been foreseen a year ago as the inevitable outcome of confronting the government in Damascus, which has a strong strategic relationship with Iran and which gives port facilities to the Russian fleet and has had a strong relationship with Russia/the USSR for the past half century.

Iraq has been opposed to Turkish policy in Syria from the beginning. This is partly because Iraq is still suffering the consequences of armed Western intervention in 2003 and partly because of the way Turkey has developed its relationship with the Kurdish governorate in the north at the expense of its relationship with the Iraqi capital.

Turkey has a strong trading relationship with the Iraqi north and one has to assume that its position is dictated by trade, oil and the strategic importance of the Kurdish north to the Western-Gulf state alliance confronting Syria and Iran.

It must be remembered that more than 60% of Iraqis are Shi'ite. The sectarian element in Iraqi politics has been brought to the surface by virtually daily attacks on the Shi'ite and by the charges laid against the Sunni Muslim vice president, Tareq al-Hashimi, of organizing an anti-Shi'ite "death squad". Hashimi is now out of the country, with the Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, among those who have risen to his defense.

CG: Is independence in the agenda of the president of the Kurdish region, Massoud Barzani?

JS: The Kurdish governorate of Iraq is already independent in all but name. It maintains a strong army - officially described as security forces - and increasingly goes its own way whatever the government in Baghdad thinks or wants. So a declaration of independence is probably only a matter of timing once it is judged that the circumstances are right.

Barzani has never made any secret of his view that a large slab of eastern Anatolia is "Western Kurdistan". The incorporation of all this territory in a Kurdish state would be his ultimate objective. This makes Turkey's dealings with the Kurdish north at the expense of its relationship with the central government of Iraq even harder to understand.

Ultimately the Kurds will put their own interests first, a point that was underlined when Barzani recently brokered a meeting of Syrian Kurds and pushed them into reconciliation. As the Syrian Kurds include a faction close to the PKK [Kurdistan Workers' Party] the Turkish prime minister was infuriated. Turkey is now very alarmed by the awakening of the Syrian Kurds.

CG: May the possible fall of Assad's Syria be the starting point for the creation of a Kurdish state?

JS: The repercussions of the collapse of the Syrian state would be so severe that no one could now predict what might come out of the ruins. Such a collapse is not on the agenda for the moment, and it is probable that even the enemies of the Syrian government don't want it because of the uncontrollable spillover effect.

They might want a compliant government in place but they do not want chaos that will threaten their own interests across the region. A Kurdish state-in-being was able to arise in Iraq because of the invasion and occupation of 2003. This is not likely to be repeated in Syria.

CG: Is Iran playing the Kurdish card against Turkey?

JS: These states are always playing one card or another against each other. This is what is called diplomacy. Both Iran and Turkey have a Kurdish problem that governments inside and outside the region can exploit, as they have exploited it in the past. For both these countries, exploiting the Kurdish issue always carries the risk of blowback.

I see no evidence that Iran is at present using the Kurdish card against Turkey, unless there is something I have missed. The greater danger arises from northern Iraq, where both the PKK and its Iranian Kurdish counterpart maintain bases of operations. It is from Iraq and not Iran that Kurdish militants - terrorists according to the Turkish government - have traditionally operated against Turkey.

CG: It seems that we are back to the "unmaking" of the Ottoman Empire at the beginning of the 20th century. Do you think that the parallel is correct?

JS: What we are witnessing behind the immediate scenes of horror in Syria is the most comprehensive attempt to reshape the Middle East since World War I. The Sykes-Picot treaty of 1916 set out the geostrategic parameters of the modern Middle East but the model no longer works for the imperial/post-imperial powers and their regional allies.

We have been through several phases but until now the nation-state has withstood the stress to which it has been subjected. These include the Suez War of 1956, the Western-backed Israeli attack on Egypt and Syria in 1967 and Israel's attempt to set up a puppet government in Lebanon. The center of attention is what used to be called the "fertile crescent", what is now Iraq and what is now Syria, Lebanon and Israel/Palestine.

This entire region lends itself to ethno-religious breakdown if the "West" can get its foot through the door.

The invasion of Iraq was followed by the destruction of Iraq as a unitary state. The constitution written in Washington - much as the constitutions of Iraq and Egypt in the 1920s and 1930s were written in London - turned a secular state into a state with a sectarian religious basis. It created a weak central government and fostered the growth of an increasingly powerful Kurdish governorate in the north. By submitting the future of Kirkuk to a referendum (yet to be held) it encouraged the demographic war that has been taking place as the Kurds seek to build up their numbers in and around this city.

Syria lends itself to the same process of ethno-religious separation if the country can be collapsed and there is opposition to a Western-installed government. In 1918, the imperial powers divided the Middle East in a certain way that suited their interests at the time. They are now remapping it again - and again to suit their interests. It is not coincidental that this program dovetails with Israel's own long-term strategic planning.

Russia and China are fully aware of what is going on, which is why the present situation can be seen as a 21st century extension of the "Eastern question" or of the "Great Game" between Russia and Britain. Certainly the outcome of the struggle for Syria will shape the future of the Middle East for a long time to come. However they see themselves, the local actors are pawns in this game.

Dubai: The Casablanca of Today?

To much of the world, Dubai is an urban oasis with towering skyscrapers — including the world's tallest building, the Burj Khalifa — in the heart of an oil-rich country. But as James Rickards points out in his book "Currency Wars," espionage, assassination, gold and the fact that it is the world's largest transshipment point for paper currencies give Dubai its standing as the Casablanca of the 21st century.

 By James Rickards via The Globalist

If "Casablanca" were filmed today, it would be called "Dubai." The classic film centers around Rick's Café Américain, where the owner, played by Humphrey Bogart, offers drinks, music and gambling, with intrigue on the side.

Dubai is an island of relative calm surrounded by wars in Afghanistan and Syria and instability in Iraq and Lebanon.

The exotic setting was Morocco during World War II. What defined Casablanca was its neutral mélange where enemies could mingle at ease. Nazis, refugees and gunrunners sat at adjacent tables to drink champagne and sing "As Time Goes By." That's just like things are in Dubai today. It is an island of relative calm surrounded by wars in Afghanistan and Syria, instability in Iraq and Lebanon, transition in Tunisia and Egypt and bitter enmity between Israel and Iran. It is the ultimate bad neighborhood.
In place of Rick's, there is Atlantis, an over-the-top resort on the artificial Palm Island, itself dredged from the seafloor and laid out in a palm shape so vast it can be seen from space.
Inside Atlantis are the best restaurants in town, where Israeli agents, Iranian provocateurs, Russian hit men, Saudi arms dealers and local smugglers sit side by side, escorted by tall, leggy blondes who look distinctly out of place in the desert.
What they find in Dubai is what Rick's customers found in Casablanca — a neutral turf where they can meet, recruit and betray each other, all without immediate fear of arrest. That is what makes Dubai so conducive to international intrigue.
The weather is excellent from October through March. Dubai is in the midst of a danger zone, surrounded by Mumbai, Lahore, Tehran, Istanbul, Cairo, Khartoum and the pirate dens of Somalia.
It has excellent air and telecommunications links with the world. It is also famously overbuilt — boasting the world's tallest building and plenty of other post-modern glitz to dazzle visitors from more traditional and repressive societies.
All this glamour and intrigue are accompanied by some Hollywood-style violence. In March 2009, a Russian warlord was shot dead in the upscale Marina section of Dubai near some its best beaches and hotels.

Dubai is famously overbuilt — boasting plenty of post-modern glitz to dazzle visitors from more traditional and repressive societies.

Two suspects, one Tajik and one Iranian, were arrested and gave confessions implicating a member of the Russian Duma acting on orders from Ramzan Kadyrov, the strongman of Chechnya. In a touch straight out of Ian Fleming's "The Man with the Golden Gun," the victim was shot with a gold-plated pistol smuggled in by a Russian diplomat. Historically, Dubai thrived on two activities, pearl diving and smuggling. Today, pearl diving is a small business carried on in part as an attraction for tourists. Smuggling is bigger than ever.
The long wharf on the Creek, the old part of Dubai, is piled high with electronics, appliances, spare parts and other goods headed for Iran. The amount of gold and currency inside boxes marked with Sony or HP logos is anybody's guess.
Across Baniyas Road, which runs alongside the wharf, are Iranian banks where letters of credit can be arranged on the spot to finance the shipment of goods — without regard to U.S. trade sanctions.
On the Creek itself are the dhows — beamy, high-prowed wooden sailing vessels with large lateen rigs ready to embark on the voyage across the Persian Gulf to Bandar Abbas and other ports on the Iranian coast. In Dubai, smuggling is not even vaguely disreputable. Rather, it is a way of life.

Skyscrapers named gold, silver and diamond

Dubai is an international financial center and tax haven, as evidenced by the fact that its boulevards and backstreets are choked with international banks.
Dubai is the principal offshore banking center for Iran. Major Dubai banks act as correspondents to Iranian banks for the facilitation of payments and foreign exchange transactions with the rest of the world, including Iran's conversion of its reserves into euros and gold and slow dumping of the dollar.
Dubai also acts as the banking center for the Somali pirate trade. While pirates, hostage crews and patrolling navies engage in standoffs in the Arabian Sea, pirate agents make the rounds in Dubai to negotiate ransom and provide wire instructions for final payment.

Dubai acts as the banking center for the Somali pirate trade. Pirate agents make the rounds to negotiate ransom and provide instructions for payment.

For tangible wealth, there is the gold souk, one of the largest marketplaces in the world, where gold in every form — jewelry, coins, bars and ingots — is for sale and re-export in attaché cases to private hoards around the world, no questions asked. Dubai has a commodities center with separate glass skyscrapers named after the Arabic words for gold, silver and diamond. Beneath these towers is one of the largest, most secure vaults in the world, managed by Brink's.
With Swiss banking secrecy under attack and oligarchs being harassed in Russia, converting wealth into untraceable gold and securing it in the desert is an attractive strategy.
The gold that changes hands in the souk is the tip of the iceberg of wholesale wealth that transits Dubai. Paper currencies move continuously from engravers to central banks to customers, much of it circulating outside its home country.
Dubai is the world's largest transshipment point for paper currencies. At secure sites near the Dubai airport, massive amounts of banknotes are stored, awaiting return to their issuing banks.
Espionage, assassination, gold, currency and an international mix of actors at the crossroads of the world give Dubai its standing as the new Casablanca. Dubai, like Casablanca, is just a mirror of its time and place. Were it not for the corruption and dysfunction of the wider world, Dubai would have no clientele.
Every war needs its neutral venue, and in the currency wars Dubai fills the bill. There is no currency anywhere that is not money good in Dubai — at a price.

ISRAEL AND CHINA,

Windmills on the Golan Hights

A MARRIAGE MADE IN HEAVEN, EXCEPT FOR ENERGY ISSUES

By John Daly

CHINA and ISRAEL are the most pragmatic of partners. For CHINA, ISRAEL’S prime attraction is as a source of cutting-edge high technology, for ISRAEL, its gaining a foothold in the world’s largest market.

CHINA’S interest in ISRAEL’S technology combined with CHINA’S go it alone attitudes on energy issues represent a mixed blessing for Tel Aviv.

On the plus side for ISRAEL, a CHINESE bank is in talks to finance the construction of a $25 million, 14-megawatt wind farm for Yarok Energy Ltd on the Golan Heights, where the company has operated a 4.8-megawatt wind turbine farm for the past two decades.

CHINA’S determination to invest in contested Golan territories comes despite that fact that the United Nations on 12 January passed a “Resolution adopted by the General Assembly (on the report of the Special Political and Decolonization Committee [Fourth Committee] [A/66/427] ‘66/80. The occupied SYRIAN Golan’” which noted, “Deeply concerned (italics in original) that the SYRIAN Golan, occupied since 1967, has been under continued ISRAELI military occupation,” …” 2. Also calls upon (italics in original) ISRAEL to desist from changing the physical character, demographic composition, institutional structure and legal status of the occupied SYRIAN Golan and in particular to desist from the establishment of settlements…”.

Background Information: See: GOLAN HIGHTS - REGIME CHANGE IN SYRIA, FULL SCORE FOR ISRAEL? 

http://geopoliticsrst.blogspot.com.ar/2012/01/strait-of-hormuz-and-syria.html

Extracts from above article: …..”For ISRAEL keeping the GOLAN HIGHTS on the other hand had been always a priority, not so much for strategic advantages or prestige, but for its freshwater supply, a key issue which is hardly addressed in mainstream media”…..

See also: DRAGON OF THE NEGEV, Israeli - Chinese railroad project 

http://geopoliticsrst.blogspot.com.ar/2012/05/china-and-israel-enter-dragon.html

MILITARY COOPERATION BETWEEN THE TWO NATIONS IS DEEPENING

For ISRAEL, CHINA’S occasionally pusillanimous attitudes towards both the UN and the world community are not an overwhelming source of distress – if CHINESE capital wants to fund a power project on the Golan Heights despite “changing the physical character” of the region  amidst a slowly roiling SYRIAN civil war, who are the UN to criticize such actions?

And military cooperation between the two nations is deepening – according to Xinhau, during a 21 May meeting in Beijing CHINA and ISRAEL pledged to boost ties between their armed forces as their chiefs of staff held talks. CHINA'S People's Liberation Army General Staff chief Chen Bingde told ISRAEL Defense Forces chief of staff Benny Gantz after lauding political, economic, cultural and people-to-people ties over the past  two decades since the establishment of diplomatic relations between CHINA and ISRAEL, "Military-to-military ties between the two nations have also grown along with the overall bilateral relationship." Underlining the importance of his visit, Gantz also met with Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping.

The bilateral military discussions build upon when ISRAELI officials hosted PLA Navy commander Wu Shengli, and a month later, when ISRAELI Defense Minister Ehud Barak visited CHINA. Chen reciprocated with a visit to ISRAEL two months later, while ISRAEL'S paramilitary Border Police unit hosted a delegation from the People's Republic of China’s People’s Armed Police (PAP).

TOP OF CHINA’S MILITARY WISH FROM ISRAEL’S DEFENCE ESTABLISHMENT?

Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) technology, along with advanced technology from fields ranging from agriculture to automobiles.

Israel Aerospace Industries Hermes 450

But, as far as CHINA’S interest in ISRAELI military high-tech, University of Haifa the Department of Asian Studies Professor Yoram Evron noted that ISRAEL is very "strict" in its defence exports to CHINA as so much of it is derived from the U.S.  and consequently ISRAEL "will not dare to jeopardize its relations with the U.S., on which it depends so heavily."

See:  http://www.asian-defence.net/2011/02/elbit-unveils-new-generational-uav.html

For ISRAEL?

Political support, and access to China’s immense market.

CHINA is now ISRAEL'S third-largest trade partner, after the EUROPEAN UNION and UNITED STATES. In 2011 ISRAELI-CHINESE bilateral trade exceeded $8 billion, roughly 20 percent higher than in 2010.

What could cloud this otherwise sunny picture?

IRAN.

CHINA relies on IRAN for roughly 10 percent of its oil supply and has repeatedly rejected intensifying UN sanctions against IRAN for its nuclear activities, an effort led by the U.S. and ISRAEL, which suspect that Iran’s nuclear energy program in facts mask a secret military effort to acquire nuclear weapons.

According to IRAN’S Ambassador to Beijing Mehdi Safari, in 2011 CHINESE-IRANIAN trade increased 55 percent to more than $45 billion a $16 billion increase over 2010 trade. Notably, CHINA boosted its oil imports from IRAN by 30 percent in 2011 despite Western and UN sanctions pressure, importing nearly 557,000 barrels per day (bpd) of IRANIAN oil. Furthermore, Safari late last year observed, “The real expectation that the volume of trade (between IRAN and CHINA) has the capacity to reach $100 billion is on our agenda.”

So, $5 billion versus $8 billion annual trade?

Oil now, or drones later?

Beijing’s not saying.

Neither is Tel Aviv.

Via Oilprice