America’s safety must be made in the USA

Right now, there are conflicts raging in Ukraine and Israel, with a new front opening up in Yemen. Now is the time for strong American leadership to restore order and end these conflicts.

The world does not work when the United States does not lead. To prove that, note that few people remember Warren Christopher these days. He was an ineffective secretary of state and leader. In the early months of the Bill Clinton administration, he traveled to Europe “to consult with our allies and friends on a course of action” to stop the killing in the former Yugoslavia. “We’re ready to play our part, but others must be as well,” Christopher said.

There is no reason to trust Airbus with our national defense contracts.

The Europeans were not prepared to play a part. Instead, the killing went on for years, with the city of Sarajevo being destroyed and more than 100,000 people killed. It was only when the U.S. military got involved that the parties came to an Air Force base in Dayton and agreed to stop the violence.

American power delivered peace.

We still see that today. You may not have heard much about it, but in the Red Sea, Yemeni Houthi rebels are attacking international shipping. The U.S. Navy is preventing those attacks from shutting down global commerce. On a recent day, “the U.S. military’s Central Command, along with forces from the UK, claimed they shot down 18 drones, two anti-ship cruise missiles, and one anti-ship ballistic missile fired by the Houthi rebels,” reported the Independent in London.

American power protects the world.

It goes without saying that the weapons used to shoot down the Houthi attacks were made in the USA. Our country is the only one that can build such high-tech weapons and the only one that can deploy military forces virtually anywhere at any time. But we can’t take this dominance for granted. It isn’t a coincidence. It is the result of a deliberate plan to promote American weapon manufacturing.

This matters, because a European company now wants to play a larger role in American military planning.

“Airbus Group SE is a company based in the Netherlands that is active in the aerospace and defense industry,” Reuters explains. It already has several defense contracts in the United States and wants to add more.

Airbus is now planning to bid for a part of a contract to build an Air Force refueling tanker. “The A330 U.S.-MRTT is a reliable choice for the U.S. Air Force: one that will deliver affordability, proven performance and unmatched capabilities,” an Airbus spokesman claimed. Set aside the fact that the Air Force has an American-made tanker that is effectively doing the job right now and consider whether Airbus is even reliable.

Any company will claim its products are good. But Airbus has a history of cheating. Just four years ago, Airbus agreed to pay more than $3.9 billion in fines after being accused of bribery in the United States, France, and Great Britain. “Airbus engaged in a multi-year and massive scheme to corruptly enhance its business interests by paying bribes in China and other countries and concealing those bribes,” an assistant U.S. attorney explained. It was the largest global foreign bribery resolution at that time.

Before that, in 2019, the U.S. government earned the largest arbitration award in World Trade Organization history, resolving a disagreement with the European Union over illegal subsidies that its government was paying to Airbus.

“For years, Europe has been providing massive subsidies to Airbus that have seriously injured the U.S. aerospace industry and our workers. Finally, after 15 years of litigation, the WTO has confirmed that the United States is entitled to impose countermeasures in response to the EU’s illegal subsidies,” U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said at the time. There is no reason to trust Airbus with our national defense contracts.

The world has learned the hard way that we can’t depend on a European company to protect us. We need American power and American manufacturing to do that. Airbus should stay in Europe and try to help the the continent improve its military outlook. They need all the help they can get to slow the influence of Russia. Meanwhile, America’s safety must be made in the USA.