I am sure the US would resort to an embargo, but some European countries
have a track record of it that relate to Aust.
A genuine question,
I'm not really up to date in the complete history of Australian-European realtions when it comes to arms-sales, where there specific situations where you guys suffered from a European imposed arms embargo ?
Libya
Germany, Poland for a start.
Germany is never going to join a quick military action for the same reason Japan doesn't, they have a troubled past that has lead to a very difficult process for them to be involved in any kind of adventure ouside of NATO territory, just look at how long it took them to be involved in Afghanistan.
As for Poland, well I cannot tell why they didn't join into the action, maybe for the same reason that many other former Warsaw pact countries didn't get engaged, no expertise, not the right equipment and no funding available, they are not really rich ,compared with the Western EU countries.
As for the rest of the EU countries, it looks like the Libya campaign might well be the first time a military campaign was ended succesfully without the US DoD in the overwhelmingly leading role (apart from the Falklands War).
Also I get the uneasy feeling that you somehow get the impression that the European countries and the US are not on the same side, maybe I'm reading too much into your comments (I probably am) but for most of the European countries that simply is not true, not even for France.
Sure there might be tensions and differences of opinion from time to time but the alliance still stands pretty firm.
Besides alll that when it comes to weapons suppliers, the only place to shop for the full spectrum of high tech weaponry outside the US is in Europe.
I fail to see why Australia should restrict themselves to buying only US made weapons, just as I fail to see why European countries should only shop in Europe and US/Canada etc.. should only look at the US suppliers, it just doesn't make any sense (budgetary wise) to do that.