Americans often criticize Europe for its weakness and lack of principle on foreign policy, from its alleged softness on terrorism and Russian aggression, to its over-reliance on multilateral diplomacy.
There are, however, some high-profile cases in which European governments stand up for their values even to their countries' economic detriment. They've recently done just that in the matter of arms sales to Saudi Arabia.
Sweden announced this week that it's canceling its 10-year-old military cooperation agreement with the Gulf monarchy, which brought Swedish companies more than half a billion dollars from 2011 to 2014. Germany, too, cut off arms exports to the Saudis this year, passing up hundreds of millions of dollars a year in revenues for its defense industry.
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