Link to article: https://www.reuters.com/technology/dutch-export-rules-china-focus-ahead-asml-results-2023-01-20/
The Dutch Government is expected to further limit chip equipment giant ASML Holding NV sales to China. The order for these semi-conductor machines going forward between the Dutch and the Chinese. The Chinese being major consumers of microchips serves the U.S a problem being the rapid modernization of the Chinese military. Thus the U.S put an embargo on microchips to China due to it being a threat. The Dutch however isn’t as keen to limit their sales resulting in tension between the senior level political/trade officials during an upcoming U.S-Dutch presidential visit.
Our main focus is that the United States doesn’t want China to continue to use these microchips to modernize their military due to the fact we don’t know how advanced these machines are, how modernized their military has gotten, and if those machines are capable of producing an even higher level microchip advancements.
In class we’ve talked about how defensive realists view the security dilemma as a paradox. The more you try to build up your defenses others will cause your defenses to become more null, making the question, when should we stop? Do we stop? Can we even stop or is the world just too unsafe for it. From Americas perspective they’re taking on a defensive take as the military growth for China poses a huge threat and one of our allies are essentially supporting it.