China, the unprincipled SysAdmin, willing to invest anywhere, actually helps our strategic interests

ARTICLE: "War in Sudan? Not Where the Oil Wealth Flows: Just 600 Miles From Darfur, BMWs, Flat TV's and Cafe Life," by Jeffrey Gettleman, New York Times, 24 October 2006, p. A1.

ARTICLE: "China Hosts Africa Summit as West Watches Warily," by Shai Oster, Wall Street Journal, 24 October 2006, p. A8.

Sudan's getting rich on an oil boom and a real estate boom. Meanwhile, just hundreds of miles away, thousands die in gruesome ethnic cleansing.

Please, save me from the insensitivity argument. I spent a month in Austria at the height of the genocide in Bosnia, and all the cafes were full there too. No one seemed too anguished about that incongruity either.

Absent the oil and real estate booms (related, of course), where is Sudan?

Remember, Sudan was Osama's hideout for a chunk of the 1990s. Before that, it was a wannabe client state for revolutionary Iran.

So now it's got the best of both worlds: genocide and FDI. And everyone wants to get down on the Chinese for the latter "facilitating" the former--which, of course, it does. But it also dampens the conflict, containing it from those who: 1) don't give a damn and 2) have no desire to intervene.

Ah, that would the West and the U.S. in particular.

Offends you, this argument? Please, take out an ad in the newspaper and call it a day. Better yet, push American corporations to boycott.

People don't want to hear this, but China's investment presence inside the Gap limits our liability there. The Chinese "unilaterally" engage in SysAdmin just like we unilaterally engage in Leviathan work. Each side limits the other's liability. We just don't recognize yet the symbiotic nature of this relationship.

China brags that it doesn't "foist" its models on anyone, but of course it does. By taking such a mercantilist approach to the Gap, it fosters pale versions of itself--bread before circuses, or economics before politics. But it does this so narrowly that the legacy of Chinese trade is wealth, but not development. Notice the two booms at work in Sudan: oil and real estate. Which of those two lasts? Which empowers Sudanese to any appreciable degree?

This is old-style dependencia, much like the security dependencies that the U.S. generates in places like Iraq, Israel and Egypt.

Our chocolate, China's peanut butter. We give each other some morals on things where they're missing: security for us, and economics for them.

Last week I told the Chinese in Beijing: soon they will come looking to kill and torture and drive off the Chinese in order to drive off globalization. The backlash is just beginning. There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.

And once we get past Cheney, we might yet again have an administration that realizes that on our side too.

Two pipers, neither gets paid. Neither finds true success either.

Comments

[Shawn in Tokyo]

I have posted on this post at the direct link below:

For China, Energy Demands Supersede Politics

Recently, China has restarted dealings on the development of Iraqi oil fields and I discuss this in the context of Tom's post above.

Cheers

[sean]

I have been reading your blog, for a few weeks here and I am struggling to find any coherent message from your posts. Not that I demand an ideological filter on your part, you are free to take a non-comformist attitude if you wish, but help me out here. In particular, what do you not like about Cheney's role in the current administration? I view Cheney as a post-realist in the middle east. He used to be a Kissinger, Eagelburger, "the jerk we know..." realist, but now advocates a more active role in transforming the troubled region. I could be wrong, but thats my view. Being somebody who sees this as a noble and yet realistic goal, where am I wrong?