The NRO's Descent Into Badness

The sun will rise, the sun will set, and The National Review will continue its descent into farce. National Review Online’s editorial about President Obama winning the Nobel Prize is far from the worst effort NRO has put forward lately. Faint praise aside, we’re going to look at this magnificent piece of scat bit by bit. As is my custom, I will blockquote theirs and preface mine with ***:

Well, that didn’t take long. But it was almost inevitable: the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Barack Obama. As “the world” hated Pres. George W. Bush, “the world” loves President Obama.

*** Scare quotations marks: the domain of shitty college writers and, well, shitty journalists. Good start.

What do we mean by “the world”? We mean the editors of Le Monde, Der Spiegel, and the Guardian. The faculty at Brown University.

*** Brown University? What the fuck? This is an odd non-sequiter. But I see where you are going here. You’re going to list “stuff we don’t like” knowing your readers will all follow you, nodding in rhythm.

The secretariat of the United Nations. We mean Lord Malloch-Brown, not Václav Klaus.

***Oooh – name dropping. NRO hates the rest of the world. Except when it does not.

When President Bush visited Iraq for the last time, a foe of his threw a shoe at him. The shoe-thrower was taken to be “the world.”

*** By whom? One citation, please. I would like one fucking citation asserting that the shoe thrower = the world. Oh, sorry, “The world.”

Hugo Chávez even made laughing reference to him recently at the U.N.

*** This is incoherent. To whom is the “him” referring to in this sentence? We must assume Bush, even though between “him” and Bush come both Chavez and the shoe-thrower, not to mention the passive construction “was taken” which must allude to some subject of some sort, though sentence structure is not a strength in this particular editorial.

Many Iraqis admire and appreciate President Bush. They do not count as “the world.”

*** This is just a peculiar sentence. I am sure some Iraqis admire President Bush. But since it is NRO that is making such hay out of this “the world” conceit, it is perhaps not surprising that they are able to come up with a vague example in opposition. Kudos for defeating that straw man you so bravely created, editors! Now kick him when he’s down.

Very much counting as “the world” is the Nobel Peace Prize Committee.

*** Ok. This is really getting to be bizarre. We are talking about the Nobel Prize. So the Nobel Prize Committee is going to play a role. Yet rather than simply go after the Nobel Prize Committee to begin with, the chosen subject of this editorial is “the world.”

They practically define it.

*** For fuck’s sake, learn how to use pronouns. And as importantly, how not to. This editorial (see how it works?) is a complete jumble.

Every year since 1901, the peace prize has been given by a committee of five Norwegians. They are appointed by the Norwegian parliament, the Storting. The Nobel Peace Prize always reflects the consensus of Norwegian politics.

*** This strikes me as generalization, but again, it also strikes me as seeming more damning than it really is. I am not certain what is so shocking about a Norwegian body reflecting the consensus of Norway.

And that consensus is, in a word — a word the Norwegians might well choose — “progressive.”

*** Just when I thought the writing could not get any worse . . . .

Others might call it left-wing.

*** I wonder who these "others" might be.

In any case, the Nobel Peace Prize almost never disappoints the editors of Le Monde, the faculty at Brown, etc.

*** This is the second reference to Brown. This makes absolutely no sense in the context of an editorial about the nefariousness of “the world.” Yet NRO is doubling down on their inapt argument.

The committee has said, “Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future. In the past year Obama has been a key person for important initiatives in the U.N. for nuclear disarmament and to set a completely new agenda for the Muslim world and East-West relations.”

*** Naturally the least objectionable paragraph in this entire piece is almost entirely a quotation.

That is true (at least in part). The Nobel Committee appreciates Obama for his repudiation of all things Bush.

*** Well, repudiating all things Bush makes sense both on the merits and in the politics. Nonetheless, this reductionist argument brings us right back to that straw man again. Poor bastard, being revived only to be beaten up again.

The new president has frozen out America’s allies in Eastern Europe, causing great consternation among them.

*** Actually, the new president has done no such thing. What he did was scrap a program that has never for one brief and shining second shown any signs of working in favor of allocating resources to something that might work. It seems perplexing that now conservatives want to set the bar of international relations down to “consternation” when it comes to dealing with the rest of the world. Or “the world.”

He has put “daylight” between America and its No. 1 Middle Eastern ally, Israel.

*** Perhaps. Or perhaps he has “put daylight” between America and the utterly unjustifiable policy of continuing to build settlements in the West Bank. These are not the same things. Binyamin Netanyahu is not Israel. And Obama’s view is one that has support in many Israeli circles.

He kept almost mum when Iranian democrats massed in the streets to demand a more decent life — the American focus is on negotiating with the regime.

*** This is reductionist piffle. The internal politics of Iran are first and foremost an Iranian matter. Obama spoke out – not loudly enough for some, to be sure – against the crackdowns on the opposition. The American focus is not on negotiating with the regime – that is a tactic, one of several in the arsenal, which also includes the sanctions that the administration just helped impose. This is the sort of profound dishonesty that has come to characterize The National Review.

He gave the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Mary Robinson, the U.N. official who presided over Durban, that hate-Israel jamboree.

*** Yep. Many of us opposed that move, though reducing Mary Robinson to the Durban conference ignores a far more complex person with a far more complex history. Asserting that the most important thing we need to know about Robinson is her role in Durban is akin to asserting that the most important thing we need to know about Ted Williams was that he was a lousy bunter.

He yukked it up with Chávez, giving him a soul-brother handshake and calling him “mi amigo.”

*** He did no such fucking thing. He engaged in the niceties of diplomacy. Sometimes that involves holding hands with Arab heads of state, sometimes that apparently involves peering into the soul of despots, and sometimes it involves using rudimentary Spanish and not being a dick to foreign heads of state. And who the fuck uses the term “soul-brother handshake” in the year 2009? Honkies, I guess. (Honkies who write for magazines that opposed the Civil Rights Act. But that’s tracing a history of the magazine’s relationship with race that can wait for another day. But don't think I am not on to your little game, NRO.)

He went along with an invitation to Cuba to rejoin the Organization of American States — this despite that fact that the OAS is supposed to be for democracies, not police states.

*** Have you seen the countries on the OAS member list? Haiti? Venezuela? I thought conservatives were the ones who took stock of the real world. That “supposed to” shit is pure “progressive” squishiness I tells ya. Our Cuba policy has been stupid for more than a generation by the way.

He had America rejoin the U.N. Human Rights Council, which, under Bush, we bowed out of: because it was dominated by such lovely regimes as the ones in Cuba, Zimbabwe, China, Syria, and Sudan; because it existed almost solely to defame Israel.

*** The UN Human Rights Council sucks. It also is almost certainly not going anywhere. Better to be on it and reform from within. We get it though – you’re the one true voice for Israel.

All these moves of Obama, the Nobel Committee appreciates immensely.

*** Holy fucked up syntax, Batman, what is the subject of that sentence?

This is an American president in their own image, the kind of president they will cheer and honor.

*** I know this is supposed to be an insult. It’s not. Just FYI.

For them, Obama is a dream president, just as Bush was a nightmare president. He is the first “post-American president,” as John Bolton and others have said.

*** Ah, yes, the old impugning his Americanness trope. And naturally John Bolton is the most useful person to use to define a president he opposes.

For “the world,” that is a dream president.

*** Seriously – did they farm out the writing of this thing to an intern? And not their best one?

Our Declaration of Independence speaks of “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind.” A decent respect is not a need for approval.

*** And since no one is saying that it is, I have no idea why this quotation and the assertion that follows is included in this essay.

Besides, who is mankind? Merely the Nobel Committee and the shoe-thrower, or Bush-loving Iraqis, too?

*** To whom is this question aimed? Again: Give one citation, just one, from the administration, or indeed from the Nobel Committee, implying that Iraqis do not matter or bolstering the case of the show thrower. You cannot just make shit up. Well, sadly, you can and do. But it’s still made up.

We might ask another question: Whose approval would President Obama rather have: that of the Nobel Committee or that of the Rotary Club in Butte?

*** Well, yes, as far as false dichotomies go, this is a particularly terrible one. Why is Obama being asked to choose?

In recent years, the Nobel Committee has done everything possible to express its abhorrence of Bush and his ways.

*** To which I say: Good job Nobel Committee. George W. Bush was a shitty president. Let’s go have a drink. As long as the Rotary Club of Butte does not want to go – they get priority.

In 2001, they gave the peace prize to Kofi Annan and the U.N. The message, in part, was: “America, you’d better not respond to 9/11 by yourselves, or too aggressively.”

*** Maybe it was. Maybe it wasn’t. Going virtually alone in the wrong war at the wrong time was all kinds of dumb, though. I’m no huge Kofi Annan fan, though, so: whatever.

The next year, they gave the prize to Jimmy Carter, and, here, the chairman of the committee was refreshingly candid: saying that they were honoring Carter in order to give Bush “a kick in the leg,” or, in our own parlance, a black eye.

*** What, are your readers so fucking dumb that they would not have been able to figure out that complex leg-kicking metaphor? Actually, strike that question as unnecessary.

A more honorable president might have refused that award, if given for the purpose of bashing the current president.

*** This is certainly my favorite argument: That others should reject the Nobel Peace Prize. This is the equivalent of being pissed at your favorite indie band for having an album that sells a lot of copies and thus spoiling your view of their purity. Jimmy Carter does lots of things that drive me mad. I oppose many of his politics, including many of his views on Israel. But taken as a whole, the man has given his all for humanity. Dispute his receiving the Nobel if you’d like. But to ascribe malign motives for something like this reveals someone as being small and petty. Sand it ain’t Carter.

Another black eye came in 2005, when the committee gave the award to Mohamed ElBaradei and the International Atomic Energy Agency. ElBaradei has said explicitly that his goal — his only “brief,” as he has put it — is to prevent military action against Iran. Accordingly, he has repeatedly downplayed that country’s nuclear progress. And the IAEA has repeatedly looked foolish, and blind. In Beijing the other day, ElBaradei said that the number-one threat to peace in the Middle East is . . . Israel, and its nukes.

*** More reductionism. When you use words like “only,” a single exception destroys your case. Given that ElBaradei took his post with the IAEA in 1997, the argument that his sole concern has to do with the Bush administration or its successors is a Goldbergian use of history, which is to say: wrong. Furthermore, the IAEA did work to try to prevent the spread of nukes after 9/11. Again: debate the case on its merits. Don’t lie and misrepresent just to make your case easier to win in the echo chamber. (Especially when you have a decent case.)

In 2007, the Nobel Committee went with Al Gore and the U.N.’s global-warming people.

*** Um, yes. Is there an argument here, or have you just given up?

And now, in 2009, Obama.

*** I have no objections to this sentence. Well, it does not really have a subject. Or a verb. But it’s probably still the best crafted sentence in the essay.

This award will cause people — will cause “the world” — to say that America is back in the fold, back in the good graces of “the world.” After a season apart, under the cowboy Bush, America is a citizen of “the world” once again. In the Nobel Committee sense of “the world,” we are.

*** The funny thing is that there is an argument here that a better writer and more intellectually honest editorial board could have put together. And it could be a good one. But the scare quotation marks, the unwillingness to consider that global opinion toward the United States has improved dramatically with the emergence of Obama (or what some would call “facts” – I can use those little quotation marks too!) and the bizarre and random hopping from lily pad to lily pad have all obscured that argument.

The committee would never have given the award to Ronald Reagan, much as he did for peace, and much as Mrs. Reagan may have wanted it for him. (The committee did award Gorbachev, however.)

*** Gorbachev did more than Reagan did on the issue at hand. And Reagan countenanced Apartheid South Africa and noxious regimes throughout South America. But a Reagan-Gorbachev pairing would have been a good one – and in the future that is the approach the Nobel Committee would take, only to take incredible grief for it.

Years ago, National Review made the editorial quip that the Nobel Peace Prize, every year, should be given to the Defense Department: because the American military was the world’s foremost guarantor of peace.

*** Blah blah blah. It wasn’t as clever as you thought it was then and did not warrant repeating now. In any case, who is the Commander in Chief of the military right now? Or is 2009 the one year it does not hold despite your invoking it now?

A few days ago, there was a rumor that Harry Wu, the anti-Communist dissident from China, would win the peace prize. That was terribly unlikely. Would the committee ever honor Oscar Biscet, the Afro-Cuban political prisoner who is a symbol of hope, defiance, and decency in that country? A virtual impossibility.

*** Counterfactuals are fun. Because they are incontrovertible. Lots of people don’t win the award. John Lewis is a personal favorite of mine. He will never win it. That does not make the exercise an ignoble one.

President Bush gave a Medal of Freedom to Biscet (in absentia, of course); Obama gave one to Mary Robinson. That neatly illustrates the difference between those two presidents, and between types who win the Nobel prize and those who don’t.

*** No. No it doesn’t. It does no such thing. What it does is shows that the editors at NRO sure can cherry pick to make the most fucktarded of arguments in a piece full of developmentally challenged assertions.

Alfred Nobel, a great man, wanted his prize to go to “champions of peace,” men and women who genuinely contributed to peace in the world. He deplored the “absurd and futile efforts of windbags who are capable of thwarting the best of aims.” Can Barack Obama really make a contribution to peace, the way the Reagans of the world genuinely do? Reagan got no peace prize, but he made a huge positive difference, and the world, along with “the world,” should know that Oslo doesn’t always know best.

*** Why was Reagan then not the foundation of this piece? Why did he not appear in the first paragraph? How the fuck can the editors of the National Review have no idea how to structure a fucking opinion piece? (Ronald Reagan vetoed the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act of 1985 and individuals in his administration brokered illegal arms for hostages deals with . . . wait for it . . . wait for it . . . Iran!!!!)

Athletes and Engagement

Will Leich of Deadspin has started writing for the New York Times' quarterly sports magazine, Play. He has a piece in the Play email newsletter today, "In Brand We Trust," that takes aim at athletes and their beliefs. He begins with their brand loyalty -- I'm a bit surprised that he does not address the true progenitors, the 1992 Dream Team, several members of which tried to cover the Reebok logo on their gear because they were under contract with other shoe companies -- but then squarely takes aim at LeBron james' unwillingness to sign a petition urging China to change its policies toward Sudan because of the humanitarian catastrophe in Darfur. This is a tough line -- I'm not certain we want to be encouraging most of our athletes to be more politically preachy, but maybe it is not too much to ask them -- or any Americans -- to be more engaged. Underlying Leich's brief piece is an implication that athletes are mostly engaged only inasmuch as it plays to their bottom line.

China's Dual-Edged Sword in Africa

To put it in the simplest terms, China is countenancing genocide in the Sudan. But equally simply, China might be emerging as the best partner Africa has, a country committed to Africa's development in ways that the rest of the world ought to observe and from which we ought to learn. earlier this week the New York Times emphasized China's growing role in Africa in an important article, "China Courts Africa, Angling for Strategic Gains."

China's role in Africa allows us a glimpse at our China dilemma in microcosm. China is vast, powerful, and pretty much immovable. The Chinese policy (a few notable exceptions -- Taiwan being the most prominent -- notwithstanding) of national sovereignty above all coupled with their sometimes callous disregard for human rights and human lives makes them a vexing world power. That China is reaching out to the rest of the world holds out both promise and peril. Let us hope that we can help promote the former while curbing the latter, but we need to be aware that force and coersion are simply not on the table as viable options in dealing with Beijing.

Inaction in Sudan

Susan Rice (a former Assistant Secretary of State for Africa during Clinton's second term), Anthony Lake (national security adviser from 1993 to 1997 and Rice's boss when she was at NSC during that time), and Donald Payne (D-NJ) ask a very good question in their Washington Post article "We Saved Europeans. Why Not Africans?" Noting that the Sudan appears willing to do everything within its power to keep foreign troops or peacekeepers out, and that we seem perfectly willing to acquiesce to their demands, they note, "Will world leaders continue to give the perpetrators of genocide a veto over international action to stop it? Unless something changes dramatically, the answer seems to be yes."

This is the unfortunate reality in the Sudan -- the powers in Khartoum know that they can ignore the powers of the west because we are unwilling to back our demands with action. We dither, Africans die. This has been the story in the Sudan as it has been the story elsewhere in Africa, such as in Rwanda. We need to acknowledge an uncomfortable truth: Unless we force Khartoum's hand, the carnage and dispossession in darfur will continue apace, the turmoil will spread into Chad, and ten years from now we'll get to hear about what we should have done, didn't do, and what we will for sure this time do in the future. As Rice, Lake and Payne argue:

Lost in the diplomatic bustle is reality: First, the U.S.-brokered peace deal for Darfur, fatally flawed from its signature, is dead. Second, Sudan has broken every pledge to every envoy to halt the killing in Darfur. Third, China is unlikely to compel Sudan to admit the United Nations -- 7 percent of its oil is at stake, and China may figure we value its help on Iran and North Korea more than on Sudan. Fourth, it's too late for sanctions; even if China miraculously relented, it would take months before their bite was felt. By then, Sudan will have completed its second wave of genocide in Darfur.

History demonstrates that there is one language Khartoum understands: the credible threat or use of force. After Sept. 11, 2001, when President Bush issued a warning to states that harbor terrorists, Sudan -- recalling the 1998 U.S. airstrike on Khartoum -- suddenly began cooperating on counterterrorism. It's time to get tough with Sudan again.

The question is, how credible would such a threat appear to be? If we are going to make the threat, we need to be able to back it up. We need to develop a coalition that will act in our name and with our backing and that will have the ability to use credible force to an extent that will make the Sudanese listen and take our promise to act seriously.

China and Africa: An Amoral and Asymmetrical Relationship

Over at TNR online Joshua Kurlantzick has a fascinating and important article on "How China Controls African Politics." When I was in Beijing this past summer one of my concerns was that China couched any behavior, however dispicable, in terms of national sovereignty. It is a remarkably resilient and amoral argument: China can do wahetevr it likes and no one can judge them because of their unabiding belief in the principles of national sovereignty. The issue that most vexed me was China's involvement in the Sudan, which I referred to in one meeting with a Chinese official as "countenancing genocide." But China needs and wants oil, and they simply do not care about Sudan's internal affairs. Khartoum is more than happy to work with the Chinese, and so, based on their principles, voila! the outside world has no right to judge either the Sudan or the Chinese. This is a very convenient way to promote atrocity while simultaneously not caring about gross violations of human rights, all the while benefiting handsomely.

Kurlantzick's article focuses on Zambia and the recent elections. Here are some key excerpts:

[M]uch of the Zambian debate centered on a completely different topic: China. Opposition candidate Michael Sata accused Chinese companies, which have invested heavily in Zambian copper mining, of exploiting Zambian workers and undercutting Zambian goods. "Chinese investment has not added any value to the people of Zambia," Sata told a Zambian radio station, also threatening to toss Chinese companies out of the country. In response, China's embassy in Zambia became directly involved in the election, very unusual for foreign diplomats in any country, warning that Beijing might sever ties to Zambia if Sata won. The incumbent president, Sata's opponent in the election, reportedly apologized to Beijing for Sata's comments. [. . .]
Zambia, in fact, offers a window into a phenomenon American policy makers have only just begun to discover. In a short period of time, China has become a major donor and investor in Africa, and it has begun to play a major role in domestic African politics--not only in Zambia but also across the continent. In fact, China has so quickly amassed power in Africa that it now rivals the United States, France, and international financial institutions for influence--and potentially damages Africa's economic and political renaissance.

This is where China can be a profoundly destabilizing force -- in pursuing a grand strategy that amounts to geopolitical passive-aggressivism couched in very realpolitik western terms. They are not about to mount an attack on the United States or any of our interests. In military terms, China poses little danger, and almost never has -- though potentially it could. But where China can be massively destabilizing is by joining forces with states that either do not much care about its people (ie -- Big Men love Bigger Partners) or with those states so desperate for anything resembling development that they will sell out the safety and security of their people for short-term gain that holds immense appeal even as the repurcussions hang like Domocles' Sword over the heads of the teetering state.

Graduation Day!

The Chautauqua Program on China's New Security Perspectives is now done, and I have a nice certificate (suitable for framing) to prove it. We ended on a high note -- an incredible banquet. The food just kept coming, seemingly endlessly. I was chosen among the group to try my hand at the noodle dance, which is just a fancy, showy way of twisting and twirling the dough for the noodles that are a staple of Beijing diets. There are allegedly pictures of me doing so, with the noodles sprawled all over my head, but I can neither confirm nor deny their existence. The company was wonderful the food plentiful, the wine and drinkable yogurt endless. We heard jokes in Chinese, and our learning process continued, at least for those of us new to China.

The group was split between experienced China hands, people who had travelled here before but are not experts, and guys like me with a peripheral interest based in international relations, other regional experience, or as in my case, comparative historical and policy interests. There were lots of very sharp folks, several among us were fluent in Chinese. My own vocabulary has somewhat stagnated, though I am here for another four days or so and plan to continue to work to be able to, oh, say "good bye" as well as "hello," or to order Sprite as well as Coke.

Suffice it to say that in one week of intense work plus deep cultural immersion, I learned a great deal about China, though I have barely scratched the surface of even gradual knowledge of the area. A few issues clearly stand out, however:

China values national sovereignty above all other issues, at least rhetorically, and this stance informs everything they do with regard to foreign policy. This view informs what appears to me to be a mistrust of American intentions. It explains why China is not more forceful with regards to North Korea. It provides a fig leaf for China's noxious policies in relation to the Sudan (on which I plan to write much more in the future). It even serves to explain the one policy that was on everyone's lips as hands down the most important issue for everyone we spoke to here -- high level military officials, diplomats, politicians, professors, students, and taxi drivers all see the issue of Taiwan as the most significant one that China faces both on its own and vis-a-vis the United States. From an American vantage point, this stance seems contradictory -- after all, how can China preach national sovereignty yet maintain its stance regarding Taiwan? But the answer is simple -- they see Taiwan as an internal matter because they do not recognize Taiwan as a sovereign nation. I do not defend this stance. I was not "spun" over the course of the last week. But it is clear that this is China's stance, and understanding this is a key to understanding China's take on its own nationalism and our foreign policy toward them.

I honestly still cannot get my brain around the primacy this issue plays given that so many other issues are, from a geopolitical framework, so much more significant. To give just one example, China's truculent neighbor, North Korea, is of far more significance. Chinese relations with its western neighbors surely have more power to disrupt international relations than should the Taiwan issue. But here is what I perceive to be key -- with the exception, perhaps, of Taiwan's rather difficult current leadership, everyone else involved would probably be happy to maintain a vague and unresolved status quo whereby the Chinese keeps the military out, the United States does not agitate for taiwan's separate and democratic status, and taiwan maintain its place as a more autonomous version of Hong Kong. Who knows if such a situation could hold, but I get the sense that neither side among the superpowers has any interest in rocking the boat to find out if the Taiwan issue has gills.

So, does China pose a threat? This question is at the heart of the debate among Sinologists these days, so I will not presume to interject in that debate in any meaningful way, and certainly I carry almost zero authority on the question. But I perceive that this question has multiple dimensions.

From a lip service vantage point, everyone here acknowledges a disparity between the US and China that they expect to last for a long time. The Chinese leaders with whom we spoke were clear to maintain that the country has almost no wish to be a military threat to the United States. But underneath even that humility was a hint that China is trying to grow its capacity even while understating its intentions. Nonetheless, among the speakers I found most open and trustworthy (and there were several of whom I thought the opposite), I got no sense of a Chinese dragon seeking to strike. But there is more than the military to consider.

From a framework of international relations, the reality is that China has the capacity to be both friend and foe depending upon the interests at stake. Given their position as a permanent member of the UN Security Council and their differing take on the utility and desirability of the use of force, it seems to me that we will sometimes find ourselves at loggerheads with China in the global arena. But I have to think that unlike during the Cold War, when opposition between the US and USSR was almost reflexive, the US and China do not always have to be on opposiing sides and that there is much about which we can find agreement. It was instuctive to see how from a rhetorical standpoint, the word we heard most often this week was "friends": "American friends," foreign friends," "professor friends." At least at a base level there need be no Axis of Evil/Evil Empire/"We will bury you" verbiage spewing from the lips of our leaders.

In the economic arena things are interesting, because China plays a role of both partner and competitor. On the surface China has fully embraced liberal capitalism, but beneath that surface roils a state still very much tied into controlling the economy, to making sure that whatever changes occur do not alter the fundamental nature of the state. China has adopted some of the accoutrements of capitalism. It has done little to adopt a similar puruit of openness in other arenas, and even most of the economy does not function as a free and open market unfettered by state control. Some experts predict that by 2020 China will be either the second or first largest economy in the world. Predicting that China will surpass the United States seems to imply a simple take on economic strength that is mechanistically linked sheerly to population numbers. It also seesm to underestimate the poitential force of economic nature that coiuld be India. But the larger point is that China will in fact become an increasingly vital player in world economic circles. Buzzwords of "growth" and "development" and "markets" and "prosperity" flow ubiquitously, like a faucet left on in an overlooked side street. It seems logical that it is in the realm of global economics that China will pose both the greatest opportunity and the greatest challenge.

One final realm in which I am not so guarded or unsure is that this will continue for a long time to be a country in which human rights, internally and abroad, will be given lower status than they warrant. I have learned a great deal this week --among even hawkish American colleagues who are experts, for example, I learned that what happened on 4 June 1989 has been turned into a simplistic morality tale that elides some vitally important issues, discrepancies, and outright failings on the part of the student movement. But even if we grant that the rest of the world oftentimes misunderstands China, the fact remains that the current regime, like those that came before it and almost assuredly like those to follow in the near and distant future, simply places a diminished value on rights that we in the west hold, and that I maintain are fundamental. To put it bluntly, the Chinese simply seem not to care that their policies in the Sudan buttress genocide. Since they do not value free speech, they are willing to imprison journalists, to crush dissenters, to beat and torture critics. They are willing to shroud Mao in a gauzy hagiography because his cruel ideology of murder and violence does not possess the same capacity to outrage as it does elsewhere. Too many people here, leaders and otherwise, simply do not believe that means matter as much as ends, and do not think that individual rights and liberties are significant compared to a sort of forced social cohesion.

These are tentative conclusions drawn from just a week or so of first-hand observation, moderately privileged access (we were told that we were the first group of Americans to be allowed access to the Foreign Ministry the other day; most of what we saw and heard was anodyne, useless, and strictly within the realm of propotcol; I also do not believe that we were the first such group for even a moment, though if we really were, I guess that is a sign of something -- I suppose both of just how closed the Chinese past is and how progress is coming, but very slowly), a lot of reading, and in my case, the luck of having made friends with some of the more astute and experienced China observers in the group.

I've somewhat made the transition from observer, scholar, writer, and intellectual to camera-toting tourist. Yesterday I went with a couple of my new friends (probably the two best, most experienced, cleverest experts among our group) to the spectacular Summer Palace on a hot, steamy, but clear day (this latter condition is rare enough that both Kaz and Dex made mention of it several times) followed by a trip to one of the more boistrous of the hutong for dinner and beers and talk and more cultural exposure (I can now confirm that while there has been a crack down, one can, if so inclined, buy hundreds of movies on dvd for less than a dollar apiece, though quality is apparently an issue and buying them thus a crapshoot). Today the three of us had a brunchy-meal, before which we gave in to the relentless bootleg sellers of Beijing 2008 Olympic stuff (somewhat shoddy, but one cannot beat the price), and then headed off to the Kingdom of Heaven. Dex left partway through to catch his plane back to Rhode Island. For tonight I have been invited to a barbecue with Kaz and some of her friends (I may be lost once she leaves tomorrow morning!), which should be interesting. Tomorrow I'll be trekking some distance to see the Great Wall. Tuesday I hope to go to Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. Then on Wednesday I fly out to Hong Kong and about 12 hours later, to Johannesburg and the next phase of this extended adventure.

Africa Stuff

There is lots of news from Africa in the last few days. The Sudan nightmare continues, and might be expanding; South Africans are going to the polls today to vote in what should be telling municipal elections; Observers fear for the future. Consider this a roundup.:

At The New Republic online, James Forsyth, assistant editor at Foreign Policy makes a compelling realist's case for greater involvement in the Sudan crisis. The gist of his case is that our inaction in the Sudan appears to lend credence to the idea that countries that seek shelter under "the China umbrella" will have free rein to be as dastardly as they choose. Forsyth acknowledges the virtue of humanitarian arguments for intervention while at the same time introducing a fairly compelling argument for intervention based on geopolitical interests.

Meanwhile, in a tail-wags-dog story, the Times reported yesterday that the Sudan has withdrawn its support for UN peacekeepers to take the place of African Union troops doing their best to control the situation in Darfur. One can easily debate this move on the merits -- in the wake of previous peacekeeping fiascos in which the UN was ineffectual in the face of African tyranny, such news might give pause -- but that Sudan should have a say in the matter is, to say the least, not reassuring. On a somewhat related note, Smith English professor Eric Reeves has been one of the leading voices drawing attention to the Sudan, and in a recent Mail & Guardian piece he addresses some of the problems of the AU forces, South Africa's inaction, and the need for stronger leadership, whether from South Africa, the AU or elsewhere.

All the while, Darfur refugee spillover into Chad runs the risk of turning the Sudan situation into yet another international (in the most literal sense of the word) miasma in Africa. Just consider what happened in the wake of the Rwandan genocide in 1994 or how the Congo/Zaire became a tinderbox a few years later. Once this becomes a cross-border problem, the potential for explosive conflict expands exponentially. This Sudan spillover may pose the worst refugee crisis in Africa (and the world) since the aftermath of the one hundred days of mayhem in Rwanda a dozen years ago.

In more hopeful news, South Africans flock to the polls today in what may be the stiffest challenge the ANC has yet faced. Thus far things seem to be going smoothly. In yesterday's Times Padraig O'Malley sounds a note of caution in the context of discontent over how the ANC has handled relocating certain communities from Gauteng to less prosperous provinces. I do not quite buy the most dire interpretations from the article, and would point out that while there are aspects of the ANC that seem bent on grasping more power than most (myself included) find comforting, the very existence of what should be fairly well-turned out voters who may challenge the ANC ought to be reassuring. The sentiments of one member of a Northern Cape opposition party member may indicate the tone of discontentment but not vitriol many in South Africa feel about the current state of the ANC: "I pray that the ANC will lose. We feel that you failed us. I was part of the people who helped the ANC win in 1994." What this indicates may be that a short-term setback for the ANC might cause the party to take a long look at itself, and perhaps to win back, to earn back, those who are concerned with what they see. Then again, some of the dissatisfaction appears pretty deeply seeded, as a quotation from a Shangase headman, Phenyamadoda Mchunu, indicates: "Tell me one reason why I should vote. We always vote but our lives don't improve." If enough South Africans begin to feel this way, things could grow very difficult for Mbeki's ANC.

Finally, according to the Mail and Guardian and observers, "things don't look good for Uganda." President Yoweri Museveni of the National Resistance Movement (NRM) is facing its stiffest challenge yet, and the one-time darling of a west that only half-pays attention to Africa at the best of times (Presidents Clinton and Bush have both heaped praise on Museveni since he came to office in 1996), looks to be resorting to typical "Big Man" tactics that have become frustratingly commonplace across Africa.