The Redhunter

China's role in enabling the Darfur crisis has been shameful. Sudan's oil resources have attracted substantial capital investment from China, estimated at around $10 billion over the last decade, and Sudan, in turn, now exports around 60 percent of its oil to China. Despite ludicrous claims to the contrary -- one Chinese official in March spoke of his country's "friendship from the bottom of our hearts" -- China's view toward Africa is purely mercantilist, and in the most destructive way. Not only does China provide a diplomatic shield, it sells weapons to Lt. Gen. Bashir's government, which transports those same weapons to murderous militias in Darfur using planes painted white to look like U.N. aircraft. Sudan has denied that practice, but, as another reminder of Khartoum's duplicity, an official U.N. report leaked to the New York Times last week confirms that Lt. Gen. Bashir's government camouflages its planes, which it also uses to conduct reconnaissance and bomb villages.

In addition to its economic motivation, China may simply oppose a U.N. response to a particular nation's human-rights violations, including genocide. A country that refuses to guarantee the basic human rights of its own people, China has also this year vetoed a Security Council resolution addressing the repressive situation in Burma.

Bringing pressure to bear on China is difficult. Chinese President Hu Jintao, visiting Sudan in February, was expected to urge Lt. Gen. Bashir to accept a larger U.N. role in Darfur. The message Mr. Hu delivered wasn't as direct as some had hoped. Advocates are calling for the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing to be used as a platform to highlight China's disgraceful record in Sudan; for the people of Darfur, that may be too long to wait.

China doesn't want to put pressure on the government in Khartoum because it might lose it's lucrative oil contracts. The Chinese leaders are pretty much thugs themselves, having grown up in the party of Mao Zedong, perhaps the greatest mass murderer of the 20th century. They simply don't care.

Further, we also would like China to put more pressure on North Korea to end it's nuclear program.

So what do we do? We only have so much political capital. Sure, we can pressure China to do more about both North Korea and Sudan, but other than verbally berating them we don't have a whole lot of incentives to offer.

We can threaten trade sanctions, as long as we realize that they'll hurt our economy as much as they will China's, and might not even work. It's silly to think that we can use the 2008 Olympic games in any meaningful way, because the media won't go along. No network or news organization is willing to risk getting kicked out of China. The Chinese authorities will make sure that any protesters are quickly rounded up.

The current diplomatic track seems worthless because Bashir's government won't do anything by itself and China doesn't care enough, no matter how much we pressure them. The only option is unilateral action, whether anyone likes it or not. Sen Biden was on to something the other day when he proposed sending American troops to the region. I don't think we're at that point yet, but we need to start thinking along the lines of unilateral strong-arm tactics.

Of course, even that is not without risk. In the 90s Sudan was a big supporter of terrorism, from what I read now they've largely gotten out of that business because of US pressure. They could easily get back in. China can make things rough for us around the world, both diplomatically and economically.

But as I mentioned in a post last week about moral posturing, nothing worth doing is without risk. I suppose this last diplomatic try is worth doing, but if and when it fails we need to look beyond traditional methods.