Because it is unable to without putting troops on the ground, and no one wants the thankless job of losing lives and billions of dollars to be the world police anymore. What exactly does the...
And yet, the world seems unable—or unwilling—to stop the horror unfolding.
Because it is unable to without putting troops on the ground, and no one wants the thankless job of losing lives and billions of dollars to be the world police anymore.
What exactly does the author want “the world” to do? It’s certainly not in the op ed for all the chagrining.
Yeah, peacekeeping missions are already complicated affairs as they are. And this particular situation is already messy enough as it is. I don't condone the fact that the world has been pretty...
Yeah, peacekeeping missions are already complicated affairs as they are. And this particular situation is already messy enough as it is.
I don't condone the fact that the world has been pretty silent on it. But it's far from surprising. At most some humanitarian corridors might be possible, but that could destabilise Sudan's neighbours... and a domino effect would, in the current world situation, be absolutely catastrophic.
It would require a lot of cooperation and good will from the strongest powers in the world. Not only are they stretched thin in their own rights, tensions are so high that it's difficult to achieve.
I really wish they weren't. Theoretically, the UN ought to be preventing things like this. Or Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Or the brutality of Israel's invasion of Gaza. And so forth. But the...
Yeah, peacekeeping missions are already complicated affairs as they are.
I really wish they weren't. Theoretically, the UN ought to be preventing things like this. Or Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Or the brutality of Israel's invasion of Gaza. And so forth. But the nations of the world are not interested in having an organization with that kind of extra-sovereign power, so it's not funded or provided the troops to engage in peacekeeping missions.
So all we are left with is the natural consequences of our limited empathy for people suffering in faraway places. And, as you say, it's not as if there are simple solutions we are just ignoring. American nationbuilding in Iraq and Afghanistan was a disaster and not for lack of troops or funding.
Without any obvious solutions, it's not surprising that what we go with instead is turning a blind eye. Especially because it's in Sub-Saharan Africa, far away from economic resources that wealthy nations care about. "Shameful" is probably the right word for it. It's a damning indictment of human nature. But not a surprising one.
The UN has one main goal: preventing great power conflict. Anything else is a side project. Even if the UN had the mandate, how would you “prevent” what’s happening in Sudan other than just...
Theoretically, the UN ought to be preventing things like this.
The UN has one main goal: preventing great power conflict. Anything else is a side project.
Even if the UN had the mandate, how would you “prevent” what’s happening in Sudan other than just conquering it (and likely just repeating Afghanistan the moment you leave)?
I think this is interesting, and I agree: there has been no proven way yet to solve these kinds of conflict besides overwhelming victory and domination. The best example of a vicious ethnic...
Even if the UN had the mandate, how would you “prevent” what’s happening in Sudan other than just conquering it (and likely just repeating Afghanistan the moment you leave)?
I think this is interesting, and I agree: there has been no proven way yet to solve these kinds of conflict besides overwhelming victory and domination.
The best example of a vicious ethnic conflict 'solved' is Rwanda — but they only managed to achieve it through complete victory by Tutsi rebels (who also committed many retribution killings against the Hutus) and the reconciliation process has been held together by a relatively benevolent president-dictator who has done net good on the whole but has suppressed and brutalized critics and opponents through authoritarian rule.
Yeah, and to answer @stu2b50's question, that was kind of my point: we don't even know how to solve these problems if we did have the political will to do so. America thought we had figured it out...
Yeah, and to answer @stu2b50's question, that was kind of my point: we don't even know how to solve these problems if we did have the political will to do so. America thought we had figured it out with Germany and Japan following the Second World War. But when we tried to apply our expertise to Afghanistan and Iraq and engage in similar nationbuilding (an explicit goal of the Bush Administration, as I recall), it failed spectacularly.
Now, you can say that there are a lot of differences between what the United States did in West Germany and Japan, and you can say that there are differences between war-ravaged developed nations and conquered developing countries, but at the end of the day, despite all of the money America through at the two conflicts, both nationbuilding exercises were colossal failures. The Taliban came right back in Afghanistan and we basically created ISIS in Iraq. I would like to say that we learned something from that, but I'm not sure that we did. If the United States were to throw a similar amount of time, money, and manpower at Sudan in 2024 as we did in Afghanistan and Iraq, I don't have any confidence that we would do it any better.
I think that the idea that a nation can be "built" is fundamentally flawed. In it is an assumption that people everywhere are the same, and if you throw infrastructure and institutions at them,...
I think that the idea that a nation can be "built" is fundamentally flawed. In it is an assumption that people everywhere are the same, and if you throw infrastructure and institutions at them, they'll end up just like the west.
That has, of course, turned out to be very wrong: a nation is evolved through a process of education, cultural evolution, assimilation, integration, domination, industrialization, and institutionalization.
Germany and Japan were already highly centralized nations, so the institutional and social structures for distributing foreign control were already in place. And their populaces had been subdued through extensive firebombing and general war weariness.
Iraq did have these stable structures, but the US made the colossal mistake of dismantling those stable structures through de-Baathification in dismissing all civil and military personnel affiliated with the deposed Saddam's party. Had the US done differently, maybe Iraq would've been a success project today. But Afghanistan and Sudan, however, don't: their structures are highly decentralized (along tribal and ethnic lines) and contentious.
I'm not sure that we did. If the United States were to throw a similar amount of time, money, and manpower at Sudan in 2024 as we did in Afghanistan and Iraq, I don't have any confidence that we would do it any better.
I agree. We don't have the tools to solve the conflict. There probably aren't any moral tools.
I would say that the tools do exist, though no nation on Earth would pay the cost because it would look fundamentally the same as conquering the country but with the goal of eventually handing it...
I would say that the tools do exist, though no nation on Earth would pay the cost because it would look fundamentally the same as conquering the country but with the goal of eventually handing it back to the people who lived there before. Bring in an entirely new bureaucracy, educate the populace, establish rule of law, entirely new law enforcement, etc. Give it 40+ years of being managed externally with strong protections against exploitation of the populace or natural resources in the meantime. Expand existing infrastructure and provide a stable and impartial court system. Do all the things we know will lead to stable lives and an increased quality of life. By the end of those decades of investment, this theoretical country will probably be able to stand on its own.
But that would require a huge investment. Who would do that when there are things to spend money on at home?
I'm not sure if those would be enough. Not only would an outside force have to defeat all belligerents in Sudan, that force would have to keep them down in order to prevent them from rising back...
educate the populace, establish rule of law, entirely new law enforcement
I'm not sure if those would be enough. Not only would an outside force have to defeat all belligerents in Sudan, that force would have to keep them down in order to prevent them from rising back up like in Iraq. Beyond education, the outside force would have to effectively brainwash the populace out of its ethnic resentments in order to pacify it. There would need to be martial law and a complete police surveillance state: imprison all belligerents, and tightly surveil the population to root out hideouts and sympathizers. Any inch of leeway and people will regroup to fight out age-old ethnic resentments and/or against the occupying forces.
Occupation and domination would have to be total, otherwise progress would be futile. See how the Taliban systemically targeted Western development projects in Afghanistan. The material cost would be astronomical. The human cost would be immense.
In Rwanda after the genocide, they imprisoned 120,000–130,000 people who participated in the killings: but up to one million people, 20% of the population then, were culpable; so many remained free. Today, it's still a police state, with the government tightly controlling the media and silencing critics, ostensibly to suppress ethnic grievances.
Yeah, Rwanda is a specifically bad case, as there had been 40+ years of cultural divisions engineered by Belgium. I think that in a situation where there were more resources, a stronger...
Yeah, Rwanda is a specifically bad case, as there had been 40+ years of cultural divisions engineered by Belgium. I think that in a situation where there were more resources, a stronger egalitarian educational tradition, and an outside force ensuring equality of opportunity, free and fair elections, etc, would have done more to resolve things. Rwanda hasn't really had 40 years to heal, nor a just and equitable supporter making sure their systems are set up well.
I disagree with this point. After all, there are currently multiple active peacekeeping missions in Africa, including in Sudan. The problem isn't funding and troops so much as mandate - the UN is...
so it's not funded or provided the troops to engage in peacekeeping missions.
I disagree with this point. After all, there are currently multiple active peacekeeping missions in Africa, including in Sudan. The problem isn't funding and troops so much as mandate - the UN is simply not designed to take offensive action, much less risk open conflict with a true military force. Part of that comes down to the world not wanting to hand over their sovereignty, as you say, and another part is simply realpolitik. You may or may not be aware, but most UN outposts are staffed by one (or maybe a few) troop contributing countries. So think of the Dutch country commander ordering the Pakistani garrison to go engage the Sudanese military or whatever, and what the resultant politics would look like.
One of my high school friends joined the Army National Guard after high school. He ended up being deployed to a UN peacekeeping base in the Sinai Peninsula. So, yeah, I'm familiar with the concept...
One of my high school friends joined the Army National Guard after high school. He ended up being deployed to a UN peacekeeping base in the Sinai Peninsula. So, yeah, I'm familiar with the concept of UN peacekeeping forces. But I am less clear on their effectiveness. In the 21st century, what do they actually do? What peace have they actually kept?
Sudan actually has respectably sized proven oil and gold reserves. The trouble is they're in Sudan, and the resources are almost more of a curse (corruption, etc). OPEC even invited Sudan to join...
Especially because it's in Sub-Saharan Africa, far away from economic resources that wealthy nations care about.
Sudan actually has respectably sized proven oil and gold reserves. The trouble is they're in Sudan, and the resources are almost more of a curse (corruption, etc). OPEC even invited Sudan to join at one point. Due to instability, that didn't end up happening though.
Edit: Also check u/ChingShih's comment for a great explainer on how China is doing resource extraction in the region.
Presumably: provide more humanitarian aid (e.g. food, clean water, etc) additional and more serious efforts to facilitate a peace deal/ceasefire more discussion of the issue (more coverage in the...
Presumably:
provide more humanitarian aid (e.g. food, clean water, etc)
additional and more serious efforts to facilitate a peace deal/ceasefire
more discussion of the issue (more coverage in the international press, discussion in international forums such as the UN, Arab League, African Union)
crackdown on international actors who are fanning the flames of conflict (e.g. the UAE backing the Rapid Support Forces)
potentially a UN peacekeeping intervention in Sudan
is a no go because there's no functional way to give aid without merely being fuel for the two military dictators on each side of the civil war this is too vague of a goal; by all accounts, the US...
is a no go because there's no functional way to give aid without merely being fuel for the two military dictators on each side of the civil war
this is too vague of a goal; by all accounts, the US is trying it's best, but it's hard to imagine what soft power the US has in the region. Sudan is fairly isolated from the rest of Africa, and Ethiopia, which is the largest power in the area, has been posturing to invade of its neighbors for a sea port, let alone be the arbiter of peace.
What would this do? And how is it the the US or any other government's job what the press do? The press should be free to cover what they wish.
This is the one thing the US can do, that is to sanction the UAE. But it's not going to do all that much in the end.
That would be an utter disaster in every possible way.
Not to mention the millions of outcries and sermons, right from UN, human rights agencies, NGOs, media houses, etc. Putting troops on ground is seen as aggressor action today even if done for the...
Because it is unable to without putting troops on the ground, and no one wants the thankless job of losing lives and billions of dollars to be the world police anymore.
Not to mention the millions of outcries and sermons, right from UN, human rights agencies, NGOs, media houses, etc. Putting troops on ground is seen as aggressor action today even if done for the right reasons and against the worst kind of creatures that tread this planet.
I wonder at what point, if any, China starts to feel pressure to play a hand in world affairs. People expect often expect the US to stick their heads in, but the US is stretched thin at the moment...
I wonder at what point, if any, China starts to feel pressure to play a hand in world affairs. People expect often expect the US to stick their heads in, but the US is stretched thin at the moment and China is the second largest economy. There's some Chinese economic interests in Sudan as well, which is usually what drives nations to inter[vene|fere].
To sort of enter the discussion you and @skybrian are having as a whole thread, and borrow on the "pressure" analogy, China isn't being pressured by its peers or adversaries to intervene in the...
Exemplary
To sort of enter the discussion you and @skybrian are having as a whole thread, and borrow on the "pressure" analogy, China isn't being pressured by its peers or adversaries to intervene in the way that the USSR vs USA played out (or even USA and USSR vs UK and France, which happened once or twice) during the cold war.
China has been watching western and Soviet spheres of influence retracting or collapsing since the 1960s. It's also watched western nations and the USSR turn around and sanction some of these same countries. While it's taken some time for China to become capable of the levels of participation we see today, it becomes an obvious choice and preferred partner when they don't participate in these sanctions.
African nations are great examples of what happens when different colonial powers withdraw for political and economic reasons, rather than for the sake of anything even approximating granting independence for the sake of independence. While China wasn't able to have the same "experiential learning" opportunities in Africa for their militaries as the great powers, they did find a way to fill the vacuum, especially in countries that were or are heavily sanctioned. Since around the 1960s they also had an opportunity to do something with their expansive population that resulted in the Chinese government recommending that people move elsewhere, including all over Africa, and start businesses. This diaspora allowed Chinese-speaking and mainland China-affiliated groups to take root locally without the ambitions of colonial conquest, with the additional benefit of laying the foundations for China's economic colonialism in later decades. Russia only wishes that its ethnic-Russian re-population scheme in Ukraine worked so well.
Right now, if you take a survey of major mines throughout southern Africa, you'll find many of them are either foreign-owned and operated by big Chinese multinationals or they're joint-ventures that just happen to be selling all the resources directly to China and sometimes not even at market rate. In many cases the resource-extraction companies are exclusively operating with Chinese construction equipment and the consultants that come with them. It seems like China always has a hand in at least one layer, if they're not completely vertically integrated at every level. With a few caveats, this really isn't any different in my mind to what the western nations were doing in the early 1900s in South America, even including having the local military or law enforcement fatally suppress local citizens (though I have yet to hear about the Chinese military/PMCs doing anything of the sort).
Back in 2008 [Zimbabweans attempted to mine diamonds in an area granted to a joint-venture including a Chinese company. In 2011 they were still being violently suppressed and I doubt that the situation improved after that article was written. When I was in Zimbabwe I heard some rumors about another diamond mine that was under Chinese control and using Zimbabwean prisoners as a labor pool (not unlike how China is using prisoners as labor in deep sea fishing). With the way things operate there, I really wouldn't be surprised if that was true. A much more recent article highlights similar types of community displacements and labor abuses at a lithium mine also operated by a Chinese company.
In another, much less populous African country, I recently met a Chinese auditor who was visiting on a work visa. I didn't ask him who he was auditing, but it seemed pretty clear that he was working for an outside company auditing one of the country's uranium mines. Incidentally, I was told that it was formerly a Soviet (and later Australian) uranium mine. While national newspapers indicate that it was since purchased by the state, locals say it was then sold to the Chinese (rather than a joint-venture) and it's completely Chinese-owned and operated by Chinese nationals who aren't allowed to leave the premises. They even import their own food, tools, and of course mining equipment. From what locals said, it's a completely self-isolated facility that doesn't really economically impact the local economies, except for the massive amount of fresh water that they pipe in that is for their exclusive use. It's a resource-extraction site operating in its own little universe.
This is the kind of relationship that China wants. It's not treating these nations as peers or developing nations to support, it's providing services for-profit, expertise and consulting for-profit, and it's lending money to develop what seems to be an indebted relationship that gives them leverage over smaller nations with few allies (and probably a fair amount of internal political turmoil). They've been doing this in southeast and central Asia and other nations, but the upshot of this is that China is gaining a tremendous amount of positive perception from some citizens (and appropriately aligned politicians) for all the great infrastructure benefiting them. China benefits in the near-term and long-term and, while it's doing some interesting things as a major creditor, it's also buying political will in other countries to allow the use of lucrative mines and even military bases which expands its role as a major player and serious partner when it comes to international negotiations and mediation. All of that gives it the strength to stand up to western, Russian, and Indian influence and be taken seriously.
So if I am understanding all this correctly, the response to @gary and the author's (in the OP link) point is that China has little to nothing to gain from intervening in Sudan, and this is why...
So if I am understanding all this correctly, the response to @gary and the author's (in the OP link) point is that China has little to nothing to gain from intervening in Sudan, and this is why they are unwilling?
I have recently been reading and watching a lot about China since I first heard talk about the New Cold War. It's been difficult to get into it as a layperson but I feel I at least grasp the basics by now - however you seem very knowledgeable about China as well as region in question so I hope it's ok to ask a couple related questions.
Is it about a China first policy - nationalism - that the CCP just does not care about anyone that isn't ethnically Chinese? Or is it more that it's a strictly economic calculus for China, that they are not getting involved in Sudan? Russia is mentioned in the post as having something to gain. China isn't even mentioned, so I infer they have nothing to gain?
Reading the article that @ignorabimus posted (which is a great read and I highly recommend it even though it's very long (archive link of it here)), it certainly sounds like official Chinese policies make for some very convenient excuses for why they won't get involved in areas that they do not deem profitable enough, or that don't have enough favourable potential in its outcomes.
As former Foreign Minister Qin Gang put it: “There is no one-size-fits-all model in the protection of human rights.”
the GCI’s notion that the diversity of civilizations and development paths should be respected—and by extension, for China’s vision for an order that does not give primacy to the values of liberal democracies.
China’s New IP proposal for increasing state control over the Internet
Additionally, seeing things like this (timestamped at 50:47, just watch about a minute from there) very much makes it seem like China has imperialist or neo-colonialist ambitions. I'm aware this clip might just be propaganda though it does appear obvious to me that China cares very little about respecting other countries' way of doing things and more so care about making deals with whomever allows them to project the most power internationally - authoritarians. But maybe that's because those are the countries that the US/West has not invested in, and so there is a void that China seized the opportunity to fill?
China hasn't really involved itself in any foreign boots-on-the-ground interventions post-WW2 (at least not in countries it doesn't border, e.g. Korea). China definitely has imperialist ambitions...
China hasn't really involved itself in any foreign boots-on-the-ground interventions post-WW2 (at least not in countries it doesn't border, e.g. Korea). China definitely has imperialist ambitions in surrounding countries, but their strategy further afield is more subtle and tends to involve investing lots of money.
To jump ahead a bit, I agree with ignorabimus's response to you. China is pretty wary of foreign interventions. They intervened during the Korean War at the 11th hour, and when it would be most...
To jump ahead a bit, I agree with ignorabimus's response to you. China is pretty wary of foreign interventions. They intervened during the Korean War at the 11th hour, and when it would be most strategically decisive. They propped up the Khmer Rouge as a sort of ally in Southeast Asia, then had some disputes with Vietnam, but resolved that quickly before it turned into a quagmire. Afterwards, Mao and subsequent Maoists have set their sites pretty much solely on the U.S. as the primary concern. Though lately they've been having regional border disputes with everyone that they can.
Okay, jumping back to Sudan: I don't think China has anything to gain at this particular point. But you can bet that they'll make some loud noises during a peace process. They'll also be among the first there to provide credit for the purposes of reconstruction and assuredly with different interest rates than the World Bank/IMF will suggest.
But China doesn't have anything to gain from settling the conflict in Sudan itself. What Russia may see as valuable is from the Soviet way of thinking. Anything they can turn away from the western sphere of influence is something that is either valuable later or something that the west will have to spend resources on later. China doesn't need to overtly provide military support or even need to play a real humanitarian role because that doesn't feel much like a "win" at home. What does feel like a win is becoming a business partner in yet another country. What feels like an even bigger win is telling its citizens that China is modernizing and profiting while the rest of the world is busy fighting, peacekeeping, or failing in strategic ambitions while running up a deficit.
The documentary/video clip you linked talked about that. Propaganda is obviously a big thing, but what that video clip is also about is proof of progress. China doesn't want to just talk a big game like Russia or India, it wants to prove that it's not to be trifled with. China's military has been lagging behind western nations substantially and over the last 10+ years they've focused on modernizing not only their equipment, but also their training. China's immediate neighbors also have large armies, but they have varying levels of materiel and personnel capability. Perun has a 70-minute video on India's military and defense strategy from about 5 months ago that provides some good details on India's massive and uniquely structured army. But India doesn't really have the equipment to make an army of that size a sure success against a peer adversary and not necessarily against a neighbor like China either.
I just got to the part of the video talking about the Chinese military becoming "more expeditionary, more externally focused." This is definitely something they've been testing the past ten years. China has come into small-scale conflict with India over at least one disputed border region. In one case, a video leaked of an all-out brawl between soldiers of the two border forces who were specifically not using firearms because they didn't want to escalate the situation into a "shooting war." But in that or another altercation there were soldiers actually killed. China of course also has designs on Tibet and Nepal, with Bhutan also getting some political pressure of its own.
But China also doesn't have to look very far to practice "externally." Much like India and Kashmir state, China has been getting plenty of experience developing a true police state, with martial law, in Xinjiang Province where they've been fighting Turkic and Uyghur separatists since the late 2000s. They've also been fighting radicalized religious-aligned groups in that same and adjacent regions and China has been attempting to secure the fluid borders of their immediate neighbors (including Afghanistan and Pakistan), because China really, really does not want an IS insurgency within its own borders making international news.
China considers the US the peer to match and it's rapidly expanding not only its conventional capabilities, but also its ability to project that force. That said, a lot of China's attempts at matching western technology have fallen really short (see pretty much anything they claim is going to either float or fly while being stealthy). But they're making inroads there as well and one day they really will have a fighting force that might not be peer-level with the US and its favorite allies, but capable of putting up a nasty fight. Whether they'll ever put that force to use remains to be seen, but they are certainly positioning themselves to great advantage.
(The DW docu is really good by the way, I'll have to watch the rest of it tomorrow. Thanks!)
China does play a sizeable role in world affairs. A key tennet of China's approach has been to not intervene militarily in distant countries (the US of course has been involved in too many...
Exemplary
China does play a sizeable role in world affairs. A key tennet of China's approach has been to not intervene militarily in distant countries (the US of course has been involved in too many countries to count). Foreign Affairs recently wrote a feature on Xi Jinping's approach to geopolitics.
I don't think you think I want China to intervene, but I'll clarify for the other readers that we should be 1) considering what would drive China to directly assume a role of protector via their...
I don't think you think I want China to intervene, but I'll clarify for the other readers that we should be 1) considering what would drive China to directly assume a role of protector via their military and 2) back off of judging the US so harshly. The US is going to enter a long period of non interventionism in Africa/Middle East and that could increase the chances of China interfering more directly than via the belt road initiative. Again, none of this is expressed as a desire.
Makes sense, thanks for clarifying! On the subject of speculating about what’s going to happen, it’s the “feeling pressure” part I wonder about. Pressure from whom? How does that work? In general,...
Makes sense, thanks for clarifying!
On the subject of speculating about what’s going to happen, it’s the “feeling pressure” part I wonder about. Pressure from whom? How does that work? In general, I’m doubtful that the Chinese government responds to outside pressure in helpful ways. I don’t think their interest in foreign investment comes from outside pressure.
In a power vacuum, I could see them imposing order to protect their foreign assets, maybe.
That's a good question. I don't think I have an answer for that because I've also never been sure why the US stuck its head into more affairs than it should have. Perhaps pressure from their own...
That's a good question. I don't think I have an answer for that because I've also never been sure why the US stuck its head into more affairs than it should have. Perhaps pressure from their own citizens to Do The Right Thing, since that's been the feeling in the US before it did.. Things. Like the Philippines.
There's also a more abstract feeling out there. It's not a coincidence that countries come to the US whenever something happens around the world. It would raise many, many eyebrows if the US wasn't involved in negotiations for a ceasefire in Gaza. Perhaps one day the same will be true for China and the former Soviet countries negotiating for peace with Russia, in a hypothetical situation where Russia becomes more belligerent towards them.
I think part of the answer is that many of Russia’s neighbors are afraid of Russia for good reason, and that’s why they want to join NATO. This is Russia pushing them away. They need allies to...
I think part of the answer is that many of Russia’s neighbors are afraid of Russia for good reason, and that’s why they want to join NATO. This is Russia pushing them away. They need allies to protect them from Russia. Similarly, China’s neighbors often have good reason to be concerned and look for allies, too.
This is what happens with expansionist, imperialistic countries. There are border disputes and worse. But maybe countries are less concerned when they’re further away and have their own troubles?
The US certainly has quite a history of intervention, but can also credibly claim to not be interested in expansion anymore, and it has a ridiculous number of allies because, despite everything, it’s often a decent ally. Which isn’t to say that there isn’t also self-interest, but it’s a different kind, based on trade.
So maybe the question is whether China could get to the point of being a decent ally? It’s not that they don’t try, but expansionism tends to result in distrust.
Maybe if they settled some of their border disputes, it would credibly indicate that something has changed?
Good point about the lack of trust in China from virtually any sizable economy near them. I can't see China's attitudes towards expansionism changing any time, so perhaps there won't be countries...
Good point about the lack of trust in China from virtually any sizable economy near them. I can't see China's attitudes towards expansionism changing any time, so perhaps there won't be countries that trust them enough to push them towards becoming world police.
At least for the Middle East, there is some contingent of Christians that seriously believe they must help bring about the end of times by making sure the stars align in Israel. Though I can't...
At least for the Middle East, there is some contingent of Christians that seriously believe they must help bring about the end of times by making sure the stars align in Israel. Though I can't explain the US war hawks that want to bomb Iran; I don't know the origins of their beef.
I'm not really sure the Belt and Road initiative is a net negative, especially given that China's incentives do kind of tend to align with the countries they provide investment to.
I'm not really sure the Belt and Road initiative is a net negative, especially given that China's incentives do kind of tend to align with the countries they provide investment to.
It's also questionable how well that's going to work in the long run. We've already seen billions squandered across the initiative, and with China not as strong as it once was economically, it's...
t being pressured by its peers or adversaries to intervene in the way that the USSR vs USA played out (or even
It's also questionable how well that's going to work in the long run. We've already seen billions squandered across the initiative, and with China not as strong as it once was economically, it's likely to actually matter that some of these investments are essentially just wasted.
That's the theory, yes, but they're still expecting ROI on it. Some of that will be in political pull and access to resources and what not, but some of that was supposed to come from it actually...
That's the theory, yes, but they're still expecting ROI on it. Some of that will be in political pull and access to resources and what not, but some of that was supposed to come from it actually being an investment.
It was fine that entire nations were squandering the funds, but with their recent housing debacle (which I believe they're handling better than the people i listen to expected), suddenly questions are being asked about how well this money was spent.
I'd argue that the US isn't actually stretched thin in terms of available resources, but that it's become abundantly clear over the last few decades that there's no appetite at home for the US to...
I'd argue that the US isn't actually stretched thin in terms of available resources, but that it's become abundantly clear over the last few decades that there's no appetite at home for the US to play World Police. It's possible that at some point the US will be able to be World EMT, providing resources and stabilization until an area can heal on its own, but that's not a role its armed forces are currently trained to do.
I would argue that we are because we are at a point where China has become our greatest military adversary. They've been up there for a long time, but in the last decade their shipbuilding has...
I would argue that we are because we are at a point where China has become our greatest military adversary. They've been up there for a long time, but in the last decade their shipbuilding has been at a breakneck pace with no signs of slowing down, while our industry is practically dead. Our reliance on air superiority will also mean less with their ground based air defenses in any Taiwan scenario. This increases the need for long range precision fires, but as we're seeing in Ukraine, you can deplete your supplies far, far quicker than you can produce them. In a hot war with China, who's going to out produce who? So our supply is too limited to be spending on every war that breaks out around the world.
I think it should be noted that the US achieved its superpower status through sheer industrial might: we were the "Arsenal of Democracy". The US manufactured over 300,000 military aircraft in WW2....
They've been up there for a long time, but in the last decade their shipbuilding has been at a breakneck pace with no signs of slowing down, while our industry is practically dead.
I think it should be noted that the US achieved its superpower status through sheer industrial might: we were the "Arsenal of Democracy". The US manufactured over 300,000 military aircraft in WW2.
It's clear that China's industrial capacity now dwarfs the US', and their industrial capability is catching up quickly. The Ukraine War is showing hints that they are the "Arsenal of Autocracy".
I think it depends on what supplies are actually being consumed? In any situation in Sudan we're not going to be consuming long range precision fires in large numbers. We're not going to be tying...
I think it depends on what supplies are actually being consumed? In any situation in Sudan we're not going to be consuming long range precision fires in large numbers. We're not going to be tying up our navy. Yes, China is an adversary, but I'd be interested in what resources you think would be tied up trying to help in Sudan that would be needed urgently in a potential hot war with a nuclear power. Not that I think we should, but I'm pretty confident we could without any risk to response capabilities.
Logistics overhead would increase. Anything that could be dropped out of a plane in Sudan could be useful in Asia in some capacity. Marines were the tip of the spear in Iraq and would likely be...
Logistics overhead would increase. Anything that could be dropped out of a plane in Sudan could be useful in Asia in some capacity. Marines were the tip of the spear in Iraq and would likely be used in Sudan, but they're currently re-orienting their entire org to be more efficient at island hopping and moving away from the type of warfare they practiced in the last two decades. If we found ourselves bogged down in Sudan long enough we would start evolving military equipment and acquisition towards what's needed in Sudan, which comes at the opportunity cost of developing weapons suitable for island fighting. An example of that would be vehicles becoming more optimized for IEDs than heavy fire. What does island fighting need? IDK there, but it'd look different than what's used in Sudan that's for sure.
Lastly, budget and political will, which you first alluded to. Fighting in Sudan costs the US money, and the US already has a large debt burden, rising cost of living, and a deficit that never seems to go away. That, combined with deaths, saps political will that would be needed if Taiwan were to be attacked.
Probably only once Chinese Bono starts getting people to care about the Chinese equivalent of caring about Darfur. Let's be real. "No one" cares about Sudan. "No one" cared about Sudan when Darfur...
Probably only once Chinese Bono starts getting people to care about the Chinese equivalent of caring about Darfur.
Let's be real. "No one" cares about Sudan. "No one" cared about Sudan when Darfur was a big buzzword; they just cared about being cool and being opposed to genocide. I don't think it's any different now. Sudan is a sub-Saharan country that is just a few spots above being the poorest in the world, and there are no white people there to make the Westerners care about it.
Your country has to already be interesting to the general population of the Western world for people to care about it for more than a week. Unfortunately, that excludes almost all of Africa.
The US is actually trying to draw down its focus on the Middle East specifically to start focusing on Africa, as it no longer needs foreign oil but wants more of the rare metals and other raw...
The US is actually trying to draw down its focus on the Middle East specifically to start focusing on Africa, as it no longer needs foreign oil but wants more of the rare metals and other raw resources found in Africa. You're likely to see more articles just like this, humanizing various suffering African groups and trying to bolster public opinion for more direct US interventions in the region.
I'm not convinced the US government is pushing on journalists to do human interest stories in Africa. It feels more likely that some journalists took it personally when they were criticized for...
I'm not convinced the US government is pushing on journalists to do human interest stories in Africa. It feels more likely that some journalists took it personally when they were criticized for putting all their resources into Gaza at the expense of Darfur and other tragedies.
The US really really does not want to directly intervene anywhere in Africa (or at least Biden absolutely doesn't). There are also no resources in Africa that the US doesn't already have large deposits of.
There's large deposits of rare earths in the US, but it doesn't mean that they're cheaper to extract here. With human rights, labor protections, land acquisition cost, environmental protests, and...
There's large deposits of rare earths in the US, but it doesn't mean that they're cheaper to extract here. With human rights, labor protections, land acquisition cost, environmental protests, and laborer cost of living issues, it can be cheaper to extract and refine them half a world away and then ship them here. Admittedly, I'm personally in favor of having such things done more locally so that we're not entirely dependent on world-spanning supply chains, but there's a few good reasons to try to use other country's reserves. Locking down supplies in foreign countries not only guarantees US access to raw materials but denies them to China, and It also will mean that once foreign deposits are consumed the USA still has their domestic sources available.
These are all valid arguments and provide good reasons the US might want to control resource extraction in Africa. The thing is, China is actually the country running the vast majority of African...
These are all valid arguments and provide good reasons the US might want to control resource extraction in Africa. The thing is, China is actually the country running the vast majority of African foreign-owned mining operations (for all the reasons you mentioned and then some). To my knowledge , the US government is really uninvolved in Africa (outside of foreign aid). It's mostly Russia and China's playground. See this comment.
Without getting directly involved, I think a more reasonable and doable request is accepting more refugees, but of course immigration is a hot-button issue in most countries. And on the subject of...
Without getting directly involved, I think a more reasonable and doable request is accepting more refugees, but of course immigration is a hot-button issue in most countries.
And on the subject of neglected conflicts where US intervention could do some good, Haiti comes to mind.
I feel like the US could do even less with Haiti. The first step in aid is for there to be someone to receive it... and Haiti is all but a failed state at this point. I'm not sure there's any...
I feel like the US could do even less with Haiti. The first step in aid is for there to be someone to receive it... and Haiti is all but a failed state at this point. I'm not sure there's any point in giving anything to Barbeque the cannibal gang leader.
So step 0 is for either a state to exist, either the prior government reclaiming power, a gang consolidating power, or hypothetically a foreign nation intervening, but the optics the latter are horrible, and we're just off the failure that was Afghanistan, where the manufactured democratic state proved utterly incapable of running itself.
I imagine taking control of the port and some key supply lines. I see the gangs as weak and having no allies. It’s just that there’s nobody there that’s stronger than them. Maybe that’s just a...
I imagine taking control of the port and some key supply lines. I see the gangs as weak and having no allies. It’s just that there’s nobody there that’s stronger than them.
Maybe that’s just a cartoon understanding of the situation, though.
You're not wrong at all, but the question then becomes "okay, the US seized the port. ...now what?" Let's say the US decides to just sit on the port and let aid come in. What happens when gang...
You're not wrong at all, but the question then becomes "okay, the US seized the port. ...now what?"
Let's say the US decides to just sit on the port and let aid come in. What happens when gang members start shooting at American troops? What about when the troops start to get injured/killed? And so on. These situations are just outrageously complex quagmires.
They can be, and that’s why the US is very reluctant to intervene after Mogadishu. (It’s why Biden is adamant that there will be no US troops in Gaza.) No way they’re going into Sudan again under...
They can be, and that’s why the US is very reluctant to intervene after Mogadishu. (It’s why Biden is adamant that there will be no US troops in Gaza.) No way they’re going into Sudan again under similar conditions.
But I don’t know if the situation in Haiti warrants that level of concern? It seems like it might be simpler in comparison.
UN interventions don’t automatically break down. It seems like sometimes it’s possible to provide security without disaster?
No, but one disaster that immediately comes to mind was after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. And it involved the UN. The UN, or more appropriately the peacekeepers, inadvertently brought cholera to...
No, but one disaster that immediately comes to mind was after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. And it involved the UN. The UN, or more appropriately the peacekeepers, inadvertently brought cholera to the already ravaged country. Haiti had never had outbreaks of cholera like that in modern times. Like 10,000 people died and over 800,000 were sickened.
In addition, the UN was even there before the earthquake, as MINUSTAH: United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti.
And that was kinda a disaster, too. From an article on why Haitians aren't keen on having the UN back:
Once Aristide was out, the United Nations implemented a security effort led by the Brazilian military, known as MINUSTAH, from 2004 to 2017 — and then a small operation followed that lasted until 2019. This mission has been criticized and known for allegations of murders, rape and other atrocities, according to Harvard Law School’s human rights clinic.
So while it is probably possible to have UN intervention with positive outcomes, it might not be in the UN's, and Haitian's, best interest to try again.
Yeah, I was thinking of the cholera outbreak too. Good help is hard to find? Also, vaccinations would help. It seems there were some attempts to vaccinate Haitians in 2022. I'm only seeing bits...
Yeah, I was thinking of the cholera outbreak too. Good help is hard to find?
Also, vaccinations would help. It seems there were some attempts to vaccinate Haitians in 2022. I'm only seeing bits and pieces in Google News.
In Haiti I think the US has (correctly) worked out that the US intervening in Haiti would be a very bad idea and is instead providing financial support for the Kenyan-led UN intervention.
And on the subject of neglected conflicts where US intervention could do some good, Haiti comes to mind.
In Haiti I think the US has (correctly) worked out that the US intervening in Haiti would be a very bad idea and is instead providing financial support for the Kenyan-led UN intervention.
Because it is unable to without putting troops on the ground, and no one wants the thankless job of losing lives and billions of dollars to be the world police anymore.
What exactly does the author want “the world” to do? It’s certainly not in the op ed for all the chagrining.
Yeah, peacekeeping missions are already complicated affairs as they are. And this particular situation is already messy enough as it is.
I don't condone the fact that the world has been pretty silent on it. But it's far from surprising. At most some humanitarian corridors might be possible, but that could destabilise Sudan's neighbours... and a domino effect would, in the current world situation, be absolutely catastrophic.
It would require a lot of cooperation and good will from the strongest powers in the world. Not only are they stretched thin in their own rights, tensions are so high that it's difficult to achieve.
I really wish they weren't. Theoretically, the UN ought to be preventing things like this. Or Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Or the brutality of Israel's invasion of Gaza. And so forth. But the nations of the world are not interested in having an organization with that kind of extra-sovereign power, so it's not funded or provided the troops to engage in peacekeeping missions.
So all we are left with is the natural consequences of our limited empathy for people suffering in faraway places. And, as you say, it's not as if there are simple solutions we are just ignoring. American nationbuilding in Iraq and Afghanistan was a disaster and not for lack of troops or funding.
Without any obvious solutions, it's not surprising that what we go with instead is turning a blind eye. Especially because it's in Sub-Saharan Africa, far away from economic resources that wealthy nations care about. "Shameful" is probably the right word for it. It's a damning indictment of human nature. But not a surprising one.
The UN has one main goal: preventing great power conflict. Anything else is a side project.
Even if the UN had the mandate, how would you “prevent” what’s happening in Sudan other than just conquering it (and likely just repeating Afghanistan the moment you leave)?
I think this is interesting, and I agree: there has been no proven way yet to solve these kinds of conflict besides overwhelming victory and domination.
The best example of a vicious ethnic conflict 'solved' is Rwanda — but they only managed to achieve it through complete victory by Tutsi rebels (who also committed many retribution killings against the Hutus) and the reconciliation process has been held together by a relatively benevolent president-dictator who has done net good on the whole but has suppressed and brutalized critics and opponents through authoritarian rule.
Yeah, and to answer @stu2b50's question, that was kind of my point: we don't even know how to solve these problems if we did have the political will to do so. America thought we had figured it out with Germany and Japan following the Second World War. But when we tried to apply our expertise to Afghanistan and Iraq and engage in similar nationbuilding (an explicit goal of the Bush Administration, as I recall), it failed spectacularly.
Now, you can say that there are a lot of differences between what the United States did in West Germany and Japan, and you can say that there are differences between war-ravaged developed nations and conquered developing countries, but at the end of the day, despite all of the money America through at the two conflicts, both nationbuilding exercises were colossal failures. The Taliban came right back in Afghanistan and we basically created ISIS in Iraq. I would like to say that we learned something from that, but I'm not sure that we did. If the United States were to throw a similar amount of time, money, and manpower at Sudan in 2024 as we did in Afghanistan and Iraq, I don't have any confidence that we would do it any better.
I think that the idea that a nation can be "built" is fundamentally flawed. In it is an assumption that people everywhere are the same, and if you throw infrastructure and institutions at them, they'll end up just like the west.
That has, of course, turned out to be very wrong: a nation is evolved through a process of education, cultural evolution, assimilation, integration, domination, industrialization, and institutionalization.
Germany and Japan were already highly centralized nations, so the institutional and social structures for distributing foreign control were already in place. And their populaces had been subdued through extensive firebombing and general war weariness.
Iraq did have these stable structures, but the US made the colossal mistake of dismantling those stable structures through de-Baathification in dismissing all civil and military personnel affiliated with the deposed Saddam's party. Had the US done differently, maybe Iraq would've been a success project today. But Afghanistan and Sudan, however, don't: their structures are highly decentralized (along tribal and ethnic lines) and contentious.
I agree. We don't have the tools to solve the conflict. There probably aren't any moral tools.
I would say that the tools do exist, though no nation on Earth would pay the cost because it would look fundamentally the same as conquering the country but with the goal of eventually handing it back to the people who lived there before. Bring in an entirely new bureaucracy, educate the populace, establish rule of law, entirely new law enforcement, etc. Give it 40+ years of being managed externally with strong protections against exploitation of the populace or natural resources in the meantime. Expand existing infrastructure and provide a stable and impartial court system. Do all the things we know will lead to stable lives and an increased quality of life. By the end of those decades of investment, this theoretical country will probably be able to stand on its own.
But that would require a huge investment. Who would do that when there are things to spend money on at home?
I'm not sure if those would be enough. Not only would an outside force have to defeat all belligerents in Sudan, that force would have to keep them down in order to prevent them from rising back up like in Iraq. Beyond education, the outside force would have to effectively brainwash the populace out of its ethnic resentments in order to pacify it. There would need to be martial law and a complete police surveillance state: imprison all belligerents, and tightly surveil the population to root out hideouts and sympathizers. Any inch of leeway and people will regroup to fight out age-old ethnic resentments and/or against the occupying forces.
Occupation and domination would have to be total, otherwise progress would be futile. See how the Taliban systemically targeted Western development projects in Afghanistan. The material cost would be astronomical. The human cost would be immense.
In Rwanda after the genocide, they imprisoned 120,000–130,000 people who participated in the killings: but up to one million people, 20% of the population then, were culpable; so many remained free. Today, it's still a police state, with the government tightly controlling the media and silencing critics, ostensibly to suppress ethnic grievances.
It all would be very ugly, I think.
Yeah, Rwanda is a specifically bad case, as there had been 40+ years of cultural divisions engineered by Belgium. I think that in a situation where there were more resources, a stronger egalitarian educational tradition, and an outside force ensuring equality of opportunity, free and fair elections, etc, would have done more to resolve things. Rwanda hasn't really had 40 years to heal, nor a just and equitable supporter making sure their systems are set up well.
I disagree with this point. After all, there are currently multiple active peacekeeping missions in Africa, including in Sudan. The problem isn't funding and troops so much as mandate - the UN is simply not designed to take offensive action, much less risk open conflict with a true military force. Part of that comes down to the world not wanting to hand over their sovereignty, as you say, and another part is simply realpolitik. You may or may not be aware, but most UN outposts are staffed by one (or maybe a few) troop contributing countries. So think of the Dutch country commander ordering the Pakistani garrison to go engage the Sudanese military or whatever, and what the resultant politics would look like.
One of my high school friends joined the Army National Guard after high school. He ended up being deployed to a UN peacekeeping base in the Sinai Peninsula. So, yeah, I'm familiar with the concept of UN peacekeeping forces. But I am less clear on their effectiveness. In the 21st century, what do they actually do? What peace have they actually kept?
Yeah. The UN doesn't have teeth, they have dentures.
Sudan actually has respectably sized proven oil and gold reserves. The trouble is they're in Sudan, and the resources are almost more of a curse (corruption, etc). OPEC even invited Sudan to join at one point. Due to instability, that didn't end up happening though.
Edit: Also check u/ChingShih's comment for a great explainer on how China is doing resource extraction in the region.
Presumably:
is a no go because there's no functional way to give aid without merely being fuel for the two military dictators on each side of the civil war
this is too vague of a goal; by all accounts, the US is trying it's best, but it's hard to imagine what soft power the US has in the region. Sudan is fairly isolated from the rest of Africa, and Ethiopia, which is the largest power in the area, has been posturing to invade of its neighbors for a sea port, let alone be the arbiter of peace.
What would this do? And how is it the the US or any other government's job what the press do? The press should be free to cover what they wish.
This is the one thing the US can do, that is to sanction the UAE. But it's not going to do all that much in the end.
That would be an utter disaster in every possible way.
The odds of the US sanctioning a country that provides it bases on the Persian Gulf certainly seem pretty slim.
Not to mention the millions of outcries and sermons, right from UN, human rights agencies, NGOs, media houses, etc. Putting troops on ground is seen as aggressor action today even if done for the right reasons and against the worst kind of creatures that tread this planet.
I wonder at what point, if any, China starts to feel pressure to play a hand in world affairs. People expect often expect the US to stick their heads in, but the US is stretched thin at the moment and China is the second largest economy. There's some Chinese economic interests in Sudan as well, which is usually what drives nations to inter[vene|fere].
To sort of enter the discussion you and @skybrian are having as a whole thread, and borrow on the "pressure" analogy, China isn't being pressured by its peers or adversaries to intervene in the way that the USSR vs USA played out (or even USA and USSR vs UK and France, which happened once or twice) during the cold war.
China has been watching western and Soviet spheres of influence retracting or collapsing since the 1960s. It's also watched western nations and the USSR turn around and sanction some of these same countries. While it's taken some time for China to become capable of the levels of participation we see today, it becomes an obvious choice and preferred partner when they don't participate in these sanctions.
African nations are great examples of what happens when different colonial powers withdraw for political and economic reasons, rather than for the sake of anything even approximating granting independence for the sake of independence. While China wasn't able to have the same "experiential learning" opportunities in Africa for their militaries as the great powers, they did find a way to fill the vacuum, especially in countries that were or are heavily sanctioned. Since around the 1960s they also had an opportunity to do something with their expansive population that resulted in the Chinese government recommending that people move elsewhere, including all over Africa, and start businesses. This diaspora allowed Chinese-speaking and mainland China-affiliated groups to take root locally without the ambitions of colonial conquest, with the additional benefit of laying the foundations for China's economic colonialism in later decades. Russia only wishes that its ethnic-Russian re-population scheme in Ukraine worked so well.
Right now, if you take a survey of major mines throughout southern Africa, you'll find many of them are either foreign-owned and operated by big Chinese multinationals or they're joint-ventures that just happen to be selling all the resources directly to China and sometimes not even at market rate. In many cases the resource-extraction companies are exclusively operating with Chinese construction equipment and the consultants that come with them. It seems like China always has a hand in at least one layer, if they're not completely vertically integrated at every level. With a few caveats, this really isn't any different in my mind to what the western nations were doing in the early 1900s in South America, even including having the local military or law enforcement fatally suppress local citizens (though I have yet to hear about the Chinese military/PMCs doing anything of the sort).
Back in 2008 [Zimbabweans attempted to mine diamonds in an area granted to a joint-venture including a Chinese company. In 2011 they were still being violently suppressed and I doubt that the situation improved after that article was written. When I was in Zimbabwe I heard some rumors about another diamond mine that was under Chinese control and using Zimbabwean prisoners as a labor pool (not unlike how China is using prisoners as labor in deep sea fishing). With the way things operate there, I really wouldn't be surprised if that was true. A much more recent article highlights similar types of community displacements and labor abuses at a lithium mine also operated by a Chinese company.
In another, much less populous African country, I recently met a Chinese auditor who was visiting on a work visa. I didn't ask him who he was auditing, but it seemed pretty clear that he was working for an outside company auditing one of the country's uranium mines. Incidentally, I was told that it was formerly a Soviet (and later Australian) uranium mine. While national newspapers indicate that it was since purchased by the state, locals say it was then sold to the Chinese (rather than a joint-venture) and it's completely Chinese-owned and operated by Chinese nationals who aren't allowed to leave the premises. They even import their own food, tools, and of course mining equipment. From what locals said, it's a completely self-isolated facility that doesn't really economically impact the local economies, except for the massive amount of fresh water that they pipe in that is for their exclusive use. It's a resource-extraction site operating in its own little universe.
This is the kind of relationship that China wants. It's not treating these nations as peers or developing nations to support, it's providing services for-profit, expertise and consulting for-profit, and it's lending money to develop what seems to be an indebted relationship that gives them leverage over smaller nations with few allies (and probably a fair amount of internal political turmoil). They've been doing this in southeast and central Asia and other nations, but the upshot of this is that China is gaining a tremendous amount of positive perception from some citizens (and appropriately aligned politicians) for all the great infrastructure benefiting them. China benefits in the near-term and long-term and, while it's doing some interesting things as a major creditor, it's also buying political will in other countries to allow the use of lucrative mines and even military bases which expands its role as a major player and serious partner when it comes to international negotiations and mediation. All of that gives it the strength to stand up to western, Russian, and Indian influence and be taken seriously.
So if I am understanding all this correctly, the response to @gary and the author's (in the OP link) point is that China has little to nothing to gain from intervening in Sudan, and this is why they are unwilling?
I have recently been reading and watching a lot about China since I first heard talk about the New Cold War. It's been difficult to get into it as a layperson but I feel I at least grasp the basics by now - however you seem very knowledgeable about China as well as region in question so I hope it's ok to ask a couple related questions.
Is it about a China first policy - nationalism - that the CCP just does not care about anyone that isn't ethnically Chinese? Or is it more that it's a strictly economic calculus for China, that they are not getting involved in Sudan? Russia is mentioned in the post as having something to gain. China isn't even mentioned, so I infer they have nothing to gain?
Reading the article that @ignorabimus posted (which is a great read and I highly recommend it even though it's very long (archive link of it here)), it certainly sounds like official Chinese policies make for some very convenient excuses for why they won't get involved in areas that they do not deem profitable enough, or that don't have enough favourable potential in its outcomes.
Additionally, seeing things like this (timestamped at 50:47, just watch about a minute from there) very much makes it seem like China has imperialist or neo-colonialist ambitions. I'm aware this clip might just be propaganda though it does appear obvious to me that China cares very little about respecting other countries' way of doing things and more so care about making deals with whomever allows them to project the most power internationally - authoritarians. But maybe that's because those are the countries that the US/West has not invested in, and so there is a void that China seized the opportunity to fill?
China hasn't really involved itself in any foreign boots-on-the-ground interventions post-WW2 (at least not in countries it doesn't border, e.g. Korea). China definitely has imperialist ambitions in surrounding countries, but their strategy further afield is more subtle and tends to involve investing lots of money.
To jump ahead a bit, I agree with ignorabimus's response to you. China is pretty wary of foreign interventions. They intervened during the Korean War at the 11th hour, and when it would be most strategically decisive. They propped up the Khmer Rouge as a sort of ally in Southeast Asia, then had some disputes with Vietnam, but resolved that quickly before it turned into a quagmire. Afterwards, Mao and subsequent Maoists have set their sites pretty much solely on the U.S. as the primary concern. Though lately they've been having regional border disputes with everyone that they can.
Okay, jumping back to Sudan: I don't think China has anything to gain at this particular point. But you can bet that they'll make some loud noises during a peace process. They'll also be among the first there to provide credit for the purposes of reconstruction and assuredly with different interest rates than the World Bank/IMF will suggest.
But China doesn't have anything to gain from settling the conflict in Sudan itself. What Russia may see as valuable is from the Soviet way of thinking. Anything they can turn away from the western sphere of influence is something that is either valuable later or something that the west will have to spend resources on later. China doesn't need to overtly provide military support or even need to play a real humanitarian role because that doesn't feel much like a "win" at home. What does feel like a win is becoming a business partner in yet another country. What feels like an even bigger win is telling its citizens that China is modernizing and profiting while the rest of the world is busy fighting, peacekeeping, or failing in strategic ambitions while running up a deficit.
The documentary/video clip you linked talked about that. Propaganda is obviously a big thing, but what that video clip is also about is proof of progress. China doesn't want to just talk a big game like Russia or India, it wants to prove that it's not to be trifled with. China's military has been lagging behind western nations substantially and over the last 10+ years they've focused on modernizing not only their equipment, but also their training. China's immediate neighbors also have large armies, but they have varying levels of materiel and personnel capability. Perun has a 70-minute video on India's military and defense strategy from about 5 months ago that provides some good details on India's massive and uniquely structured army. But India doesn't really have the equipment to make an army of that size a sure success against a peer adversary and not necessarily against a neighbor like China either.
I just got to the part of the video talking about the Chinese military becoming "more expeditionary, more externally focused." This is definitely something they've been testing the past ten years. China has come into small-scale conflict with India over at least one disputed border region. In one case, a video leaked of an all-out brawl between soldiers of the two border forces who were specifically not using firearms because they didn't want to escalate the situation into a "shooting war." But in that or another altercation there were soldiers actually killed. China of course also has designs on Tibet and Nepal, with Bhutan also getting some political pressure of its own.
But China also doesn't have to look very far to practice "externally." Much like India and Kashmir state, China has been getting plenty of experience developing a true police state, with martial law, in Xinjiang Province where they've been fighting Turkic and Uyghur separatists since the late 2000s. They've also been fighting radicalized religious-aligned groups in that same and adjacent regions and China has been attempting to secure the fluid borders of their immediate neighbors (including Afghanistan and Pakistan), because China really, really does not want an IS insurgency within its own borders making international news.
China considers the US the peer to match and it's rapidly expanding not only its conventional capabilities, but also its ability to project that force. That said, a lot of China's attempts at matching western technology have fallen really short (see pretty much anything they claim is going to either float or fly while being stealthy). But they're making inroads there as well and one day they really will have a fighting force that might not be peer-level with the US and its favorite allies, but capable of putting up a nasty fight. Whether they'll ever put that force to use remains to be seen, but they are certainly positioning themselves to great advantage.
(The DW docu is really good by the way, I'll have to watch the rest of it tomorrow. Thanks!)
China does play a sizeable role in world affairs. A key tennet of China's approach has been to not intervene militarily in distant countries (the US of course has been involved in too many countries to count). Foreign Affairs recently wrote a feature on Xi Jinping's approach to geopolitics.
They are trying to be more influential, in their way, with the “belt and road” initiative. Maybe we should be careful what we wish for?
I don't think you think I want China to intervene, but I'll clarify for the other readers that we should be 1) considering what would drive China to directly assume a role of protector via their military and 2) back off of judging the US so harshly. The US is going to enter a long period of non interventionism in Africa/Middle East and that could increase the chances of China interfering more directly than via the belt road initiative. Again, none of this is expressed as a desire.
Makes sense, thanks for clarifying!
On the subject of speculating about what’s going to happen, it’s the “feeling pressure” part I wonder about. Pressure from whom? How does that work? In general, I’m doubtful that the Chinese government responds to outside pressure in helpful ways. I don’t think their interest in foreign investment comes from outside pressure.
In a power vacuum, I could see them imposing order to protect their foreign assets, maybe.
That's a good question. I don't think I have an answer for that because I've also never been sure why the US stuck its head into more affairs than it should have. Perhaps pressure from their own citizens to Do The Right Thing, since that's been the feeling in the US before it did.. Things. Like the Philippines.
There's also a more abstract feeling out there. It's not a coincidence that countries come to the US whenever something happens around the world. It would raise many, many eyebrows if the US wasn't involved in negotiations for a ceasefire in Gaza. Perhaps one day the same will be true for China and the former Soviet countries negotiating for peace with Russia, in a hypothetical situation where Russia becomes more belligerent towards them.
I think part of the answer is that many of Russia’s neighbors are afraid of Russia for good reason, and that’s why they want to join NATO. This is Russia pushing them away. They need allies to protect them from Russia. Similarly, China’s neighbors often have good reason to be concerned and look for allies, too.
This is what happens with expansionist, imperialistic countries. There are border disputes and worse. But maybe countries are less concerned when they’re further away and have their own troubles?
The US certainly has quite a history of intervention, but can also credibly claim to not be interested in expansion anymore, and it has a ridiculous number of allies because, despite everything, it’s often a decent ally. Which isn’t to say that there isn’t also self-interest, but it’s a different kind, based on trade.
So maybe the question is whether China could get to the point of being a decent ally? It’s not that they don’t try, but expansionism tends to result in distrust.
Maybe if they settled some of their border disputes, it would credibly indicate that something has changed?
Good point about the lack of trust in China from virtually any sizable economy near them. I can't see China's attitudes towards expansionism changing any time, so perhaps there won't be countries that trust them enough to push them towards becoming world police.
At least for the Middle East, there is some contingent of Christians that seriously believe they must help bring about the end of times by making sure the stars align in Israel. Though I can't explain the US war hawks that want to bomb Iran; I don't know the origins of their beef.
I'm not really sure the Belt and Road initiative is a net negative, especially given that China's incentives do kind of tend to align with the countries they provide investment to.
It's also questionable how well that's going to work in the long run. We've already seen billions squandered across the initiative, and with China not as strong as it once was economically, it's likely to actually matter that some of these investments are essentially just wasted.
China has overcapacity problems and sees the BRI as a way to fix/alleviate them by creating demand for Chinese products abroad?
That's the theory, yes, but they're still expecting ROI on it. Some of that will be in political pull and access to resources and what not, but some of that was supposed to come from it actually being an investment.
It was fine that entire nations were squandering the funds, but with their recent housing debacle (which I believe they're handling better than the people i listen to expected), suddenly questions are being asked about how well this money was spent.
I'd argue that the US isn't actually stretched thin in terms of available resources, but that it's become abundantly clear over the last few decades that there's no appetite at home for the US to play World Police. It's possible that at some point the US will be able to be World EMT, providing resources and stabilization until an area can heal on its own, but that's not a role its armed forces are currently trained to do.
I would argue that we are because we are at a point where China has become our greatest military adversary. They've been up there for a long time, but in the last decade their shipbuilding has been at a breakneck pace with no signs of slowing down, while our industry is practically dead. Our reliance on air superiority will also mean less with their ground based air defenses in any Taiwan scenario. This increases the need for long range precision fires, but as we're seeing in Ukraine, you can deplete your supplies far, far quicker than you can produce them. In a hot war with China, who's going to out produce who? So our supply is too limited to be spending on every war that breaks out around the world.
I think it should be noted that the US achieved its superpower status through sheer industrial might: we were the "Arsenal of Democracy". The US manufactured over 300,000 military aircraft in WW2.
It's clear that China's industrial capacity now dwarfs the US', and their industrial capability is catching up quickly. The Ukraine War is showing hints that they are the "Arsenal of Autocracy".
I think it depends on what supplies are actually being consumed? In any situation in Sudan we're not going to be consuming long range precision fires in large numbers. We're not going to be tying up our navy. Yes, China is an adversary, but I'd be interested in what resources you think would be tied up trying to help in Sudan that would be needed urgently in a potential hot war with a nuclear power. Not that I think we should, but I'm pretty confident we could without any risk to response capabilities.
Logistics overhead would increase. Anything that could be dropped out of a plane in Sudan could be useful in Asia in some capacity. Marines were the tip of the spear in Iraq and would likely be used in Sudan, but they're currently re-orienting their entire org to be more efficient at island hopping and moving away from the type of warfare they practiced in the last two decades. If we found ourselves bogged down in Sudan long enough we would start evolving military equipment and acquisition towards what's needed in Sudan, which comes at the opportunity cost of developing weapons suitable for island fighting. An example of that would be vehicles becoming more optimized for IEDs than heavy fire. What does island fighting need? IDK there, but it'd look different than what's used in Sudan that's for sure.
Lastly, budget and political will, which you first alluded to. Fighting in Sudan costs the US money, and the US already has a large debt burden, rising cost of living, and a deficit that never seems to go away. That, combined with deaths, saps political will that would be needed if Taiwan were to be attacked.
Probably only once Chinese Bono starts getting people to care about the Chinese equivalent of caring about Darfur.
Let's be real. "No one" cares about Sudan. "No one" cared about Sudan when Darfur was a big buzzword; they just cared about being cool and being opposed to genocide. I don't think it's any different now. Sudan is a sub-Saharan country that is just a few spots above being the poorest in the world, and there are no white people there to make the Westerners care about it.
Your country has to already be interesting to the general population of the Western world for people to care about it for more than a week. Unfortunately, that excludes almost all of Africa.
The US is actually trying to draw down its focus on the Middle East specifically to start focusing on Africa, as it no longer needs foreign oil but wants more of the rare metals and other raw resources found in Africa. You're likely to see more articles just like this, humanizing various suffering African groups and trying to bolster public opinion for more direct US interventions in the region.
I'm not convinced the US government is pushing on journalists to do human interest stories in Africa. It feels more likely that some journalists took it personally when they were criticized for putting all their resources into Gaza at the expense of Darfur and other tragedies.
The US really really does not want to directly intervene anywhere in Africa (or at least Biden absolutely doesn't). There are also no resources in Africa that the US doesn't already have large deposits of.
There's large deposits of rare earths in the US, but it doesn't mean that they're cheaper to extract here. With human rights, labor protections, land acquisition cost, environmental protests, and laborer cost of living issues, it can be cheaper to extract and refine them half a world away and then ship them here. Admittedly, I'm personally in favor of having such things done more locally so that we're not entirely dependent on world-spanning supply chains, but there's a few good reasons to try to use other country's reserves. Locking down supplies in foreign countries not only guarantees US access to raw materials but denies them to China, and It also will mean that once foreign deposits are consumed the USA still has their domestic sources available.
These are all valid arguments and provide good reasons the US might want to control resource extraction in Africa. The thing is, China is actually the country running the vast majority of African foreign-owned mining operations (for all the reasons you mentioned and then some). To my knowledge , the US government is really uninvolved in Africa (outside of foreign aid). It's mostly Russia and China's playground. See this comment.
Without getting directly involved, I think a more reasonable and doable request is accepting more refugees, but of course immigration is a hot-button issue in most countries.
And on the subject of neglected conflicts where US intervention could do some good, Haiti comes to mind.
I feel like the US could do even less with Haiti. The first step in aid is for there to be someone to receive it... and Haiti is all but a failed state at this point. I'm not sure there's any point in giving anything to Barbeque the cannibal gang leader.
So step 0 is for either a state to exist, either the prior government reclaiming power, a gang consolidating power, or hypothetically a foreign nation intervening, but the optics the latter are horrible, and we're just off the failure that was Afghanistan, where the manufactured democratic state proved utterly incapable of running itself.
I imagine taking control of the port and some key supply lines. I see the gangs as weak and having no allies. It’s just that there’s nobody there that’s stronger than them.
Maybe that’s just a cartoon understanding of the situation, though.
You're not wrong at all, but the question then becomes "okay, the US seized the port. ...now what?"
Let's say the US decides to just sit on the port and let aid come in. What happens when gang members start shooting at American troops? What about when the troops start to get injured/killed? And so on. These situations are just outrageously complex quagmires.
They can be, and that’s why the US is very reluctant to intervene after Mogadishu. (It’s why Biden is adamant that there will be no US troops in Gaza.) No way they’re going into Sudan again under similar conditions.
But I don’t know if the situation in Haiti warrants that level of concern? It seems like it might be simpler in comparison.
UN interventions don’t automatically break down. It seems like sometimes it’s possible to provide security without disaster?
No, but one disaster that immediately comes to mind was after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. And it involved the UN. The UN, or more appropriately the peacekeepers, inadvertently brought cholera to the already ravaged country. Haiti had never had outbreaks of cholera like that in modern times. Like 10,000 people died and over 800,000 were sickened.
In addition, the UN was even there before the earthquake, as MINUSTAH: United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti.
And that was kinda a disaster, too. From an article on why Haitians aren't keen on having the UN back:
So while it is probably possible to have UN intervention with positive outcomes, it might not be in the UN's, and Haitian's, best interest to try again.
Yeah, I was thinking of the cholera outbreak too. Good help is hard to find?
Also, vaccinations would help. It seems there were some attempts to vaccinate Haitians in 2022. I'm only seeing bits and pieces in Google News.
In Haiti I think the US has (correctly) worked out that the US intervening in Haiti would be a very bad idea and is instead providing financial support for the Kenyan-led UN intervention.
It's certainly treated like a bad idea. Who even brings it up, other than me? I still wonder about it, though.