Here we go again

It's the Chinese, stupid.

This is the phrase that's been running through my mind for months. As the bickering continues about whether UN peacekeepers will be allowed into Darfur, as the Sudanese army bristles with 10,000 fresh troops ready to launch an all-out offensive against the rebels, as the airmen refuel the helicopter gunships and the janjaweed saddle up their horses, I tap my pen restlessly in the cheap seats of the UN Security Council chamber and think dark thoughts about the well-groomed Chinese delegate sitting unsmiling and unspeaking at the table.

Darfur is teetering on the edge of an all-out massacre, perhaps even worse than in 2004. The UN will get blamed for this, of course. The Security Council fails again! the headlines will cry. As though the Council were some kind of unified body, empowered to do whatever it likes. As though the resolute and scandalous silence of the Russians and the Chinese, who sell their weapons and pump their oil and otherwise cushion the Sudanese from any real consequence, weren't doing whatever they damn well please in that Council chamber, including cynically abstaining from the vote that would authorize peacekeepers.

UN reform. The UN is obsessed with it right now. You've never seen such navel-gazing. But where it really counts, in the Council, the goal has never seemed so distant, nor so critical. Any one of the permanent five members can still act as a spoiler, a stick in the spokes of the international community, for no justifiable reason at all. God bless the veto.

The Chinese hold the key to this puzzle, I'm convinced. Not only should they support the deployment of peacekeepers, they should supply the bulk of the force. It makes so much sense: the world's largest infantry, well-trained and reasonably well-equipped, unlike the majority of armies that make up UN peacekeeping forces -- Nigerians, Bengalis, Uruguayans. Uncommitted in the major conflicts of the moment, unlike the Americans, Brits and French. And politically palatable, for not only are the Chinese eager to expand their influence in Africa, but they are a key ally -- perhaps the key ally -- of the Sudanese. They're not Christian, Muslim or even animist. They don't have any colonial baggage.

The Chinese hold a veto in the Security Council, making them one of the world's five most politically powerful states. So when do we hold them to account for this? When do we demand that they put their pistols where their politics are? Step up, China. You want to roll with the big dogs, you'd better get off the porch.

EDIT: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/5356448.stm

A step in the right direction...