Thank God for Earthquakes?

Simon Jenkins, in this fine Guardian piece, analyses how the earthquake in Xinjiang is a foreign policy blessing for many:

"You don't have to be cynical to do foreign policy, but it helps. A sigh of relief rose over the west's chancelleries on Monday as it became clear that the Chinese earthquake was big - big enough to trump Burma's cyclone."

Add to that China's relatively good behaviour, and then, Jenkins notes, the Western prophecy (of sit-and-wait-it-out-till-democracy-magically-blossoms) miraculously self-fulfils itself:

"To add to the relief, Beijing was behaving better than it has over past calamities. Since this might have been thanks to the west's "positive engagement" with China's dictators - even awarding them the Olympics - we could possibly take credit from the week's tally of disaster. Sorry about that, Burma."

Some of it is knee-jerk comparisons to Iraq and Afghanistan, but the piece is informed, at its heart, by a profound dissatisfaction with the motives of Western mandarins:

"After days of hand-sitting and abuse-hurling, the thesis that "diplomatic pressure" is going to burst the dam of Burma's hostility seems naive. I have read not one observer who believes this regime will admit aid workers, while many accept that it would be unlikely to contest a dump-and-run airlift under appropriate air cover. If the west refuses even to plan such an operation, it would be more honest to admit to doing nothing and stop counterproductive abuse of the regime.

What is sickening is the attempt to squeeze a decision not to help these desperate people into the same "liberal interventionist" ideology as validates billions of pounds on invading, occupying, destabilising, bombing and failing to pacify other peoples whose governments also did not invite intervention."

This deserves to be read.