The scope of the tainted milk scandal seems to be expanding daily:

Milk tainted with melamine, a compound banned in food, has killed three other babies, two in China’s northwestern Gansu province and one in eastern Zhejiang. The health scare erupted after Sanlu Group last week revealed it had produced and sold melamine-laced milk, and a subsequent probe found a fifth of 109 Chinese dairy producers were selling products adulterated with the substance. [Emphasis mine] At the latest count, 6,244 children have become ill with kidney stones after drinking powdered milk laced with melamine, with three deaths and 158 suffering “acute kidney failure.”

Reading this reminded me of a Chinese academic and America expert I met over dinner last spring in Beijing while I was traveling with a delegation sponsored by the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations (the good people who brought you “ping-pong diplomacy”). Her current topic of study? America’s muckrakers like Upton Sinclair and Ida Tarbell, and incidents such as these, which led to our modern regulatory institutions.

No one had to spell out the obvious parallels to China’s current situation. That very morning, the New York Times had reported on a mass demonstration against a planned petrochemical plant near Chengdu, a project which had been approved by the central government’s National Development and Reform Commission. Such demonstrations seem to be generally tolerated, so long as the protesters don’t directly challenge the central government’s authority or legitimacy, as these protesters took pains to do:

“We’re not dissidents,” said Wen Di, an independent blogger and former journalist living in Chengdu. “We’re just people who care about our homeland. What we’re saying is that if you want to have this project, you need to follow certain procedures: for example, a public hearing and independent environmental assessment.”

Of course, there’s one big difference between China today and the U.S. in the first half of the last century: For all its imperfections, America had a democratic system of government which was better suited structurally for responding to scandals like these in a productive way.

Andrew Sullivan, responding to Christopher Hitchens’ claim that an Obama presidency will mean “more war, and more bitter and protracted war at that—not less”, says:

I can face the idea of a president Obama taking on and finally defeating Osama. In fact, that’s the major reason why I favor his candidacy… . Obama will try to correct the massive stretegic error of the Iraq invasion and pivot Western allies toward a greater focus on Afghanistan and Pakistan. I believe that Obama will be able to do this with much less global p.r. blowback than McCain and that the support president Obama will get from our European allies will dwarf McCain’s.

First of all, I should point out that I, too, would welcome a President Obama “taking on and finally defeating Osama.” For what it’s worth, I could face a Honeydew-Beaker Administration “taking on and finally defeating Osama.” (Hey, I wouldn’t even mind if it happened in the next 3-4 months, under Bush, but I get the feeling that happenstance might upset someone…)

What I really wanted to draw attention to is Sullivan’s assumption that Obama will be able to formally and officially expand the Afghanistan problem into an Afghanistan-Pakistan problem with “much less global p.r. blowback than McCain.” Au contraire. I expect there will be more blowback against Obama.

Right now, he can ride high on a wave of global public support, but those thronging masses in Berlin and elsewhere are supporting him because they expect something in return: a massive rupture with Bush-era foreign policy. Since this is inchoate mob opinion we’re talking about here, it wouldn’t do to overanalyze it; basically they want more talk, fewer bombs, and they think he’s the one who’s going to give that to them. Americans, on the other hand, seem more inclined to take him at his word on his promises to get tough with Pakistan (though they still favor McCain on national security issues).

Something tells me that, if it comes to a choice between upsetting Americans’ expectations, and upsetting the world’s, the President of the United States is going to side with…well, the United States. And this is going to cut across a number of issues besides Afghanistan/Pakistan, as Slate pointed out awhile back:

If his diplomats or military advisers told him that the Iranians perceived his willingness to talk as a sign of weakness, he might reconsider his pledge to meet with the Iranian president as quickly as he now promises. Maybe when presented with confidential data gathered by eavesdropping on U.S. citizens, he would be less keen to drop all the measures taken by Bush and criticized by the opposition. Maybe his belief that “the United States needs to lead the world in ending this genocide” in Darfur would put him at odds with reality or with some members of the international community. In each of these cases, Obama would suffer the consequences of high expectations. He would be trapped between the desire to preserve his high standing in the world and the need to act in ways that would erode that standing. Of course—his advisers would argue—it is better to have this political goodwill in the first place. But even if that were true, political goodwill should always be handled delicately. Starting modestly and building up is also an option, sometimes a better one if you aim to keep expectations realistic. (This, I think, is the way John McCain would play his cards internationally.)

It’s undeniable that the “get tough on Pakistan” rhetoric is good for Obama’s short-term political interests. The world simply isn’t listening as closely to the candidates’ statements as are Americans, so it’s easier for them to bask in the unadulterated glow of St. Barack. But if Obama wins in November, he may soon come to realize that hell hath no fury like a Berliner scorned.