politics by other means

Recently, Ben and I were discussing the United States Postal Service. I think it's rarely considered that this is a government agency whose executive, the Postmaster General (awesome name by the way), is endowed with the extra-constitutional ability to negotiate treaties with foreign powers. After all, I can only assume that it's the Postmaster General who decides whether little Julio or Ahmed can or cannot receive tins of American cookies while abroad in Cuba or Iran (China is not part of that axis, fyi, wink wink...) Ok, so we're talking postal treaties here, nothing too sexy, and of course the embargoes on Cuba and Iran were in fact decided by the president and congress, but just think of Tuvalu -- we send mail there and someone has to decide whether and how we should do it. So I think the principle is very intriguing and deserves some more aimless open-mouth daydreaming -- which I'm good at. Just think about it some more and you'll begin to see the implications with mail exchanging hands between two countries. Tampering with mail is a federal offense. Is it still a federal offense to tamper with mail outside US borders? Are there extradition treaties to handle this? It's a hypothetical black hole (which are, by nature, hypothetical...)

So you can imagine that I found an article in today's New York Times announcing that the FDA will open a permanent office in Beijing to be both interesting and relevant. Again, I'm not certain what the precedent is here, but to me it seems to be a rather significant event for American foreign policy. A Secretary of U.S. Health and Foreign Services is quoted in the article sharing this belief: "We're opening up a new era, not just new offices."

What will be the mandate of these officials, described as "inspectors?" How is this fundamentally different than the UN installing weapons inspectors in a sovereign country -- surely something that China, as well as many other nations, would not agree to. What does the Chinese government think about this new office? Clearly they're not wholly opposed to it if office plans to open soon. Perhaps this is a bit of good PR and also a chance to inject some new ideas and manpower into the unfolding and ongoing food safety crisis here.

This article also seems to dovetail nicely with recent opinion piece in the New York Times suggesting that problems with melamine contamination are not limited to China -- although the issue is much less severe in the US, and arises for far less nefarious reasons.

I do hope that this new FDA office is successful in at least beginning to address the problems with food safety here. It would be nice to be able to pour some milk in my coffee soon without thinking twice about it. And God forbid I start to take my coffee black.