Tentative conclusions on democracy & governance
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Will the Obama Administration Basically Ignore Darfur?
Yes. Despite the (unfounded) promises and (non-credible) threats, the Obama Administration will follow the Bush Administration’s lead: the U.S. will not take any decisive action to stop the genocide in Darfur.
In an article in today’s Slate Magazine, Shmuel Rosner explains that, because of a cost that exceeds what the U.S. is willing to pay, the Obama Administration will not attempt to “save what’s left of Darfur,” the western region of Sudan.
“Conflict” has racked the region for nearly six years, and in 2004 Congress unanimously voted to replace this euphemism and call the situation genocide. Countless U.S. politicians – including our current 1st and 2nd in command – and others in the West have not only condemned the deplorable actions of Sudan’s President al-Bashir, but have also called for action to stop the mass murder and displacement of citizens occurring in Darfur. The latest condemnation came from the International Criminal Court which charged President al-Bashir with war crimes. Unsurprisingly, this has turned out to be the least credible of possible threats: since this charge, al-Bashir has been expelling aid groups from the country and traveling around the world at will. Despite all of these threats and calls for action, five years later, the genocide rages on.
Rosner offers a chilling – albeit sound – explanation for the U.S.’s inaction: we are simply unwilling to pay the cost of ending this genocide. I would amend Rosner’s argument slightly. He asserts “Washington will occasionally be willing to act against genocide when it has no other urgent matters to deal with.” A paucity of urgent matters is not going to force the U.S. into action, mostly because the U.S. will never experience – and has never experienced – this sort of paucity. Rather ending a genocide will become an urgent matter when the political incentives for doing so are high. It is unlikely, for instance, that the U.S. would stand by idly were a militant Muslim group in Iran to suddenly begin mass killings of Baha’is, a situation which isn’t completely unimaginable. Any situation that might destabilize an Islamic oil-exporting country, smack in the neighborhood in which our two wars are raging, would not be ignored by the U.S.; on the contrary, handling it would become a top priority.
The U.S. exhibited the same nonchalance toward the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. In a 2001 article in the Atlantic, Samantha Power called those in the Clinton Administration “bystanders to genocide” for failing to intervene in the Rwandan genocide. A foreign policy expert like Power must understand the justification for standing by. She will undoubtedly decline from making similar accusations of the current administration regarding Sudan.
3 responses to to “Will the Obama Administration Basically Ignore Darfur?”
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Austan Mogharabi April 10th, 2009 at 12:10
I wish I agreed with you that the U.S. would do something if Iran started killing mass numbers of Baha’is. Unfortunately, I think the incentives would be to pass resolutions in the House and Senate condemning Iran and calling on the U.N. to do the same.
People killing their own people is rarely something the U.S. is willing to “handle” – especially when it doesn’t destabilize anything. Plus, what does “handle” mean? Short of military intervention, can we really stop Bashir?
So yeah, killing Baha’is in Iran wouldn’t destabilize Iran. It would just result in a lot of people being dead. Note that we’re “allowing” (whatever that means) Iranians to train and kill Iraqi and American security forces without doing anything. You think we’d be more belligerent for Baha’is?
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Johanna April 14th, 2009 at 15:20
Yes, people killing their own people is *rarely* something the U.S. is willing to handle (“handle” is a euphemism for “militarily strike;” obviously that’s our only recourse when we’re interested in stopping violence elsewhere). But my point is that we *will* intervene occasionally – we did so in both Kosovo and Somalia.
Your point about Baha’is is fair. However that was a hypothetical. I’m making a broader point. Why did we intervene in Kosovo, why did we intervene in Somalia? The situations in these countries did not pose a threat to us or our way of life, as you seem to argue is almost always the case when people elsewhere in the world are killing their own people. It doesn’t affect us, thus we don’t care. But even when these situations don’t directly affect our well-being, we still find incentive for intervention, as was the case with both Kosovo and Somalia.
We thought we could instill some semblance of governance in Somalia. We failed. The West (in the form of NATO) seemed to feel an obligation to the Balkans. Again, we kinda failed. So perhaps our current non-intervention policy is partly a consequence of learning from past mistakes. When violence and mass murder don’t directly threaten us, let’s leave it alone. Or perhaps we’re just selectively intervening. But why, and at what cost?
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The foreign policy of the Clinton Administration can largely been seen as an aberration from traditional American foreign policy, thus its policies cannot be cited as examples of what America can or what they should do. Mandelbaum has argued that Clinton’s foreign policies were “intended to promote American values” whereas “historically the foreign policy of the United States has cented on American interests”. Although I would like to see America intervene and stop the genocide, it’s possible that Obama’s administration is simply reverting its foreign policies to be in line with what America’s foreign policy has been all along. It’s hard when people criticize you for overextension while the other side criticizes you for inaction. I’d like to see other states step up to the plate .I’m tired of the constant pointing of the finger at the United States when things in the world go wrong. Yes, we have set ourselves up to be the beacon of freedom and democracy, however, idly standing by and waiting for the US to act is wrong too.
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