Solutions for Darfur

NY Times today is running an ope-ed about the sitn in Darfur. Mark Helprin thinks the way to end the violence and displacement is to "Make Sudan An Offer It Can't Refuse".
In short: he suggests that US should give Pres. Bashir an ultimatum - leave or else. And then bomb the living daylights out of his civil and military infrastructures.

"Which would the regime in Sudan prefer? To be annihilated, or to discontinue its campaign of mass murder in Darfur? Given Sudan’s record, very few nations would be willing to come to its aid with other than a pro forma whimper, and given the geography and the air and naval balance, no nation could. Though many a repressive dictatorship would protest, and Sudan’s patron, China, might determine to speed up the formation of the blue-water navy it is already building, little else would change except for the better.

This is especially so because only in the worst case would a military strike actually be necessary. One of the chief attractions of such an initiative is that, if properly directed, it could, one way or another, military strike or not, accomplish its aims. These are, first, to stop the mass killings and dislocations; and, second, to pressure Sudan into negotiating settlements in good faith (which it need not do as long as it retains its habitual option of simply murdering the populations it finds troublesome)."

A few thoughts:
* And then what?
After we've bombed them into submission, then what happens to the country? Darfur gets autonomy? Independence? Who is going to support it? It will be like giving birth to a failed state from the get-go. I think the Iraq misadventure has taught us that threatening force, even using it should only come after thorough preparation for the Day After.

* It's only been five years... what's changed?
In other words, what Helprin offers here as newsworthy is really not so new, and not so worthy. Military intervention and the threat of it has been an option for five years now. But very very very clearly, the "international community" has not embarked down that course. What has changed? Not much really. So the question to Helprin then is, if the US or Europe have yet to intervene despite five years of the Darfur tragedy, what makes you think they will do so now?

It is unrealistic to expect an about-face from the world powers. Although the first African American President of the USA might have something to say about that....

Darfur: A Little Pushback against the Fingerpointing at China

Below is a piece my boss and I published on Foreign Policy - a great int'l affairs website, by the way.

Intended as a reality check against eager advocacy groups, op-ed writers and others to point the finger at China for not doing enough to resolve Darfur crisis. In short, moral of the story: "People in glass houses..."

Why China Won’t Save Darfur

By Morton Abramowitz, Jonathan Kolieb

Foreign Policy, posted June 2007.

Frustrated by the West’s failure to halt the slaughter in Sudan, Darfur advocacy groups are pinning their hopes on a country they see as genocide’s enabler in chief: China. But in pressuring an indifferent Beijing, activists are merely helping Western governments evade responsibility for a humanitarian crisis that they could do far more to stop.

STAN HONDA/AFP/Getty Images

Can this man save Darfur? Not by pinning his hopes on China, he can’t.

After four years of tireless efforts, Darfur advocacy groups have had little success in pressuring the Bush administration or any other Western government to move decisively against the Sudanese government for its atrocities in Darfur. These groups are right to dismiss the Bush administration’s latest sanctions initiative as mere posturing; like all of the president’s efforts to date, it’s too limited in scope and lacks a wider, more holistic diplomatic strategy. These groups are focusing instead on the two C’s of humanitarian advocacy—China and celebrities—as a remedy for a crisis that has killed over 200,000 people and displaced more than 2.5 million. But in pointing the finger at China, proponents of stronger action on Darfur are merely helping the White House evade moral responsibility for a humanitarian disaster that it labels a “genocide.”

With its oil ties to the Sudanese regime and its resistance to U.N. Security Council resolutions condemning Khartoum, China is a convenient whipping boy, and a cast of celebrities has signed on eagerly to lead the whipping. Hollywood heavyweights Steven Spielberg, Mia Farrow, and George Clooney have come out in recent weeks to criticize the Chinese government for not responding to the cries of Darfur’s people, zeroing in on the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Earnest editorial writers have joined them enthusiastically.

The campaign has had some results. Beijing’s usual foreign policy approach—“non-interference” in Sudan’s domestic affairs—has been evolving under the pressure. China has become more active in trying to persuade the Khartoum regime to cooperate with the international community. China is willing to pursue a peace settlement, and indeed President Hu Jintao pressured Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir on this issue and duly urged cooperation with the United Nations on his visit to Khartoum in February. Beijing has also appointed a full-time envoy tasked with assisting in resolving the Darfur crisis.

But threatening a “Genocide Olympics” alone will not bring peace (or peacekeepers) to that troubled region. No amount of criticism will convince Beijing to pursue a coercive strategy and a nonconsensual deployment of U.N. peacekeepers that Khartoum rejects. Yes, China has the economic leverage to gain the ear of President Bashir, but that hardly means it has the ability—or, more to the point, the will—to bully him into accepting a large U.N. peacekeeping contingent in Darfur. China’s multibillion dollar investments in Sudan’s petroleum industry are a much-needed source of energy for its mushrooming economy. Beijing may make tactical moves to pressure Sudan, but it will not choose human rights over oil, a matter of paramount national interest.

And, even if China were capable of delivering Bashir, the Sudanese government is not the only impediment to an effective peace process. Nowadays, more people may well be dying from tribal clashes than from marauding janjaweed or government forces. The infighting of fractured rebel groups and the sheer number of displaced people with no homes to return to are also immediate and significant obstacles to peace. But China has little influence over the rebel movements and is ill-positioned to act as a mediator between them.

Nor is China a good choice to be our moral compass. The West embraces human rights and international humanitarian law, but China emphatically does not. The continuing crisis not only threatens the lives of millions, but the weak Western response undermines those grandiose principles such as the “responsibility to protect”—hallmarks of our international moral code. Moreover, it is the U.S. government, not Beijing (nor the U.N., for that matter), that has invoked the label “genocide” to describe the Darfur crisis. Morally and legally, the responsibility to lead is America’s.

Ending the Darfur conflict requires much more than what China alone can offer. Rhetorical flourishes from world leaders, limited Western unilateral sanctions, and promises of firmer action at some indeterminate time in the future are also patently insufficient. Only a top-level, sustained, and aggressive multilateral mediation effort backed by the United States, the European Union, and African, Arab, and Chinese governments can stop the violence and reverse the massive displacement of people.

Advocacy groups deserve praise for bringing Darfur into the world’s collective consciousness and generating funds to care for millions of dislocated civilians. But their latest campaign lets the U.S. and others off the hook. Highlighting China’s woeful human rights record is important, but does little to resolve the conflict in Darfur. China is not going to do what the United States and Europe have been unwilling to do for the past four years.

Morton Abramowitz is a senior fellow at The Century Foundation and a former president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Jonathan Kolieb is a research associate at The Century Foundation.