No No-Fly Zone?

There is a really thoughtful opinion piece on Darfur in the NY Times. The author takes Hillary Clinton and others that support a no-fly zone over Darfur to task. I should admit that I have written posts in support of no-fly zones over Darfur. The fact that this might ground humanitarian aid, which is unsurprisingly dependent on the use of airplanes, is something I had not thought of. It certainly makes me reconsider supporting this strategy.

On the other hand, the author also argues against threats of coercive military action. While I can see how a military strike could give Khartoum justification to crack down even more or send humanitarian aid away, I also think that without any coercion, the government in Sudan will continue to delay until the Darfur region is repopulated and rid of black Africans*. I don't know what the right amount of pressure is, but I have to guess that they need more than we are giving right now, not less.

The timing of this opinion is good, because I have been thinking about Darfur alot recently. The truth is that I haven't posted much about Darfur in the past year or more, and I haven't done much in the way of advocating for action outside of the blog either. What I realize is that I have basically given up. In reading Samantha Power's book Problem from Hell (which I still haven't managed to finish - it is too enraging), there is a Congressman who gives a speech everyday until America acts on genocide. It is noble to read about someone like that, but I haven't been able to muster that kind of commitment.

I saw that the international community wasn't going to give Darfur the attention it needed for a real resolution, and so I felt powerless and I gave up. I feel like a hypocrite for turning my back to the crisis, but I can't bring myself to write the same posts day after day. The situation isn't changing; people are still being attacked and displaced, and the world is still ignoring the problem. With nothing new to write, I decide to write nothing. We'll see if I can bring myself to check in on this issue more often; in the meantime, remember this: We will be apologizing for Darfur just like we did for Rwanda.


*From a recent Nicholas Kristof column: One of the most troubling signs is that Sudan has been encouraging Arabs from Chad, Niger and other countries to settle in Darfur. More than 30,000 of them have moved into areas depopulated after African tribes were driven out.

Another Mentor of Mine

So there are two people who have had a large impact on the development of my international perspective. You have already heard about Thomas Friedman; the other is Nicholas Kristof. In this column ($), he talks about civil conflict and instability as the greatest killer in Africa.

Mr. Collier [author of The Bottom Billion - a book I want to read as soon as the NYPL gets a copy], a former research director of the World Bank, notes that when the G-8 countries talk about helping Africa, they overwhelmingly focus just on foreign aid. Sure, aid has a role to play, but it’s pointless to build clinics when rebel groups are running around burning towns and shooting doctors.

One essential kind of help that the West can provide — but one that is rarely talked about — is Western military assistance in squashing rebellions, genocides and civil wars, or in protecting good governments from insurrections. The average civil war costs $64 billion, yet could often be suppressed in its early stages for very modest sums. The British military intervention in Sierra Leone easily ended a savage war and was enthusiastically welcomed by local people — and, as a financial investment, achieved benefits worth 30 times the cost.

Sometimes I feel like the reason good governance and foreign aid are emphasized is because military intervention is much less popular. So we console ourselves by talking about how much money we send to developing countries. I think promoting good governance ($) is a joke when you are talking about somewhere like Congo (or Iraq) - stability is a definite prerequisite. But that won't happen until this country and its leaders make a serious decision to actually protect all the victims in war torn regions.

Olive Branch From Iran?

Summary:
There is evidence that Iran wanted normal relations with the US in 2003. How did we go so wrong? Would Iran have lived up to its promises?

So Nicholas Kristof wrote a column about an attempt by Iran in May 2003 to establish more normal relations with the US. Before I launch into a rant about how poorly the Bush administration's policy with Iran has been, we should recognize that Iran probably wouldn't have lived up to all of their promises. At the same time though, our isolation of them has made the hard liners in their country stronger, which makes the government more willing to stand against us publicly.

One of the worst things we did was create this "Axis of Evil" label. Instead of making the countries try harder to be good, it has made them want to behave worse. Bush doesn't realize this because he wants to see the world in a good versus evil dichotomy, and to do this he needed to create enemies - ones that would be on par with the former Soviet Union. This isn't to say that Iran was benevolent, but they were mostly harmless instead of a grand power we needed to rally against.

I want to stress again that when dealing with rogue states and potentially threatening governments, there are smart ways of dealing with them that makes them weaker instead of stronger. We need a leader that understands this.

Pick a Side

I can't stress how important this debate is and I wish people really thought about it more. Do we want to use force or do we want to stress diplomacy to accomplish our foreign policy aims? As I see it, one cannot work without the other, although I think Bush is just learning this. The question though is which should we stress?

I think it is undeniable that in Iraq we should have stressed diplomacy, sanctions, and working with the international community. In fact, sometimes force and the threat of force only makes leaders of rogue states stronger. Unfortunately, in our dealings with Iran it seems like we haven't learned any of these lessons (for a really funny take on this, check out Kristof's column where he shows just how much bad decisions can hurt our cause - more so than espionage). Of the candidates on the left, I get the impression that Bill Richardson knows how to stress diplomacy while still showing that the US can use force.

Kristof and Iraq: A Follow-Up

Nicholas Kristof wrote a really good follow-up post to his column about coverage of the Iraq War (yes, Kirstof has a blog). That column has forced me to do a lot of thinking about how I interpreted news from Iraq after the invasion.

My original position was that reporters tend to report more about violence than they do stability and that this gives an overly negative view of the war. Kristof does recognize this, but here is what he says:

But that said, the basic narrative from reporters in Iraq in the last few years has been that security and sectarian violence is worsening, while the basic narrative from the administration has been that things are getter steadily better and that the reporters are exaggerating. To me, it sure looks as if the reporters got it right.

At the time I didn't trust that reporters were being unbiased. What I realize now is that maybe I should have had a little more faith that those covering the situation in Iraq would have reported that there was stability had it existed. Good journalists want to report accurately about the overall situation they are reporting on, and if they are talking about increased violence, I should probably be quicker to believe it.


Note: I replied to a comment on Kristof's post. I couldn't resist.

For Macie and LEM

Kristof has done it again ($). This time though, it isn’t about genocide. His column is about early reporting of the Iraq War that described the violence and the potential for Civil War. I must be honest that I was also one of the people that ignored the early reports of escalating violence. I was desperate for Iraq to succeed because I wanted to see a relatively stable democracy develop in the Middle East. I hated the argument that Iraq was incapable of being a democracy and thought success here would prove that it could exist anywhere.

I need to give some credit where it is due, mostly to my friends that had said for a long time that this war was a mistake and that this would happen (Macie and LEM to name two). As soon as reports came out that Iraq was wrapped in violence, they brought this to my attention. And when they did, I told them they were ignoring the good reports and I said that things would settle down.

While I do admit that I was hesitant to hear the bad news even as it got worse, I still maintain that there were points when good management of the war could have made this more successful. I think if there had been more troops and we were able to maintain stability early on, we might have avoided the civil war that appears imminent. I must also recognize that part of the reason I cling to that belief is that I am an optimist, and I don’t want to admit that democracies cannot be helped along by foreign involvement. I believe that everyone wants some level of freedom and no one really wants (or needs) an oppressive regime like Saddam’s.

With that said, we do need to learn something from this example. Creating a new democracy is obviously a difficult mission and can end up with us leaving the country worse that when we found it. We must be prepared to use significant troop presence over long periods of time if we are to be successful. Since we are probably not prepared to do this, we should avoid nation-building scenerios like this one in the future.

What I am afraid of though is that this (similar to Mogadishu) becomes proof of why we should not ever get involved in other country’s affairs. Iraq was clearly a mistake, but there are other situations that could use international intervention and will not require long term troop commitment (Darfur, Somalia, Lebanon / Palestine). The Middle East (and Africa) has a violent past and present, but there is good we can do to protect defenseless victims and help the region move forward.

Genocide - Always so Controversial

There have been some interesting, although heated, debates recently about America’s role in stopping genocide. In a column from last week ($), Nicholas Kristof took a reader to task for suggesting that we should deal with domestic problems before fixing problems around the world. Since then, I have had similar arguments with family. The view expressed by the reader is not uncommon.

If someone says that they don’t get involved in that debate because they choose other issues that are more important to them, I can’t really find fault with that. There are so many problems in this world that choosing to fight any of them is worthwhile and noble. We all have to follow our passion.

What I do find fault with though is a similar argument that says we shouldn’t do anything about genocide because we haven’t fixed our own problems. Those two arguments may sound similar, but to me the difference is that the one I just mentioned dismisses any effort to stop genocide, whereas the first one only says that the particular person is more invested in other issues while not disinvested in genocide.

The reason I find the latter argument problematic is because its foundation rests on putting certain human lives above others simply based on nationality – an somewhat arbitrary division. I realize that we cannot intervene right now to prevent every loss of life or stop every repressive government. We have to draw lines somewhere. I happen to think that one of the first places to draw a line is when someone tries to eliminate, “either in whole or in part, a group based on their race, religion, or nationality.” I find the Holocaust appalling for the same reason that I find Pol Pot’s genocide appalling. It has nothing to do with the race of the victim, but that the victims were attacked en masse because of their race (or ethnicity or nationality).

One of the first things people attack when you talk about genocide is the fact that the UN resolution doesn’t include political groups. This part is debatable, but I can see why it exists. It isn’t because anyone tolerates persecution of political dissidents, but is instead based on a belief that there is something inherently destructive to the fabric of humanity when a culture is eliminated. Since some people might not agree that political mass murders should be excluded, I would accept as a compromise that groups should be forced to intervene when there is mass murder of political groups as well.

What usually happens with this argument though is that they think genocide is a bogus term if it doesn’t include political mass murder. Therefore, somehow it becomes acceptable to ignore mass murder based on race, simply because the genocide convention does not include politics.

The bottom line here is that I don’t see any moral difference between killing Rwandan Tutsis, European Jews, non-Muslim Sudanese, or Americans. The difference to me exists in the numbers that are murdered, the motivation behind the murder, and our ability to stop the murders. I am happy, but not satisfied with, condemnation of genocide. Looking back at our history, even that was too much to expect. I look forward to the day when everyone can feel anguished when they become aware of mass murder, and not be able to dismiss it because the victims are not American.