Sunday, September 18, 2005

Stop the Mass Murder in Darfur
Kristof, Mercenaries, and the Genocide Intervention Fund

Nicholas Kristof again tries to redirect our national attention to the catastrophe occuring in the Sudan. One might see this as a particularly high opportunity cost of the war in Iraq, though it is, of course, unlikely that we would have done anything to stop the Darfur tragedy anyway. Conservatives have repeated the litany of Saddam's sins ad nauseam, but it's clear that this is merely a post hoc attempt to justify a war undertaken for (allegedly) prudential reasons. (They were, you'll recall, all for Saddam when his atrocities were more-or-less in our national interest.) Even if we weren't overstretched in Iraq, we'd still be sitting on the sidelines in the Sudan. Well, too bad we're not just sitting on the sidelines, actually, instead of making things worse...

Last year I suggested that liberals should start thinking about funding mercenaries to defend the innocent in the Sudan. Although some liberals howled about this suggestions (I've since switched comments from Haloscan to Blogger, so the howls are gone), I stick by it, and, as I've noted, such solutions have worked in the past.

Now there's a group at Swarthmore, the Genocide Intervention Fund (GIF), that seeks to take similar action by sponsoring African peacekeepers already in the Sudan. As far as I can tell, they don't use money to purchase weapons, in part because the people who are likely to contribute to such an organization--liberals--are often irrationally averse to the use of force. (At any rate, that's one of the reasons suggested by this piece in the Sudan Tribune.)

Even if we stick with the GIF approach of not paying for weapons, we could supply the troops with enough other supplies that it would free up money in the AU to purchase more weapons for the peacekeepers. This may be a better idea than funding mercenaries--it's at least more practicable. On the other hand, mercenaries, like those of Executive Outcomes that brought order to Sierra Leone, are probably more reliable and less likely to do damage of their own than troops from, e.g., Nigeria which make up much of the AU force, and which have a history of abuses on peacekeeping missions (in, e.g., Liberia and Sierra Leone).

But whatever the solution, any even minimally rational and humane person must acknowledge that something must be done in the Sudan. We simply cannot stand by and do nothing.

26 Comments:

Blogger Winston Smith said...

Well, many conservatives are averse to using force to achieve humanitarian goals, but not averse to using it to promote our national interest. Liberals, on the other hand, are more likely to recognize that humanitarian goals per se are legitimate, but many of them are overly-averse to the use of force...even the ones who aren't pacifists strictly speaking.

12:42 PM  
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Anonymous Anonymous said...

Winston, I might also add that, given our current administration, the conservative proclivity to intervene to "promote our national interest" is frought with problems.

I would submit that their conception of *our* national interest is either economically narrow or, more generously, premised upon some farfetched "reverse domino" theory.

In a more general sense, going to war "to promote the national interest" is highly questionable, since it can (and has) lead to ultra-nationalistic movements like 'German greatness'. The consequences of war are so severe that the prima facie assumption of only engaging in it as a last resort is a wise one, especially given the uncertainty even of strategic success.

Moreover, there's also the question of whether, well-intentioned or not, we are actually correctly perceiving our own interests. For this reason, international alliances and organizations like the UN and NATO are useful in restraining nations' more misguided impulses. Madison himself alluded to this in Federalist 63:

"An attention to the judgment of other nations is important to every government for two reasons: the one is, that, independently of the merits of any particular plan or measure, it is desirable, on various accounts, that it should appear to other nations as the offspring of a wise and honorable policy; the second is, that in doubtful cases, particularly where the national councils may be warped by some strong passion or momentary interest, the presumed or known opinion of the impartial world may be the best guide that can be followed. What has not America lost by her want of character with foreign nations; and how many errors and follies would she not have avoided, if the justice and propriety of her measures had, in every instance, been previously tried by the light in which they would probably appear to the unbiased part of mankind?"

1:45 PM  
Blogger Winston Smith said...

Most excellent quote, LC. If we'd listen to Madison a tad more about a few more things we'd be a lot better off.

Azael,
I'm not sure what you think we disagree about. You write as if I'd defended the moronic decision to go into Iraq, which I haven't and wouldn't. Re: liberals and force: my claim was that liberals have a *tendency* to be against the use of force...really it's the leftish wing of the Democrats and those further left. There are still Democrats of my acquaintance who rail against our intervention in Kosovo. And if you read the piece I linked to, it's GIF ITSELF that notes that liberals are hesitant to give money for weapons. So, once again, I'm baffled at your ire.

8:33 AM  
Blogger Winston Smith said...

Well, I agree that it's all a big mess, and I agree that it might sometimes be hard to figure out which causes to endorse, and I agree that the bad guys might use the same strategy...

But just because some cases are gray and hazy doesn't mean that aren't clear and obvious, and Darfur is such a case. And the bad guys are *already* doing it--which is something I hadn't even thought of before. So in a way I'm just suggesting that the good guys do it too.

Such projects are bound to go wrong sometimes...but it's very unlikely that we'd make things any *worse* in Darfur or the Congo.

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