The Morality of Intervention

[gottaB]

The civil war in Sudan has claimed more than 50,000 lives in Darfur, while a million more have been driven from their homes, caught in the crossfire of the bloody conflict between the Sudanese government and ethnic minority rebels.

The need for immediate action is clear. But because of the Iraq War, it may never be taken.

Under pressure from human rights groups, both Britain and the United States have joined Kofi Annan in proposing a UN resolution that calls for economic sanctions and travel restrictions. It is an exercise in futility – the kind that paved the way for widespread massacres in Rwanda and Srebrenica. What is urgently needed now is a credible threat of a military intervention, which was all that was required to preempt genocide in the past.

The sad truth is that the lack of action on Sudan is in no small part a result of George Bush and Tony Blair's not-so-excellent adventures in desert. A study published on Wednesday by the Foreign Policy Center, a British think-tank, unequivocally laid the blame for the unfolding genocide on the Iraq war. The report criticizes Britain and the United States for backing "quiet diplomacy, " a response it characterizes as "utterly inappropriate." Its author Greg Austin told The Independent, "The commitment of the U.S. and the U.K. in Iraq and the use of military force in Iraq pushed them away from considering any sort of military option."

The Morality of Intervention....

[struggle4progress]

1. The Foreign Policy Centre

http://fpc.org.uk/
report is 35 pp pdf
very short pdf press release also available

[gottaB]

2. An excellent report

Disheartening, though.

In the big picture, I don't know how much emphasis should be placed on prosecuting genocidal criminals as opposed to, for instance, values and ideas.

Austin and Koppelman argue persuasively that international commitments to condemn and prevent genocide have been purely rhetorical. That suggests to me that genocide and its root causes remain poorly understood. So I suspect that there is more to the "lack of political will" than Austin and Koppelman allow, although they do make a strong argument with regard to the Iraq fiasco.