By Jack Snyder
Thanks to Steve Walt for kindly inviting me to guest blog while he is at the
beach and I am frying eggs on the sidewalks of Manhattan. Steve's blog title
bills him as a "realist in an ideological age," so let's take a realist's look
at an issue that has lately been worrying humanitarians: the coming war in
Southern Sudan.
In 2005 the Khartoum regime choked down an internationally mandated peace
settlement to solve its problem of a two-front civil war in Darfur and in
the South. The time-buying deal, which promised the South it could keep half of
the country's oil revenue, included a January 2011 balloon payment in the form
of a referendum on national independence for the South. Like other holders of
subprime obligations when the bill comes due, it now looks like Sudan's
President Bashir may walk away from the deal. Violence by the regime's security
forces is spiking. The North and the various Southern factions are amassing
arms. If you liked the violent outcome of East Timor's independence referendum,
you'll love where Sudan's vote is heading.
Since the United States and the U.N. brokered this deal, it's apparently now our job
to fix it. On an ABC talk show last Sunday, Joe Biden said
the Obama administration is working "full time" to insure that the referendum will
happen and will be free and fair. U.S. engagement "must be viewed as
credible to keep that country, that region, from deteriorating," Biden
said. "The last thing we need is another failed state in the region."
But the administration's special envoy to Sudan, Major General Scott Gration,
has been quoted
as saying that the United States has "no leverage" over Bashir's regime. A New York
Times op-ed by Dave Eggers, author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, and Africa human rights
veteran John Prendergast begs to differ. They say that a mix of carrots and
sticks from the United States can induce Bashir to accept a clean referendum, unlike his
own stolen re-election last spring. The sticks: blocking debt relief from the
IMF, supporting the ICC indictment of Bashir for genocide in Darfur, tightening
the existing arms embargo on Sudan, and "providing further support for the
South." The "carrot": if Bashir complies, getting the U.N. Security Council to
issue a one-year renewable stay on the ICC case.
Since Walt is still on the beach, we'll need to figure out for ourselves
what a realist with a conscience would think of this proposal. Score half a
point for thinking about the political consequences of an ICC indictment and
trying to use it to get leverage for peace. But deduct two points for proposing
the limp carrot of a one-year deferral of an arrest that won't happen anyway. Similarly
flaccid is IMF leverage on a state with oil revenue and friends in Beijing.
What about the threat of "providing further support for the South?" Ring the
alarm bells to warn against this one. What if independence-hungry Southerners
become convinced that the U.S. Air Force is on their side, so they don't need
to compromise with Bashir's regime? A small army of political scientists
including Alan Kuperman, Tim Crawford, and Arman Grigoryan has been documenting
the chronic problem of "moral hazard" that ensued when the United States has made
deterrent threats in support of hard-pressed ethnic minorities in places like
Kosovo, and then these separatist groups dug in their heels and refused to cut
a deal.
In Kosovo we backed up our threats with real airpower. Historically more
common, says the realist political scientist Colin Dueck in Reluctant Crusaders, is that the U.S.
practices "limited liability internationalism," where the talk is big but the United States
balks at high-cost follow-through. Writing what looks like a blank check for
deterrent support to an embattled ethnic group is cruel when the check is going
to bounce, as it almost surely will in the case of Southern Sudan, because now
it is the United States that has the problem of the multi-front war.
The humanitarian realist take-home lesson, as always: keep commitments in
line with resources, and don't promise more than you will deliver.
Stay tuned for more on a realist approach to bargaining over ICC
indictments.
Jack Snyder is the Robert and Renée Belfer
Professor of International Relations in the political science department and
the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University. His
books include Electing to Fight: Why Emerging Democracies Go to War, co-authored with Edward D. Mansfield.
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