A World without U.S. intervention

REVIEW & OUTLOOK, The Wall Street Journal

June 23, 2004 — Once again the U.S. has been fighting a lonely diplomatic battle, isolated in the United Nations Security Council and considered as too aggressive in most European capitals. Only this time, with its troops already involved in two major military campaigns, America cannot solve the problem “unilaterally.”

So, as if in a time warp, the African tribes in western Sudan, persecuted by their own government, are trapped in that pre-September 11 world so idealized by many critics of the Bush administration. In this world, nothing gets done unless approved by the U.N. or at least the Franco-German directorate that claims to speak for all of Europe. It’s a world where the lowest common denominator dictates international policy. And where hundreds of thousands of refugees will likely die because countries such as Pakistan and Algeria, two current members of the Security Council, refuse to impose sanctions on Sudan, a fellow Muslim regime, even as it is engaged in the mass killing of Muslims. It’s a world where Chinese and French business interests override any other considerations and “constructive engagement” is tried until the last refugee is dead.

In short, the horror of Darfur is an example of what the world looks like without America’s credible military threat to intervene to preserve the international peace and security and to stop ethnic cleansing.

Over one million refugees are living in camps inside Darfur where the government-backed militia continue to terrorize them. As Doctors Without Borders put it in a statement: “Men risk being killed if they leave, and women have been beaten and raped looking for food and other essential items outside the camp.”

In the meantime, Khartoum is hampering international relief efforts and the rainy season will make things so difficult that even if the aid could flow unimpeded, some 300,000 people would probably still die from starvation and disease.

Europe has been reluctant to pressure Sudan, ostensibly out of fear that this might torpedo a peace deal between Khartoum and the South, where government forces have been slaughtering and enslaving Christian and animist Africans for years. Some two million people have died during that conflict and the Bush administration deserves much credit for brokering the deal.

But it was never credible when Europe claimed to be more concerned about those negotiations than Washington. Even U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has little patience for these kind of excuses. “You cannot have a comprehensive peace in Sudan without dealing with the situation in the west,” he said yesterday, referring to Darfur.

Having just commemorated the 10-year anniversary of the Rwandan genocide, he seems determined not to be held responsible for yet another ethnic cleansing.

Washington, which unlike Europe already has a trade embargo against Sudan, last week threatened to blacklist individual Sudanese officials and freeze their assets unless Khartoum holds back the militia and stops meddling with the relief efforts. This brought some reaction from Khartoum. It promised to send its army to disarm both the Arab militias and the African rebels who have been resisting their tormentors.

But Washington must be careful that Khartoum doesn’t use the 100,000 troops freed up in the south to finish off the resistance in Darfur. Equally, the talks that just started between the government and the African rebels might be just another way for Khartoum to buy some time, as it has done so often in the south. And with every moment wasted, more people die in Darfur.

With the U.S. heavily committed elsewhere, the rest of the “international community” is demonstrably unwilling to end the atrocities. The same high-minded moralists who so decried American force-projection in the liberation of Iraq now prefer to sit on their hands and wait for the American cavalry to ride to the rescue.

While EU leaders saturated the airwaves with their expressions of “shock” over the Iraqi prisoner abuse, one has to turn to page 18 of their recent summit conclusions to find one small paragraph about Darfur. All they could muster was to express their “deep concern” regarding Sudan’s “humanitarian crisis,” as if what it is happening in Darfur is an act of nature or God rather than murderous, ruthless men.

It is fashionable these days to express distaste for American “unilateralism.” But the unfolding catastrophe in Darfur offers a chilling view of what the alternative really looks like.