Call by US Presidential Candidates no Threat to Khartoum
blurb:isstoday:02062008sudan
02 June 2008: Call by US Presidential Candidates no Threat to Khartoum
On 28 May the three candidates still in the running for the US presidential elections later this year took the unusual step of subscribing to an advertisement in which they expressed their common position on the Darfur situation and Sudan’s Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA). They described the Darfur campaign of the Sudanese government and its proxies in Darfur as genocide, unacceptable to the American people and the world community; deplored Khartoum’s obstruction of the deployment of a robust UN mission to Darfur and noted its continued refusal to adhere to the terms of the CPA. They sought to disabuse the Sudanese government of any notion that the US government - that must inevitably replace that of President Bush early next year - would ignore the issue of peace and security for the people of Sudan.
The Save Darfur Coalition could scarcely disguise their jubilation at this public pronouncement, though more sober consideration may persuade them that they have perhaps lost more than they have gained by it. Essentially, the candidates, senators John McCain, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, have said that whatever else they disagree on in terms of foreign and domestic policy, they are united in their overall view of Sudan’s crisis. But far from guaranteeing that America’s Sudan policy will feature large in the presidential campaign, this statement actually removes it from consideration.
It is not an issue on which they seek to engage the electorate or win its support.
Over a month ago all three opposed the idea of president George Bush attending the opening of the Beijing Olympics in August. China’s policy in Sudan and Tibet featured in their objections. It was fairly easy to give this advice, since it cost them nothing at all to occupy what many would see as the moral high ground. Of course, whichever of them succeeds to the White House will find that US policy towards China requires a rather more nuanced and subtle approach. Symbolic gestures of the sort they are advocating for the president can have undesirable consequences of far more weight. The non-attendance of president Bush would certainly send a signal to China, and one that would be interpreted as a serious national insult. It would not, however, convince Beijing to alter its policies towards Sudan, Tibet or anywhere else, and would probably prevent the collaboration of the Chinese government on a number of other matters which be more important: nuclear proliferation and the Iranian and North Korean issues immediately come to mind.
Candidates for high office tend to depict the matter of policymaking in far starker, more moral terms than they will find easy to apply once in power. Choices are rarely simple when it comes to real policy on pressing issues and trade-offs are of the essence, so that the least of evils often trumps the good and desirable.
On Sudan, the current US administration has pursued an ambiguous strategy: one that pays lip service to a public campaign on Darfur that increasingly resembles the anti-apartheid movement in terms of its scope and popularity, but also recognizes Khartoum’s usefulness in regional matters. Washington may have supported the South in the Sudanese civil war, but it does not desire the collapse of the Sudanese state, which would have dire consequences for its Middle East policy not least because of the Egyptian reaction. Nor does it like the idea of the Justice and Equality Movement launching a successful putsch from Darfur. The US administration far prefers stable military governments in nominal democracies to ideologically Islamic ones. Whether a new administration in Washington will feel free to escape the constraints of this schizophrenic policy remains to be seen.
Khartoum is aware of this, and will take no fright from the advertisement of the three candidates. On the contrary, they have as good as told the Sudanese government that US policy in that region is not a campaign issue. Now, away from the posturing of the hustings, it is up to the diplomats to continue their difficult work of saving the CPA, without which nothing can be done to save Darfur.
Richard Cornwell, Senior Research Fellow, African Security Analysis Programme, ISS Tshwane (Pretoria)
