rse atrocities in the course of ending them. From Rwanda, many people drew the lesson that failure to intervene is the worse option. The Iraq war may be the first step in unlearning this lesson. If not, an intervention in Darfur surely will be.
But Darfur isn’t like Iraq. The plan is for UN forces to police the vast area of Darfur where the killings are taking place, not to overthrow the regime in Khartoum. That the Sudanese government has reacted so vehemently against the idea should be no surprise, and is a fairly good indication of their future plans.
It’s interesting that Posner argues his case only with relation to Iraq, and refers to Rwanda only in passing, and not at all to Bosnia. The case for humanitarian intervention in both these latter cases was overwhelming – as Adam Le Bor shows in his Times article today, where he presents a strong case against Kofi Annan’s leadership of an increasingly ineffective UN.
The truth is, of course, that each case needs to be taken on its merits. About Darfur, I don’t know: maybe Posner’s right. If UN intervention is taken as an act of war by the Khartoum regime, and is greeted by the familiar Arab rhetoric that a new crusade is being launched by the West against Islam, then the outlook would, most definitely, not be good. On the other hand the threat of intervention surely needs to be maintained, to keep the pressure on the government to enter into further talks.
I don’t know Eric Posner’s politics, or whether he considers himself to be of the left, but this certainly isn’t the usual right-wing argument against intervention: More Africans killing each other? What else is new? It seems a particularly bleak conclusion for someone who professes humanitarian concern for others, that when sections of humanity are being slaughtered, they shouldn’t look to the rest of the world for help.
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