The Cutting Edge

The July 2008 indictment of Sudan's Omar Bashir by the International Criminal Court includes three counts of genocide, five of crimes against humanity and two of murder. He is accused of running the campaign in Darfur that killed (using the lowest estimate the Court deemed reliable) 35,000 people directly and 100,000 more by related causes, and turned more than 2.5 million people into refugees. He is supposed to be arrested upon arrival in signatory countries-although his trips to the Arab world and Iran had the air of victory laps. But President Obama's envoy to Sudan, retired Air Force General Scott Gration, declared the genocide over. In June he said, "What we see is the remnant of genocide... the consequences of genocide... the results of genocide."

In July, he told Congress he didn't think there was any evidence to support the continued designation of Sudan as a sponsor of terrorism. In recent days, he said economic sanctions were hindering the United States in its attempts to provide aid to a different region of the country. On the other hand, Ambassador Susan Rice, the President's envoy to the UN, has continued to call the situation in Darfur "genocide" and demand accountability of the Sudanese government. 

The administration appears to have split the difference. The word "genocide" was not used in announcing a new policy in which the United States: will engage in talks with the Sudanese government-not Omar Bashir directly, only the people the dictator has put in place for the purpose; will not lift sanctions; will reconsider the "sponsor of terrorism" designation; and will offer the government unnamed "incentives" if the people of Darfur are no longer decimated by the government-sponsored Janjaweed militia. The opposite also applies, said Ambassador Rice. "There will be no rewards for the status quo, no incentives without concrete and tangible progress. There will be significant consequences for parties that backslide or simply stand still."
 
It is the approach the Obama Administration has taken to countries with which the United States has had poor relations: it does not matter whether their policies were to blame for those problems or our policies were to blame; whether they cheated on elections and killed regime opponents or we cheated on elections and killed regime opponents; whether they fund and support terrorist organizations in neighboring countries or we fund and support terrorist organizations in neighboring countries; whether they committed genocide or we committed genocide. The United States will find ways to work with whoever is in power in whatever county. Iran, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba, China, Syria and now Sudan. There is a clean slate that contains the possibility of good things and the possibility of bad things, depending on entirely on future behavior.

Hence, in this new emerging world, old accounts are easily closed.

Cutting Edge commentator Shoshana Bryen is Senior Director for Security Policy at JINSA.