Darfur: Two Ways Forward...revisited

Previously (23 April 2007) I posted a list of two broad categories of interventions available with regard to Darfur: violent or non-violent.

The list of violent interventions follows:

1) unilateral national aggression

2) multilateral international aggression

3) UN mediated international aggression

4) proxy aggression

The lists of non-violent interventions follows:

1) international diplomacy

2) sanctions

3) incentives

A decision to utilize any of the above four violent interventions would be a decision to act wickedly. I hope that I have made this position clear through my thoughts in past posts. This statement does not rule out the use of violent intervention as a necessary evil, but it does rule out the idea of justifying such an intervention. Such an intervention might be a good faith effort to protect the weak, but should go down in the history annals as a wicked action performed on behalf of the weak.

The remaining question with regard to Darfur is this: is violent intervention a necessary evil? My answer to this question is no. My criterion for deciding on necessity is a utilitarian one. Will violent action be useful for accomplishing a good which functionally outweighs the evil of violent intervention? Notice this is not an 'ends justifies the means' sort of utilitarian thought; the end does not make the means right. Rather it is an 'ends functionally outweighs the means' utilitarian thought; the end works functionally better with the means than without the means. Here the means remain outside of the moral right but within optimal outcome. By optimal outcome I mean a system of action useful for providing good for the most number of people. The violent option may be recommended but not lauded. Lauding is reserved for righteous action not wicked action.

Specifically with regard to Darfur, violent intervention would do harm to more Darfurians than non-violent intervention. The options of unilateral national aggression, multilateral aggression and proxy aggression are currently not under consideration by the United States government. However, UN-mediated violent intervention has been possibly urged by the US Senate under Senate Resolution 276 (http://clinton.senate.gov/features/darfur/documents/2007_08_02_s_res_276.pdf), a resolution produced largely from the guidance of Senators Lugar and Biden. The Sudanese government is a sovereign government which rules over the territory of Sudan. Any violent action against Sudanese military personnel or equipment would provoke Khartoum to immediately withhold aid to the people of Darfur (such violent action is encouraged by the no-fly zone sentence in the resolution). Such a response by Khartoum would be devastating and would result in the death of hundreds of thousands of Darfurians. This is not to mention that the peace between the "North" and the "South" brokered by President Bush in 2004 is already tenuous as the South is complaining of inequality in oil profit sharing and national governmental power sharing with Khartoum. UN mediated violence against Sudanese military personnel or equipment would encourage the Sudanses Liberation Movement/Army (SLM/A), the Sudanese Liberation Movement (SLM) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) rebel forces to act violently against the Sudanese military. Under attack in the west by Darfurian rebels and in the south by Southern Rebels, Khartoum would respond violently with military action to preserve its governmental authority over all of Sudan. Further complications from violent intervention could occur if rebel forces in Chad cross the border to launch attacks in Darfur against Janjaweed or others. This would further inflame the situation toward an international skirmish between Darfur and Chad.

UN presence would be a welcome thing for the residents of Darfur only if they do not actively engage in attacks on Sudanese military personnel or equipment as would be the case with a mandate to enact a no-fly-zone. A mandate to protect residents of Internally Displaced Persons camps and surviving Fur villages is all that is required.

In the next post I will examine the use of non-violent intervention and will offer an assessment of Save Darfur's (www.savedarfur.org) encouragement of unilateral sanctions via lobbying on the Sudan Divestment Authorization Act of 2007 (HR180).