Nothing Aside

What To Expect From The G8 Summit

The G8 Summit in Gleneagles, Scotland is fast approaching.  The major topics we should see the eight leaders grapple with are aid and debt relief to Africa and perhaps some movement on global climate changes (though both will be resisted by Bush).  For a summary of what we might expect from Gleneagles, James Forsyth provides a handy cheat sheet on what each of the eight leaders is hoping to get out of the summit.

Forgive African Debt Now

I've always liked Tony Blair.  From his hawkish idealism on Iraq, where he truly saw the benefit to be gained from a free Iraq (before Bush did and much more substantively), to his domestic adherence to liberal paradigms of the British social safety net, Blair is the complete Third Way leader. 

It is rare for politicians to openly advocate a dramatic boost in foreign aid when they are still in office.  Usually national interest and more pressing issues grab attention and make foreign suffering an easy thing to ignore.  After all, foreign aid has no constituency and therefore probably won't help any politician in the next round of elections.

But Blair has taken that bold step and is now using his political capital to rally support for African debt forgiveness.  It is a tremendous step by a leader still in power and his effort should be commended.  His big effort will be to get the United States to agree to what it is quite capable of doing: freeing several billion dollars that will go a long way to raising millions of people out of poverty and eliminate avoidable diseases. 

African debt amounts to about $40 billion.  That is about 10% of the entire cost of the war in Iraq.  If Congress can come around and authorize an extra $80 billion every few months for more spending in Iraq (and I'm not saying they shouldn't) they should be able to make a big splash and find, say, $20 billion towards the elimination of poverty in Africa.  If there were ever a good reason to have a government budget deficit, a big chunk for such a noble cause would certainly be it. 

I worry, however, that Bush is already shying away from Blair's effort on this.  Look at this incredibly vague statement of support for Blair:

When I say we're going to do more, I think you can take that to the bank, as we say, because of what we have done. We have taken a leadership role.

"More" doesn't mean a whole lot.  Yes, Bush's $15 billion pledge to control AIDS in Africa was a nice start, but it has been underfunded and is only the beginning of what could be done. 

It is clear that there is disagreement between Bush and Blair on this issue.  While Bush continued to talk about how the United States was taking a "leadership role" and other vague pronouncements, Blair was specifically pushing for specific actions like "a 100 percent debt cancellation."  Blair has a clear goal, while Bush is dragging his feet on an issue that should be important to his evangelical base: helping those most in need.

Bush's new $674 million pledge is a good first step, but I think it is being used to divert attention.  In the grand scheme of things, that bump will not do nearly as much as it will be credited for.  But this way, Bush can say he increased aid and the media will report that, but it will not go nearly as far as it could.

The United States can and should do more.  It would be so easy.  Foreign aid may not have any constituent advocates, but that hardly means it isn't important.

**UPDATE**: It seems I posted too fast and missed this more stinging editorial in The New York Times.  It quite brutally takes the Bush administration to task for ignoring foreign aid as a priority:

President Bush kept a remarkably straight face yesterday when he strode to the microphones with Britain's prime minister, Tony Blair, and told the world that the United States would now get around to spending $674 million in emergency aid that Congress had already approved for needy countries. That's it. Not a penny more to buy treated mosquito nets to help save the thousands of children in Sierra Leone who die every year of preventable malaria. Nothing more to train and pay teachers so 11-year-old girls in Kenya may go to school. And not a cent more to help Ghana develop the programs it needs to get legions of young boys off the streets.
...

According to a poll, most Americans believe that the United States spends 24 percent of its budget on aid to poor countries; it actually spends well under a quarter of 1 percent. As Jeffrey Sachs, the Columbia University economist in charge of the United Nations' Millennium Project, put it so well, the notion that there is a flood of American aid going to Africa "is one of our great national myths."

The United States currently gives just 0.16 percent of its national income to help poor countries, despite signing a United Nations declaration three years ago in which rich countries agreed to increase their aid to 0.7 percent by 2015. Since then, Britain, France and Germany have all announced plans for how to get to 0.7 percent; America has not. The piddling amount Mr. Bush announced yesterday is not even 0.007 percent.

What is 0.7 percent of the American economy? About $80 billion. That is about the amount the Senate just approved for additional military spending, mostly in Iraq. It's not remotely close to the $140 billion corporate tax cut last year.

Now, we don't have to be Norway here (which leads the world in GDP percentage for foreign aid), but the United States should be at toward the head of the pack on this.  Aid is something that can go quite far for relatively little cost.  We can do better.

Saving Sudan

Recently the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution condemning Sudan for allowing genocide (though they didn't use that word) to be committed against civilians in the Darfur region and calling on the government to stop the violence. The government of Sudan has taken this resolution as a direct threat and says it will not comply. It was given 30 days to do something about the problem before facing the wrath of the international community - though no one really is prepared to do anything about it, as is often the case with the U.N.

So, since Sudan is acting quite hostile to the prospect of having outsiders command it to stop aiding the Arab Janjaweed in their campaigns of massacre against the black Sudanese population it looks like the U.S. and others will have to face the very real possibility of having to act with decisive force.

In a new article in the New Republic, David Englin outlines what such an encounter would require and what the Sudanese government would offer as resistance. From the sounds of it we will need substantial help from countries that have surplus military capacity (e.g. France, Germany). The Sudanese military will not roll over. It has vowed to fight.

To prevent continued attacks on villages and fleeing refugees, an intervention force should immediately establish a no-fly zone over affected areas in western Sudan. Fleeing refugees have reported Sudanese government warplanes strafing and bombing black African villages as a prelude to attacks by horse-mounted Janjaweed Arab militias, who swoop in to murder, rape, and pillage. ... A no-fly zone would directly prevent attacks on villages by Sudanese warplanes and helicopter gunships, as well as disrupt command and control and logistical support for the Janjaweed.

While establishing a no-fly zone would be essential, it would be a mistake to underestimate Sudan's ability to defend the sovereignty of its airspace. Although its population remains horribly impoverished, Sudan has used its substantial oil revenues to more than double the size of its air force since 2000. Over the past four years, Sudan has purchased at least 34 new fighter jets from China, including a dozen Shenyang F-7 supersonic jets. Russia has already supplied Sudan with a large number of MiG-24 Hind helicopter gunships, and it recently sold Sudan a dozen fourth-generation MiG-29 fighter jets, which are considered to be on par with the most advanced U.S. fighters. Both China and Russia have supplied Sudan with modern radar stations for command and control. It is not clear who flies Sudan's more advanced warplanes, and some have suggested that Russian mercenary pilots may be involved. In any case, this is not an air force to be taken lightly. ... French air bases west of Sudan in Chad and French and U.S. bases east of Sudan in Djibouti are well situated to support no-fly zone operations, as are American bases in Saudi Arabia, and aircraft carriers in the Red Sea. Using systems and techniques proven over Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq, intervention force pilots could successfully keep Sudan's warplanes and helicopters out of Darfur--but they should be prepared to fight a modern enemy if Sudan chooses to defend its airspace.

So we'll need to establish a no-fly zone which will have to be fought for against the best there is in Russian-Sino technology. Wonderful.

While clearing the skies would go a long way toward preventing further attacks, an intervention force should also create Janjaweed-free safe havens on the ground. This would require conventional ground forces to establish checkpoints, conduct patrols, and forcibly disarm militiamen. This force would also be responsible for the physical security of the actual refugee camps. ... The Sudanese government has used bureaucratic red-tape to keep food and aid from getting into the camps, and starvation and disease are finishing the work the Janjaweed started. With hundreds of people starving to death each day, refugees resort to foraging for straw, grass, and firewood beyond the camps' perimeters, but these peripheral areas are still controlled by the Janjaweed. ... Cynically responding to international pressure to properly secure refugee camps, the government of Sudan in some cases has reinforced camp security with Janjaweed militiamen. The ground arm of an international intervention force ought to immediately take over responsibility for camp security and include camp peripheries in established safe zones.

Ground forces would be required. And, in a country of 30 million people (though far fewer in the region affected) a quite sizable force would be required to secure such safe havens.

Also, in order to avoid the type of disaster which plagued the French involvement in Rwanda, these camps should not become effective safe havens for the Janjaweed. In Rwanda the French effectively protected Hutu perpetrators of the genocide in camps set up to protect victims from violence. Considering the infuriating French opposition to including the word "sanctions" in the U.N. resolution, it's still not clear that the French will be effective enforcers of such safe havens in Darfur.

The other security challenge for both ground and air forces is making sure humanitarian aid gets through as soon as possible. By some estimates, as many as 1,000 people are dying each day in refugee camps because of disease and starvation and less than half of the food and humanitarian aid needed is getting through. Part of the problem is that aid has not been forthcoming from wealthy donor nations. Only a handful of nations--notably the United States, Britain, Norway, and the Netherlands--have made significant financial contributions, and the United Nations is struggling to come up with the $350 million it needs in food, medicine, supplies, and equipment. U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan recently issued direct appeals to several wealthy nations in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.

Again, where are the French and Germans on this one? We know they have the money. If they don't want to get their troops involved in, well, anything, they should at least contribute to humanitarian aid. Likewise, nations like Saudi Arabia and other Gulf emirates should make a move to reform their image by contributing to aid to help black Sudanese against their Arab hunters. It would be an appreciated step to help others beyond their own Muslim world. The issue of funding should be the last concern. That is the easiest way to help the situation, yet a thousand people die every day because of a simple lack of food and medicine. That is completely avoidable.

So, how many troops would be necessary to secure the area and provide help to the thousands of refugees?

Reports coming out of the Rwandan genocide suggest that as few as 1,000 to 2,000 troops could have provided the security necessary to prevent the deaths of 800,000 people. The African Union announced plans Wednesday to send 2,000 troops to Darfur. Britain's top general has said he could muster 5,000 troops for Sudan and France has 1,000 troops already stationed in neighboring Chad, including many from the vaunted French Foreign Legion. (With the U.S. military already stretched thin in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States has officially demurred on the issue of sending troops.)

It's a shame we don't have the resources to step in to help out in Sudan. It's a sad commentary on the state of our overstretched military that we can't help the people that need our help and to confront a government that truely is an incubator for future terrorists (see bin Laden, early 1990's). But regardless of how troops were distributed to Iraq, European countries who did not get involved in Iraq now have the forces to step up to the plate in Sudan. They should. Now is not the time to hold grudges against the U.S. about our inability to keep our military capacity at a level which would have allowed us to intervene in Sudan. It's done and set. France should use its African bases to take the lead in Sudan. Unlike Rwanda which was situated in a less than accessible area of the continent for deployment purposes, Sudan is easily accessible from our bases in Djibouti and our carriers in the Red Sea. This should be a done deal.

A sobering closing paragraph from Englin:

While an intervention force establishing no-fly zones in the air, safe zones on the ground, and secure transit routes for aid shipments might take care of the immediate problem, each of these alone constitutes a serious violation of Sudanese sovereignty, and together they amount to a full-on invasion of western Sudan. Hopefully, the government of Sudan, faced with this prospect, would act quickly itself to disarm and demobilize the Janjaweed, stop government forces from participating in any more violence, and let aid through. As things stand right now, however, Sudan's leaders have said that any attempt to use force to intervene will be met with force. Therefore, the international community needs to be fully prepared to engage and defeat the Sudanese military. Establishing a no-fly zone against an advanced, hostile Sudanese air force would almost certainly require offensive attacks on Sudan's airfields, aircraft, and command and control system. Pushing into Darfur to force open border crossings, drive out or disarm resistant Janjaweed, and establish safe zones around refugee camps would require a significant commitment of ground troops, probably many more than the 7,000 or so British, French, African Union, and Australian troops already being considered. And if concerned nations are serious about military intervention, they had better make sure they have the stomach to endure casualties in what could turn out to be a bloody fight. If not, then they had better make sure they have the stomach to stand by while, once again, hundreds of thousands of Africans are brutally extinguished by their own government.

The Sudanese government won't roll over. Resistance should be expected. This could prove to be a perfect opportunity for the African Union to prove its relevance. Those who can should intervene. This has nothing to do with state sovereignty and everything to do with helping our fellow man avoid being massacred.