Apart from this obvious maneuver, the next President is again faced with the challenge of formulating a mission or a sense of purpose for US policy abroad. It seems to me that the logical step, particularly given that a Democratic administration is likely to come into power, is a return to “humanitarianism.” Here we are faced with the near-perfect intersection of several interests. First, the crumbling of NATO, similar to the situation in the late 1990s, when Clinton “saved” the transnational alliance with his “humanitarian intervention” in Yugoslavia. There is no reason to think this could not happen again. This coupled with real geopolitical benefit and the right domestic environment could produce such an intervention.
As in the 1990s, the credibility of NATO is at an ebb. Yet unlike the 1990s, US hard power itself has also been damaged. This factor could play into the equation in one of two ways: either it could convince US planners to back off foreign entanglements, or it could lead to the more likely result of struggling to shore up the damage by action of some kind. What better action than acting on behalf of humankind, to stop some kind of atrocity somewhere in the world. The US Army will become saviors and liberators once again. Furthermore, such an intervention would solve the problem of redefining US Foreign Policy. Indeed, of each of the post-Cold War missions suggested and pursued by each successive administration, Clinton's humanitarianism has gone down the easiest, to say the least. This option will naturally appeal to policy makers, who at the moment are intensely seeking a way to improve the image of the US around the world. Stopping a genocide, as was claimed in Yugoslavia, could be the perfect way for both of these problems to be fixed.
The “genocide,” as it is being called, in Darfur represents the perfect opportunity, and much of the groundwork has already been laid. The “Save Darfur” coalition, which does not donate any of its money to victims of the Janjaweed but rather uses it for a massive public relations project to “convince governments to act,” works around the world to rally support for intervention. President Bush mentioned that the United States would not stand for genocide in Sudan in his State of the Union. Meanwhile, the administration is discouraging rebel groups in Sudan to take part in peace talks, suggesting instead that they wait for NATO or EU peacekeepers to end the fighting. This of course indicates that intervention is actively being considered. But even all these factors are not enough to move the US policy establishment toward intervention. At the end of the day, if millions of dollars are being spent and careers put on the line, policy makers want concrete benefits. In the case of Darfur, the addition of just such a benefit creates a "perfect storm" of sorts.
Sudan in general, and Darfur in particular, sit atop a massive lake of oil, which is being drilled by the increasingly energy-hungry Chinese at the moment. In fact, they have been expanding across the developing world, including Africa, for new sources of energy. This could be part of the reason for the recent announcement of AFRICOM, a permanent standing US army on the continent of Africa, as well as for US support for the Ethiopian invasion of Somalia. On the way in, the Ethiopian invaders torched Chinese oil fields operating in Somalia, whose government the US claimed was in cahoots with al Qaeda.
Kicking the Chinese out of Sudan would be a geopolitical boon for the United States, with its Red Sea border directly west of Saudi Arabia (the most important US ally in the world), but it would also be an economic one. Exxon Mobil or Chevron Texaco could be drilling those oil fields, and the US could be deciding to whom these resources get meted out. The long-term goal of “securing” the African continent from Chinese expansion also means that humanitarianism could serve as a credible pretext for some time, as there is no shortage of violent conflicts in Africa which could justify US intervention. The pressures of global warming, with its harsh effects on developing nations such as those in Africa, means that these conflicts are only going to worsen, and thus calls for intervention as well.
Clintonian humanitarianism, therefore, could as yet come to define US Foreign Policy in the post-Cold War era. However, the United States is not what it was in the 1990s, and its freedom to act has been severely constrained. This is why the next administration's foreign policy doctrine is likely to contain much less of the unilateralist tone of the Clinton Doctrine. Barack Obama in particular seems willing to recognize and accept the limits to US power in a realistic way. This means relying on allies and regional alliances to accomplish foreign policy goals – alliances such as NATO. And, as I discussed above, NATO is a near-perfect candidate for humanitarian intervention in Darfur.
Of course, only time will tell, and these events are still a long way off. The truly interesting part of watching the incoming administration will be to see how it tries to redefine America's role in the world, part of the struggle to find a pretext for imperialism that has been going on since the collapse of the USSR.
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