Much of the debate surrounding the details of President Obama’s upcoming policy plan for Sudan has focused on ‘carrots’ (incentive diplomatic and/or economic actions) and ‘sticks’ (punitive diplomatic, economic, and/or military actions). There is general agreement that the plan should include some of each, so the real debate is about which carrots, which sticks, and in what order.
US Special Envoy Scott Gration
To understand the debate, it’s useful to first take a step back and briefly look at how all of this is supposed to work. Carrots and sticks are tactical means designed to achieve strategic ends through behavior modification. The theory goes like this: if the U.S. wants to change the behavior of County X, it can simultaneously offer incentives for good behavior and threaten punishments for bad behavior. If Country X wants the carrots and fears the sticks badly enough, they’ll decide to adjust their policies. If they don’t, they’ll choose to forego the carrots and endure the sticks in the interest of maintaining the status quo. If this happens, the U.S. has failed, and needs to come up with more attractive incentives and scarier punishments, and try again.
Applying this theoretical model to Sudan on the issues of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) with South Sudan and the genocide in Darfur has been U.S. strategy for years. That strategy has met with some success in regard to the CPA (though that success and indeed the CPA are increasingly fragile), but has achieved little thus far in regard to Darfur. Clearly, this strategy needs some reinvigoration if President Obama hopes for better results than President Bush. If we look at why this is the case, it’s largely because the U.S. doesn’t have a lot of solid, credible carrots and sticks at its disposal.
As for carrots, the U.S. has plenty to work with (improving diplomatic relations, easing sanctions, taking Sudan off the list of state sponsors of terror, etc.), but they’re not viewed in Khartoum as particularly credible because the U.S. promised many of these carrots during the CPA negotiations and then failed to deliver them due to the Sudanese government-backed genocide in Darfur which was heating up as CPA negotiations concluded.
As for sticks, the U.S. has already used most of the non-military unilateral sticks at its disposal (reduced diplomatic relations, a broad array of targeted economic sanctions, etc.), leaving only military action, inventing new non-military unilateral sticks, or the prospect of multilateralizing the U.S.’s existing unilateral sticks by convincing others in the international community to join in. The problem with military action is that it’s a big line to cross – it comes with a host of potential negative consequences, great political and economic costs, and no guarantee of success. The problem with inventing new significant unilateral diplomatic and economic sticks is obviously that they might not exist. The problem with enacting multilateral economic and diplomatic sanctions is that it’s incredibly hard to do – it requires convincing the countries with the deepest diplomatic and economic ties to Sudan to willingly fray those ties, which would probably come at diplomatic and/or economic costs to themselves. Not an easy ask to effectively make in these tough economic times.
So as the Administration looks past the policy planning stage and towards implementation, it certainly has its work cut out for it. President Obama and his Special Envoy, Gen. Scott Gration, must simultaneously build Sudanese confidence in (and desire for) U.S. carrots, while also creating a genuine fear of new unilateral and multilateral sticks among Sudan’s ruling elite. In order to rehabilitate the credibility of U.S. carrots as potential incentives, President Obama and his Administration must convince Sudan that this time the U.S. would deliver on its promises on the non-negotiable condition that Sudan first earn them, while also convincing a skeptical Congress and activist community that carrots would only be provided in exchange for proven and sufficient action by the Sudanese government. Failure to convince Congress and their constituents that they won’t naively give away the store will deny the Administration access to any real carrots at all, as Congress must agree to any major U.S. concessions. In order to rearm himself with effective sticks, President Obama and his Administration must dig deep and come up with any viable untapped unilateral U.S. punitive measure, while also aggressively building the necessary international support for stronger multilateral sticks.
It’s also worth noting that these processes are connected. A genuine U.S. attempt at engagement with Sudan would help Pres. Obama and Gen. Gration secure international support for subsequent multilateral sticks, which makes clear perhaps the likeliest scenario to come out of the policy review – an initial strategy focused on (readily available) carrots which, even if unsuccessful, would help build critical international support for a secondary strategy focused on (by then newly-available) sticks. Regardless of the mix of carrots and sticks that ends up making it into the Administration’s policy plan, it is exceedingly likely that many of the details (including just about all of the sticks) will be classified, so we may not know which ones are in play until we see them used. That rule of the road will once again demonstrate Congress’s importance, as the relevant oversight committees examine the policy plan in public hearings and private classified briefings.
None of this will be easy, but all of it will be necessary if President Obama and his Administration want to accomplish what near-constant international efforts have thus far failed to achieve – a real and lasting peace in Sudan.
The opinions expressed here are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the position of the Save Darfur Coalition.
Tags: CPA, Darfur, President Obama, Scott Gration, Sudan, Sudan Policy Review
