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.

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