To stop the war on South Sudan, the U.S. should send weapons
To stop the war on South Sudan, the U.S. should send weapons
All revenue to the Southern government stoppedin November; this past February, the South began shutting down all oil pumping. The North walked out of negotiations with the South in February and refused to return.
Diplomatic pressure will not move Bashir and his generals, who do not take promises of improved relations with the West seriously. The United States has promised three times — in 2003, 2006 and 2010 — to normalize relations with Sudan if the North would let the South leave voluntarily. It did, and we did not respond quickly enough. Now we have no credibility. Meanwhile, Bashir ridicules Security Council resolutions. “We will implement what we want, ” he said Thursday. “What we do not want, no one can impose upon us.”
In the past three years, the Obama administration has engaged Sudan by getting Bashir to agree to a free and fair referendum on Southern separation and, last July, allow the South to peacefully become independent. Now that war has come, talking will not end it. Only redressing the imbalance of military might will convince Bashir and his generals that fighting won’t solve the two countries’ profound political crisis. The Obama administration must arm the South Sudanese with antiaircraft weapons to create a stalemate and get the North back to the negotiating table.
Andrew S. Natsios, George W. Bush’s former envoy to Sudan, is a professor at Georgetown University and the author of “Sudan, South Sudan, and Darfur: What Everyone Needs to Know.”
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