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Too Busy To Save DarfurThe Obama administration has very few options for solving the crisis in Sudan.

By Shmuel RosnerPosted Thursday, April 9, 2009, at 12:31 PM ET

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Washington will occasionally be willing to act against genocide when it has no other urgent matters to deal with (Clinton in Bosnia in the 1990s) but will not act when the president is too busy with other foreign-policy crises (George W. Bush in Iraq) or when he has to weigh the battle against genocide against other important U.S. interests (Obama). This is still much better than what most other countries do—but it's far from enough.

At the end of a long article in a recent issue of Commentary, Tod Lindberg notes, "In the extreme case, halting or failing to halt genocide has come down to whether the political will exists within the United States to act." That's a burden not all Americans and very few administrations are willing to shoulder.

Look at the price tag the Obama administration would be asked to pay: Arab nations oppose all the measures meted out against al-Bashir and his government, as was shown in statements that came out of the Arab League summit in Doha, Qatar, last week. "We stress our solidarity with Sudan and our rejection of the ICC decision against President Omar al-Bashir," Arab leaders declared. Some say they hold this position because they fear they could be next in line; some believe it's because they are concerned about the future stability of the already fragile country. The appalling result is Arab support for a despotic government. But the Obama administration has vowed to improve relations with the Arab world—and hunting down al-Bashir is hardly a good start.

Then there's the issue of China. As Will Inboden observed last month in Foreign Policy: "The two most notable headlines from the Obama administration's China policy thus far consist of pleas to Beijing to finance more U.S. debt and obsequious promises not to press China too much on human rights. This is not an encouraging trajectory." Certainly not if you consider Darfur a priority. We can't hope to pressure Khartoum effectively without Beijing's cooperation. But the risk involved in making China more cooperative doesn't seem to be one that Washington is willing to take. Not for a while, anyway.

The last option—the so-called "last resort" option—is the use of force. Once upon a time, Vice President Joe Biden supported this path. "I would use American force now," Biden said at a hearing before the Senate foreign relations committee. "I think it's not only time not to take force off the table. I think it's time to put force on the table and use it." Obama himself wasn't as blunt, but he also talked about force. Just not U.S. force. He hoped for a "large, capable U.N.-led and U.N.-funded force with a robust enforcement mandate to stop the killings." What he got instead is a court order that is robust enough to make al-Bashir laugh.

Back in August 2008, the New Republic's Richard Just wrote a long, masterful piece explaining the failure of the campaign to save Darfur. "[W]hen it came to the question of troops," he wrote, "the Darfur activists were split. Many were uncomfortable with the use of force." Eventually, "the movement coalesced around the idea that U.N. troops were the answer. In the wake of the Iraq debacle, the idea of sending U.N. peacekeepers to Darfur represented for many activists a sort of safe compromise—troops would be put on the ground, but American power would not be wielded. It was military action that they could endorse without opening a dissonance in their worldview."

It was a pipe dream—as every student of world affairs could have told them. It's a way for activists to keep their consciences clean, perhaps, more than a serious attempt to stop genocide. And the ICC warrant is no different. Same with the special envoys and global condemnation. It is time to admit that genocide will be stopped in some cases, but only when the United States has no other urgent tasks to deal with.