The list of civil wars, government crackdowns, and pesky militant safe-havens that interventionists demand the United States meddle in seems endless. There is no corner of the Earth that doesn’t call for some measure of U.S. intervention, apparently.
The latest call for intervention is coming from G. Pascal Zachary writing at The Atlantic in a piece unabashedly titled “Post-Colonialism: Why the U.S. Should Help Govern South Sudan.”
There has been some violence in South Sudan in recent months that has taken the lives of about 1,000 people, according to Zachary. The remedy? Zachary calls on the U.S. to “send in more peacekeepers,” “hammer out a power-sharing agreement between the warring parties,” and, mostly boldly, to take over the country by way of establishing “trusteeship” (propping up the government and taking away some of its sovereignty).
What exactly is going on the South Sudan and demands another U.S. intervention? Zachary explains that “the near-civil war in South Sudan stem[s] from that old African bugaboo: tribal enmity.” In other words, none of our business.
Government troops loyal to President Salva Kiir, who hails from the country’s largest ethnic group, the Dinka, are vying for power and greater representation with rebels supporting the dismissed Vice President Riek Machar, who belongs to the second-largest ethnic group, the Nuer. But South Sudan’s disorder cannot be pinned entirely on ethnic differences, just as the solution to the crisis must involve more than persuading the Dinka and Nuer to form a “national unity” government that ostensibly transcends tribal divisions.
Can you imagine a situation less relevant to us or to any government outside South Sudan?
For many national commentators and political sages, the bar for U.S. intervention is so low that relatively minor tribal infighting in a teensy-tiny, far-off country that has absolutely nothing to do with America or Americans is something that warrants launching another military and political nation-building campaign that Zachary cutely describes as “post-colonialist.”
As with almost all arguments for U.S. intervention, there isn’t the slightest consideration of the extremely likely possibility that things will go horribly wrong once Washington’s principals are at the helm. Two things are taken for granted: (1) the U.S. has legitimacy to intervene, and (2) everything will go swimmingly once it does.