Does the human tragedy in Sudan warrant different treatment than the restraint President Bush has shown with Cuba and China? Evidently not. The Administration talks only of protecting American economic interests.
According to official State Department spokesman, Richard A. Boucher, "We believe that prohibiting access to capital markets in the United States would run counter to global United States support for open markets, would undermine our financial market competitiveness and could end up impeding the free flow of capital worldwide."
True enough, as far as it goes. Delisting a company for doing business with a murderous regime might disqualify many a U.S. company, to say nothing of other foreign companies. If the policy proposed for the Sudan Peace Act were applied successfully to companies pumping oil in Sudan, it could easily be applied to companies sewing shoes in Vietnam or shipping flowers from Colombia. From there, it might have to be applied to oil drillers and shippers around the world, for it is an unpleasant consequence of geography and culture that gangster governments rule and steal and kill in many countries with oil wealth.
The fundamental problem with the Sudan Peace Act, however, is not that it would establish a difficult precedent or embroil us in a battle of words and trade restrictions with friendly, peaceful, democratic countries that are home to hard-headed businessmen.
Sanctions are the real problem. Generations of congressmen and Presidents, to say nothing of diplomats, have imagined that economic sanctions are a full substitute for force. That is how the United States has come to put sanctions on at least three dozen countries, with little or no effect.
...
If peace in Sudan or any other desperately afflicted place should be a U.S. goal, as the votes of 422 representatives for the Sudan Peace Act might suggest, then those lawmakers should accept the consequences of their words. Will they risk the lives of American soldiers? Highly doubtful. Will they simply shut up? Highly unnatural. More likely, they will keep passing bills that promise what they cannot deliver.
Source: Barron’s, August 25
Editorial Commentary by Thomas G. Donlan |
