[Peace-discuss] RE: RE: NATO and Darfur

[Scott Edwards]

My underrstanding, Carl, is that the admin approached NATO partners with a 
vision of "NATO" stewardship of a possible UN mission, and was rebuffed. I 
certainly do not rely on the cador of this or any government for my work.

It seems to me that a UN mission in Darfur would be the antithesis to Iraq, 
Afghanistan, and Serbia: Legal International intervention to prevent ongoing 
genocide only after it is clear that potential regional-backed missions are 
unable or unwilling (unable in this case).

So while I understand the history you command and allude to, I don't 
understand exactly what the proposal is. Intervention, so long as there are 
no US fingerprints? No intervention, and all that entails?

Is it motives that concern you? Or some principal about force in general? I 
guess the point of my last message was that given how little we know about 
what will happen, and what role, if any NATO will choose to play, is not 
there some other related conversation that should be happening? What's a 
stake is, in my opinion, something greater than the history of NATO in 
global politics.

I am in DC this weekend in order to put together a strategy for Darfur for 
the coming months. This line of discussion, and others off-list have been 
valuable.  We will know within the coming days weather the AU will 
officially ask for UN assistance, and maybe in the following weeks 
discussion about what actors will do what may be more productive.

I hope folk have had a chance to look at the DOS report.

Warmly,
scott

Amnesty International, US
Country Specialist for Sudan

>Message: 2
>Date: Thu, 9 Mar 2006 21:11:47 -0600
>From: "C. G. Estabrook" <galliher at uiuc.edu>
>Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] RE: NATO and Darfur
>To: peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
>Message-ID: <4ff791e7.969ce03e.81cbd00 at expms1.cites.uiuc.edu>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
>
>How can you be so sure what NATO's role would be, Scott?  Do
>you rely on the candor of this administration?
>
>A better predictor might be what the USG has done in the past.
>Control of European militaries was one of the spoils of war
>when the US displaced Britain and Germany after WWII.  The
>collapse of the Soviet Union, the existence of which was the
>ostensible excuse for NATO, hardly led to its demise: on the
>contrary, the US expanded it to the Russian border (after
>promising not to) and enlarged its role in the US hegemony.
>
>On the excuse of genocide in Kosovo, the US used NATO to
>reduce the Serbian roadblock to control of what Rumsfeld
>called "New Europe" -- which the US used to counterbalance the
>occasionally uppity Old Europe -- and the cream of the jest
>was that the US used Old Europe's troops (NATO) to do it.
>
>Fresh from war crimes committed for "humanitarian" reasons in
>Serbia, NATO troops were projected outward by the USG even
>beyond Europe to do its dirty work in Afghanistan.  (There's a
>parallel in the US rejections of offers to negotiate from
>Serbia and Afghanistan before the US launched its attacks.)
>Now NATO troops exercise protectorates in Kosovo and
>Afghanistan, but it's US geopolitical purposes that are being
>served. Far from "inflammatory," talk of the US use of NATO is
>a refusal to forget recent history.
>
>Now US politicians and pundits, both right and left (rather
>meaningless expressions of convenience) are calling for an
>expanded NATO role.  Eric Reeves, whom you quote on NATO's
>saying it won't send troops to Darfur, in fact argues
>strenuously in a liberal journal this week that NATO should be
>made to do so: "Bush should say clearly: You will. And America
>will lead the way."
>
> >From Rome's barbarian legions to the Ottoman janissaries,
>empires typically try to get subject peoples to do the
>fighting for them.  Mutatis mutandis, the US has clearly used
>NATO that way.  It's unconscionable to allow the use the
>suffering in Darfur (or Kosovo) as a cover for the expansion
>of US hegemony.
>
>Regards, Carl