The Failed State Lobby
Juba, South Sudan, is one of the few places in the world where American bipartisanship seems to be alive and well. One year ago today, President Barack Obama's envoy to the United Nations, Susan Rice, sat near former Republican Secretary of State Colin Powell as Rev. Franklin Graham, a harsh evangelical critic of the U.S. president, cheered what White House officials were claiming as a major foreign-policy success -- the birth of an independent South Sudanese nation. Diplomats and African heads of state took turns congratulating the new government from a podium overlooking tens of thousands of sweating South Sudanese gathered under the midday sun for the occasion.
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Without the United States' heavy-handed engagement, it is doubtful South Sudan would today be its own country. But Washington's love affair with the SPLM looks likely to end in heartbreak [Sudan People’s Liberation Movement]. One year on, the jubilation that accompanied South Sudan's independence has vanished. Its first year as a nation has been a disaster by all but the lowest of standards. Sure, worst-case scenarios of sustained full-blown war with Sudan or a complete implosion of the state have not yet materialized. But good luck finding many other silver linings: South Sudan is already the target of a sanctions threat by the United Nations for military aggression along its border with Sudan; its internal strife has already resulted in thousands of civilian casualties; and the country's oil -- its sole source of revenue -- stopped pumping in January as part of dangerous brinkmanship in negotiations with Sudan. The country desperately needs visionary leadership: It has only one paved highway, three-quarters of its adults are illiterate, and extreme poverty is widespread.
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The heavy U.S. backing of the SPLM might be producing as many problems as it is resolving. "It makes them reckless," said Alex de Waal, a top Sudan scholar and an advisor to the African Union's mediation efforts between Sudan and South Sudan. "They think the rules don't apply to them." That behavior was most evident in April, when U.S. and African diplomatic officials told me South Sudan seemed genuinely blindsided by the global condemnation of its military offensive against Sudan.
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