I haven't said much about Obama's China visit trip, in part because I'm no expert on Sino-American policy. But what Peter Beinart says here rings quite true for me:
A few things stand out upon a first reading of Obama's official Sudan policy announcement, TNR's copy of which is pasted below.
One is the stark language it uses regarding President Omar Al Bashir's indictment by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes and crimes against humanity. The policy explicitly states that the United States will support "international efforts to bring those responsible for genocide and war crimes in Darfur to justice" and says that "accountability for genocide and atrocities is necessary for reconciliation and lasting peace." Until now, the United States has been extremely cagey about the ICC indictment, to the point where our Sudan envoy, Scott Gration, has made it sound like we're interested in deferring accountability indefinitely in order to improve relations with Khartoum. I've heard that Hillary Clinton's deputy, James Steinberg, was pushing to ensure that our policy didn't undermine the ICC ruling during the policy review process. The change is a good thing: International justice continues to be imperfect, but one should not be allowed to commit the worst crimes in the world and get away scot free.
The second interesting thing is the role that counter-terrorism plays in the policy. During the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's Sudan hearings last summer, Gration and Senator Russ Feingold got into an fairly hostile dispute over the value of Sudanese cooperation on intelligence and counterterrorism issues--with Feingold arguing that the value of Khartoum's intel cooperation is vastly overblown, and that the issue had often been raised as a way for Sudan's government to avoid accountability for human rights violations. Since all of the data on such cooperation is secret, the two ended the exchange by vowing to discuss the matter further in a "secure" setting.
With many, including us, focused on the likelihood of Barack Obama naming James Steinberg as his national security adviser, word comes today that the job may go to Marine General James L. Jones, who retired last year after serving as Supreme Allied Commander of NATO and Commander of U.S. European Command.
