11. From Independence to Civil War: Atrocity Prevention and US Policy toward South Sudan
- Author:
- Jon Temin
- Publication Date:
- 07-2018
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Institution:
- Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
- Abstract:
- Could the civil war in South Sudan have been prevented? Could some of the violence and misery caused by the war have been avoided? Those questions are academic in some ways, as so much damage has been done. But in other ways, seeking answers is vital because patterns of violence in the 21st century suggest there will be more wars that resemble the South Sudan conflict: (a) fought within a country’s borders, (b) fought between multiple groups that regularly fragment and realign, (c) driven in part by access to lucrative natural resources and capture of state coffers, (d) with civilians often targeted, and (e) in which the lines between civilians and combatants are sometimes blurred. When the threat of such state collapse appears elsewhere—and we should expect that it will—lessons from the South Sudan experience will be valuable. This project seeks to identify some of those lessons by examining US policy toward South Sudan in the years leading up to and during the civil war. President Barack Obama’s administration placed an emphasis on atrocity prevention, and South Sudan’s civil war was the source of some of the most egregious atrocities anywhere during his time in office. The author conducted in-depth interviews with more than 30 former and current American officials (from the Obama and George W. Bush administrations), South Sudanese experts, and longtime observers of South Sudan from the think tank, nongovernmental organization (NGO), and academic communities. Through those interviews, the author sought to identify pivotal periods in US policy making, short stretches of time during which events in South Sudan compelled the United States to act—or, in hindsight, times at which the United States could have acted with greater conviction but did not. This report identifies four such periods. For each, the author seeks to identify alternative policies that could have been considered and to assess whether those policies may have been able to prevent or limit violence.
- Topic:
- Foreign Policy, Civil War, and Atrocity Prevention
- Political Geography:
- Africa, South Sudan, and United States of America