Jefferson and Lincoln

The great and small nations of the world determine their foreign policies on a number of considerations that are difficult to quantify, but they all hope to develop these policies within an ethical and philosophical framework. Perhaps there is no nation like the U.S. that has had this special interest to the point that it has become known for a policy that fluctuates between the “ideal” and the “realistic.” American scholars have concluded that American policy has always represented a mix between the two.

It is in this light that I have viewed America’s recent behavior with regard to the Sudanese referendum for Southern secession. This issue has become the subject of increasing American attention on the part of the U.S. State Department, a myriad of diplomats and, of course, members of the intelligence community. As for President Obama, he did not let the matter pass without writing a statement calling on Sudan to ensure that the referendum move forward without tension. Various promises were made to the Sudanese government in Khartoum if things go peacefully until the secession of Southern Sudan is completed.

Personally, I do not know a thing about the deliberations that went on in the American government and the White House regarding the future of Sudan, but it is most likely that internal pressures played a decisive role in influencing American behavior. The reputation of the Sudanese regime has never been positive, and Americans of African descent see in the Sudanese policy a translation of the Arab and Islamic intolerance that appeared in the “colonization” of Southern Sudan and the attempts to subjugate and enslave Darfur.

In short, the ruling political elite in the U.S. saw a “Jeffersonian” moment in the Sudanese separation process, with a colony’s declaration of freedom from a nation or tyrant. Thomas Jefferson was the author of the American Declaration of Independence from the British Empire and later the third American president after George Washington and John Adams. What concerns us here is that the Sudanese situation is not at all like that faced by Jefferson. Southern Sudan was not a colony of the North, even if it was marginalized from economic development. Further, the South has not fallen under the pressure of taxation like those for tea or salt that the Americans had to rise up against, demanding that there be no taxation without representation. The Sudanese situation is the opposite. There were no taxes to be paid by the South, and by the time oil wealth was found, the time for separation had already come.

The truth is that Southern Sudan represented a “Lincolnian” moment (in reference to Abraham Lincoln). The American South decided to secede from the USA because of the expansion of the Union to include states that did not support the institution of slavery in Nebraska and Kansas. Also, the North had in general become more powerful than the South, demographically and industrially, which led Southerners to feel that they were on their way to becoming second-class citizens in their country. The American South was suffering from increased marginalization, much like Southern Sudan, with the exception of the obvious differences between the two, such as that Sudan has not known slavery and that both the South and the North are suffering from poverty.

More so than Lincoln, the Sudanese were given a legitimate case for waging war for the sake of Sudanese unity. It was within Khartoum’s right to defend the unity of the nation by arms if necessary, as it has done in decades past while the international community, especially America, refused the legitimacy of such actions.

The difference here might not simply be the era or timing, but rather that the Sudanese government never presented a progressive or democratic model of any kind, which was never an issue for the U.S. Washington was never interested in a future shared between Khartoum and Juba, nor a shared struggle for the sake of modern democratic rule. In short, the struggle was not for the sake of unity, as in Lincoln’s case; rather, it was for the sake of separating from a parent nation, as Jefferson did.

In any case, the U.S. did not act in the best interests of the Sudanese nation. Instead, it wanted another Sudanese nation that knew that identity that was formed by the Americans and made them a different people from the subjects of the British Crown. Southern Sudan still forms a tribal confederation of the Dinka, Shilluk and other tribes. Whatever the names, there still remain many issues between them and the nation, which the U.S. cannot do anything about except appeal to the governments. Perhaps President Carter was the only one of the American thinkers who saw that the difficult path for the South would not be the hour of independence, but what will happen after.

Obama wanted to placate a large section of America: the liberals who had a lot against the government of President Bashir; the Jews who see the South as a victim of the Arabs; the Americans of African descent who saw the issue as another slavery; and the conservatives that fight against the spread of Islam. All of them wanted Southern independence, and if it spread to the North, all the better. But Obama and his associates, amidst a Jeffersonian state, forgot an important issue. They have forgotten Sudan’s high strategic interest for the U.S. and the rest of the world. They have added a new Somalia to the ranks of the world’s failing nations — or perhaps one in the North and the South, as well. Further, even though at the moment it appears that cooler minds have prevailed, the Third World, and Africa in particular, has not known a smooth secession. Pakistan split bloodily from India, as did Eritrea and Ethiopia in war after war of independence. These and Biafra’s unsuccessful bid for independence from Nigeria show that the price will always be fatal.

With extreme ease, America has opened for itself, and the rest of the world, the gates of hell. Sudan — both North and South — is a massive body that, throughout the years, has created for itself inroads into Somalia, Uganda and Yemen. Worse than that, a group of extremists has achieved an additional victory that gave them new regions for training and, more than that, additional opportunities for violence and fanaticism.

Jefferson has defeated Lincoln in Sudan, but the price of victory will not be an addition to a free world dedicated to the search for scientific and spiritual progress. Instead, it will be the birth of yet another curse in a long history of curses.