Notes on the Obama Transition, II

One doesn't need to recapitulate all the appointments President-elect Barack Obama has made so far, but it should be said that his national security team selections augur well for internationalism and interventionism. I say this with especial pleasure because he received the votes of many isolationists, moral relativists, defeatists, masochists, pacifists, and fellow-travellers. Their anguish and incredulity at Mr. Obama's escalation of the war in Afghanistan will be a pleasure to witness.

Take Joe Biden. During his abbreviated time in the Democratic primaries, he was the most interventionist candidate on the issue of Darfur. In July 2007 he said, "We have to stop talking about it. ... They [Sudan] have forfeited their sovereignty by engaging in genocide. We should impose a no-fly zone if the UN will not move now." He also called for NATO to deploy 2500 troops to crush the janjaweed. (In contrast, the sallow, blithering Bill Richardson advocated waiting around until the génocidaires' job was done. It's a deliverance that this feckless, bumbling dolt won't be in charge of the State Department.)

That job will of course be filled by Hillary Clinton, whose adamantine support for the War on Terror scandalizes the milquetoast wimps who thought they'd finally got rid of her last summer. Mrs. Clinton's views need no further outline, but the woman set to be the ambassador to the United Nations should be better known by the public, and her views offer insight into those of her appointer.

Dr. Susan E. Rice, the assistant secretary of state for African affairs in Bill Clinton's second term, may be the advocate for victims of genocide that humanitarians have been waiting for. (Also noteworthy: Samantha Power, the proponent of intervention, Harvard professor, and author of the Pullitzer Prize-winning A Problem from Hell: America in the Age of Genocide, is serving on the Obama transition team.) Dr. Rice told The Atlantic Monthly in 2001, "I swore to myself that if I ever faced such a crisis again, I would come down on the side of dramatic action, going down in flames if that was required." And in 2006 she wrote,

History demonstrates that there is one language Khartoum understands: the credible threat or use of force. After Sept. 11, 2001, when President Bush issued a warning to states that harbor terrorists, Sudan -- recalling the 1998 U.S. airstrike on Khartoum -- suddenly began cooperating on counterterrorism. It's time to get tough with Sudan again.

After swift diplomatic consultations, the United States should press for a U.N. resolution that issues Sudan an ultimatum: accept unconditional deployment of the U.N. force within one week or face military consequences. The resolution would authorize enforcement by U.N. member states, collectively or individually. International military pressure would continue until Sudan relented. The United States, preferably with NATO involvement and African political support, would strike Sudanese airfields, aircraft and other military assets. It could blockade Port Sudan, through which Sudan's oil exports flow. Then U.N. troops would deploy -- by force, if necessary, with U.S. and NATO backing.

If the United States fails to gain U.N. support, we should act without it.

Her views on Darfur will coincide at last with US accession to the International Criminal Court, which Mr. Obama has promised to do. The ICC is seeking an arrest warrant for Omar al-Bashir, the slave-driving blood-thirsty tyrant in charge of Sudan, and the US could aid this quest by joining the court.

With Republican Robert Gates at the Pentagon, former Marine and exemplar of the military-industrial complex General James Jones as National Security Advisor, Anthony Lake and Richard Holbrooke as additional possible appointments, and not a single initial opponent of the invasion of Iraq yet chosen for his national security team, Mr. Obama has decisively rejected the postcolonial appeasement politics of a considerable segment of his electorate.