Taking the responsibility to protect seriously

David Clark, with whom I do not always see eye to eye, sounds a note of caution about the latest UN resolution on Darfur. He writes:

The main problem... is the cynicism and malevolence of the government in Khartoum. On each occasion that the UN has decided to act, Khartoum has professed a sincere intention to cooperate, only to throw up obstacles and objections when the focus of world attention has turned elsewhere. The programme of ethnic slaughter has then resumed as if nothing had changed.
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The fallacy at the heart of our failure in Darfur until now has been the idea that you can stop genocide and ethnic cleansing with the consent of those responsible. It's almost as if Bosnia never happened. That error persists even now, as the resolution describes the UN's "determination to work with the government of Sudan, in full respect of its sovereignty". There is no credible reason to believe that this noble sentiment is shared in Khartoum, and the sooner the international community realises that the better. Instead of treating the Sudanese government as a potential partner for peace, world leaders need to see it for what it is - a recalcitrant, criminal enterprise that will only yield when it is given no other choice.

The rest is here