DURING the campaign, Barack Obama took a hawkish line on the genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan:

[W]hen genocide is happening, when ethnic cleansing is happening somewhere around the world and we stand idly by, that diminishes us.





Yesterday, the president unveiled a new approach to Sudan that was long on diplomacy and short on no-fly zones. Instead of using hard power to stop the Sudanese government from massacring its own civilians, he wants to use the carrot of aid and the stick of sanctions to cajole the regime in Khartoum to behave better. At the same time, he is more focused than before on trying to prevent the other civil war in Sudan, between the Muslim north and the non-Muslim south, from reigniting.    

Given the constraints facing America at the moment and the complexity of the situation in Sudan, this may be the least bad policy. Smart and knowledgeable folks such as Alex de Waal and John Prendergast approve. But still, it is a far cry from the simple moral mission he touted on the campaign trail.