The global economic crisis has revealed the folly of large U.S. budget and trade deficits, as well as of the strong dollar that makes them possible. If it is serious about recovery, the United States must balance the budget, stimulate private saving, and embrace a declining dollar.
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Our "key national interests"
I must say that I was incredulous to find a question about what our country's "key national interests" may be in Sudan. In spite of the flippant attitude of the last administration towards international law, our country was actually bound by the Bush admin. to intervene in this tragedy. Colin Powell clearly stated that genocide was occurring in Darfur. According to the Convention on Genocide, once a country recognizes an incidence of genocide, that country is obliged to work towards ending the situation. Why do you think that the Clinton admin. was so reluctant to declare the clear cut case of the former Yugoslavia as genocide. Indeed, as Samantha Power's argues in her fantastic book, "A Problem From Hell", the US has often turned a blind eye to genocide because it served some perceived national interest or another.
As Mr. Natsios insists, there is certainly a humanitarian interest at stake. I would like to have seen, however, a stronger statement of the fact that all nations have a moral obligation to intervene--in the most productive fashion possible--in a genocidal situation. There is simply no "key national interest", which rises above the weight of the moral obligation to our fellow human beings to prevent such inhumanity as is being practiced in Sudan currently.
Of course, I am not ignorant of the fact that making such an ideal the official policy of the US government may very well be very uncomfortable in the not so distant future. After all, while such a scenario is no longer getting a great deal of attention in relation to Iraq, there are strong reasons to believe that a genocidal situation may very well obtain in that country upon our withdrawal. After all, the Kurds are asserting their autonomy from the national government by making oil deals independently. In addition, the Shiite majority remains mad as hell about it's treatment at the hands of the vastly outnumbered Sunni, which began almost contemporaneously with idiotic creation of such a geographical anomaly by the Sykes-Picot agreement. Finally, Iran, currently the only Shiite government in the world, will almost certainly "encourage" their brothers in Iraq to "take their due" so as to increase its already fantastical increase vis-a-vis the balance of power in the region.
In short, it is clear that we will blithely ignore Powell's "Pottery Barn" policy towards Iraq, with the result that it is at least likely that acting on our "key national interests" in Iraq could have so shattered relations between the country's three main ethnic groups that we end up bearing direct responsibility for the next great genocide in the world. Of course, with Iraq we have yet another example of a situation in which our country's consideration of the possibility that it may have a moral obligation to the principle of humanity played as much of a role in planning as did the first doubt of likelihood that the 90 day and out forecast of our incursion into the country may be just a wee bit stupid. Hence absolutely no phase IV planning to keep the country together once we broke it.