Potential Policy Shift toward Mass Atrocities

In a recent article, The Washington Independent elucidates the potential foreign policy shift toward bolder action against mass atrocities under an Obama administration. The article contextualizes the current role of Susan Rice, head of Obama's Foreign Policy Transition Team, who in April 2007 testified in favor of military action as a last resort in response to genocide in Sudan. She further concluded that a Chapter 7 UN Resolution ought to be invoked should robust financial sanctions and an implemented no-fly zone fail to cease government fueled atrocities.

Her upstanding record is not without tarnish, as GI-NET Board Member Samantha Power has criticized Rice's inaction under the Clinton Administration to stop the 1994 Rwandan Genocide. Rice later told Samantha Power, "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."

Through her work at the Brookings Institution and as a former staff member of the National Security Council, Rice has been described as "...one of the few people to live in the foreign-policy world who understood global issues, transnational issues like human rights, climate change and terrorism."  As a close advisor to President Elect Obama and potential national-security adviser, U.N. ambassador, or Secretary of State, Susan Rice sheds light on a future of US foreign policy toward Africa.

Read the entire article here.