Jewish groups in this country took action from the moment Colin Powell declared what was going on in Darfur a genocide in the fall of 2004. It was like an automatic trigger for groups that were personally affected by the Holocaust. Hugely important in this. Evangelical groups that had been active in south Sudan where they were being persecuted and remain in great peril along with others being attacked by the Arab government .They actually made the turn. Instead of focusing just on the Christians [said], “Ok it’s Muslims dying in Darfur. We’re familiar with this; we have missionaries in the south; we’re seeing refugees fleeing into our territory. We’ll take action.”

There’s a 1-800 Genocide number in this country. Like it or not. It’s sort of a parody of technology as a tool. Nonetheless, if you call it, you can type in your zipcode. It’s meant to reduce the transaction cost of actually being a genocide activist. You can call it and if you don’t know your Congressperson’s, your Senator’s, number you get directed with a specific ask, depending on what the legislative moment is.

My favorite part of the movement, because it is designed by students, are the genocide grades now being given to members of Congress and the Senate. What’s very  comical about it is because students are the base – there are now about 500 chapters of the anti-genocide movement around the country (500 high school chapters as well) --  what you have is students who are very empirical and very sophisticated about gathering data, assembling grades on members of Congress and so forth much like the NRA has long assembled grades on gun rights or gun control. So these students, in conjunction with non-governmental organization colleagues, come up with grades for members of Congress based on voting records, support for funding, support  for punishment, prosecution, etc.

And then you’ll have staffer right before the grades are released publicly, calling up a Swarthmore student or a UNH student saying, “My member’s got a C-;  how can he get a B?” And you have the student sitting back, quite a role reversal students would enjoy more, except for implications of failing to move from C- to B.

Results of this movement are mixed. There’s been $300 billion spent by this government …  keeping people alive in Sudan.  There have been indictments issued against key members of the Sudanese government at the international criminal court, [recognizing] that the government in some way has supported but the killing, but by no means would any movement consider it a success. The challenge going forward is to ask why? If the citizens are doing exactly what they’re supposed to do, putting this pressure on the powers that be, what are the limits of American diplomacy on behalf of humanitarian ends like those in Sudan or strategic ends like, for instance, stopping Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. We’re not having as much success as we used to long ago in exerting our influence around the world.

So I think Teddy Roosevelt and others want to know ‘why not?’ Why is the US, whether it’s carrying a big stick or small stick or carrots, what’s up? What are the limits of our leverage now and how can we change course and better effect events here and around the world?

One answer is that this movement as I’ve described it really exists only in this country. It's almost a uniquely American phenomenon that people would say, “well we said ‘never again’ and now we’ve got to do something about it.” That kind of credulousness in the belief that you can, in fact, influence your government for all the skepticism about government that you see reflected in polls.  A remarkable number of citizens, as we saw from the recent election, act as a country in a way that hasn’t really taken hold on a lot of issues even in Europe or with some of our closest allies.

But second of course it’s no secret is that America is influenced and leverage has been eroded by some of the decisions made in recent years that has just made it harder to summon countries to our side within international institutions  Again each of those countries has their own national interests, their own domestic dynamic and should be held accountable accordingly. But in terms of  understanding why a movement that has done exactly what it was supposed to do hasn’t quite been able to push this issue over the edge and really bring meaningful respite to some pretty vulnerable people in Sudan (or you could choose a number of other countries as well)?  I think it’s important to look at just how difficult it is to summon other countries and get them to embrace the kind of burden sharing  that would be needed to manage genocide and will be needed to manage climate change, refugee flows and more generally poverty, malaria, terrorism and proliferation. Again all of these issues are going to require the kind of alliances and cooperation I mentioned earlier.

Here’s where I’d like to bring in Sergio


Continued.