The Commons: This Is What the End of the Liberal World Order Looks Like

"I have studied Sudan all of my adult life. I lived there in 1980 and wrote my doctoral dissertation on Sudanese foreign policy. It's a country, I learned, that breaks the heart of anyone who loves it. In the years since, I have not found a single American article or book on Sudan that did not get some detail wrong. But Anne Applebaum's "This Is What the End of the Liberal World Order Looks Like," deeply depressing though it is, gets everything right. It even conveys, somehow, the feeling of Sudan. I had thought that I should write something about the utter depravity of the current civil war, but now I don't have to."

"Beginning in 1989, Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter made Sudan a primary focus of their peace-building efforts. During the Second Sudanese Civil War, President Carter negotiated a six-month humanitarian cease-fire-during which international health workers were able to enter the country to support more than 2,000 Guinea-worm-endemic villages and distribute more than 200,000 cloth filters for drinking water. Now, less than 40 years later, we have forgotten the success of that effort."

"In "This Is What the End of the Liberal World Order Looks Like," Anne Applebaum writes that "Sudan is a good place to fight." But we should also remember that Sudan is a good place to wage peace."

Sudan's ongoing civil war has produced anarchy, greed, and profound humanitarian collapse, with inadequate international attention. Longstanding knowledge of Sudan shows chronic misreporting by American sources, while past peace-building efforts achieved measurable successes. In 1989, Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter prioritized Sudan and secured a six-month humanitarian cease-fire enabling health workers to reach over 2,000 Guinea-worm-endemic villages and distribute more than 200,000 cloth water filters. Less than forty years later, that success has been largely forgotten. Sudanese citizens have repeatedly demonstrated nonviolent organizing, including 2018–2019 protests that removed Omar al-Bashir, and continue to attempt local peace efforts amid renewed conflict.

Read at The Atlantic