“Obama has not broken the American mold, but rather, appears to be fine-tuning a ‘humanitarian’ interventionist doctrine.”

Any government in the world that believes it has been targeted for regime change by the United States and its allies would be foolish to allow western-based nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to operate freely in its territory. When Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir evicted 13 western NGOs from his country last month, he was responding quite rationally to the clear threat of so-called “humanitarian” military intervention by the U.S. under the pretext of “rescuing” Sudanese in the war-torn Darfur region.

Under the Obama administration, a military interventionist doctrine is rapidly crystallizing around the concept of “Responsibility to Protect,” or R2P, which holds that nations have a responsibility to forcibly intervene when a state is judged to be unwilling or unable to protect or otherwise fulfill its responsibilities to its people – responsibilities that can be broadly or narrowly defined. United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice and Samantha Power, a member of Obama’s National Security Council, are leading advocates of a broad and unilateralist interpretation of R2P. Both are very close to President Obama, and can be assumed to reflect his thinking on foreign policy. And both are implacably hostile to Omar Al-Bashir’s government in Sudan. Rice is eager to blockade Sudan’s ports and to launch “selective” bombing raids.

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