alt Hacker News> You don’t need genocide to control mines, farms and oil fields
True but if your goal is the control of resources, you don't really care if your proxy ends up engaging in these and other war crimes. That's just the cost of doing business.
Take as example when Saddam Hussein used nerve gas on the Kurds in Halabja in 1988. Well that's a war crime. Did the US care? Not until 1990 when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and threatened Saudi Arabia. Up until then Saddam was a foil against Iran, who was only really an enemy after religious fundamentalists overthrew the US puppet regime of the Shah in 1979. Then in the 1990s, the US retroactively started caring about Halabja.
So did the US need Saddam to use nerve gas on the Kurds? No, of course not. Did they care? Absolutely not. Again, it was the cost of doing business.
> We don’t have that influence.
Yes we absolutely do. You get that power when you supply the weapons and can choose who to supply them to. We have many weapons that we could wield against allies in particular. What if the US declared that gold sourced from Sudan was illegal to trade in? If you say the US can't make laws in other countries, I'll just laugh. The US still has control of the global financial system and can declare that any bank wanting access to the US financial system has to not trade in Sudanese gold.
Currently, the UAE gets away with this by essentially laundering Sudanese gold. The system allows them to do this. Well the UAE produces no gold so what if any gold exports from Dubai had to come with certificates showing from where it was imported?
If you don't think that can be done, look no further than the Kimberly Process Certification Scheme ("KPCS") for conflict-free diamonds [1].
> ... we’d put serious economic and military interests at stake. Interests American voters care about ...
I'm curious what African (or even Middle Eastern) interests you think voters care about? I say this because American voters pretty famously don't really care about foreign policy at all. Also, foreign policy is notably uniparty. The war in AFghanistan went through 4 administrations, 2 Republican, 2 Democrat. Vietnam went through 5 administrations (2 Democrat, 3 Republican) as well (ie Eisenhower, JFK, LBJ, Nixon, Ford).
> if your goal is the control of resources, you don't really care if your proxy ends up engaging in these and other war crimes
Granted. The UAE is not involved due to animus. But this analysis renders everyone in Sudan as NPCs. The reason the conflict is an opportunity for meddling, the reason it has turned into a genocide, these causes are found more in culture and politics than pure economics.
> You get that power when you supply the weapons and can choose who to supply them to
America withholding arms from Sudan wouldn’t change much.
If we started dictating Emirati foreign policy based on withholding arms, they should drop us as a security guarantor. (And can. And eventually would.)
We’d lose a reliable ally and investor and oil producer in exchange for foreign policy control in a region Americans are sick of being involved in.
> What if the US declared that gold sourced from Sudan was illegal to trade in?
Nothing. Like actually nothing. Maybe domestic gold prices would bump up a bit, but less than they have with tariffs and the deficit explosion.
If we tried to get the UAE to stop trading Sudanese gold, on the other hand, that would mean applying diplomatic and possibly economic pressure. That could result in costs to American voters we don’t care to pay.
> the Kimberly Process Certification Scheme ("KPCS") for conflict-free diamonds
Yet blood diamonds still sell.
Gold is tracked and traded based on provenance—high-end mints will produce more expensive bars. The difference is there is a larger buyer pool for conflict gold than there is for diamonds. (And much more for oil.)
> American voters pretty famously don't really care about foreign policy at all
This is what I meant. American leaders are constrained in acting on foreign policy lines that result in domestic pain. Alienating the Gulf would result in domestic pain.