Is the situation in Sudan bad enough to warrant military intervention? This good article at TNR discusses what a military intervention might look like. It also contains this tidbit:

All of which raises the question of just how many ground troops an intervention force might require? Reports coming out of the Rwandan genocide suggest that as few as 1,000 to 2,000 troops could have provided the security necessary to prevent the deaths of 800,000 people. The African Union announced plans Wednesday to send 2,000 troops to Darfur. Britain’s top general has said he could muster 5,000 troops for Sudan and France has 1,000 troops already stationed in neighboring Chad, including many from the vaunted French Foreign Legion. (With the U.S. military already stretched thin in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States has officially demurred on the issue of sending troops.) It is not clear, however, if military intervention on the ground in Sudan would look more like Rwanda or more like Somalia, where 26,000 American troops were sent into a hostile environment to secure and deliver humanitarian aid. Rwanda was about one ethnic group murdering another. In Somalia, warring clans fought over control of humanitarian aid, and military force was necessary to get aid to the people who needed it.

TNR ends up concluding more troops might be needed. The risk is, of course, that this turns into Somalia. The probably efficacy of a no-fly zone sounds good, but seems to need a ground force to actually make sure the aid reaches the places it needs to. I was also surprised at the extent to which Russia and China have sold advanced weapons to the Sudanese government. There is no indication whether those governments knew about the genocide happening in Sudan, nor how recent those arms sales were, but it begs that question of whether those governments would turn down the revenue from these arms sales even if they did know.

If it’s subscriber only, drop me an email and I’ll send you a link.