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Anarchy in Sudan has spawned the world’s worst famine in 40 years

economist.com

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Re: Anarchy in Sudan has spawned the world’s worst famine in 40 years

#281

Post by piva00 »

JohnMakin wrote: post #172

Still cannot get the images of the Ethiopian famine out of my head - truly horrific stuff. I’ll let people smarter and more powerful than me debate what could/should be done - I’d personally hazard a guess nothing short of military intervention can stop something like this but that has its whole slew of unintended side effects. It seems like there are enough resources in the world to prevent things like this, at leas…

> I’d personally hazard a guess nothing short of military intervention can stop something like this but that has its whole slew of unintended side effects

Military interventions most often fail to secure a country than the opposite. Haiti had a long peacekeeping mission from the UN and fell back into anarchy, Sudan has also had a military intervention. Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, etc. are other examples of interventions gone south.

Probably one of the few more successful interventions was the Yugoslavian Civil War, nowadays the appetite of the world for NATO bombing a country isn't really there.

No one has figured out how to do nation building from the outside, that often has come from the people in those nations themselves.

Re: Anarchy in Sudan has spawned the world’s worst famine in 40 years

#282

Post by moffkalast »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #68

>It is official: for only the third time in the past 20 years, the un has declared a full-blown famine. Looking into this, it's because the UN will only declare a famine if there's no functioning government. If there is one, they have the government declare a famine. Presumably that's why the UN declared a famine at the refugee camp, not the country or region. This story from last month discusses this aspect. https:/…

"I just wanted you to know that you can't just say the word "famine" and expect anything to happen."

UN: "I didn't say it. I declared it."

Re: Anarchy in Sudan has spawned the world’s worst famine in 40 years

#283

Post by dilawar »

tim333 wrote: post #280
bawolff wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess the problem is nobody wants to "own" countries anymore. Probably for good reason, colonization caused a lot of evil. However if you want to make a country do what you want, you can't just blow it up and then expect them to listen to you. Controlling people requires actually controlling them, and that is icky.

While the old prememant ownership thing has gone out of fashion, maybe we could have something like a 20 year lease where the Brits go in again and bring law and order? This kind of thing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Egyptian_Sudan

Meh. We had the great Bengal famine under British rule. And none of it was due to lack of this and that.

Amrtya Sen "Nobel" in economics was related to this.

Re: Anarchy in Sudan has spawned the world’s worst famine in 40 years

#284

Post by doikor »

jksflkjl3jk3 wrote: post #151
throwaway3521 wrote: post #15

At which point we admit that current approaches to helping these countries does nothing and we reach out for other, radical, approaches and ideas?

How about going in the other direction? Completely stay out of their business and let whatever emerges from the chaos develop on its own? Central planning of societies doesn't have a good track record, especially when there are competing external interests. Look at the horrific consequences of the American meddling in geopolitics of the third world over the last 100 years. The CIA and war industry is responsible for…

The current chaos is a result of UAE and Saudi having a proxy war there. Basically the developed world stepping out to let these countries figure shit out for themselves just led to another group of countries stepping in.

Re: Anarchy in Sudan has spawned the world’s worst famine in 40 years

#285

Post by ainiriand »

throwaway48476 wrote: post #275
grecy wrote: post #22

I am very sad to watch this situation. I spent 3 weeks driving my 4x4 through Sudan in early 2019 [1], just a month before they finally got rid of Al-Bashir, and it was incredible. The people of Sudan were some of the kindest and friendliest I have ever encountered on the planet. When I asked for directions to buy bread and it turned out to be complicated, the following morning locals brought a bag of fresh-baked bre…

I don't think I've heard of a single group that was not described as the 'kindest and friendliest'.

Germans.

Re: Anarchy in Sudan has spawned the world’s worst famine in 40 years

#286

Post by pfdietz »

jksflkjl3jk3 wrote: post #151
throwaway3521 wrote: post #15

At which point we admit that current approaches to helping these countries does nothing and we reach out for other, radical, approaches and ideas?

How about going in the other direction? Completely stay out of their business and let whatever emerges from the chaos develop on its own? Central planning of societies doesn't have a good track record, especially when there are competing external interests. Look at the horrific consequences of the American meddling in geopolitics of the third world over the last 100 years. The CIA and war industry is responsible for…

In practice that becomes, "they are genociding themselves, how convenient".

Re: Anarchy in Sudan has spawned the world’s worst famine in 40 years

#287

Post by oezi »

jksflkjl3jk3 wrote: post #151
throwaway3521 wrote: post #15

At which point we admit that current approaches to helping these countries does nothing and we reach out for other, radical, approaches and ideas?

How about going in the other direction? Completely stay out of their business and let whatever emerges from the chaos develop on its own? Central planning of societies doesn't have a good track record, especially when there are competing external interests. Look at the horrific consequences of the American meddling in geopolitics of the third world over the last 100 years. The CIA and war industry is responsible for…

If we look at the havoc of any conflict region (Syria, Afghanistan, Sudan, Somalia,...) we can see that both engaging in the conflict and staying out of it is tremendously expensive.

Paying Turkey to hold the Syrian refugees back and housing those that passed through costs Europe tens of billions each year. Engagement would have been hard, but one is left to wonder if we shouldn't try harder for own benefit.

Re: Anarchy in Sudan has spawned the world’s worst famine in 40 years

#288

Post by stale2002 »

wolfram74 wrote: post #279
JohnMakin wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s no critique though - simply tone policing while trying to push another argument entirely. I’m not even making whatever argument is being “critiqued” here. It’s simply bad posting.

but there was a critique, your proposal was "something something let an army fix it" and they provided context "something something various armies caused it."

Then that would be an unrelated critique/strawman that doesn't accurately respond to what they said.

They did not propose to fix it via an army. Instead they said "nothing short of military intervention can stop something like this" That is not a recommendation. Instead it is describing how difficult the problem is to solve.

They then followed it up by saying "but that has its whole slew of unintended side effects". This is significantly hedging the claim, saying that the military could actually make things worse!

Maybe one of the side effects that he is saying could happen is exactly the issue brought up, meaning that the famine would get worse. Therefore bringing this up as a possibility is not a critique, and actually agrees with the original statement.

And they also previously had said "I’ll let people smarter and more powerful than me debate what could/should be done". That statement explicitly saying that they aren't proposing things.

They even finished up the statement by saying "a conversation needs to be had very soon how this should be handled ", which only suggesting that this should be talked about, because he quite clearly thinks that this is a complicated and difficult problem to solve, for which a military intervention could very well not be a good idea!

If you actually read the original statement it is extremely conservative in its statements, and you have to almost intentionally be obtuse to attack such a hedging non recommendation that merely describes how bad and hard it is to solve!

Re: Anarchy in Sudan has spawned the world’s worst famine in 40 years

#289

Post by DangitBobby »

wolfram74 wrote: post #279
JohnMakin wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s no critique though - simply tone policing while trying to push another argument entirely. I’m not even making whatever argument is being “critiqued” here. It’s simply bad posting.

but there was a critique, your proposal was "something something let an army fix it" and they provided context "something something various armies caused it."

Instead of being an asshole, people could just respond to the idea.

Re: Anarchy in Sudan has spawned the world’s worst famine in 40 years

#290

Post by bojan »

tim333 wrote: post #280
bawolff wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess the problem is nobody wants to "own" countries anymore. Probably for good reason, colonization caused a lot of evil. However if you want to make a country do what you want, you can't just blow it up and then expect them to listen to you. Controlling people requires actually controlling them, and that is icky.

While the old prememant ownership thing has gone out of fashion, maybe we could have something like a 20 year lease where the Brits go in again and bring law and order? This kind of thing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Egyptian_Sudan

The first step would have been leaving the African Union.
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