| ‘Not On My Watch’: The Bush Administration and US Foreign Policy over Darfur, 2003-2008 |  Printable version
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Date: 14 April 2011
Time: 15.30-17.00
Place: Room 1A01, Pieter de la Court building, Wassenaarseweg 52,
Leiden.
Speakers: Dr Lee Seymour, Northwestern University, Evanston, USA and
Assistant Professor, Institute of Political Science, Leiden University
Discussant:
Klaas van Walraven
You are kindly requested to register for this seminar.
Abstract:
The crisis in Darfur saw the emergence of the most powerful
grassroots advocacy campaign in recent US history and elicited
unprecedented language from US leaders who, for the first time, accused
a state of perpetrating an on-going genocide. This should have pushed
Washington to take stronger measures to stop the violence and given it
far more leverage over Sudan. Yet US diplomacy was remarkably
ineffective. The US only marginally moderated the violence, had
difficulty coordinating its policy with its allies, and failed to broker
an effective peace agreement or force Sudan’s timely acceptance of a
more robust peacekeeping force. These failures pose something of a
puzzle given Darfur’s extraordinarily high profile in US politics and
diplomacy. In examining discourse in the politics of the Darfur crisis,
I argue that American diplomacy was characterized by carelessness with
the truth and a misrepresentation of US aims and values in pandering to
advocacy groups, the media and voters, with detrimental effects on the
search for a political solution. This discursive strategy obstructed
other communicative processes that were unfolding as Washington argued
with its allies and bargained with the Sudanese government and rebel
groups. It also undermined the efforts of advocacy groups.
Dr. Lee J. M. Seymour is an Assistant Professor at the Institute
of Political Science. He studied political science at Northwestern
University, Sciences Po Paris, Dalhousie University and the University
of British Columbia. In 2008-2009, Dr. Seymour was a post-doctoral
fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at
Harvard University, and from 2006-2008, he was a doctoral researcher at
the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, in Berlin. His dissertation,
Pathways to Secession: The Institutional Effects of Separatist Conflict,
compares the outcomes of armed separatist conflicts, with particular
attention to conflicts in the Horn of Africa, the Balkans, and the
Caucasus. With support from the United States Institute of Peace, he has
conducted field work in Southern Sudan, Somaliland, Ethiopia, Kosovo,
Russia, Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh. His broader research interests
include the politics of self-determination, the role of legitimacy in
world politics, and civil wars and insurgency. In 2009-2010, Dr. Seymour
is teaching courses on Insurgency and Political Order, International
Security and Intrastate Conflict, and American Foreign Policy.
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