A DVD extra for World News Tonight
If you watch ABC’s World News Tonight tonight, there’s a 50-50 shot I’ll be in a story about President Bush’s decision to impose additional sanctions against Sudan for its actions in Darfur. The point I tried to get across — sanctions are unlikely to work in this instance because (in increasing order of importance: 1) ...
If you watch ABC's World News Tonight tonight, there's a 50-50 shot I'll be in a story about President Bush's decision to impose additional sanctions against Sudan for its actions in Darfur. The point I tried to get across -- sanctions are unlikely to work in this instance because (in increasing order of importance: 1) The United States doesn't a large economic relationship with Sudan, and with pre-existing sanctions in place, there's not much left to cut off; 2) Conflict expectations between Sudan and the United States are already pretty high, so even if the sanctions were costly, Khartoum would be reluctant to concede anything substantive; 3) Sudan has a "white knight" (or "black knight" if you will) in the form of China. With that country pumping billions into the Sudanese economy, the U.S. financial sanctions are little more than a hiccup in their economic trajectory. We'll see how well this gets communicated in seven seconds. Here's some info that won't be in the story: whenever news networks do these stories, there's always a "b-roll" in which they show the professor walking across campus or working at his computer, etc. I bring this up because if they show that footage tonight, I was typing this very sentence!!!!! Exciting behind-the-scenese stuff, eh? [Hey, how did that copy of All Politics Is Global get into the corner of the shot?--ed. Because I am that shameless.] UPDATE: The good news is that I did indeed appear in the story. The bad news is that the b-roll did not. Curses!!
If you watch ABC’s World News Tonight tonight, there’s a 50-50 shot I’ll be in a story about President Bush’s decision to impose additional sanctions against Sudan for its actions in Darfur. The point I tried to get across — sanctions are unlikely to work in this instance because (in increasing order of importance:
1) The United States doesn’t a large economic relationship with Sudan, and with pre-existing sanctions in place, there’s not much left to cut off; 2) Conflict expectations between Sudan and the United States are already pretty high, so even if the sanctions were costly, Khartoum would be reluctant to concede anything substantive; 3) Sudan has a “white knight” (or “black knight” if you will) in the form of China. With that country pumping billions into the Sudanese economy, the U.S. financial sanctions are little more than a hiccup in their economic trajectory.
We’ll see how well this gets communicated in seven seconds. Here’s some info that won’t be in the story: whenever news networks do these stories, there’s always a “b-roll” in which they show the professor walking across campus or working at his computer, etc. I bring this up because if they show that footage tonight, I was typing this very sentence!!!!! Exciting behind-the-scenese stuff, eh? [Hey, how did that copy of All Politics Is Global get into the corner of the shot?–ed. Because I am that shameless.] UPDATE: The good news is that I did indeed appear in the story. The bad news is that the b-roll did not. Curses!!
Daniel W. Drezner is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast. Twitter: @dandrezner
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