The already beleaguered (if yet to be deployed) peacekeeping force for Sudan has drawn fire from an unexpected quarter. Jeffrey Sachs, head of Columbia University's Earth Institute, reportedly dismissed the peacekeeping effort as irrelevant yesterday:

You could put the peacekeepers in there, they won't change one iota on the ground in terms of the grim realities of the harshness of life in Darfur," Sachs said, pointing to the need for clinics, schools, electricity and water holes. "I'm not against the peacekeepers, I just find them a waste of money," he said. "Unless the rich world is going to promise $2.6 billion for the peacekeepers each year, plus $2.6 billion for development, I'd say keep your peacekeepers."

The implication is that Darfur is an economic development problem rather than a problem of noxious political leadership and calculated policy. I wonder how far this reasoning extends; what other mass atrocities should be deemed development problems that cannot be addressed absent a massive aid program? Taken too far, this kind of economic determinism will suck the life out of international efforts to combat mass atrocities. And it's not as if the world needs another excuse to look the other way.