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.

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!!