The Obama administration’s new “incentives and pressure” policy toward S Sudan confirms that it will resort to punishing errant African governments only after diplomatic engagement has failed.

In announcing the results of a lengthy policy review, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said last month that Washington is rejecting the option of isolating Khartoum.

Instead, the US is offering to bestow unspecified rewards on the Sudanese government if it makes progress toward settling the Darfur conflict and if it abides by the terms of a peace agreement that could result in the secession of the South.

Punishments — also unspecified — will be imposed if Sudan does not respond positively to these offers, Mrs Clinton said.

This relationship is being supported by activist groups that had earlier been critical of a more conciliatory approach advocated by Scott Gration, the Obama administration’s special envoy for Sudan.

Mr Gration, a Kiswahili-speaker raised in Congo and Kenya by American missionary parents, had suggested rewarding Sudan with “gold stars, smiley faces, handshakes, agreements, talk, engagement” with the aim of encouraging it to make peace in Darfur.

At the same time, the Obama team is at least temporarily ruling out the confrontational stance urged by UN ambassador Susan Rice.

She has articulated hardline views similar to those that Obama himself put forward during the presidential campaign.

He had denounced a Bush administration move toward normalising relations with Sudan as “reckless and cynical.”

Some analysts suggest that the Obama administration may itself be holding out the prospect of normalised relations as a key reward for Sudan’s co-operation on Darfur.

The specific actions to be taken by the United States, as either rewards or punishments, are contained in a classified document that was not divulged as part of the Sudan policy review.

President Obama’s general preference for diplomacy over coercion can be seen in the case of Kenya as well.

While the United States has threatened to deny visas to several Kenyan leaders, it has simultaneously said it will withhold those sanctions in nearly all cases if the individuals in question co-operate with US objectives.

Underlying this carrot-and-stick policy is the calculation that Kenya, like Sudan, has considerable strategic value in fighting terrorism in Africa.

Some activists complain that the United States is behaving in an even more lenient manner toward Rwanda and Uganda.

They wonder why the Obama administration has refused to hold Rwanda and Uganda “accountable for their involvement in illegal activities in the Congo.”

The advocacy group argued, “There has been no answer as to why US policy priorities do not include addressing Presidents Paul Kagame and Yoweri Museveni’s connection to Congolese individuals and groups that have chosen war over peace as a way of access to power.”