Never is it pleasant to hear when the will of a sovereign is ignored or or its population's weakness abused, especially when the talk is about the youngest member of the international community.
Realpolitik would say that unless the South Sudanese people find a third balancing force, the stronger of the USA or China is going to win their oil. The South Sudanese lose eitherway, best case they still lose more than acceptable. How can you balance those two forces without implicating a third external force? Could even the South Sudanese people balance the two biggest powers in the world by themselves?
My view ? You know. Yes, they can. Divide your presidency. Have it ruled democratically by three equal ministers.
I know a directorial executive is qualified as "weak" in political science. But it's exactly that constitutional weakness you want. I know as well I'm late, you agreed on your constitution already. It's a bold hypothesis and it took me time to persuade myself.
One of the three ministers can represent the "South Sudanese-Chinese" interests, one the "South Sudanese-American" interests and the third minister can represent the "Holistic South Sudanese" interests.
The result : The third minister will never have to agree to neither side, unless Chinese and US diplomats can agree on a compromise on how to share the resources in a way that sustainably profits the South Sudanese population more than it profits the US and Chinese ones. The population will fully support the "no-sayer", because they know such a compromise is possible.
If the population knows that they elect several and not just one presidents, then their voting behaviour switches also from bipolar to multicultural. A little bit differently said, knowing it's possible to elect a moderate in the executive gives the population the incentive to vote moderately and wisely as well.
The parliament is divided in three interests : Those who want to work with the US when it comes to oil, those who want to work with China, and those who don't want to work with neither of them.
The executive will have therefore on one side the population's and parliamentarians support to refuse unfair foreign intervention but also their pressure to not to ignore it : The "China-South Sudan" or a "USA-South Sudan" majority would block an unfair unilateral deal. At the same time the government is prevented from freezing oil extraction by a "USA-China" majority that constantly pushes for it.
The constitutional unity enables the actually divided South Sudanese representatives to sit as a confident sovereign at the table, China and the US together at the other side.
At the moment, in the bipolar world, both are still able to poker on a win of the President's favors and hence there is no point for either of them to lower profit expectations or even think of sharing resources with the competitor. Making it impossible from a constitutional perspective for one side to grab the oil, is the kind of incentive that will bring both powers to table and find the compromises you can accept. Diplomats have to respect local laws, it's not a moral choice, it's a political one.
The South Sudanese people can definitely increase the profit on their oil by establishing a strong and divided head of state. The directorial Swiss executive independently delivered relatively permanent social peace and slow but constant economic growth throughout the last 15o years, in four different languages, uniting two divided religions and integrating many more, smoothing out clashing post-industrial ideologies all while being surrounded by imperialist struggles, and all while enabling the population to trade and build its way out of poverty and trying to respect the tradition of openness to the world... etc etc ... not so weak, the directorial executive style ... just have to ask the right people ... genre historians ... not political scientists ...
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