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South Sudan, often touted as “the world’s newest country,” had a tumultuous first decade of independence. Following its secession from Sudan in 2011, leaders of the two largest ethnic groups, the Dinka and Nuer, launched a civil war that killed over 400,000 people and displaced another 4 million, a quarter of the population. The war devastated the country’s already feeble economy, cementing a place for South Sudan near the bottom of UNDP’s Human Development Index.

Yet despite the war and suffering that have beset South Sudan, the country has received much less international attention than other troubled spots around the world. Neither the media nor scholars have given the country much attention. This neglect is particularly surprising given the long history of American and British engagement in South Sudan. Part of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan Condominium beginning in 1899, South Sudan became an …