It's still not clear how much help Burma is going to allow in. The French foreign minister is making noises that sound curiously close to a humanitarian invasion:
In response, the French foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, suggested that the United Nations should invoke its “responsibility to protect” civilians as the basis for a resolution to allow the delivery of international aid even without the junta’s permission.
The UN, understandably, wants to stick to more conventional sorts of pressure. But what kind of leverage does the rest of the world have? They barely interact with us.
Then there's the food problem: Myanmar's rice harvest seems to have been devastated, though of course, it's pretty hard to get any information about what's going on. The reports we have seem to be at about the level of neighborhood gossip; they're filtering out through a network of aid workers that is, as one might imagine, under considerable strain, not to mention the eye of the regime. But at this point it the rice markets seem pretty convinced that Myanmar's going to flip from exporting to importing rice. The last thing the world needed right now was less grain on the world market.
It seems to me that now would be a very good time for the US to call a temporary halt to its ethanol program, and ship that grain to where it might actually provide a net benefit. Of course, who knows if they'd let it in. But then, it's hard to think of any place that grain wouldn't be better used than in American cars. And of course, anyone who wants to take me up on my earlier suggestion could try one of these recipes tomorrow night. Or hell, just pop in some convenience foods.
Megan, is there any evidence that US rice is going to ethanol generation? Would Burma enjoy corn?
Now would be a great time for China to use some of its newly gained soft power and strongarm the ruling junta into letting in more folks.
Then again, both the Burmese (and the Chinese) would probably not be very keen in having the US Navy show up in their harbor.
Do they have threatening weapons? Are they a major strategic power in the area? Then why do we care if they refuse our help?
Let them rot. The geopolitics of unwanted intervention are so complicated and irrational that it's better that the government explain, and eventually atone for the death of its own citizens.
Unfortunately, even if the political obstacles could be hurdled, I believe most corn grown for ethanol is not terribly well suited for human consumption. I'm no expert though, so I might be way off base.
I don't see force being used here - the more so since, by the time it could be approved, planned, and moved in, it'd be way too late.
On the other hand, I do see a possible threat to the government here.
Wait wait wait...
Are we actually going to BEG them to LET US help them?
Either the Burmese are some seriously good psychological warriors or we're a bunch of dopes.
Probably a little of both.
Kouchner is one of my favorite leftists: one who believes totalitarianism is fundamentally wrong. Your standard modern intellectual leftist, by contrast, figures that America has a history of causing a lot of people a lot of grief domestically and abroad over the past 230 years or so. This is seen as indistinguishable, as morally equivalent to Stalin's Great Terror, the Hitlerian Holocaust, Mao's Cultural Revolution, Pol Pot's Killing Fields, etcetera and so on.
I think it would be great if we airdropped food supplies on Burma. It would be the right thing to do, even if we had to "impose" relief on that loonocratic military junta. But there's no resolve to do so. We're preparing for an Obama presidency when totalitarian despots worldwide can look forward to an enhanced moral standing in our diplomacy.
Meanwhile, in a rare moment of academic clarity, we find a study (presumably not one the august UN could sponsor) that links deaths in natural disaster to a lack of growth and development brought about by a lack of democracy. You can read about that here at the popular German "Axis of Goodness" blog (it's in English after the first paragraph in German):
Democracy, Dictatorship and Natural Disasters.
It's time to close the UN offices and evict the corrupt, worthless organization from its United States offices. It has not only failed completely in Myanmar, Rwanda, and countless other humanitarian crises, but it has been responsible for rapes, murders and the installation and support of corruption worldwide. As Paul Volcker learned, it is also incapable of being reformed and cleaned up.
Regarding Burma/Myanmar, a America's leftists need to decide how much cost in lives their isolationist ideology is worth. The decision to avoid and ignore a problem, or treat it with insufficient effort and resources, is still a decision that we are all accountable for. If your intent is to do good in the world, then put the right action behind it. If you "intend" to help in Myanmar, but your actions are most likely to lead to the death of hundreds of thousands through inaction, your intent is actually to have those people suffer and die. Intent is determined through our actions (or the lack thereof), not through mind games we play with ourselves and wishful conjectures and hand-wringing done while sipping on Starbuck's latte. Never has the world seen so many self-professed idealists with incredible intent and so much wealth who do so little, and inevitably end up causing greater harm through their misdirection and obstruction of difficult but correct choices.
Thugs like Burma's dictators need to be given some clear options by the world's grownups, just as Saddam Hussein was provided. Act as a responsible government and take care of your people (enlisting help when you clearly do not have the capacity to direct efforts yourself), step aside, or be removed by the responsible democracies. We simply do not have room in a shrinking world for thugs, bullies and genocidal tyrants.
I can't see "helping" against the wishes of the local government. That has the potential for turning into the same type of clusterf*ck as Black Hawk Down, which directly resulted in September 11th.
Starting shit and then chickening out emboldens our enemies. If you're going to invade, you go balls to the wall and victory is the only option. Judging by what I see in the media and on this blog, the U.S. doesn't even have the guts to stick it out in Iraq, where we have a major strategic stake. If we go into someplace like Myanmar, we're going to pull out when it first gets tough and hand a morale victory to everybody who either is or wants to take us on.
A "humanitarian invasion"? With what? Corn dogs? Wheat stocks? Cans of ethanol?
Maybe we should use military force to remove the dictatorial government and free the citizens. Oh wait, we tried that and everybody's still whining about "War for Oil". Let's have a "War for Rice" starring the United Nations, minus the US. Beat them plow shears into swords, boys.
Or we could just continue to believe that "all cultures are equal" and celebrate the diversity of starvation.
Well if we're going to invade, we're going to need more troops. Who's planning on signing up?
Megan, you've read your Amartya Sen.
Why don't you educate your readers on the wisdom of sending a fleet of B2s to drop ten million of cash on the distressed population?
OK, maybe Euros would be better.
Perhaps a test for environmental durability of the various currencies is in order.
Good for Kouchner. The idea that we should let tens (hundreds?) of thousands of people die merely because the junta is paranoid is immoral.
We have 2 choices. Ignore the problem and give peace a chance. Or, become like Rome and go in and take over the country and rule how we see fit (forget democracy, that didn't seem to work with Iraq). This may mean having to kill the few (or the many if things go wrong) to save the many.
The first choice seems a lot easier and the second may not even solve the problem if things go poorly, so from a cost benefit analysis, the first is the choice we should make. Although, if our president were named Genghis Khan instead of George Bush, I'd feel a lot better about the 2nd option.
I think the situation is significantly different from Somalia. In Somalia, you had armed groups intentionally prolonging the famine because they had become economically dependent on the extortion they extracted from aid agencies. These groups were not unified. They did not have a secure grip on power. There was a reasonable expectation that force could actually work. There is no reason to believe that is the case in Burma. Force will further harm those we wish to aid.
MarkG: "Your standard modern intellectual leftist, by contrast, figures that America has a history of causing a lot of people a lot of grief domestically and abroad over the past 230 years or so. This is seen as indistinguishable, as morally equivalent to Stalin's Great Terror, the Hitlerian Holocaust, Mao's Cultural Revolution, Pol Pot's Killing Fields, etcetera and so on."
Haha! that's a good one!
To the extent the junta has a clue, they may be remembering Noriega and the famous earthquake in Nicaragua.
His corrupt and incompetent handling (theft) of international aid transformed the Sandinistas, up to then a bunch of rads camping out, into the saviors of the population, especially after Carter bailed on the democratic oppo.
Letting aid in, in any form, could be more destabilizing than keeping the outside outside and making sure the army is fed, if no one else is.
"The idea that we should let tens (hundreds?) of thousands of people die merely because the junta is paranoid is immoral."
I agree, which is why it's fundamentally immoral for the US to stay in the United Nations. The main role of the UN is to make such juntas and dictators feel accepted, regardless of what they do to their own people.
The world didn't do anything during North Korea's long famine (well, except that Clinton sent Madeline Albright to flirt, drink champagne and gush about how charming Kim Jong Il is). We haven't intervened in Zimbabwe, and we're letting Chavez destroy Venezuela. SLORC lost the election in Burma in 1990, Aung San Suu Kyi was given the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991, and then the international community apparently felt that it had done enough.
There aren't any easy answers here, but this should be a reminder of the huge cost of allowing these sick thugs to have outdated legal, political and economic systems. Traditionally, foreign aid has been structured to give dictators an incentive to produce poverty. Bush's Millenium Challenge at least attempts to change this.
We need a stronger, clearer public understanding that most poverty world-wide is caused by bad government. Any discussion of world poverty should focus first and foremost on modernizing governments, since they are the main problem.
To all those talking about U.S. imperialism, blah blah blah - this is a proposal from France - presumably if they are proposing this, they are also prepared to back up their proposal with the muscle to make it happen. This would not be the 1st time that the French decided to provide humanitarian aid 'for their own good' against the wishes of a countries ruling regime. All the examples I can think of so far are in Africa, but it's certainly within French capabilities to do something like this in Mynamar as well if they choose to do so.
well, except that Clinton sent Madeline Albright to flirt
Yikes. And people think Bush has bad diplomatic instincts?
Get help in here! https://secure.avaaz.org/en/burma_cyclone/77.php
Nelson writes: "so from a cost benefit analysis... Ignore the problem and give peace a chance."
This is where I simply can't understand the intellectual sloppiness of the left. My brain doesn't permit fuzzy, nice-sounding, guilt-easing falsehoods and fictions. What cost benefit analysis Nelson? I'm an econometrician and direct operational risk management for a global financial corporation. Please do share your analysis with us
Somehow though, I'm skeptical about your analysis given you have logical linkage problems, where "ignore a problem" is attached to "give peace a chance" as a presumed and unsupported direct outcome. The wealth of historical evidence to the contrary of your conjecture is overwhelming; in fact, ignoring problems historically almost always amplifies the cost of treating it when the problem no longer can be avoided.
The dishonest, intellectual slackers of the left have caused too many innocent lives to be lost, enslaved continents and impaired civilization. Yes, there is a cost with intervention: our soldiers, the loss of innocent life by accident, and the occasional wrongful or malicious action that is part of the human distribution. But there is a cost through inaction as well, and it has always been much greater. In a default, interest, penalty and principal come due with great vigor. Yet our parasitic left has gone from demanding a life of ease with no criticism of their low worth, to now demanding the right to judge those of us who do produce and contribute to positively changing our community.
It's as if the grasshopper wasn't content in being a mere parasite, mooching off of the hard-working ants, but now the grasshopper is a self-proclaimed moral authority. His life of excess, neglect and detachment is somehow argued to be superior to the foolish ants who "might fail" as they deal with the hard decisions reality requires. The grasshopper has transcended from being judgment-free to being the Judge.
"There is risk in doing something," observes the mindful Grasshopper. "Only fools intervene in others business, saving millions of Iraqis from poison gas, rescuing dying Burmese from an oppressive government, or removing the threat of global war by engaging the Iranians. The superior moral path is one of focused good intent combined with diligent inaction. Through the worship and sacrifice of other's money and emissions to the mother earth, the consumption of fine "green" goods and the ownership of a Prius or Volvo, we Grasshopper signal a message of unity that requires no sacrifice nor stake. Our proper worship and consumption gives us the authority to judge all others."
The liberal Grasshopper sits back with his undemanding government or union job of minimal hours and excess vacation and pension paid at others expense, enjoys his nice house, car, broadband, Internet and excess calories, condemning and overtaxing the hard working entrepreneur or innovative business person, criticizing those who dare deal with real problems in a meaningful way. His energy is focused not on addressing the world's real problems, but to imposing the greatest burdens upon the very ant whose pocketbook he loots for his worthless survival. Because he lives solely because of the ant's efforts, he has completely projected himself into believing he is the ant's rightful authority.
People are dying in Myanmar today because people like Nelson needed to feel better without any material effort or sacrifice. The time is near where the ants clean house and throw out the Grasshoppers among us.
Ethanol is a source of calories. Where do you think the phrase "beer belly" comes from?
redherkey -
That's one of the most interesting responses I've ever read. I'm actually indifferent to either action. Here's the order of outcomes I can see from best to worst:
(a) Go in and swiftly take over the country. Make Myanmar an American territory, rule harshly but competently and fairly to prevent disorder and feed the masses. I call this the imperial solution.
(b) Do nothing. Save American lives and resources while leaving the choices of people dieing or living up to them, even if it means civil war. Offer aid if it's asked for and accepted freely.
(c) Go in and loose a bunch of American lives or rule ineffectively or allow dissent or hold elections too soon or anything else that would cause a civil war (with us in the middle) to erupt.
I don't doubt our troops ability to go in and take out the existing government. I do doubt our ability to govern what's left over afterwards effectively. We're not Rome. We're past the days of manifest destiny and we're past the days of "total war" which would allow us to impose an effective government.
Er... lose not loose, sorry.
There's really nothing that can be done quickly enough to make much difference for this crisis (not that our military couldn't act quickly - it's the political system that couldn't move fast enough on this, and I'm not sure that's a bad thing). But Burma's problems didn't start recently, and other countries with dysfunctional governments could be similarly affected at any time.
Why is this recent problem in Burma worse than what the Burmese people been going through for nearly two decades, or what Zimbabwe is going through, or North Korea? None of it is acceptable. We should use this as a reminder of the suffering caused by bad government in so many places around the world. How can we pressure governments to modernize? Certainly not by essentially honoring them in the UN!
Megan: Haven't various hungry countries in Africa rejected free grain from the US on the grounds that it's somehow evil GM doomfood?
Given that SLORC is worse than the Zambian government - and probably worse than Mugabe in Zimbabwe - I have no strong belief that they'd take free food, even if they didn't use the ridiculous GM excuse.
Governments like that don't much care about mass starvation, especially if there are rebellious groups they can starve out. Food is a weapon, and hunger is welcome, as long as it can be made to starve their opponents, and tighten their grip on everyone else.
(I'm not sure that a "temporary halt to the ethanol program" would be very useful for this problem - though I completely support a permanent halt to it for other reasons.)
Nelson, I concur with your comment that "I do doubt our ability to govern what's left over afterwards effectively."
Militarily and economically, we would have little difficulty. However, we have too many in our country that know nothing but the easy way. Conflicts worth solving are done in a 30-minute episode of Friends. Hard challenges are to be walked away from. Deferred gratification isn't interesting. Etc.
Not to sound like I'm an angry old WW-II generation retiree, though I wish we had some of the great generation left in leadership positions to help us recognize the threats we're ignoring. As if the social security, Federal debt, trade deficit and infrastructure neglect we're handing on to our kids wasn't enough, we're engineering serious problems globally through inattention.
Per your argument against taking out governments, are you satisfied with the cost of inaction? In time, we'll be surrounded with nuclear-equipped dictatorships exporting terror worldwide and very little leverage nor support globally. The estimated 60+ million lost to socialism in the 20th Century may be a drop in the bucket of what we face going forward. Is a decade of false peace worth that cost, or should we deal with the problem before it gets out of control?
Megan, per your suggestion that "now would be a very good time for the US to call a temporary halt to its ethanol program," I'd suggest you're treating the symptom and not the disease.
Grain prices are at record highs because of several coefficients, and the one you're suggesting is most significant is the ethanol program. However, if you study corn and soybean pricing, other factors are significant, including oil prices. You have both a production cost increase (fuel to plant, spray and harvest crops, fertilizer produced using fuel, seed production and delivery cost increases, increased trucking and shipping costs for harvested grain, etc.) as well as an increased crop demand due to the substitution linkage of the inferior good capacity for some gasoline and diesel.
In other words, quit messing around with a less significant variant and solve the real problem: oil supply and market price. Open up domestic drilling, put political pressure on OPEC to stop starving the world, invade Venezuela and Iran (just kidding!), etc. Of course, the political framing for the right solution doesn't make one popular in progressive circles, does it?
After solving this crisis, we should next turn our attention to the sudden shortage of Risperdal we evidently have here in the US.
"It seems to me that now would be a very good time for the US to call a temporary halt to its ethanol program, and ship that grain to where it might actually provide a net benefit. "
I don't see how sending corn is going to help when a rice crop is destroyed. These are human beings, not livestock or Americans and Mexicans who can eat corn. The last time we sent corn into a famine it was horrible - we sent corn to Ireland during the Famine and people didn't know how to cok it. They ate it half raw, pereorated their intestines and dided of peritonitis.
"These are human beings, not livestock or Americans and Mexicans who can eat corn."
Go to Hong Kong and order a Hawaiian pizza from Pizza Hut - it will have ham, pineapple and corn. They put corn in all kinds of things in Hong Kong, because the locals like it (I didn't mind the corn on pizzas - my main complaint was that there was very little cheese, since they haven't taken to cheese the way they have to corn; and replacing tomato sauce with thousand island dressing on pizza is odd!).
Yes, Hong Kong isn't Burma, but that doesn't mean they've never cooked corn. And, we could work out something (sell the corn and use it to buy rice? stop growing the corn and plant other crops?).
Like Sigivald, I doubt that trying to end the corn-based ethanol program would do anything for poorly governed countries in the near future, but I like the idea anyway, for other reasons.
Put a carrier group off the Irawaddy delta, send in the Marines and start distributing aid. Let SLORC bitch if they want, but I'm pretty sure no one is going to have the means, or desire, to stop us.
Tell the UN and all the whiners to go piss up a rope. Hundreds of thousands of people have died around the world because 'diplomats' have sat around whining and wringing their hands.
I'm sure the Thais would allow us to work out of Utapao AB just as we did during the Tsunami. They've go enough problems with Burmses (and Lao, and Cambodian) refugees. They'll be happy to help us keep the Burmese in Burma.
Jim: I'm pretty sure we can also tell people "cook thoroughly" when we send them corn (and even suggest adaptations of local recipes!). It's not 1850 anymore, you see, and that lesson has been learned.
The people of Burma are, indeed, "human beings" - just as those of North America (or even Italy!) are, who also eat corn. Corn being better, you see, than starvation, even if it is not one's preferred subsistence grain.
It occurs to me that the sanctions regime should be especially effective now. You might expect its supporters to be pleased.
What is the point of maintaining what is, in effect, an ineffective blockade, if you start shipping people goodies as soon as they are in real trouble?
It occurs to me that the sanctions regime should be especially effective now. You might expect its supporters to be pleased.
What is the point of maintaining what is, in effect, an ineffective blockade, if you start shipping people goodies as soon as they are in real trouble?
I don't need to inform any well read person about the scale of the tragedy unfolding in Myanmar. Even if we accept the fact that the Burmese authorities were informed of the approaching cyclone by it's neighbors and they couldn't do much given the lack of disaster management infrastructure, even if we accept that they don't have basic health facilities on the ground even without a cyclone and therefore couldn't help people for the first 2 days, we cannot accept the Myanmar authorities' reluctance to accept help from the rest of the world for the Burmese people.
There must surely be ways (including aggressive diplomacy and beyond) that can produce tangible results within 24-48 hours of such tragedies, where developed countries and relief organizations can over-ride such diplomatic situations, and be able to provide support where needed.
Having worked in the critical care field, I find it impossible to fathom how cruel all of us sitting comfortably in the developed world are being, by accepting the stance of the Myanmar authorities, and merely writing or reporting about it, and seeing none of the logical anger from world leaders. Where are the leaders of the US, UK, France, Russia and China right now?
Talking is not going to help the Burmese people now dying of hunger, thirst and lack of sanitary conditions. We must be able to push the Burmese authorities to let the aid agencies get in as many specialists as are needed. There are many phases in the management of a disaster. The Burmese Authority failed to protect it's people by not issuing warnings, and then by not having a salvage system in place to protect the people who didn't perish right away. We as the developed world must acknowledge part of the guilt for failing to step up within 48 hours of the catastrophe and not bulldozing our way into Burma with help.
It is a shame that life in different parts of the world carries extremely different costs and how short our memories are. The Asian Tsunami took away about 200000 lives and it shocked the world, but recovery efforts have slowed down. Hurricane Katrina claimed about 1800 lives, devastated a city that is still struggling to recover. Genocide in Sudan continues with the implicit acceptance of all countries (Saying that we disagree and not doing anything else makes one a condoner). Now, the cyclone in Burma is threatening to take around 50-100 thousand lives and we are still dragging our feet.
If the leaders of the developed world truly believe in their moral standing (of which there is no current evidence), now is the time to act and not just speak about what they want to do to help. We need Barack Obama, George Bush, Hillary Clinton and John McCain to step up to the plate, collaborate with Ban Ki-moon and the other world leaders to stop this nonsense in Burma. No, there is no prize, no presidential election benefit, no superdelegates and no Nobel Peace Prize for doing all this. What there is a sense of having being true to the ideals of the people these leaders represent.
There must surely be ways (including aggressive diplomacy and beyond)
Diplomacy is just an attempt to persuade someone to do something you want. How do you "aggressively persuade" someone? Pressure? What sort of pressure can you apply - and are we not already applying that pressure via the sanctions regime?
"We as the developed world must acknowledge part of the guilt for failing to step up within 48 hours of the catastrophe and not bulldozing our way into Burma with help."
The catastrophe for Burma was in 1990, when SLORC ignored the results of the election and kept power. Natural disasters are bound to happen sooner or later. Burma is suffering mainly because of inadequate, antiquated government. The Burmese deserve sympathy and concern (and perhaps even action), but no more so than Zimbabweans, North Koreans or even Venezuelans (although Venezuela's leader is just starting to ravish his country).
This catastrophe is primarily one of bad government, and we've known that Burma was badly governed for well over a decade. There's no surprise here.
Why are we giving Burma so much more attention than Zimbabwe, where election results are now being ignored and overturned? Is unnecessary death OK as long as it's done gradually, killing people off steadily over time rather than in one natural-disaster-instigated lump? I deeply sympathize with the Burmese, as I have for years now, but why are we all pretending that this is a recent and isolated problem?
Some Ideas: A short op-ed by the Vice President of the Asia Society and PSA Co-Chair, Jamie Metzl on the situation in Burma....
"As you all know, the crisis in Burma is transforming from a natural disaster to a humanitarian catastrophe due to the xenophobia, incompetence, and malevolence of the Burmese government. With every day that passes, the situation of the up to tow million Burmese people affected by this crisis, almost three quarters of whom have reportedly not received any assistance, is becoming ever more precarious. It is clear that the time has come for bold international action. My colleague, Brian Vogt, wrote an excellent piece detailing one strategy for getting aid through to those who need it earlier this week. Brian is quite right to warn that we must not to allow our disgust for the Burmese junta lead us to political posturing rather than decisive action.
Although the Chinese government stated last week that they did not think it appropriate for the Burma crisis to be brought to the UN Security Council, it is becoming increasingly clear that stronger action by the UN and the international community will be required to break this deadly impasse. French Prime Minister Bernard Kouchner was among the first to call for aid drops in Burma, even against the wishes of the Burmese regime. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is now calling for a UN summit on aid to Burma. The United States must continue to take a lead in these efforts, and to build international consensus around a more aggressive assistance agenda with the greatest amount of international legitimacy possible. Clearly, food and aid drops will not be enough as water-borne diseases begin to take their toll over the coming days, particularly on the young and the elderly. Specifically, the United States can actively support the provision of assistance under chapter 7 of the UN Charter, as was done for Somalia and other recent humanitarian crises."
For more on Burma from PSA, please go to www.acrosstheaisle.org