Eric Witte May 19th, 2008
The Burmese government’s failure to assist the victims of Cyclone Nargis, and worse - its outright obstruction of international relief efforts - are leading to mass death in the country. The specter of hundreds of thousands of victims slowly succumbing to starvation and preventable communicable disease has sparked debate over whether the international community should trigger the “responsibility to protect” (R2P) principle created at the UN World Summit in 2005 but to date never exercised. French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner has been the most vocal advocate. Ivo Daalder and Paul Stares recently put forth thoughtful arguments in support of the idea. Gareth Evans, the President of the International Crisis Group and a co-chair of the commission that crafted the principle, raises good questions about whether R2P even applies in the case of Burma.
In the United States, the prospect of intervention in Burma has triggered a backlash among opponents of the Iraq war wholly unrelated to the applicability of the R2P. They argue, among other things, that an invasion could cause the government to fall, resulting in a free-for-all among Burma’s many minority groups and factions. The United States and its allies, already tied down amid sectarian and ethnic strife in Iraq and Afghanistan, could find themselves bogged down in a third occupation - further stretching already overburdened militaries, and in the end - by unleashing unstoppable ethnic strife - perhaps doing more harm than good.
These are serious objections, and for proponents of intervention, certainly issues that would be horribly irresponsible to ignore, especially in light of the Iraq debacle. But some of the opponents of intervention in Burma only seem to be seeing the situation through the lens of Iraq, and to a lesser extent, Afghanistan. Their dismissal of the idea appears rooted in quite a large assumption: that any breach of Burma’s sovereignty means a full military invasion.
This is the latest in a string of debates over military intervention since the end of the Cold War that are distorted towards the lessons of the most recent experience. The Clinton administration did not intervene in Rwanda and was very late to intervene in Bosnia in large measure because of the perceived lessons of Somalia in 1993 (”post-Mogadishu syndrome”). Successful intervention and peacekeeping in Bosnia starting in 1995 certainly undercut domestic opposition to military intervention in Kosovo in 1999. In turn, that intervention’s success, despite deep flaws in the post-intervention phase, may have made it easier for the Bush administration to find support among Democrats for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. For some observers, the Iraq quagmire has now made any thought of intervention in Burma a non-starter.
Surely we can do better than this. Burma is neither Bosnia nor Somalia, nor Kosovo, nor Iraq. Burma is Burma, with unique factors of history, military, geography, and culture, and subject to a unique mix of factors in international diplomacy. The burdens of Iraq and Afghanistan do place constraints on what kind of action is conceivable, but should not stop the debate cold. With the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in the balance, it is astoundingly flippant to merely suggest, as the usually thoughtful Josh Marshall has: “Why don’t we not invade any more countries for a while?”
For starters, it is far from clear that actions breaching Burmese sovereignty need amount to a full invasion. In Rwanda, jamming hate radio would have been one useful intervention absent the will to mount the full military campaign that should have been conducted. In Bosnia in 1995, belated air strikes against Bosnian Serb artillery around Sarajevo were sufficient to end shelling of the capital. In Burma, for example, if air drops or beach landings of humanitarian supplies made sense (a big if) without the junta’s assent, it’s hard to see how this could lead to an Iraq-like scenario, or demand so many resources as to make implementation of the plan impossible in light of force commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Those who argue for intervention in Burma have a grave duty to think through its effects, intended and unintended. I am neither an expert on Burma nor humanitarian relief, and do not feel qualified to advocate a specific course of action. My point is that those who unequivocally oppose any breach of the junta’s sovereignty also have a grave duty to think through the ramifications of inaction and should consider middle roads. Hundreds of thousands of people needlessly died in Rwanda and Bosnia because of political opposition to timely international military intervention. Much of that opposition was grounded in ignorance of those conflicts. In the present situation in Burma, the sovereignty of an illegitimate government should hardly be the highest priority. And with so many lives on the line, glib dismissal of any kind of intervention is unforgivable.
