Since Cyclone Nargis struck Burma, there’s been much discussion about the wherefores and the whyhows of forcing assistance upon the military junta that runs the country. Rosemary Righter’s words summarise the argument:
The junta is not, of its own volition, going to let in anything like the volume of aid required, at the speed required, to prevent a natural disaster turning into a monstrous, and manmade, humanitarian catastrophe… Governments with the power to help must insist on doing so, with or without the junta’s co-operation – with the approval of the UN Security Council if they can, and without it if they must.
Bernard Kouchner weighed in, invoking the droit d’ingerence1 and the Responsibility to Protect, to which one can only reply – well, he would, wouldn’t he? Kouchner came of age politically as the droit d’ingerence was being born, and since becoming French Foreign Minister (no, I can’t believe that one either) he’s used his position as a platform to promote a more activist approach towards international affairs. In response, Gareth Evans – one of the architects of the Responsibility to Protect – at first expresses concern that the invocation of R2P in this context
had the potential to dramatically undercut international support for another great cause, to which [Kouchner] among others is also passionately committed, that of ending mass atrocity crimes once and for all.
Having said that, Evans then makes the point that
when a government default is as grave as the course on which the Burmese generals now seem to be set, there is at least a prima facie case to answer for their intransigence being a crime against humanity – of a kind which would attract the responsibility to protect principle.
This would mark a tremendous shift in international affairs, even beyond that of the original endorsing of R2P at the 2005 UN World Summit. While in principle I can agree with a statement like that, in practice it doesn’t appear to be workable. The question of who decides when a government is being sufficiently “intransigent”, and what the criteria for intransigence would be, seem to make it of limited use as a policy tool – as with the Convention on the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide. However I wouldn’t use that as an argument against the Genocide Convention, so I can’t in good conscience use it as an argument against applying R2P to cases such as Burma.
(The implications are wider than that, of course. At what point does intransigence become sufficient to warrant intervention? How incompetent does a government have to be before we push in regardless? Anybody with the slightest interest in these things should recognise that the first argument could have been used against Israel with the Occupied Palestinian Territories, and that the second could have been used against the US federal government in New Orleans. Let it be clear that I am not making these arguments – but you can be damned sure that there are more than a few states that would like to.)
We can argue around the moral and legal arguments around R2P as long as we like. My problem is that many of the arguments for humanitarian intervention don’t take into account the realities of delivering assistance, particularly following a natural disaster in an authoritarian state. Take, for example, Nick Cohen – a man with precisely no experience in this field, but who nevertheless knows exactly what we should do:
Suppose they are wrong, say the realists, and aid workers are met with armed resistance. Is the UN going to start a war for the sake of delivering rice rations? Even the apparently modest proposal to airdrop supplies is, they continue, a violation of Burma’s sovereignty. As always, there are 1,001 good reasons for doing nothing. But I don’t think passivity is an option for the UN.
Well, maybe he doesn’t know exactly what we should do, but he knows we should do something! This is of course the classic humanitarian fallacy, the thought bumble that launched a thousand NGOs, and should be treated with the suspicion it deserves. I couldn’t let this topic go by without allowing Conor Foley (who has taken issue with Cohen in the past) to explain:
The problem with mounting humanitarian operations during complex emergencies such as this is that it is very difficult to separate the effects of conflict, natural disaster and the overall political situation… Some have argued that aid should be made conditional on the government agreeing to meaningful political reform and dialogue with the pro-democracy movement. But if the government rejects this, then refusing aid will simply increase the suffering of the poorest and most vulnerable people.
We’re stuck between a rock and a hard place, then – the humanitarian imperative says that we should deliver assistance to people, regardless of the nature of their government, while the political reality is that we can’t even get into the country. The way to break the deadlock, according to Righter and others of that inclination, is to go in with all hearts bleeding and all guns blazing:
If the generals get the message that “no” will not be taken for an answer, they may decide to join what they can’t beat. And if not? Imposing aid is a messy business. Dying for lack of it is messier by far.
Above I mentioned the realities of delivering aid following a disaster, and unfortunately one of those realities is that you can’t “impose” aid. If you don’t have the co-operation of a government that has functional control of the affected areas, then it’s difficult to get anything done.2 Even if you do have the co-operation of a government, it’s often difficult to get things done; there are a thousand ways that a government can make life difficult for aid organisations on the ground, whether through malicious intent or bureaucratic neglect.
So “imposing aid” isn’t just a “messy business” – it’s a logistical impossibility in an environment like Burma. The only hope we have of reaching the communities affected by the cyclone with the aid required – not just this time, remember, but the next time as well – is the course that we’re already on. The diplomatic and humanitarian pressure must be unrelenting, even if it proves to be fruitless, because in the end it’s the only way to actually deliver assistance – which even Kouchner acknowledged (in a joint article with David Miliband):
even in the face of the horror, we have to take into account the Burmese authorities, upon whom we depend to facilitate international action.
People have already died because we haven’t managed to get assistance to them in a timely manner, and many more will die yet. However we must remember that this is not our fault; it’s the fault of the military regime. If we are really serious about relieving the suffering of the people of Burma, then what is needed is not just short-term assistance, but a more effective longer-term strategy for engaging with the government of Burma.3 It is largely because of the absence of interest in Burma and the consequent lack of engagement with the government that we are in the position we are today – stuck on the sidelines, fuming at the fouls.
