Robert Kaplan has a very intriguing op-ed in the Times discussing the situation in Myanmar which I think is well worth reading, given that it’s fairly brief and Robert Kaplan often has an interesting take on situations, especially situations which seem intractable. I’m not quite happy with the piece; it seems like there’s a chunk missing which disrupts the flow, but that might be because of the zealous editorial staff more than Kaplan himself.

What’s going on in Burma/Myanmar right now is very, very interesting. The world seems to be in a strange holding pattern, eager to help, yet held back by the military junta. It’s always made me happy that the world seems to pull together in the event of disaster, regardless of other issues, sending food, medicine, and other supplies to the sites of natural disasters. It’s pretty neat that global efforts can be quickly mobilized to make a difference, and I can’t imagine how frustrating it must be for aid workers trapped on the wrong side of the border.

(Although I guess they could always pop over to China and help out there, as long as they’re in the neighborhood.)

Talking about this with my father the other day, he expressed a sort of disbelief at the predicted death toll from the cyclone, and I pointed out that the government made the death toll even worse, by choosing to actively reject offers of assistance, and that both sickens and horrifies me. I can see why the junta doesn’t want foreigners in the country, but it’s still immensely sad that thousands of people have/are going to die because of their government’s decisions.

Kaplan’s piece discusses the idea of forcing Myanmar to accept aid, and the potential consequences. As he points out, the only way to force a country to accept your help is to basically invade, and there’s no way that would be a smart idea without a large coalition of forces. But he also explored some of the long term repercussions, like the fact that an invasion would probably topple the junta, and create a big, slimy mess.

Although what’s happening in Burma makes me angry, I don’t think that forcing the government to accept aid is the solution. After all, my government makes decisions which lead to the deaths of thousands of people, and no one’s invading us, because it’s a process of slow attrition, rather than a very public situation. I don’t think that anyone is seriously considering an invasion of Burma, but it was still kind of an odd thing to think about, the idea of forcing our way into a country to offer humanitarian aid.

The piece is an interesting thought experiment, pondering what would happen if we did invade, and how such an invasion should be handled. At the start, he points out that conditions are pretty much perfect, due to a confluence of factors which have come together at just the right time, but, by the end, he admits that an invasion would be a poorly conceived idea which could potentially cause all heck to break loose.

Of course, as Kaplan points out, the invasion of Iraq was presented as a form of humanitarian aid, with the implication that it was sort of a moral imperative to topple Hussein and give Iraq a democracy, and some of the world went along with us at the time. (”Democracy: the gift that keeps on giving” would have been a great tagline for the war, don’t you think?) It makes me wonder how a serious proposal for a US-led invasion of Burma would be greeted by Americans and the world.