Apropos narratives. Why does yours make 'intervention' and 'playing hardball' the centre of the plot line? When did that become the 'default setting' in dealing with humanitarian catastrophes? Isn't the conflation of humanitarian aid with morals rather counterproductive?
"Junta." Do we have a Junta? Or is it just them?
One could ask: Why not invade? And it would be the wrong question, and I hope most people out here would be at least a little gun shy in invading another country with the current context; besides, invasion (if it means more than strategic bombing and capitulation) is not something we're really up for in very practical terms. Is it really how bad the situation is or the rhetorical and praxis resources that dictate the response? Where are the celebs on this? Other than one or two movies, where are the docs and feature films? Concerts to raise awareness? If we really want to do something about Burma, why not start with Walmart?
They may be passé but what about Just War Principles.
Ok, there is a highly corrupt and incompetent government running the place. The government hdoes not belive in human rights. It is unlikly that they can manage a relief effort on this scale on their own. So I suppose we could say there is a just cause.
But a reasonable probability of success? What would be success? How much force would be necessary not just to put aid workers in place and thrown out the bums out, but to pacify and rebuild the country? Does success include not upsetting the balance of power between India and China?
Is it legal? Burma is not developing weapons of mass destruction; it is not attacking a neighbor. It connot even threaten a neighbor. It just wants to mind it's own bussiness without outside intervention. The UN charter guarantees National Soverinty.
Geography. There are certainly worse places to fight in the world. But not many.
Ah, but the real problem here is that the logic of humanitarian intervention slides all-too-easily into the logic of "forcing people to be free." The universalist character of human rights claims does not leave a lot of room for different-but-equally-valid modes of governance; in Carl Schmitt's terminology, violators of universal human rights are foes rather than enemies, and although you fight noble wars against enemies you exterminate or otherwise eliminate foes because they're not really human -- at least, not really human in the same way that you are. Violators of universal human rights are, if anything, even worse, since they're fallen humans who have both given up their own human status and obscured that of others.
A long time ago Kant realized that universal moral claims pointed inexorably in the direction of wars of conquest to establish a peace based on commonly-held conceptions of reason. He was perfectly find with this, and actually argued that such wars were a part of Nature's historical conspiracy to civilize everyone (a position that Hegel later takes and runs with). Although we forget it, this was an important part of the argument of Kant's famous essay on "perpetual peace" -- the elimination of difference, by force if necessary, in order to solidify common standards.
I take Peter's point -- and Kant's point -- to be, quite simply, that if we want to make universal moral claims, we necessarily commit ourselves to forceful interventions, or to increasingly hollow-sounding technical excuses for not implementing the logical consequences of our positions. "Liberty is God's gift to humanity" -- GWB's phrase -- means universal empire, and also means humanitarian intervention at gunpoint.
If we accept such universal moral claims, is there any viable alternative except the distasteful claim that "they" don't deserve the rights and freedoms that "we" have?
Whose rights? What rights? These are good questions. The better one is: Whose obligation? Within that question, I think, there is a question of action, not just who acts, but how they act (following the Kantian line of jus ad bellum, jus in bello, jus post bellum). Should the US act in typically boring, fruitless liberal ways? Or should they act in self sacrificing ways? Invasion is not virtue; it is not something I am (or would ever be) advocating. If the world is truly cosmopolitan, there are meaningful actions beyond the liberal act of denunciation that might strike at the heart of US hedonism, but have positive effects on Burma. Of course this goes beyond the logic of humanitarian intervention.
When it comes to conservation though, they have allowed huge intervention, letting us make wildlife reserves and monitoring tiger statistics: see Wildlife conservation society, based in NY. So its weird they dont allow human aid.
I think the equally interesting question here is how on earth the French government thought this was even remotely feasible, simply from a logistical and military point of view...
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