Omission of Burma
The other day Thoreau alluded to the stupidity of seriously advocating the United States invade Burma to overthrow the junta and liberate the place. (As opposed to the impulse to invade Burma and overthrow the junta and liberate the place, which is perfectly understandable, provided you follow it with, But maybe we should think this through first.) The fallback options short of invasion include the idea of airdropping supplies.
Kerry Howley has lived in Burma and thinks lots of things through. She notes that Oxfam believes that airdropping supplies can actually be counterproductive. She adds that, yes, things in Burma could get worse in the case of intervention:
Burma is isolated, but it is no North Korea; there is ample room for the generals to become more insular by cutting off Internet access and throwing all foreign workers out of the country. This is a country that’s always in crisis, and dozens of well-funded foreign NGOs are operating within Burma at any given time.
One of the illusions that convinced some otherwise well-meaning people to go along with the conquest of Iraq in 2003 was, “Iraq is so bad, how could we make it worse?” But we could. So with Burma. I know almost nothing about the junta that rules Burma. But I know that it’s the junta that rules Burma – that is, that they’ve extended their writ over a preponderance of the territory we think of as Burma, more or less. That is to say, they successfully maintain power.
The junta apparently numbers 19 guys, but 19 guys don’t run a place like Burma by themselves. They’ve got people for that. Cops, soldiers, secret policemen, bureaucrats. And those people have families and friends and hangers-on. Stakeholders. And apparently “regional commanders enjoy a great deal of autonomy in their respective areas.” So they and their retainers and whoever else profits from existing arrangements have a stake in the existing system. And the habits and attitudes of the bulk of the population are the habits and attitudes that enable one to survive under tyranny. It’s not about knocking off that one bad guy and his eighteen friends. There’s a whole set of structures and class interests and cultural patterns, local peculiarities and regional fault lines to cope with. I don’t know much about Burma, but I know that much about any place. It’s hubris to be sure you can start rearranging such a society without a good chance of making it even worse.
Comment by The Mechanical Eye —
May 16, 2008 @ 1:43 am
I don’t know much about Burma, but I know that much about any place. It’s hubris to be sure you can start rearranging such a society without a good chance of making it even worse.
The tragedy of American politics is that such thinking is labeled as dirty hippie liberal appeasement, when a more honest age would consider it as a straightforward Burkean respect for localism.
DU
Comment by Thoreau —
May 16, 2008 @ 2:29 am
Jim, I’ve seen people from Burma, and their skin is swarthy and they have a different religion. So I don’t think your analysis applies to them.
Bombs away!
Comment by mds —
May 16, 2008 @ 10:29 am
Marry me, Mr. Henley.
Well, to be fair, that is pretty much the only way the US does humanitarian interventions these days. It never really struck me before, that New Orleans actually got off easy by being abandoned. Massive airstrikes and a full-scale invasion to topple Governor Blanco would have probably caused even more carnage than not giving a fuck did.
Comment by Jon H —
May 16, 2008 @ 11:59 am
Invading is a dumb idea, but at least it wouldn’t be necessary to take over the whole place. The worst-effected places are on the coast, after all.
I expect some big military air-cushion transports could rush in, dump off tons of supplies, and rush back out before the junta could react.
Worst case, you’d need some air support to pin down the junta forces and keep them away from the coast long enough for the supplies to disperse somewhat and be less susceptible to confiscation.
Comment by Happy Jack —
May 16, 2008 @ 12:30 pm
Worst case, you’d need some air support
Just like Sadr City? I guess that’s one way to relieve the suffering of hunger.
None of this talk of more invasions should be surprising, though. It was less than five years after Vietnam when we shook off the cobwebs and reverted to business as usual.
I believe summer school is for them’s that didn’t learn the lesson the first time around. Maybe year-round school would be more appropriate.
Comment by Derek Copold —
May 16, 2008 @ 5:27 pm
One interesting facet of this is that it’s much harder to gin up a lot of loathing for 19 essentially faceless guys than for a an easy villain like Saddam Hussein or Ahmadenijad. They’re names are often even more unpronounceable.
Jim, I’ve seen people from Burma, and their skin is swarthy and they have a different religion.
Worse still, they’re oppressing the Christian Karen minority.
Comment by Thoreau —
May 16, 2008 @ 5:36 pm
You know, this calls to mind the 19 hijackers (most of them never given much press coverage) and the fact that Bin Laden got all the attention, and the fact that we eventually lost interest in Afghanistan and went to Iraq….
Comment by Patrick D —
May 16, 2008 @ 6:46 pm
I know a bit about Burma. Like most third world basketcases, it has many ethno-linguistic groups (some of which would like independence) that occupy territories spanning borders with its neighbors and a long history of European colonial rule.
Maybe if the neocons added India, Bangladesh, Thailand and China to the “Axis of Evil” before the invasion we’d have another beautiful Charlie-Foxtrot.
Comment by Jon Hendry —
May 16, 2008 @ 7:22 pm
“Just like Sadr City? ”
Well, no, because the idea would be to deny the junta road access to the coastal region, to make it harder to bring in infantry to either oppose us or to confiscate the supplies dropped off for the hurricane victims.
There would be no need to clear areas, or make areas safe to occupy. It’d be a matter of landing the hovercrafts on solid ground, unloading one or two hundred tons of supplies off of each hovercraft, and then buggering out while air power tries to hold the junta forces at a distance for 6-12 hours while the local Burmese distribute and scatter the provided aid.
“Regime change” is a dangerous fantasy. But could we do something like this with hovercraft? Swoop in, dump off the supplies that are infeasible to airdrop, and dash out?
Frankly I wouldn’t be surprised if there are large areas of coastal Burma that have been rendered inaccessible by the storm, and would be very difficult for the junta to reach in any force – and that’s assuming their communications network would still be up to the task.
Comment by Jon Hendry —
May 16, 2008 @ 7:35 pm
Make that 75 tons each.
Comment by Happy Jack —
May 17, 2008 @ 10:58 am
“Regime change†is a dangerous fantasy. But could we do something like this with hovercraft? Swoop in, dump off the supplies that are infeasible to airdrop, and dash out?
Think about this. You’re talking about killing or neutralizing the security forces (I’ll leave aside collateral damage). What happens to the criminal element? Ethnic fights? Have you ever seen the jostling that happens when food is handed out to the hungry?
I’m just barely touching the possibilities of what can go wrong. When you encounter a problem, and your first thought is “who do I have to kill to fix it”, it’s time to check your premises.