ASIA HAND The case for invading
Myanmar By Shawn W Crispin
BANGKOK - With United States warships and
air force planes at the ready, and over 1 million
of Myanmar's citizens left bedraggled, homeless
and susceptible to water-borne diseases by Cyclone
Nagris, the natural disaster presents an
opportunity in crisis for the US.
A
unilateral - and potentially United
Nations-approved - US military intervention in the
name of humanitarianism could easily turn the tide
against the impoverished country's unpopular
military leaders, and simultaneously rehabilitate
the legacy of lame-duck US
President George W Bush's
controversial pre-emptive military policies.
Myanmar's ruling junta has responded
woefully to the cyclone disaster, costing more
human lives than would have been the case with the
approval of a swift international response. One
week after the killer storm first hit, Myanmar's
junta has only now allowed desperately needed
international emergency supplies to trickle in. It
continues to resist US and UN disaster relief and
food aid personnel from entering the country.
Officially, 60,000 people have died; the figure is
probably closer to 100,000.
The US is
prepared to deliver US$3.25 million in initial
assistance for survivors, which if allowed by the
junta could be rapidly delivered to the worst-hit
areas using US Air Force and naval vessels,
including the US C-130 military aircraft now in
neighboring Thailand, and the USS Kitty Hawk and
USS Nimitz naval warships, currently on standby in
nearby waters.
With the host government's
approval, the US military led the multinational
emergency response to the 2004 tsunami, including
in the politically sensitive, majority Muslim
areas of Aceh, Indonesia. The response to
Myanmar's tragedy, in comparison, is being
undermined by the play of international power
politics, including most notably the military
government's antagonistic relations with the US.
Washington has long-held economic
sanctions against the regime, which were recently
enhanced through financial sanctions against
individual junta members, their families and
business associates. Despite the economic
suffering the sanctions have had on the grassroots
population, many Myanmar citizens support the
measures against their perceived abusive
government, according to one Myanmar researcher.
Early last year, the US tried to have Myanmar's
abysmal rights record put onto the UN Security
Council's agenda, but the motion was later vetoed
by Myanmar allies China and Russia.
In the
wake of the cyclone, the criminality of the
junta's callous policies has taken on new human
proportions in full view of the global community.
Without a perceived strong UN-led response to the
natural disaster, hard new questions will fast
arise about the UN's own relevance and ability to
manage global calamities.
This week,
French Foreign Minister Bernard Koucher suggested
that the UN invoke its so-called "responsibility
to protect" civilians as legitimate grounds to
force aid delivery, regardless of the military
government's objections. On Friday, a UN spokesman
called the junta's refusal to issue visas to aid
workers "unprecedented" in the history of
humanitarian work.
Because of the UN's own
limited powers of projection, such a response
would require US military management and assets.
US officials appear to be building at least a
rhetorical case for a humanitarian intervention.
While offering relief and aid with one hand, top
US officials have with the other publicly slapped
at the Myanmar government's lame response to the
disaster.
Shari Villarosa, head of the US
Embassy in Yangon, has challenged the veracity of
the government's official death count, telling
reporters that storm-related casualties could
eventually exceed 100,000 at a time the junta
claimed 22,500 had perished. The junta has since
revised up its official death toll figure to
around 60,000.
US First Lady Laura Bush,
who last year publicly goaded Myanmar's population
to rise up against the military junta during the
"Saffron" revolution, has in the wake of the
cyclone revived her criticisms, referring to the
government as "inept" and claiming that despite it
receiving forewarning it failed to alert its
citizens of the impending cyclone.
"It
should be a simple matter," said US Secretary of
State Condoleezza Rice, referring to the junta's
refusal to allow foreign aid workers into the
country. "It's not a matter of politics. It's a
matter of a humanitarian crisis."
Armed
and ready Should the junta continue to
resist foreign assistance while social and public
health conditions deteriorate in clear view of
global news audiences, the moral case for a
UN-approved, US-led humanitarian intervention will
grow. Fistfights have already reportedly broken
out over food supplies in Yangon, raising the risk
that Myanmar troops could soon be called to put
down unrest in the midst of a humanitarian crisis.
Last September, Myanmar's army opened fire against
and killed an unknown number of street
demonstrators.
Apart from putting
significant US military assets on standby, there
are no indications yet that President George W
Bush or the Pentagon is preparing a unilateral
rescue operation. Yet policymakers in Washington
are now no doubt weighing the potential pros and
cons of a pre-emptive humanitarian mission in a
geo-strategically pivotal and suddenly weakened
country that Bush administration officials have
recently and repeatedly referred to as an "outpost
of tyranny".
Within that policy matrix,
the deteriorating situation presents a unique
opportunity for Bush to burnish his foreign policy
legacy. Some note that a US military response to
Myanmar's humanitarian crisis would follow in the
footsteps of Bush's presidential father, George H
W Bush, who after declaring victory over the
Soviet Union's communist threat, moved to
demonstrate to the post-Cold War world that US
military might would be a force for global good.
That included his government's US
military-led humanitarian aid mission in civil
war- and famine-struck Somalia in August 1992 that
morphed later in the same year into a full-blown
US Marine invasion of the capital Mogadishu,
including the airport and main port, to protect
the integrity of future aid deliveries from
marauding militias. That military mission was
mostly abandoned by 1993 after fierce fighting
between US troops and Somali militias, while
television images of a slain US soldier being
dragged through Mogadishu's streets took the
idealistic edge off the supposedly humanitarian
military exercise.
This time, it is almost
sure-fire that Myanmar's desperate population
would warmly welcome a US-led humanitarian
intervention, considering that its own government
is now withholding emergency supplies. Like his
father then, Bush is now clearly focused on his
presidential legacy, which to date will be judged
harshly due to his government's controversial
pre-emptive military policies, waged until now
exclusively in the name of fighting global terror.
In an era when the US routinely launches
pre-emptive military strikes, including its 2003
invasion of Iraq, the 2003 Predator drone
assassination attack against an alleged al-Qaeda
leader in Yemen, a similar drone attack in 2006 in
northwestern Pakistan, and last week's attack
against a reputed al-Qaeda ringleader in Somalia,
it is not inconceivable that the US might yet
intervene in military-run Myanmar, particularly if
in the days ahead the social and political
situation tilts towards anomie.
Whether or
not a US military intervention in the name of
humanitarianism would, as in Somalia, eventually
morph into an armed attempt at regime change and
nation-building would likely depend on the
population's and Myanmar military's response to
the first landing of US troops. Some political
analysts speculate that Myanmar's woefully
under-resourced and widely unpopular troops would
defect en masse rather than confront US troops.
While Myanmar ally China would likely
oppose a US military intervention, Beijing has so
far notably goaded the junta to work with rather
than against international organizations like the
UN, and more to the point, it lacks the power
projection capabilities to militarily challenge
the US in a foreign theater. Most notably, the US
would have at its disposal a globally respected
and once democratically elected leader in Aung San
Suu Kyi to lead a transitional government to full
democracy.
Many have speculated that
Myanmar's notoriously paranoid junta abruptly
moved the national capital 400 kilometers north
from Yangon to its mountain-rung redoubt at
Naypyidaw in November 2005 due to fears of a
possible pre-emptive US invasion, similar to the
action against Iraq. Now, Cyclone Nagris and the
government's woeful response to the disaster have
suddenly made that once paranoid delusion into a
strong pre-emptive possibility, one that Bush's
lame-duck presidency desperately needs.
Shawn W Crispin
is Asia Times Online's Southeast Asia Editor. He
may be reached at swcrispin@atimes.com
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