This is the kind of story that poses a dilemma for someone like me with pacifist tendencies. The junta that rules the Southeast Asian country is making it nearly impossible for aid to get to victims of a cyclone that has left tens of thousands dead and nearly 2 million homeless.
The issue is this: Should an international military force be assembled to step into the situation to ensure that not only food and medicine, but doctors and aid workers, can get to the survivors and offer assistance. This literally is a matter of life and death for the Burmese.
Forget for a minute whether this is even possible. The logistics are the logistics and I am far from qualified to talk about them. What is interesting to me — what is most worth considering — is the question of humanitarian intervention.
I am basically a pacifist. I don’t generally approve of the use of military force and I believe that using violence to combat violence rarely does anything more than escalate the violence. At the same time, I can’t ignore what is happening around the world — Rwanda, Somalia, Kosovo, for instance — and wonder if there are cases when a military force with a limited mission might be necessary.
This is a difficult one. Like I said, my view is that violence begets violence. But I also know that unarmed men and women are no match for armed gangs. A larger military presence that had the authority to intervene may have prevented some of the horror in Rwanda or at least slowed it.
The drawbacks, of course, include the potential for so-called mission creep and the cynical use of the idea of humanitarian intervention to further political goals — as in Iraq.
I am getting ahead of the question, I know. But should the Burmese government continue to maintain its prohibition against foreign aid workers and a larger humanitarian crisis ensues, the call for some kind of intervention is sure to come. We need to be asking these questions now, so we waste little time when there’s literally no time left to waste.
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Hank Kalet 