The appalling spectacle of the Burmese people being practically abandoned by its government in the wake of Cyclone Nargis has rightly outraged world opinion. The Burmese government is an obnoxious socialist dictatorship far out of step with the rest of the world, and with only tangential interest in the welfare of its own people at the best of times. In the circumstances the scandalous impediments placed in the way of international relief efforts amount to a crime against humanity in itself.
In view of recent developments the call has gone up in various spheres for unilateral action to be taken by the UN or other actors in the world community to bring aid to the people of Burma. Nick Cohen comments on this trend - particularly with respect to the French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner:
Bernard Kouchner fitted the classic profile of a soixante-huitard. He came from a left-wing family and marched in the May demonstrations, but while his comrades blindly followed the causes of Fidel Castro and Ho Chi Minh, Kouchner went off in an unexpected direction. He joined the Red Cross and worked as a doctor in the bitter ethnic fighting in Nigeria.
The Biafran conflict meant little to the European left of his day. No struggle between capitalism and socialism was at stake. Biafra was just a terrible civil war and the only political response Kouchner offered was a demand to ease the suffering. He developed the doctrine of 'the humanism of bad news,' which ignored the old utopian dreams of creating the best possible society and concentrated on the basic task of mitigating the cruelty of the worst.
Kouchner carried on organising doctors to go to the conflict zones of the world until, in 1979, he caused a sensation in France by hiring a ship to rescue the Vietnamese boat people. Ho Chi Minh's communists had triumphed and masses of Vietnamese were taking to the sea to save themselves. The world had a 'responsibility to protect' them, Kouchner declared, which overrode all other considerations.
In Washington, the Carter administration began to think that it should shoulder the responsibility as well and leftists everywhere were outraged. The overwhelmingly majority saw French and American imperialism as the sole causes of suffering in Vietnam and did not want to look at the crimes of the anti-imperialist 'liberators'.
Leaving all political considerations aside, they said, Kouchner's plan may well break international law. As Paul Berman, Kouchner's biographer explained, the 'mission in east Asia was meant to save lives and yet the mission could easily be interpreted as an intervention in the affairs of a sovereign state, the People's Republic of Vietnam. The boat people were citizens of the People's Republic and the People's Republic had by no means granted permission to Kouchner or to anyone else to go trolling the sea for the purpose of rescuing the enemies of the People's Republic. By what right, in the name of what international accord, could Kouchner go ahead with his mission? He invoked a higher right, but to be sure, scoundrels on the wrong side of the law always invoke a higher right.'
As the new ideas on human rights and humanitarian intervention began to spread, conservatives on the right and left were appalled. The 'realist' Henry Kissinger feared that they would undermine America's dictatorial allies, rightly so as events were to turn out. The 'anti-imperialist' Noam Chomsky feared they would undermine America's dictatorial enemies and again he was right to do so. Both upheld the principle that sovereign states were entitled to do what they wanted within their borders.
After the disaster of the second Iraq War, such views are everywhere, yet on paper at any rate, Kouchner has won. In 2005, the United Nations adopted his language and said it had a 'responsibility to protect' the civilians victims of crimes against humanity regardless of whether sovereign governments wanted them to or not.
Meanwhile, Nicolas Sarkozy transformed Kouchner from aid worker to statesman. And it was heartening to see last week that in his new role as French foreign minister, he upheld his old cause by demanding that the UN deliver aid to the victims of the Burmese cyclone. He was opposed by authoritarian regimes the world over. A Western diplomat at the UN Security Council meeting said objections came from China, Kouchner's old enemies in Vietnam, Russia and South Africa, which might not be a one-party state but has in the ANC only one party which can hope to win power. All knew without needing to be told that if the Burmese military were held to be illegitimate rulers whose wishes could be overruled because they lacked a democratic mandate, the same criteria could be used against them or their allies, too, and their desperate arguments reflected their fears.
One of the tenets of Tony Blair's "ethical foreign policy" was that the need for humanitarian intervention could in certain circumstances override the principle of national sovereignty. Direct action to bring relief to the people of Burma must be considered - whether by airlifting supplies, or by sending ground troops to accompany aid workers, if necessary without reference of the position of the Burmese government and army. Remarkably, while dictatorships the world over (and their apologists in the west) may flinch at the suggestion, the United Nations itself - angered by its sidelining in this issue - may be increasingly ready to accede. The British government would do well to rouse itself from its current stupor and support Kouchner's initiative.
The New Party News