Invasion: Burma!
Anne Applebaum is a writer that I usually like a lot, and I usually try to maintain a more or less neutral stance on things, but this article in Slate is just wrong-headed. She attempts to make a case for a humanitarian military intervention in Burma, an argument I’ve heard others make. It is a bad idea.
Applebaum doesn’t specifically mention it, but her argument is clearly coming from a Responsibility to Protect (R2P) point of view. For those who are new to the term, R2P is a newish, burgeoning international norm that asserts that governments have a responsibility to protect (hence the phrase) their own citizens. When they can’t or won’t, it is the international community’s responsibility to do so. It has wide support, a lot of enemies, and the Security Council has cited it (among a host of other reasons) to support military interventions. Personally I think it is a pretty good idea.
R2P emerged in a 2001 report (follow the link above) that lays out in pretty vague terms the justifiable reasons for an R2P-intervention:
“Military intervention for human protection purposes is an exceptional and extraord-
inary measure. To be warranted, there must be serious and irreparable harm occurring
to human beings, or imminently likely to occur, of the following kind:
A. large scale loss of life, actual or apprehended, with genocidal intent or not, which
is the product either of deliberate state action, or state neglect or inability to act, or
a failed state situation.
B. large scale ‘ethnic cleansing’, actual or apprehended, whether carried out by killing,
forced expulsion, acts of terror or rape.” (emphasis added)
I admit that you can make a fair case that the current situation in Burma qualifies under letter A. It involves a large scale loss of life and state neglect.
But R2P doesn’t just gives a threshold for the type of humanitarian catastrophe that we need before an intervention can be launched. It also offers a set of utterly reasonable “precautionary principles”. These are so logical that even if Applebaum isn’t thinking of R2P, they should/would be part of any military planning nonetheless. They suggest that any military action should have “reasonable prospects” of success. You should have a pretty good idea that you’ll be doing more good than harm when you send in the guns. Military actions should also be the “last resort”. We don’t have either of those here.
Just to be clear. Your military intervention can do two things: kill people and blow things up. You don’t protect someone, you threaten to kill their attacker. The R2P argument is strongest when there is a group of people who are being attacked, because then you can use your military to kill the bad guys - like in the Magnificent Seven. It still makes sense when you have two or more groups fighting each other and a bunch of civilians stuck in the middle - like uh, real life. In either of those cases people are facing flying bullets anyway.
But in this case what would the military do? Use fighter wings to defend air drops of food? That seems harmless enough, but what happens when that food hits the ground and is taken into the junta’s system? Who defends the humanitarian workers then? Troops and artillery I guess, but now we’re fighting a ground war with the junta, and we’ve created a conflict where there wasn’t one before. That isn’t what the people of Burma need right now.
I’m absolutely not saying that the junta is good. They’re not. They are very bad leaders who deserve to be removed. But the norm of humanitarian intervention is best reserved for civil conflicts or other cases of violence and kept out of natural disaster response.
May 15th, 2008 at 7:54 am
Absolutely No. We should not invade Burma. Why is it that when you are top dog, the only answer is war, with all its unintended consequenses. There are many ways to put pressure. Try the U.N.. Try the Int’l. court. Read the definition of an independent country under established international law. You may not agree with its policies, but it is an independent state. To invade is to declare war.
May 19th, 2008 at 9:31 am
That’s a fair and reasonable explanation you’ve given on why the ‘R2P’ doesn’t apply to this case.
Can I sum it up by saying that it doesn’t apply because:
1. It doesn’t fulfil point B. of the ‘justifiable reasons’ you mentioned, therefore (I presume) not fulfilling the full criteria in order to take action;
2. It doesn’t fulfil the ‘precautionary principles’ criteria.
My question is, which take primacy in decision-making about intervention:
the justifiable reasons, or the precautionary principles?
Or is there, say, a matrix (based on the above) upon where decisions can be made (by eg. the UNSC) on whether the situation in Burma entails intervention?
In the meantime, I suppose the best we can hope for is there are still other options, no matter how vague this hope is; since there doesn’t seem to be consensus on whether things have become bad enough to warrant military intervention or not.
July 29th, 2008 at 10:30 pm
I would like to describe R2P a little more in depth than was provided to give a full understanding of the stipulations that are to be met in order for humanitarian intervention to be carried out.
R2P was designed to take on the views of those needing support. R2P states that the primary responsibility of protecting its people rests within the state in question. If the state is unable to or unwilling to fulfill its responsibility to protect its people then the international community has a responsibility to intervene.
So once it has been established that a state is unwilling or unable to protect its people, R2P requires that three requirements be fulfilled in order to intervene.
1) Just cause
2) 4 precautionary principles
3) Right to authority
1) Just cause– States that civilians must be in face of harm in 1 OF 2 ways:
-Large scale loss of life (actual or anticipated)
-Ethnic cleansing
2) 4 precautionary principles
1- Right intention: The primary purpose of intervention must be to halt human suffering
2- Last resort: Intervention can be justified only when every non-military option for prevention of the crises has been explored.
3- Proportional means: The scale, duration and intensity of the planned intervention should be the minimum necessary to secure the objective of protecting the people.
4- Reasonable Prospects: There must be a reasonable chance of success in halting the suffering that has justified the intervention.
3) Right to authority: There must be a blessing for intervention from the Security Council of the UN. If the Security Council does not approve of intervention there are two alternatives. 1) An emergency meeting of the UN General Assembly to meet under the “United for Peace” procedures or 2) There can be regional or subregional military action.
Now with that being said, I believe that the international community, the UN, and R2P have failed when it comes to the issue of Burma.
There was an obvious need to individuals to be assisted because their government was unable and unwilling to provide the proper support that the citizens were in need of.
Just cause was met, civilians were in the face of harm by a large scale loss of life (actual AND anticipated). There was an estimated 100,000 people dead. I think that would be considered large scale…
Right intention: The purpose of intervention would have been to halt human suffering
Last resort: We tried diplomatic efforts to persuade the military junta to allow foreign aid into the country. It failed for THREE weeks. Imagine how many lives could have been saved!
Reasonable prospects: With a French led invasion with the support of the US the likelihood for success would have been great.
Right to authority. There was never a vote in the Security Council…… This is where the UN failed in another humanitarian intervention.
THE UNITED STATES FAILED, THE UNITED NATIONS FAILED, AND THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY FAILED!