ETHOS

By Eric Augenbraun

As I write this more than 23,000 people are dead and an estimated 37,000 are missing in the wake of Cyclone Nargis’ landfall over Burma (also known as the Union of Myanmar) on May 2^nd. Many expect the death toll to reach a staggering 100,000 by the final count. Just to put this in perspective, as a result of the September 11^th attacks and Hurricane Katrina 3,017 and 1,836 died respectively. I do not point this out to suggest that these two tragedies are in some way less significant than what has happened on the other side of the world, nor do I wish to let our government off of the hook for the unnecessary hell that Huricane Katrina wreaked and continues to wreak on the people of New Orleans—you know me, that is the last thing I want to do. I make this comparison merely to remind people that in the insulated media market that is the United States, it is easy to lose sight of the pain and suffering that goes on in the parts of the world that most people would be hard pressed to find on a map.

In case you slept through geography class…

So what can we learn from the devastation that resulted from this Cyclone and Hurricane Katrina?

Both cases throw into relief how “natural disasters” quickly become unnatural when the state and ruling class are indifferent to the plights of poor and working people. As historian Winston James, writing about a series of hurricanes that struck the Caribbean islands at the turn of the 20th century, argued correctly:

The effects of natural catastrophes…are profoundly mediated by social, economic, and political relations. Put simply, God may send hurricanes, but their consequences are not God-given. The damage that hurricanes, floods, and droughts do is clearly related to the degree of power one has over the effects of these natural phenomena, and the mechanisms at one’s disposal to cope with their aftermath.

Since 1962, Burma has been ruled by a military junta that is, by all means, repressive and antidemocratic—its record hardly indicating a commitment to the protection of human rights. Most of the country’s population lives in abject poverty and, at $1,900, the Burmese GDP per capita ranks 179^th in the world. One need not strain to understand just why the fallout from the Cyclone has taken the course that it has.

Though in both the United States and Burma wealth and resources are stratified to small minorities, the poverty of Burma and the wealth of the United States and death toll of the cyclone underscore the fact that what Lenin once called “oppressor nations” and the third world operate on entirely unequal footing. Still, while Burma and the United States are, admittedly, incomparable, what do these two governments have in common? Both stood idly as disasters—the consequences of which could have been largely averted—took the lives of countless innocent victims.

The Burmese government has been slow to accept aid from other countries while our hypocrite-in-chief has attempted to take the moral high road for which he missed the exit in 2005. The United States has offered up a whopping total of $3.25 million in aid—the war in Iraq, meanwhile, which has killed nearly 1 million Iraqis, costs approximately $2 billion per week. Oh the contradictions just make my head spin.

In any event, Time magazine journalist Romesh Ratnesar has the solution to the post-Cyclone recovery: invade Burma.

Yes, you read right, invade Burma.

Ratnesar suggests that it might be time for the United States to consider a “humanitarian intervention” if the Burmese government continues to deny aid to the country. This invasion would be for no other purpose than delivering aid to the people of Burma argues Ratnesar. With all due respect, he is either extremely naïve or he is an idiot. His argument is grounded in several faulty premises: First, he assumes that the United States government is actually interested in aiding the recovery of Burma—that $3.25 million check must have been really convincing.

Second, Ratnesar’s solution embraces the problematic understanding of America as a global police force. While the Burmese government should accept aid for the sake of its people, the United States has no right to violate the nation’s sovereignty should it decide not to accept aid. The use of United States military might in such a fashion sets a dangerous precedent and certainly serves to buttress the American-military-as-humanitarian, liberator, and democracy-spreader logic.

This was the result of Clinton’s “humanitarian” bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999.

Finally, and most importantly, proponents of “humanitarian interventions” like Ratnesar wrongly assume that it is possible for the henchmen of U.S. imperialism (i.e. the military) to operate in the interests of any group other than the U.S. ruling class. Historically, “humanitarian interventions”—popularized by Bill Clinton (remember Somalia, Bosnia and Kosovo?)—have been little more than thinly veiled attempts for the U.S. to assert its economic, political, and military dominance on a global scale. Moreover, the ambiguity of the term allows those seeking to justify even the most blatantly imperialist endeavors (like the current occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan) to paint these invasions as “humanitarian” in nature. Ratnesar, ignorant of the last 200 years of history, suggests that it is actually possible for the United States military to intervene in the affairs of a foreign nation as a truly neutral force. This is the very same reasoning that underlies the “Save Darfur” movement; principled opponents of U.S. imperialism should resist this tendency.

The death and destruction wrought by the cyclone is a tragedy worthy of the world’s attention. Reflecting on the end results of such tragedies, however, is not enough. We must look critically at the way wealth and power are distributed around the world to understand why disasters like this end the way they do. While the cyclone has made clear the priorities of the Burmese government, it is not the role of the United States (or any other nation) to assert its own will in a foreign nation—whatever the fluffy rhetoric justifying such an action. If real change is to come to Burma, it must come from within.