WESTERN SLYNESS TOWARDS MYANMAR

To Seek Geopolitical Advantage
from Myanmar’s Crisis

China Matters
Friday, May 09, 2008

For the impassioned interventionist, Myanmar has it all: a
corrupt and despotic junta, a gallant pro-democracy
princess, and brave, battling monks. Now it’s got a
colossal humanitarian crisis that throws the failures and
flaws of the detested regime into sharp relief.

One thing it doesn’t have: a government so callous and
shortsighted it will refuse international aid in order to
preserve its own rule.

However, this is a line that the United States and its
allies are pushing, apparently in an effort to delegitimize
and weaken the Myanmar regime and maybe tally up a regime
change success on the cheap, courtesy of an unprecedented
natural disaster.

As a result, we may sacrifice an important source of
credibility and leverage in Asia—America’s perceived
willingness to provide apolitical disaster relief—and open
the door for China to supplant us in this key role.

A casual Western reader could be forgiven for believing
that the Myanmar regime is refusing to accept international
aid in the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis.

From Reuters:

In Myanmar, desperate survivors cried out for food, water
and other supplies nearly a week after 100,000 people were
feared killed by Cyclone Nargis as it roared across the
farms and villages of the low-lying Irrawaddy delta region.

"We're outraged by the slowness of the response of the
government of Burma (Myanmar) to welcome and accept
assistance," U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Zalmay
Khalilzad, told reporters.

"It's clear that the government's ability to deal with the
situation, which is catastrophic, is limited."

France’s Foreign Minister, Bernard Kouchner, suggested that
the UN Security Council invoke a “responsibility to
protect” (designed for cases of genocide) to override
Myanmar sovereignty and enable relief operations inside the
country without the government’s permission.

Asia Times’ Southeast Asia editor Shawn Crispin (who bills
himself as “Asia Hand”...hmmm) completely jumped the shark
in my opinion with a piece entitled “The case for invading
Myanmar”:

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...
the deteriorating situation presents a unique opportunity
for Bush to burnish his foreign policy legacy... 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... 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.

Easy, tiger.

A more balanced view of Myanmar affairs -and one that
doesn't fit with the narrative of criminal dysfunction by
the Myanmar regime-- might be gained by looking across the
tarmac at Yongon International Airport.

YANGON, May 7 (Xinhua) -- A special big aircraft carrying
500,000 U.S. dollars' worth of relief materials from China
arrived at the Yangon International Airport Wednesday
afternoon as part of China's one million dollars' emergency
relief aid to cyclone-devastated Myanmar.

The 60-ton relief supplies, carried by a Boeing 747-400
aircraft, include compressed food, tents and blankets.

May 7 is two days before “the first big aid flights”
(according to AP) arrived. The China mission was a
development that the Western press apparently missed.

China subsequently pledged an additional $4.25 million in
aid, making them the largest pledged donor as well as the
largest provider of actual aid to date, as far as I can
tell.

The Western response?

Well, as of May 9, if you type “China aid Myanmar” into
Google, the first hit you get, from ABC News :

“Is China’s Aid to Myanmar a PR Stunt?”

Actually, politics is all over the issue of Myanmar relief,
and most of it is coming from the Western countries.

In an interesting coincidence, President Bush happened to
be awarding a medal to Aung San Suu Kyi and used the
opportunity to throw a few rocks at the government we’re
supposedly negotiating with in the midst of a titanic
humanitarian disaster:

President Bush spoke at a ceremony where he signed
legislation awarding the Congressional Gold Medal to
democracy advocate Aung San Suu Kyi.

"This is a fitting tribute to a courageous woman who speaks
for freedom for all the people of Burma and who speaks in
such a way that she's a powerful voice, in contrast to the
junta that currently rules the country," Bush said.

Returning to the troubles of the UN and the Western
governments in getting their aid into Myanmar.

Per the Independent:

"We will not just bring our supplies to an airport, dump it
and take off," said [The World Food Programme's regional
director Anthony Banbury]. "This is one reason why there is
a hold up now, because we are going to bring in not just
supplies but a lot of capacity to go with them to make sure
the supplies get to the people."

In other words, the UN, the US, and some Western
governments have made delivery of their aid contingent upon
getting visas for their teams of experts to accompany the
aid and supervise its distribution.

Reasons given range from “the Myanmar government is
overwhelmed” to “otherwise the aid will go to feed the army
instead of the people” (which some will recognize as a
reprise of the accusations that North Korea diverts food
aid to feed its army while its people starve).

The aid kabuki theater continued, with the United States
pledging $3 million in aid, but not to the Myanmar
government. Instead, it was put in the hands of the USAID
team waiting in Thailand for permission to enter:

The White House said Tuesday the U.S. will send more than
$3 million to help victims of the devastating cyclone in
Myanmar, up from an initial emergency contribution of
$250,000. The additional commitment of funds, announced by
press secretary Dana Perino, came as Myanmar continued to
resist entry for a U.S. disaster assessment team. The Bush
administration said permission for such a team to enter the
Southeast Asian nation and look at the damage would allow
quicker and larger aid contributions.

In the meantime, the decision was made to funnel $3 million
more to the disaster-stricken zone. Perino said the money
would be allocated by a USAID disaster response team that
is currently positioned in Thailand.[emph. added]

In a USAID press conference, some reporter was able to get
to the nub of the issue, despite Director of Foreign
Disaster Assistance jefe Ky Luu’s dogged attempts to
tap-dance around the issue of tying aid to access:

QUESTION: I’m sorry, one more question. Well, why not just
give everything through the UN and allow the UN to
distribute everything? Why does it have to go through U.S.
transport planes or U.S. assets? Why not give everything to
the UN and have them -- you know -- through the World Food
Program, through all their agencies, seeing as how their
planes are being allowed in now?

MR. LUU: Well, not all their planes are being allowed in.

QUESTION: Well, there are several at this point.

MR. LUU: They have received, what we’ve been told,
permission for four flights and for food. They are
similarly situated, as are our other colleagues, in terms
of being able to bring in staff. As I said here, the UNDAC
team, they were only allowed to grant visas for four staff,
so – the point being is if there’s a large infrastructure
that we can support, we will look at that option. But the
point is that it shouldn’t be narrowed in scope. Everybody
has to become involved and we hope and urge that the regime
will allow the access to take place as soon as possible.

The Jakarta Post picked up on another report indicating
that it seemed more important for the United States to get
its people rather than its food and supplies into Myanmar:

While directly pushing Myanmar to admit international
disaster relief, the United States has asked Indonesia,
Thailand, Malaysia, Japan, India, China and others to use
"any leverage" they may have with Myanmar to allow relief
teams into the country, AFP reported.

It’s easier to say “Myanmar is dragging its feet on aid”
than “Myanmar desperately wants the aid but we are
withholding it until we get what we want”, but that’s
what’s happening:

And that leads to scenes like this:

The U.N. World Food Program said two planeloads of supplies
containing enough high-energy biscuits to feed 95,000
people were seized Friday, prompting the world body to say
it was suspending aid flights.

Later, WFP chief spokeswoman Nancy Roman said the flights
would resume on Saturday while negotiations continued for
the release of the supplies.

Myanmar's government acknowledged taking control of the
shipments and said it plans to distribute the aid itself to
the affected areas.

Compare and contrast:

Three Red Cross aid flights loaded with shelter kits and
other emergency supplies landed in Myanmar Friday without
incident.

"We are not experiencing any problems getting in (unlike)
the United Nations," Danish Red Cross spokesman Hans Beck
Gregersen said.

The International Red Cross is apparently a trusted and
established channel for channel for distributing aid into
Myanmar.

Canwest reported:

While many relief groups continue to face delays in helping
the cause, Red Cross groups have been able to access some
victims and distribute aid to some areas.

Michael Annear, Southeast Asia Regional Disaster Management
Co-ordinator for the International Red Cross, said the
organization did deal with some hassle in starting its
operations, but things are improving.

"Initially, there was some slight delay (on obtaining
visas)," Annear said during a conference call Thursday,
"(but) we've been quite successful in developing a system
with the Myanmar embassies in other countries and also
working from within the Myanmar Red Cross, who is working
closely with the government to get approval for individuals
to come in."

The personnel from the International Red Cross would be in
addition to the Myanmar Red Cross, which has about 27,000
local volunteers working to help victims since the cyclone
hit last Saturday.

The organization has a permanent delegation of workers in
Yangon, with external experts also coming in to help. More
technical delegates are expected to arrive Friday and
through the weekend.

Annear says the familiarity local Red Cross volunteers have
with the area and its culture are an asset in distributing
materials - purchased locally - to the most vulnerable
regions.

The Chinese Red Cross is also working with the Myanmar Red
Cross Society to funnel aid into Myanmar.

In the case of supplies, it would seem to be the right
thing to flood Yongyon airport with supplies on a
dump-and-go basis and hope that the Burmese regime has
strong enough instincts for compassion and
self-preservation and the Red Cross has enough access and
capability to push the food and equipment out to the
afflicted areas.

The Burmese regime may be more corrupt and inept than most,
but totalitarian regimes tend to be rather good at disaster
relief, when the security mechanisms for monitoring and
control can shift to humanitarian outreach. Its performance
in this unprecedented national crisis will be a key test of
whether it can continue to cling to power.

When one looks at the Western response in detail, it is
hard to avoid the conclusion that the Western governments
are exploiting the suffering to dramatize the weaknesses of
the Burmese regime and undermine its legitimacy and
rule—and that the Western media is enamored of the
narrative that the United States can stand in judgment of
the rest of the world on disaster relief *cough* Katrina
and humanitarian intervention *cough* Iraq to the point of
self-delusion.

That’s not a narrative that Myanmar’s Asian neighbors are
particularly interested in.

One could draw the conclusion that, in the matter of
Cyclone Nargis, self-serving outrage is a monopoly of the
Western powers, but meaningful assistance is not.

While reporting the high-profile complaints of the UN,
Europe, and the United States, the Independent noted in
passing:

Navy ships from India and planes from Japan, Thailand,
Singapore, Laos and Bangladesh have arrived in recent days
with medicine, candles, instant noodles, raincoats and
other relief supplies.

From Bangkok, Canwest acknowledged that aid was arriving,
and reported the self-inflicted difficulties faced by the
Western countries:

Only "friendly" governments such as China, India and
Thailand have been allowed to help so far, and even they
have been limited to delivering supplies and leaving.

This kind of "drop-off assistance" does not sit well with
many Western governments, however. After years of ignoring
calls for reform and sloughing off punishing sanctions,
most governments do not trust the Myanmar generals to
distribute the aid on offer, rather than stockpile it for
themselves and the military.

The Western-powers versus Asia dynamic played itself out in
an interesting way in the UN Security Council.

The French representative dutifully followed up on Bernard
Kouchner’s “responsibility to protect” scheme by floating
the idea of Security Council intervention in an e-mail.

China, Russia, Vietnam, South Africe, and Indonesia
publicly slapped it down.

Indonesia, one might recall, was a major beneficiary of
foreign assistance in Aceh following the devastating 2004
tsunami and might be considered sympathetic to the idea of
accelerated and forcible humanitarian access.

But it drew the opposite conclusion, according to Xinhua:

Based on Indonesia's past experiences in dealing with
disasters, especially the 2004 deadly tsunami, [Indonesia’s
UN ambassador] Natalegawa said that most probably the aid
delivery efforts were hampered by conditions in the field.
"It's quite possible that the obstacles hampering the
relief assistance delivery are not caused by political
things, but by the complexity of conditions in the field,"
he said.

Indonesia went on to state:

"We think there are other better forums to discuss the
humanitarian dimension of the Myanmar situation,"
Indonesian Ambassador Marty Natalegawa told reporters ahead
of a Security Council meeting."There is a already a
readiness on the part of Myanmar to open itself to
assistance," he said. "The last thing we would want is to
give a political spin to the technical realities and the
situation on the ground."

The Chinese went public with their displeasure, and even
the chief UN aid guy was cool to the idea.

Beijing's deputy permanent representative, Ambassador Liu
Zhenmin, made it clear that China, which has veto powers on
the council, opposed any involvement of the U.N. Security
Council.

"The current issue of Myanmar is a natural disaster," he
said. "It's not an issue for the Security Council. It might
be a good issue for other forums of the U.N."

Liu said the council should not politicize the issue and
should "let the humanitarian assistance go on."

U.N. humanitarian affairs chief John Holmes has indicated
that the French approach would not be helpful and could be
seen by some as confrontation.

Western diplomats acknowledged that it would be difficult
to persuade skeptics on the council about the need for
getting the council involved. Council diplomats said
Washington was among the most supportive of the French
idea.

One might say that the West overreached, scored an own
goal, gave up the moral high ground, picked up a stone to
throw and instead dropped it on its own foot, or (insert
suitable metaphor here) by pushing Kouchner’s over-the-top
proposal.

One might also say that the people of Myanmar would have
been better served by a prompt release of aid that erred on
the side of compassion and trust, instead of wasting time
at the UN Security Council on futile jibber-jabber
concerning the fantasy of forcible humanitarian
intervention or haggling over the access of our experts.

Instead, intensive diplomatic efforts could have been
devoted to negotiating a genuine, life-saving measure:
permitting US helicopter crews to fly humanitarian missions
to cut-off villages.

Asian disaster relief is, interestingly, an important role
for the United States military, in particular the U.S.
Navy.

Since we are technically at peace with all of the states in
the western Pacific and Indian Oceans—at least until the
next war—the Navy needs an excuse to keep steaming around
there, making port calls, and making the case for a
sustained US military presence out there.

One mission the US Navy has claimed is humanitarian
assistance in the wake of natural disasters, most
conspicuously and successfully demonstrated in the case of
the case of the 2004 tsunami.

The Navy has a ship in the area, the Essex, that could
provide 19 helicopters with cargo lift capability, and it
would be nice to see them deployed to get supplies to
people desperately clinging to life in the flooded
Irrawaddy delta.

Unfortunately, USAID’s Ky Luu, got a little carried away
and proposed that the US military drop supplies without
permission of the Myanmar government.

Secretary of Defense Gates, who seems to be the sole voice
of reason in the Bush administration these days, quashed
the idea, stating:

"I cannot image us going in without the permission of the
Myanmar government."

Presumably, Secretary Gates drew the conclusion that
nothing would discredit the humanitarian mission of the US
military in Asia quicker than unapproved operations.

Nobody’s going to welcome the 7th Fleet in the region if
they are worried about helicopters full of Marines buzzing
across the horizon to “rescue” some pro-US rebel group from
an attack by government forces on the pretext of a
rainstorm.

Even under the most favorable of circumstances, a deal on
US forces flying missions into Myanmar would probably be
unachievable.

But, given the unnecessary and quite possibly cynically
deliberate two-step on admission of US and UN aid workers,
it’s impossible, and many people may die as a result.

In the wake of the disaster and the politicized Western
posturing, I think that there will be an assessment that an
effective, non-US disaster relief capability needs to be
present in the region—from Indonesia, India, or China.

The Chinese may be quick to jump on the opportunity.

As the AP pointed out:

China is a relative newcomer to major international
disaster relief operations and its armed forces, despite
their vast size, have limited capacity for quickly
delivering supplies beyond its borders.

Beijing may decide it needs something like the Essex
sailing around in the Pacific with helicopters on deck,
ready to offer disaster relief both to its close and
unpopular allies like Burma and any state that wants to
avail itself of the resource—and not only for humanitarian
reasons or to provide more opportunities for the display of
Chinese soft-power benevolence.

A Chinese disaster relief capability would also deny the
United States another pretext for a significant military
presence in the west Pacific and Indian Ocean, and give the
Chinese military forces humanitarian cover for development
of their blue-water and regional force-projection
capabilities.

And, when the Western posturing on Myanmar is recalled,
Asian states might be willing to swallow their suspicions
of Chinese military reach and accept Beijing instead of the
United States as a primary provider of regional disaster
relief.

That’s not good for us.

Even if the Myanmar regime collapses as a result of the
post-cyclone chaos, that win may not be enough to
compensate for the loss of US standing and prestige in the
region.