Invading Burma redux

I asked last Friday, theoretically more than practically, whether it was time to invade Burma, inviting readers to have their say on whether coercive relief operations could be realistically considered in the wake of the Burmese junta's refusal to allow foreign aid or relief workers into the country.

Today Time.com asks the same question.

Like my piece, the Time piece does not actually propose invading Burma (though it could be read as coming close to it), but points out that "the world has yet to reach a consensus about when, and under what circumstances, coercive interventions in the name of averting humanitarian disasters are permissible." I would also point out that Time seems to think that parachute drops of supplies, without prior permission of the junta, constitutes "invading," which is silly. But let that pass for discussion's sake.

Of course there is a sort of cognitive dissonance in thinking about shooting your way in to deliver food and medicine. But not really - exactly how is the plight of the Burmese of the disaster area different than that of a concentration camp? As I said Friday, "This catastrophe may not fall under the legal umbrella of genocide, but it is a distinction without a difference."

It's not going to happen with Burma, of course, for reasons I explained and that Time also touches on. But Time doesn't consider the far implications of its question (and I didn't either, Friday), which is this:

Supposing (for argument's sake) that the scenario imagined by Jan Egeland, former U.N. emergency relief coordinator, comes to be - "the threat of a cholera epidemic that could claim hundreds of thousands of lives and the government was incapable [or unwilling - DS] of preventing it." Egeland says that "you would intervene unilaterally."

Well, okay, then. But we'd have to go all the way. The trump card, before the Marines land, would have to be an unambiguous message to the junta that they will be deposed and tried for crimes against humanity. And not tried by the pansy International Criminal Court, either, but by a US-convened Nuremberg-style tribunal - if they even lived through the regime change.

If the junta still refused to permit aid, then we'd have to understand that actual conquest of the country would be required, the government must be overthrown and yes, nation building would have to follow.

That's the hard part - understanding the end game before starting the front game. As Sun Tzu warned, you have to see all the way through, insofar as it is possible, before deploying. For that matter, even Jesus knew that much about military strategy.

No, just cordoning off the relief area and killing Burmese army units that try to block the relief won't do. For the problem needing solving is not the relief operation or its security. It is the regime.

Are we prepared to go all the way? Well, no. And since we are unable to do so anyway (see my first post for why), the question is automatically moot.

But here is a question for Time: if invading Burma is justifiable because of the humanitarian catastrophe there, then should we have not invaded North Korea years ago for the same reason?