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21 May 2008 03:16 pm

China Blocking Burma

George Packer calls out China:

...since I’m not a member of the U.N. Secretariat, the U.S. Department of State, or the executive board of Save the Children, I don’t have to be polite to either the Chinese or the Burmese government. So let history record: at the U.N., China is blocking any chance of a Security Council resolution authorizing the world to do for suffering Burmese what their government won’t do or allow to be done for them, even if it means an uninvited intervention.

Matt, I assume, will see this as scapegoating China and more half-hearted advocation for invasion. But there is some truth in what Matt Steinglass wrote earlier this week:

If the response were playing out according to the rough script that obtained in the ’90s for international interventions in Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Sierra Leone, Kosovo, and East Timor, then Western governments would be holding summit meetings right now to put together a coordinated diplomatic approach to pressuring Burma to open hurricane-affected regions to foreign aid agencies, with a threat of military intervention as a last resort. It would be left unclear exactly what foreign militaries planned to do in the last resort, just as it was left unclear in Kosovo and East Timor. The aim would be to push the Burmese government to accept more access for foreign aid agencies in a compromise deal to avoid military conflict. As the unacceptability of the crisis became established in the international public’s mind, diplomatic pressure would be applied on countries reluctant to approve humanitarian interventions, such as China. Ultimately, just as Russia acceded to intervention in Kosovo, China might signal to the Burmese government that it could no longer shield it from international demands. At that point hopefully a face-saving compromise could be found that permitted more access for international aid agencies than would have been obtained without the vague threat of eventual military action.

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