| May 21, 2008 | Wednesday | Jamadi-ul-Awwal 15, 1429 |
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Moral imperatives in a dysfunctional world
BACK in Colombo, we suddenly began receiving calls from Sri Lankan friends asking if we were all right. Puzzled, I asked why they were so concerned. It seemed there had been a big explosion not too far from our hotel. Apparently, a suicide bomber had rammed an explosive-laden motorcycle into a police bus, killing 10 and wounding 50. Our friends hoped the incident would not ruin our trip. I reassured them that bomb blasts had formed the background noise to life in Pakistan for years, and one more was not going to make much difference.
But this fatalistic approach does not mean that I am hardened to random violence that kills and maims without differentiating between combatants and non-combatants. Both Pakistan and Sri Lanka have suffered for years from vicious terrorist attacks that have caused thousands of deaths. While the killers are driven by different agendas, the end result is the same. Orphans and widows do not care very much about utopian visions or independent homelands. They care about shattered bodies and shattered lives.
But while crazed leaders and delusional terrorist organisations cannot be reasoned with, what excuse do apparently sane politicians have for inflicting atrocities on their own people? In our hotel, I have been watching images of disaster victims from China and Myanmar. In the former, relief assistance is being gratefully accepted, despite the country’s quick response to the earthquake, and its relative wealth in trained manpower and material resources. Myanmar, by contrast, is a bankrupt tyranny that lacks a disaster-relief infrastructure, and yet it has refused to allow foreign experts in out of a paranoid fear that their presence will somehow waken the generals’ hold on the country’s jugular.
For years, Myanmar as it now chooses to call itself, has withdrawn into a medieval time-warp where a handful of corrupt, vicious army officers have subjugated a gentle people. As we saw when the opposition rose against the government last year, it has no compunction in using brutal force against its own people. When the cyclone struck a fortnight ago and reports of thousands dead emerged, the world was ready to help. But the power-mad junta refused to issue visas to doctors and aid workers, preferring to allow thousands of unnecessary deaths rather than permit foreigners to see how it had bungled relief efforts. And in the middle of the tragedy, they insisted on proceeding with their referendum on the ‘constitution’ they had devised to legitimise their monopoly on power. For me, this macabre obscenity was the last straw,
These vicious acts against their own people raise the question of how much should nasty leaders be allowed to get away with. Does the world have a responsibility towards enslaved people? Should international assistance be limited to food, medicine, and money for development? Or is there a moral imperative that dictates intervention as a last resort?
True, interventionism was given a bad name by the unnecessary and illegal invasion of Iraq. While Saddam Hussein was certainly a vicious dictator, his country had made social and economic progress under him. Until he invaded Iran and then Kuwait, Iraqis were reasonably well off, with a functional society and a healthy economy. Both Gulf wars were largely about oil. As we have seen in Zimbabwe, the West only commits its resources when its own wellbeing is threatened.
When the United Nations was created over 60 years ago, idealists saw it as a body that would make human conflict a thing of the past. However, the powers and composition of the permanent membership of the Security Council ensured that national rivalries would spill over into the UN, and that forging consensus within the forum would be as difficult as it is outside. So although the international body has prevented a number of wars since its foundation, it has been powerless to halt many more. Over the decades, there has been much talk about the need for reforming the UN. The fact is that the composition of the Security Council reflects the balance of power at the end of the Second World War. Changing economic and political realities have been ignored as the Big Five call the shots. But even if the SC was expanded to admit, say, Japan, India, Germany and Brazil, financial interests could still cause a deadlock, much as they have in the past.
Today, the Myanmar economy is heavily dependent on energy deals with India and China. In addition, the latter imports timber from its neighbour on a huge scale. These mutually beneficial arrangements would block any international action against the junta. One argument against sanctions is that it is the people who suffer as their leaders have total access to a country’s resources. Thus, even while the Iraqi people were being denied life-saving medicines, Saddam and his henchmen lacked nothing.
Clearly, there are no easy answers. Morality has little place in international relations, especially when weighed against narrow national interests. And yet whether we like it or not, the world is shrinking. TV, the internet and a host of electronic devices are bringing news and images of distant disasters into our living rooms. We can no longer use ignorance as an excuse for inaction.
While most of us are too jaded to talk publicly of idealism, perhaps we need to put this unfashionable concept back on the agenda. Clearly, universal democracy is not something that is going to happen overnight. The world is made up of states at different stages of political development, and to expect them to make a quantum jump from tyranny to tolerance and equality would be naïve. Even developed democracies often fall far short of this ideal.
Nevertheless, it might be possible to draw a line for governments. If they transgress it while mistreating their own people, they would trigger international action. In Myanmar’s case, the junta crossed this line when they took a decision to allow their own people to die rather than allow in foreign relief workers. Of course, in the current global environment, it would be next to impossible to forge a consensus on the parameters for action. But given the worsening plight of people in dysfunctional countries around the world, we cannot shut our eyes forever.
