There is an option other than invading. We could supply arms to rebels, train them, and undertake a covert campaign to foment guerilla war against the regime and bring it down.

The key to making a covert campaign work is, paradoxically, the willingness of a democratic government to say "yes, that's exactly what we're doing, and we don't apologize for it one bit" when the action is revealed.

One could expect the Left to begin stumping for and supporting the Burmese government as soon as this happened, of course. The State Department would also seek to undermine this approach, as neighboring states are just fine with the SLORC junta.

So, the Burmese are going to die in droves. This time, and next time too. Maybe the UN can have a caviar-stocked conference about it afterward. Wouldn't that be nice?

It's interesting-- although tragic-- that Terror and Consent by Philip Bobbitt seems to have anticipated the argument. I haven't finished it yet, so I don't know what I think of the ideas, but he seems to be making an argument that runs as follows:

1) The principle function of states in the 21st century is not to provide welfare, but to maximize opportunity of its citizens;

2) A critically important facet of that job is the provision of, and protection of, critical infrastructure;

3) The largest threats to those pieces of infrastructure are natural disasters and terrorists, therefore, the principle challenges to the modern state will revolve around the prevention of, and recovery from, those events.

There's more, but that's the outline I've I'm just finishing up on the first section, because it's a large, dense, thought-provoking book. I've just about finished reading his frame of the situation. The rest of the book is presumably a dissection of good and bad past efforts, and outlines of policies heading forward.

His previous book, The Shield of Achilles was also very good.

So, we have to surrender in Iraq and Afghanistan because winning there would be in our interest, but the only conflict "allowed" is one in which America has no advantage?

OK. That's Nuts.

We have no real interest in Burma. No stratetic geo-politics. No oil coming to market. It's protected by China. It's likely to be a thousand times uglier than Iraq, with Jungle Fighting.

Burma is a tragedy. But it's Burma's and China's tragedy. It's of no interest whatsoever to America or Americans. Here I agree with Dems and the Left.

Time is made of idiots. Morons who cannot figure that if Iraq and Afghanistan is bad, Burma would immeasurably worse.

There is no magic bullet. No Superman and the Justice League. Burma no matter what will see dying and horror. Best to let the Burmese and Chinese to their slaughter and starvation.

Europe is entirely different of course, US policy has been to keep it stable and un-dominated by hostile powers since Wilson. Iraq and Afghanistan are of great interest to America.

Invade a country in order to help it sounds a little crazy to me if they want to drop supplies in thats fine but no need to put troops on teh ground unless they ask for them.

Unless invading is mostly punitive towards the junta it doesn't make sense anyway. Most of those who are going to die because of the junta's asinine policies will do so before any invasion could be mounted (from a purely political/logistical point of view).

How long does it take dysentery to kill a person? Cholera? Sepsis? Simple starvation? It's a rates problem. No invasion could happen in less time than it takes for most of the damage to the civilian population is done.

But those who said we shoulda/coulda get to feel better about themselves when in fact no one does, and that's what's really important to the self-important folks. (Reverend, you're excluded from that, because you posited your argument as a thought experiment rather than a practical idea.)

Why did we settle for a draw in Korea? Ans: China.
Why did we eliminate the invasion of N. Vietnam as an option? Ans: China. Who do these two aforementioned
countries, plus Burma, share a common border with? Ans: China. End of subject. Period. No invasion of Burma in this or any other parallel universe. Ever. As one ex-Polish diplomat and retired professor of Pol. Sci. once told me: "The second worse thing to losing a war with China would be "winning," i.e., what happens to the dog who chases the city bus every day and finally "catches" it? Ans:THUMP-THUMP-THUMP-THUMP...on down the road.

After Katrina, Cuba and Venezuela offered medical and energy aid. Obviously there was propaganda value in it, just as there would be for the U.S. in helping Burma, even though New Orleans is still a ruin. The Bush regime refused it, just as Burma is now refusing our aid. Should Cuba and Venezuela have invaded? They probably could have won with most of our forces in the meat grinders of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Burma and the U.S.: Pot, kettle, black.

Invading Burma has to be one of the worst military policies I have heard the Americans discussing as other than a joke.

Unfortunately, the Americans do sometimes do things that are insanely high-handed, belligerent and risky, at least by my standards. Busting Manuel Noriega for drugs by invading Panama was even more high-handed, and the Americans actually did it.

But I don't think they'll do this, and I hope and expect the discussion will move to /dev/null soon.

We have a serious, serious war on our hands, with the jihad aggression of the system of Islam. Buying a fight with China over Burma is like an idea Winston Churchill briefly contemplated, to support plucky Finland against the invading Soviet Union. Morally, in the abstract, that might have been OK, just like getting rid of the government of Burma, but London had other problems at the time, and taking on Moscow was not the right solution for them.

Nor is fighting for freedom and goodness anywhere and everywhere (other than when it offends our very good friends the Saudis) a wise idea for us. (Though that was the spirit of George W. Bush's second inauguration speech.)

We cannot pursue a policy like that without supporting by blood and iron a doctrine that governments like that of China - and all its client states - ought to be overthrown. It's inconceivable (yes, theoretically, practically and in all other ways) that the Chinese and their clients would not notice the prosecution of a slow global war against them. And we don't have the strength for this.

Reducing our active problems to a manageable level means tolerating, at minimum, China, Russia and their allies and clients. Tolerating the kinds of clients China likes means tolerating tyranny. There is no way to get around that.

#6 from virgil xenophon:

"Why did we settle for a draw in Korea? Ans: China. Why did we eliminate the invasion of N. Vietnam as an option? Ans: China. Who do these two aforementioned
countries, plus Burma, share a common border with? Ans: China. End of subject. Period. No invasion of Burma in this or any other parallel universe. Ever."

What he said.

Mort:

Yes, the public relations value - or propaganda value, if you will - is real, but the relevant issue isn't propaganda, it's emergency response capability. In terms of emergency response capability, our military has done disaster relief and humanitarian aid around the world for decades. US emergency response does not trump local capability. If Burma possessed the local-national emergency response capability to handle the crisis, this wouldn't be a controversy. If they had it, we could make a symbolic offer and feel good about ourselves and the situation when they diplomatically declined.

The State of Louisiana and the military junta of Burma are not equivalent, but as far as disaster response, there is a parallel that can be drawn between New Orleans and Burma insofar the civil administration of Louisiana as a state and New Orleans as a city had a notorious reputation before Hurricane Katrina. These civil administrations were over-taxed by special circumstances and responded as poorly as their reputations indicated. We can rightly criticize the bungling of FEMA, but we also can't overlook that FEMA is designed as a follow-on and augmentee to local emergency response, while the local emergency response in New Orleans collapsed from the start. New Orleans isn't the first or only American locale where natural disasters have occurred; indeed, it's not the only place Hurricane Katrina affected. How well did other places respond to the emergency, with and without federal assistance? As well, there are conventions that regulate federal intervention within states, just as there are bureaucratic processes that regulate US aid overseas. Finally, our military is designed more for global force projection than local deployment - in ways, it's actually simpler for our military to mobilize for humanitarian intervention overseas than at home.

" . . . New Orleans is still a ruin."

This is a non-sequiter. The relevant issue we're discussing with Burma is emergency response, not post-disaster rebuilding or vitalization. The latter issue falls outside of emergency response and is guided by local economics and market drivers. Even your assertion, though, characterizing NO as a "ruin" seems to be an overstatement. The resources and investments are there. Obviously, there are areas that are still depressed - areas that were depressed before Hurricane Katrina and coincidentally were hit hardest by the event - but the areas of New Orleans that one would expect to recover (e.g., the French Quarter) are recovering.

"The Bush regime refused it, just as Burma is now refusing our aid."

See my 1st paragraph. Obviously, the US owned more than enough emergency response capability to respond to Hurricane Katrina, even with the wildcard of the levee break. (Again, it's not the 1st time or place a large flood has occurred in the US - but why is it that the situation was, or seemed, worse in NO compared to other large floods?) The 'first responders' of the City of New Orleans and the '2nd responders' of the State of Louisiana should have responded more effectively than they did. Although the media highlighted, perhaps exaggerated, the shortcomings and time gap before US emergency response recovered in NO, American private (Walmart was particularly effective) and public (highlighted by the take-charge GEN Honore) emergency response recovered soon enough. Our emergency response stumbled, no doubt, but the United States owned the means to bring sufficient emergency response to New Orleans. Within the equivalency you've draw, can you say Burma has sufficient means, like we have, to recover its emergency response?

"Should Cuba and Venezuela have invaded? They probably could have won with most of our forces in the meat grinders of Iraq and Afghanistan."

First, most of our forces are not physically in Iraq and Afghanistan. Second, we could defeat those nations from a military standpoint without placing a single American soldier, boots on the ground. Note: I'm not saying that we should invade Burma.

I agree with you that for the leaders of Cuba, Venezuela, and Burma (and apparently you as well), foreign emergency response aid matters more as a propaganda threat to their regimes than for its humanitarian concern. I also would agree - to a point - that we're sensitive to the PR or propaganda value of helping others. Furthermore, I would even go so far as to say that our offer to project emergency response aid to the other side of the world represents a hegemonic conceit. But it is a conceit that is solidly grounded in a sincere traditional progressive American impulse to help, and it's a conceit we can deliver upon, and have delivered upon, in substantive ways unmatched by anyone else in the world.

Burma and the U.S.: Pot, kettle, black.

It's because of thinking like this that the United Nations is a rotten facade, and we have no credible international organizations to deal with situations like Burma and Darfur.

The best solution is an old-fashioned one: Pray for the conversion of the Chinese. There's damned little else we can do.

"Burma and the U.S.: Pot, kettle, black."

By all mean Mr. Goldman, if you believe that, go live in Burma a few years. Then I won't have to put up with your inane stupid comments.

You don't know anything about NO. You don't know anything about Burma. Shut the @# up.

After Katrina, Cuba and Venezuela offered medical and energy aid. Obviously there was propaganda value in it, just as there would be for the U.S. in helping Burma, even though New Orleans is still a ruin

Mort, of course you realize that in 1999, Chavez refused US help offered after the Vargas mudslide. This was in Chavez's first year in office,when Clinton was President.

So why did Chavez offer assistance in 2005?

even though New Orleans is still a ruin.

I can't begin to relate how much this trope annoys me. After Hurricane Andrew hit south Florida in 1992, there was widespread devastation though thankfully we were spared the flooding. Rebuilding was slow, with repairs to most places taking two years or so. A significant number of places were still in ruins four years after the devestation, especially the poorest areas which never fully recovered even to this day. Entire communities were re-configured due to the destruction, and the demogrpahics of the area shifted around.

New Orleans got hit worse, AND was flooded, AND started out with a higher concentration of poorer areas which always recover last. Anyone who seriously thinks it should have rebuilt by now is either an unrealistic optimist whose every estimate should be ignored, or (to be charitable) is completely ignorant. There is no government on earth, past or present, that could get that city rebuilt given the starting circumstances in the 6 months it took news channels to start running the "shame on us NO is still ruined" pictorial specials. Doing it in two years would have mortgaged the state into crushing debt for the next 50 years, and putting it on the federal tab would have required all kinds of law bending and even more debt.

In short, the fact that NO has not yet recovered is the expected state of affairs, not some shocking bullet point to throw around as if it represents some new huge failure of the US. And I'll probably have to say something similar 5 years from now, when some similarly ignorant correspondant does a followup on the state of affairs in Burma and declares that things would be better if the US had just "done more to help".

"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?"

My own answer for that would be the cost-benefit argument. Choosing to do a lot of good at a (comparatively) SMALL cost ought to be preferable to doing a lot good at a HIGH cost. (I'd argue that's true for individuals as well as nations.) The potential costs of shooting one's way into Burma are simply a lot lower than using that approach with North Korea.

But...I hope no one reads this and thinks I'm in favor of going in with guns blazing - I'm simply responding to a single argument. Frankly, I agree with pretty much everything else Mr. Sensing says here.

While I'm at it, I might as well toss this list of objections into the mix as well:

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/greenwald/5311

I don't think it is our job to invade Burma for humanitarian reasons.

Both India and China want to be superpowers. Both of them border Burma. Let them show that they can even stop human rights violations on their own border. They can't, and thus will not become superpowers.

We should also use Burma to highlight the moral bankruptcy and military ineptitude of the UN and EU.

We should also use Burma to highlight the moral bankruptcy and military ineptitude of the UN and EU.

Darfur already did that, and look at how ineffective that turned out to be. John Bolton still gets angry editorials flung his way every time he calls for UN reform.

"Darfur already did that, "

But a second and a third example will get more people to figure it out.

Two months ago, no one was even thinking about Burma. Now, with the monks being shot and this humanitarian shame, it is well on the way to joining the ranks of Darfur and North Korea as an example of UN/EU impotence.

Next up : Tibet, around the time of the Olympics.

The US, India, South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, and Australia should join up into a soft-power move to highlight North Korea, Burma, Tibet, Darfur, etc. as a collection of China-driven atrocities, to seed and cultivate a global anti-China movement. This will pressure China to clean up its act.

Russia and VietNam could also be participants, but the above nations alone are a good combination of countries through which to conduct this.

#18 from GK:

"The US, India, South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, and Australia should join up into a soft-power move to highlight North Korea, Burma, Tibet, Darfur, etc. as a collection of China-driven atrocities, to seed and cultivate a global anti-China movement. This will pressure China to clean up its act."

Not effectively it wouldn't.

On the other hand, cultivating bad relations with China is against our interests and our diplomatic policy. Signing up for a global anti-China coalition guaranteed bad relations with China. So it's a non-starter.

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.

Must . . . resist . . can't . . . help myself. I think its an invasion (the type that most countries would let pass), but the real problem I have with this thread is the intermingling of airdrops with a ground invasion.

Why not airdrops? Americans dropped supplies from airplanes when it invaded Burma in the 40s. Sure about a third of the supplies were unreachable in the trees, but this is all cost benefit. Is there a serious threat of a shoot-down? Can significant flights be staged from air craft carriers? Would India allow itself to be used as a base? Would the supplies put the recipients at risk from local military? Why not?

PD Shaw raises interesting questions. I wish I had clearance to browse the "plans we never think we'll use" files lurking in the Pentagon (like the infamous invasion plans for Canada declassified a while ago) to see if we've actually got contingencies available to pull something like this off.

Not saying we should start dropping supplies without permission, I'd just like to know we could if a President made the call.

1) This is deliberate democide on the part of the government of Burma.
2) I wish that I could say, "See. This is what democide looks like. New Orleans is not a deliberate attempt to kill anyone. Let go of all your crazy obscene myths.", but I know there is no way I can get the 'reality based community' to get its head out of the ganja fog long enough to find out the actual facts. No matter what I say, there is going to be an ignorant chorus of, "We can't criticize the government of Burma, we are just as bad."
3) China could be one of the greatest forces for good in the world. Instead, they are one of the greatest forces for evil. I was watching that Chinese government propaganda flick - Hero - not that long ago. If you haven't seen it, the subtext of the movie is that you should always trust your leaders - even if they seem like nasty brutish violent tyrants - because ultimately they are acting in the best interests of the people. The hero accepts this logic, sacrifices his life for the sake of the peace the leader will bring, and the nasty brutish violent tyrant goes on to become the first emperor of China. Which might be all well and good, but as anyone who has read Chinese history knows, none of those thugs ever really did bring peace. The history of China is one long blood soaked holocaust after another. It's been nothing but one long series of murders, civil wars, and disasters. China shows little signs of changing any time soon. Mass murder has become a cultural habit. I wish I knew the solution, but I suspect its outside of mortal hands.
4) It astounds me how sheltered by providence are the American people. We have no concept of disaster. Sure, Katrina was bad (I was there), 9/11 was a tragedy, and Iraq has been no picnic, but I mean compared to what any other nation suffers through and what so many suffer through again and again, what have we to complain about? A hundred thousand dead in burma? Ten thousand dead in China? I don't think we can fathom it. We lived with the fear of that scale of tragedy in the first 24 hours following the towers falling, but really we haven't a clue what disaster is.
5) Times like this I wish we had another 10 marine divisions. This planets needs another superpower in the worst way, because we just aren't atlas enough to support the whole world alone. The EU is hopeless. The Indians and the Brazilians still have at least another generation or two before they can really take the world stage. Russia is busy degenerating back to another petty strong man state writ large (what else is new). Africa is its usual mess, and the Aussies are well meaning and lift more than thier fair share but really its a small country with a big desert. China is pretty much it. If they don't become one of the good guys soon, our children are in for a world of hurt.

This would be an invasion whose purpose would be nation building, no matter how you slice it. I would imagine that most people would have learned their lesson about nation building by now. But, apparently not.

Unless one is ready to reshape our forces along something akin to these lines, it is doomed to failure. And this will not happen for a decade or so.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/33

This particular situation is more reminiscent of Somalia to me than anywhere else. Famine, great human suffering, thugs in power. I agree with those that say that Burma is in China's Sphere of Influence. It appeared to me that negotiations with the North Koreans began to make progress after their botched nuclear detonation which appeared to piss the Chinese off. Once China started to exert its influence, the negotiations came to a relatively rapid conclusion.

Put China under pressure, like they were put under pressure in Tibet and Sudan and you might be able to see something happen. It will take a months to launch and invasion. China can pressure the Burmese, if anyone can. Failing that, the Burmese are unfortunately screwed.

No need to invade. Just bomb the hell out of Naypyidaw invoking R2P and make it clear there is no intention to invade and occupy. China has her hands full right now. Burmese public support and even much of the army's can be guaranteed.
Once the generals get holed up in their bunkers with their command and control centre taken out, the door will be open for international aid teams to go in. Army dissenters will start defecting and Burmese will take care of the rest themselves to achieve badly needed regime change. All they need is a catalyst, an effective spark.