Let's "Bomb" Myanmar -- with Rice

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates stated earlier this week that he "couldn't imagine the United States dropping aid by air" to the million displaced people of Myanmar "without permission from the Myanmar government." "It's sovereign air space, and you'd need their permission to fly in that air space," U.S. Joint Chiefs Chairman Michael Mullen explained to reporters. Such airdrops of urgently needed supplies like food, water and medicine have been suggested by, among others, Ky Luu, director of the U.S. Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance, and French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner. However, so far at least, they've not been carried out. The reluctance to send in food and medicine, whether or not a given government grants permission, raises an important issue concerning humanitarian aid and even more generally, international relations in the 21st century.

The best way to get quickly to the point is, oddly, to visit the family. Once upon a time, it was widely agreed that one's home was one's castle, and that whatever happened in one's home was nobody else's business. In legal lingo, one had a very high expectation of privacy in one's home. Feminists changed this expectation, arguing that when one had reason to believe that child or spousal abuse is taking place inside the home, intervention was justified. Thus, if neighbors hear someone being thrown against the wall and cry for help, we--the community, the authorities--should rush in, whether not the homeowner put out a welcome mat. In short, the right to be free from oversight behind closed doors is not absolute. The same should now be applied to international relations.

Once upon a time, when a king converted his people from one religion to another, say to make them into Catholics, other nations--Protestants in this case--interfered to promote their religion. The results were very bloody civil wars in many parts of Europe. They came to an end (more or less) in 1648, when the various nations signed several treaties known together as the Peace of Westphalia, which entailed a commitment not to interfere in the internal affairs of another nation. Since then, the notion of national sovereignty has become almost sacrosanct. Thus, few things get Americans more exercised than claims that the UN (or some other party) is intruding on the sovereignty of the United States. And, when Saddam violated the sovereignty of Kuwait--most people around the world rallied behind those who rolled him back. This is in sharp contrast to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which many of the same people viewed as a violation of Iraq's sovereignty.

True, as a major scholar, Stephen Kranser from Stanford, pointed out in his book Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy, sovereignty was never fully respected. But this observation, along with its implications for policy, was lost on most people, the media included. Sovereignty was regarded as a touchstone of international relations.

A turning point of sorts came in 1996 when a Sudanese diplomat by the name of Francis M. Deng, troubled about--of all things--the resistance of some nations to efforts to provide their people with humanitarian assistance, published a book entitled Sovereignty as Responsibility. Deng argued that if a government does not protect its own people, it forfeits its right to sovereignty; in other words, that sovereignty was not absolute, but on the contrary, conditional. In order for sovereignty to be respected, a nation had to be good citizen of the international community.

This idea caught on. First it was embraced by the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, established by the Canadian government; then by Kofi Annan, then Secretary General of the UN, who asked rhetorically: "If humanitarian intervention is, indeed, an unacceptable assault on sovereignty, how should we respond to a Rwanda, to a Srebrenica--to gross and systematic violations of human rights that affect every precept of our common humanity?"

Nowhere does this point apply better than in disaster-stricken Myanmar. An invasion would cause only more casualties on both sides. Nor should we bomb its obstructionist military, as temping as this might seem. However, if the authoritarian rulers of this country (or any other) continue to endanger the lives of many hundreds of thousands of their people by refusing to accept badly needed food and medicine, then the international community should act. It should provide food and meds by air drops. Too often nations bomb nations--killing thousands in the name of one value or another. Such bombings must pass a much higher test before one can judge them as justified. "Bombing" food and meds--to save lives--should come much easier. Like right now.

Amitai Etzioni is Professor of International Relations at The George Washington University and author of Security First (Yale, 2007) www.securityfirstbook.com He can be reached at [e-mail]