On Myanmar, Weeks On

I refrained from writing about Myanmar's disaster situation too soon after Cyclone Nargis. This is not because I wanted to avoid causing more pain to the thousands of Burmese people who read my blog daily, since those Burmese people are a mere figment of my over-active imagination. No, my reticence was borne of a desire to see what Yangon would do, and how ASEAN would react. I held myself back even when the Secretary General of ASEAN gave an interview on ChannelNewsAsia, believing that something positive could come of all of this talk.

I am sorely disappointed.

There are many divergent philosophies to political legitimacy. Democracy advocates see legitmacy as flowing from the will of the people. In a nutshell, if the people choose you to lead, you are legitimately their ruler. This may surprise some people, but there are other schools of thought. Most significantly in Asia, is the concept of "the mandate of heaven".

Before someone decries this as no more than a label for arbitrary tyranny, the concept needs to be established in its full detail. Being a largely Asian concept, it is often misunderstood and misconstrued in Western media. The mandate of heaven is a derivation of the divine right to rule. However, it carries with it a heavy burden of caring for the populace. Failure to do so results in a revocation of that mandate.

The very idea of a mandate implies that it is given by another entity, and similarly can be withdrawn. In ancient China, the advent of multiple natural disasters was in itself considered a sign of the loss of mandate.

Why are we discussing sources of political legitimacy? Because without relying on a democratic philosophy as a framework, it can still be clearly shown that the military government has no legitimacy whatsoever. The writer is an admirer of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi's labour for Myanmar, and is aware of the military coup that resulted in her unjustified imprisonment. Nonetheless, the military junta's lack of legitimacy is clearly established, even without reference to the coup.

Disavowing democratic philosophy for the moment, the military junta of Myanmar has no legitimacy because its actions directly increase the misery of the people. It has stymied international aid, failed to mobilise the army to provide support, and instead using it to drive refugees back to their 'homes'. The point is not that the junta has tried and failed to be a boon to the people. It is that the junta has deliberately acted in ways that are inevitably disastrous to its people.

The military junta is not the de jure government of Myanmar. This is not to say that some fictional democratic government most likely led by Ms Suu Kyi is the de jure government, as there could likely be no government at all at the present time.

So why does the international community, and ASEAN, continue to deal with the junta? As Chairman Mao once said, political power comes from the barrel of the gun, and the military junta has all the guns in Myanmar. In effect, it is the de facto government, and the international community needs to deal with it, but there is a limit to peaceful means.

It is estimated that millions of people are in danger of losing their lives from starvation and disease if humanitarian aid does not reach them soon. Many have already died. There is no ethnic cleansing. No apartheid, no Holocaust. But clearly, when the government through deliberate inaction and interference allows millions of its own citizens to die, it is genocide and there is good ground for direct military intervention.

There is a certain irony in this. This writer is proposing sending in military forces for the sole purpose of allowing humanitarian aid to flow into Myanmar. It is an emergency scenario, where delays literally cost lives. How many human lives are we willing to trade to give the junta's generals the time to consider how best to let aid in without relinquishing their grip on political power? This writer submits that one life is already one too many.

Will there be a Security Council veto if a proposal to intervene with force is raised? Perhaps. China may veto the motion. But this close to the Beijing Olympics, with memories of Sichuan and how well China acquitted itself in that disaster, perhaps not. And even if there is a veto, it could be time again for the General Assembly of the United Nations to Unite for Peace.

Mr George Yeo, Secretary General of ASEAN, noted that progress was slow because the junta was highly wary and skeptical of foreign aid. Translated, the junta is wary that they will lose political power. Unsurprising, given their abject lack of political legitimacy. Also, while the armed forces are capable of suppressing their own people, they are insufficient to resist any modern military force.

At the end of everything, here is the litmus test. How many more human lives are we willing to trade to assuage the junta's sensitivities, illegitimate as they are?