I keep realizing I haven't mentioned the horrifying tragedy in Burma and then realizing I'm not sure what I could possibly say about the horrifying tragedy in Burma. But I suppose one thing to say is that, as is usually the case in these situation, you've got a natural disaster which is then compounded by bad, unaccountable government (sort of like Katrina amped-up by a few orders of magnitude) of the sort that really only an autocracy can bring you. It's a reminder that we should be fairly confident that, over the long haul, democratically governed nations can survive and prosper in ways that it's very difficult for dictatorships to do.
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Burma
07 May 2008 06:43 pm
Comments (35)
We can say, along with Bernard Kouchner of France, that if the Burmese government isn't going to permit aid to flow into the country to save the people who are dying there, then we ought to use force to make them.
It should be unacceptable for a government to do what the Burmese government is doing. People are dying and need aid immediately.
Sure, why not? How could a military plan to provide humanitarian aid possibly go wrong, or cause the already suffering victims to suffer any worse?
Surely, if it's worth doing, it's worth doing without a moment's thought, given that some very high minded people have issued hasty and moralizing declarations.
Do it! It'll be great!
I'm all for democracy, but democracy isn't inherently superior to autocracy when it comes to dealing with natural disasters or providing essential services. I wouldn't expect Mexico's government to handle the after effects of a natural disaster better than Singapore's. The sort of people involved are also a huge factor: some populations respond well to these sorts of crises; others not so much. Compare, for example, the behavior of the Kobe earthquake survivors to the behavior of the Katrina survivors.
As far as Kouchner's suggestion to invade Myanmar, I say let the French take the lead on that.
I'm all for democracy, but democracy isn't inherently superior to autocracy when it comes to dealing with natural disasters or providing essential services.
Yes, it is. Compare India and China on famines. They both had famines at similar rates until independence, since then China has had several and India's had none.
Your Mexico/Singapore hypothetical is misleading in several ways. First, Mexico is by most measures only slightly more democratic than Singapre. This data suggests Mexico is the 63rd most democratic country in the world, and Singapore is 74th. The Economist ranks them 53rd and 84th; another data set I've got that's not on the web has them at 49th and 65th. While Mexico comes out slightly ahead, but they're in the same general grouping of semi-democracies. (India and China are separated by about 100 counties). Second, wealth level matters. You should compare a similarly wealthy democracy and non-democracy to make your point. Wealth level and democratic status both have an impact in this regard. And of course democracies are far wealthier than non-democracies in the aggregate. Third, Singapore is an extremely wealthy city-state that is by almost all accounts an oddity in the world today. What other authoritarian regime would you similarly trust in this situation? Is there any one in the same general economic ballpark as Mexico you'd trust more than Mexico?
I'd be willing to bet there's a really good argument made that an incompetent or malevolent autocracy's response to a natural disaster would be worse on the most vulnerable populations than an incompetent democracy.
MoveOn is saying that the best way to give is to go through the International Burmese Monks Association, because that's the best way to make sure that the aid won't get diverted or refused by the dictatorship. Does anyone know more about whether that's the case? Here's where they're sending us:
https://secure.avaaz.org/en/burma_cyclone/
Allowing a bunch of Americans or Europeans into your nation to help with a disaster such as this has its own risks, at least in the eyes of the beleaguered government. You can be assured that amongst those entering to "help" a large sub-group will be a nest of CIA/NSA spies and covert military operatives. In just a few years we've "helped" several times the Myanmar death toll to their graves in Iraq and Afghanistan. I don't want anyone from the U.S. government on my property. The same sentiments by foreign citizens is more than understandable.
El Cid--research on democracy's comparative performance arrives at a strong empirical confirmation of your suspicion.
djw's general point here is the thing that Amartya Sen won his Nobel Prize for pointing out -- when famine or some other disaster strikes, democracies urgently rush to the aid of the needy, because politicians who are insensitive to their plight will lose their jobs.
The example that strikes closest to home for me, and for Sen, was the Bengal famine during the early 1940s in India. There wasn't really anything wrong with the crops -- in fact, crop yields were better than they had been in a non-famine year previously. The problem was that the British colonial rulers took all the grain out of the countryside and moved it to Calcutta to forestall a Japanese invasion (which never came). About 3 million people died in the Bengali countryside.
Churchill didn't care very much about this, as he usually didn't about any of his colonial subjects. Among the few remarks he has about the famine is that the Indians brought it upon themselves with their tendency to 'breed like rabbits'.
Once India became a democracy, the era of mass-casualty famines ended.
"They both had famines at similar rates until independence, since then China has had several and India's had none."
India would have had a massive famine forty years ago if it weren't for a deus ex machina named Norman Borlaug.
"First, Mexico is by most measures only slightly more democratic than Singapre."
Freedom House ranks Mexico as "Free" and Singapore as "Partly Free".
"Second, wealth level matters."
True, but wealth level is partly determined by government competency and policies (human capital is also a huge factor, but can be adjusted for by immigration policy). Singapore is rich largely because of intelligent policies well-executed by its government that have attracted capital, foreign investment, and high-paying industries. If Mexico were as well-run as Singapore, it would be a first world country.
Can anyone please explain the Burma/Myanmar distinction? I've heard NPR go back and forth all day. Bush says Burma. What's the deal?
Alex,
The ruling junta (SLORC) renamed the country "Myanmar", so I think the U.S. gov't, among others, continues to use Burma as a sign that we don't recognize the legitimacy of their rule.
Best thing we can do in the long-term is simple:
Stop eating shrimp.
I think "Burma" only refers to one ethnic group/region in the place as well. Maybe it's like Bohemia is to the Czech Republic. If McCain called the place Burma, that would be more evidence that he's senile or stupid. The rest of us are just ignorant and lazy.
Sure, why not? How could a military plan to provide humanitarian aid possibly go wrong, or cause the already suffering victims to suffer any worse?
Yeah, much better the aid sits unused in Thailand and the aid workers twiddle their thumbs while the junta decides whether to give them visas.
If the green revolution is the difference between pre and post Independence India, why the famine in Bangladesh?
I agree with more or less everything in your last paragraph, and I don't dispute that by most any good measure, Mexico is more democratic than Singapore--only that they're relatively close by global standards today on that score. but it doesn't change the fundamental underlying dynamic--democracy, as Sen rather exhaustively demonstrated (Neil provides some details) inspires governments to perform relatively well (within whatever constraints they face) in the face of potential and actual humanitarian disasters.
I'd like to see the United States standardize it's aid package offers to natural disasters around the world. Come up with some funding matrix that takes into account the geographic size of the disaster and the number of wounded and have a few stock packages for land disaster, water disaster, etc..
Wouldn't it be better in the long run if our generousity isn't based on the optics of the particular disaster and the country in question. The Bam earthquake in Iran, the Kashimir earthquake in Pakistan, the tsunami that hit Indonesia, India, Sri Lanka, and Thailand, the Burma cyclone -- why isn't there roughly the same proportional response to natural disasters? I think a generous planned response, friend or foe, would do wonders for the US reputation in the long run.
Al: I, like a lot of people, like the notion of getting the aid to those who need it. But there is such a thing as the real world.
A lot of people aren't crazy, for example, about how the Somalia intervention went, particularly given that it was originally opposed by the very aid organizations it was supposedly to aid.
It's really, really easy to make moralistic, or even simply moral, declarations. But weaving those into the actual world is much more difficult.
Can you not even imagine, for one second, that a well-intentioned yet ham-handed intervention could make things worse for many people that you first intended to aid? Or is this impossible, given your unquestionable desire to make things better?
Fred:
If the green revolution is the difference between pre and post Independence India, why the famine in Bangladesh?
I agree with more or less everything in your last paragraph, and I don't dispute that by most any good measure, Mexico is more democratic than Singapore--only that they're relatively close by global standards today on that score. but it doesn't change the fundamental underlying dynamic--democracy, as Sen rather exhaustively demonstrated (Neil provides some details) inspires governments to perform relatively well (within whatever constraints they face) in the face of potential and actual humanitarian disasters.
"democracy, as Sen rather exhaustively demonstrated (Neil provides some details) inspires governments to perform relatively well (within whatever constraints they face) in the face of potential and actual humanitarian disasters."
Could be. Although on the other hand, some of the most sustainable and intelligent policies (e.g., Singapore's and Chile's social security systems; Brazil's flex-fuel system, etc.) were enacted when the countries were autocracies and would have been difficult to pass had they been democracies.
> Could be. Although on the other hand, some of the most sustainable and intelligent
> policies...were enacted when the countries were autocracies and
> would have been difficult to pass had they been democracies
When it comes to democracy vs wealth, South Asia is in the blessed position of not having to choose between them.
By now, some 50 years after independence, its pretty clear that while democracy may not bring prosperity to India, dictatorship won't turn it into a Singapore or even a China. The alternatives on offer are Burma, Pakistan, Bangladesh,Nepal...its a no-brainer.
"Could be. Although on the other hand, some of the most sustainable and intelligent policies (e.g., Singapore's and Chile's social security systems; Brazil's flex-fuel system, etc.) were enacted when the countries were autocracies and would have been difficult to pass had they been democracies.
Posted by Fred | May 8, 2008 12:45 AM"
While I won't get into the merits of those policies (that would be a threadjack), Amy Chua made the good point that for every Pinochet and Fujimori, there's a Mugabe or a Papa Doc Duvalier. After all, if dictatorships by virtue of being dictatorships, which theoretically could move faster and solve collective action problems better than democracies, were better at this, then communism wouldn't have been such a humanitarian disaster and Africa would be the richest continent in the world. Think of how poorly Maoist China responded to that one earthquake that turned out to have the highest death toll in modern history or how many people have starved in North Korea. Even a country that is on the road to democracy but puts up blockades to accountability, such as in Pakistan in IIRC 1969 when the military dictatorship in West Pakistan took forever to respond to flooding in East Pakistan (and West Pakistan had for years also been taking money out of more heavily populated East Pakistan to spend it in less heavily populated), which is why when East Pakistanis could finally vote, they voted for the Awami League, which eventually led to civil war.
In addition, even with the Green Revolution, India could have still experienced famines. A big problem with dictatorships is that since they aren't accountable to anyone, they often don't invest in infrastructure that people need to survive that the rulers don't personally need or see necessary. A big problem with a lot of dictatorships has been that they don't build the roads, etc. that could help food aid move into places where it is needed or let in aid workers, like in Burma right now. Meanwhile, when farmers end up doing worse under a government, such as under Vajpayee's BJP, they get voted out.
In addition, while the much-mocked pre-1990's "Hindu growth rate" was only around 3.5% per year, that's a lot better economic performance than India saw under British rule, which was around 1% per year while the population grew and about 0% per year during the final century of imperialism.
I really don't know why Chile's pension plan reforms are held up as some sort of global model of anything -- as though somehow this justifies Pinochet's knuckleheaded & scattershot interventions into the economy (he kept copper nationalized, for example).
Now that we are at the time in which people who were working at the time are retiring now, it turns out that the plans didn't work so well for a large swath of the population, so President Bachelet pushed through reforms so that lower income and public workers get regular, non-privatized pensions. If anyone missed the symbolism, the reforms were named "Solidarity Pensions."
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/americas/03/11/chile.pension.ap/index.html
This was a fairly commonly predicted risk with such plans, and it's interesting that the need to reform this problem in no way slows right wingers' citing of Chile's social security system as the bestest proof of tyrannical awesomeness EVAR.
So what was the record for the entire Pinochet regime? Between 1972 and 1987, the GNP per capita fell 6.4 percent. (13) In constant 1993 dollars, Chile's per capita GDP was over $3,600 in 1973. Even as late as 1993, however, this had recovered to only $3,170. (14) Only five Latin American countries did worse in per capita GDP during the Pinochet era (1974-1989). (15) And defenders of the Chicago plan call this an "economic miracle."
Reality Man,
With the exception of the southern states and possibly West Bengal, India has done a piss-poor job by its poorer citizens, both in the rural areas and in the countryside. Land reform only really took place at all (on a _national_ level, there was land reform in the Communist-ruled states) during Indira's Emergency back in the 1970s. The established elites (media, courts, etc.) did a stellar job of blocking the land reforms and expropriations that would have improved the lives of the rural majority. I think India would have done much better with an authoritarian government whether it was a right-wing one like Chiang on Taiwan or a left-wing one like Tito.
I'm Indian by descent of course so I can say this. In the northern states of India the majority of girls never go to school for a day in their lives. Government spending disappears in corruption and the rural population is in thrall to landowners and moneylenders. The SOuthern states are of course much more progressive, no thanks to liberal democracy or to the central government.
Democracy in India today is a farce. With the exception of the fundamentalist Right and the communist Left, none of the other parties stand for anything other than getting mediocrities in positions of power where they can enjoy the perks of office. The parties will adopt any ideological position, take any opportunity, engage in any alliance of convenience to get into power and stay there. The CPI(M) isn't great but they are the best of a very bad lot.
I dislike liberal democracy in general of course but the example of my ancestral country only confirms me in my beliefs. India would be in a much better place had Nehru seixed authoritarian powers in 1948.
BTW Neil, did you know we know each other in real life. You'd recognize my real name right away.
El cid: "I really don't know why Chile's pension plan reforms are held up as some sort of global model of anything -- as though somehow this justifies Pinochet's knuckleheaded & scattershot interventions into the economy (he kept copper nationalized, for example)."
Pinochet is held up as an example by right-wingers in the USA because they *like* him, and *like* what he did - namely, dictatorship, repression, torture and mass murder.
I dislike liberal democracy in general of course but the example of my ancestral country only confirms me in my beliefs. India would be in a much better place had Nehru seixed authoritarian powers in 1948.,
Really? What if the guy after Nehru turned out to be a corrupt authoritarian? Democracy is the least worst, and Burma's paranoid dictatorship is now giving a good example why.
Ironically, after SLORC cracked down on the peacably protesting Buddhist monks recently, it was the Indian Communist party that complained that the Indian government was too cozy with the Burmese dictatorship.
For some reason I am reminded of Christopher Hayes laughing at the suggestion that SLORC be forcibly removed. Well, the thousands of dead and homeless b/c of SLORC's refusal to accept foreign aid are just collateral damage to policy of coexistence. Maybe regime change wouldn't be a good idea, but the alternate policy of coexistence isn't very good either. It doesn't seem like a laughing matter, in fact Hayes has nothing on his blog about Burma and the typhoon.
If you have nothing to say about Burma then let other people speak for you. You have a GREAT medium to get the word out about various orgs that are helping there like Doctors without Borders: http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/ or the monks themselves https://secure.avaaz.org/en/burma_cyclone/77.php
Barry: I should have been clearer. I guess I intended to vent a complaint that such a nonsense counter-example is still accepted by a community larger than the rabid right and their market fundamentalist buddies.
Peter K.,
That's a pretty silly response. I could just as easily point to Yugoslavia, or Cuba, or Taiwan as the types of authoritarian governments that would have done India a lot of good.
Of course succession is always a problem with a benevolent authoritarian, Tito being a good example, I concede to you there. But it's also true that Nehru's successors _were_ in fact plenty corrupt. The fact is that the _only_ time that land reform ever happened at a substantial scale, on the national level, was during the Emergency. It would have been better if that Emergency had been declared twenty years earlier and India could have cracked down on the big businessmen, the corrupt bureaucrats, the moneylenders and landowners, and put its national resources at the services of the people.
It appears as though many Indians agree. In 1996, a survey found that 60% of Indians would welcome a military coup- I don't know what that statistic is today. I know little about the situation in Myanmar and so will refrain from comment, but I do know a thing or two about India.
These aren't my _reasons_ for disliking liberal 'democracy' of course but every time I look at India I am confirmed in my disgust for that particular form of government.
There is a mantra in the aid world (among the serious professionals) that I recommend to you:
There are no natural disasters.
All disasters are political. All disasters are enabled by choices people and governments have made.
Hector, I'm Indian-American as well, so I tend to know a lot about this stuff as well. I've made many a rant against the corruption and self-serving actions of many in Congress and the BJP. I'm not arguing that Indian democracy is perfect, but it is definitely preferable to the authoritarian British imperial rule which preceded it.
In addition, I can't recall ever meeting a single Indian across religious, linguistic, political or caste lines that like what Indira did during the emergency and think of it as a time of great economic growth. While land reform is important, it's not the be-all and end-all to economic policy. Cuba, despite your protests, hasn't exactly been a great example of economic growth and that isn't only been because of the embargo.
"I dislike liberal democracy in general of course but the example of my ancestral country only confirms me in my beliefs. India would be in a much better place had Nehru seixed authoritarian powers in 1948."
Here's the problem though. India is unique in the extent to which the poor turn out to vote. If they didn't believe in the system at all, they wouldn't bother to take part in it. In addition, there is no way to guarantee that the dictators that followed Nehru after his death would have been benevolent dictators. In addition, Nehru's economic policies weren't that successful in the first place, so how would removing restraints on Nehru's ability to make mistakes be better for India? Land reform might have gone deeper, but his policies retarded the pace of Indian industrialization and prevented India from taking advantage of export-led growth mechanisms followed in East Asia in light industry goods like pencils. At best, a Nehru dictatorship would just have led to an Indian nation of more economically well-off peasants with an even smaller industrial middle class. Since when do best-case scenarios actually pan out?
In the end, even the strongest and most popular dictatorship is a brittle structure. Relying on it to lead to growth in the short run makes some sense because democratization is messy, but dictatorships just can't react well enough to certain problems (like famine, capital flight or mass discontent) to survive.
I would just like to pour some cold water on all the people who agree with Kouchner that you can foist humanitarian aid on a country. With all due respect, are you guys nuts? You're dealing with a paranoid regime that believes (quite rightly) that the US UK and France are doing everything they can to undermine it. OCHA director John Holmes is working every hour of every day to convince them that the western warships waiting to provide relief (as they did so successfully in Indonesia in 2004) are NOT a threat to its sovereignty, and they can be used in the aid effort. And you're going to back him up by... THREATENING TO INVADE THE COUNTRY IF THEY DON'T LET RELIEF IN FAST ENOUGH? Every time Kouchner opens his mouth, Holmes cringes.
Yes, the slow pace of aid, and the denial of visas, is ridiculous and heinous. But we're not about to invade Burma. Which leaves us a choice: holding our noses and dealing with Than Shwe's paranoid push-and-pull so we can get as much aid in as we can as fast as we can... or threatening the regime, whereupon the general will put the country on lockdown and not let anybody in whatsoever, and everybody in the Irrawady delta will perish, but at least we'll get to prance around all righteous-like and laud ourselves for defending the Responsibility to Protect.
Give it up, fellas. The Responsibility to Protect died in Baghdad, if indeed it ever lived at all. If you want to help the citizens of Burma, pull up your sleeves and work with the regime like OCHA and the Red Cross are trying to do right now. If not, stay home, and keep the rhetoric with you.
Give it up, fellas. The Responsibility to Protect died in Baghdad, if indeed it ever lived at all. If you want to help the citizens of Burma, pull up your sleeves and work with the regime like OCHA and the Red Cross are trying to do right now. If not, stay home, and keep the rhetoric with you.
What OCHA and the Red Cross are doing now? Sitting on their hands in Thailand?
Nice to see dictators like Saddam and dictatorships like Burma's will always have chumps to defend them.
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Posted by El Cid | May 7, 2008 6:59 PM