Pat Dollard | Young Americans

So, by Albright’s reasoning … any nation that signed on to this intervention policy and didn’t like how Katrina ravaged New Orleans was being handled by our own system of government could have stormed the Gulf shores and come in to take over the post-storm operations?

Wow …

I’d sure love for someone to ask old Maddy that one, eh?

By JAMES TARANTO - (WSJ)

When a cyclone hit Burma (alias Myanmar) recently, the repressive regime that rules that country dawdled for weeks before allowing international relief teams to enter the country. “Aid agencies estimate more than one million storm survivors, mostly in the delta, still need acute help,” reports the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. “Cyclone Nargis killed more than 78,000 people. . . . More than 58,000 are still missing and unaccounted for.”

Madeleine Albright, the secretary of state during President Clinton’s second term, blames George W. Bush. Before he came along, she claims in a New York Times op-ed piece, “diplomats and foreign policy experts” were moving toward “an integrated world system” in which “the international community would recognize a responsibility to override sovereignty in emergency situations–to prevent ethnic cleansing or genocide, arrest war criminals, restore democracy or provide disaster relief when national governments were either unable or unwilling to do so”:

During the 1990s, certain precedents were created. The administration of George H.W. Bush intervened to prevent famine in Somalia and to aid Kurds in northern Iraq; the Clinton administration returned an elected leader to power in Haiti; NATO ended the war in Bosnia and stopped Slobodan Milosevic’s campaign of terror in Kosovo; the British halted a civil war in Sierra Leone; and the United Nations authorized life-saving missions in East Timor and elsewhere.

Three guesses as to what caused this brilliant plan to collapse:

The invasion of Iraq, with the administration’s grandiose rhetoric about pre-emption, was another matter, however. It generated a negative reaction that has weakened support for cross-border interventions even for worthy purposes. Governments, especially in the developing world, are now determined to preserve the principle of sovereignty, even when the human costs of doing so are high.

Thus, Myanmar’s leaders have been shielded from the repercussions of their outrageous actions.
What principle, exactly, is Albright putting forward here? The 1990s interventions she cites favorably are all cases in which, in her account, the intervening power was motivated by humanitarian concerns rather than national interest. But she also approves of the liberation of Afghanistan because it was “clearly motivated by self-defense.”

On what basis, then, does she object to the liberation of Iraq? It was both a humanitarian intervention (toppling one of the world’s most brutal dictators) and an act of self-defense (”the administration’s grandiose rhetoric about pre-emption” is merely a dysphemistic way of saying this).

Is Albright’s idea that intervention is acceptable for reasons of humanitarianism or national interest but not both? Maybe. That would explain the Clinton administration’s intervention in Iraq, which Albright does not mention in this article. Although the administration did not take action to remove Saddam Hussein from power, it did bomb the country and support strict U.N. sanctions.

In 1996, as the hard-left radio show “Democracy Now!” recounted some years later, Albright, then ambassador to the U.N., gave an interview to CBS’s “60 Minutes”:

Correspondent Leslie Stahl said to Albright, “We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that”s more children than died in Hiroshima. And–and you know, is the price worth it?”

Madeline Albright replied “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price–we think the price is worth it.”

That the sanctions killed half a million Iraqi children was almost certainly a pro-Saddam canard. But Albright did not dispute the premise. Instead, she defended as “worth it” the policy that purportedly killed several times as many people as are believed to have perished in this year’s Burma cyclone. You can see why her New York Times op-ed does not reprise this case for inhumane intervention.

Even if Albright is unable to articulate the principles that guided the Clinton administration’s foreign policy, maybe she is right that it was better than its successor’s. Let us test her specific claim that the Bush administration’s policy to Iraq is to blame for the intransigence of the Burmese junta. Did that regime behave differently when Clinton was in the White House and Albright at Foggy Bottom?

Nope. This is an excerpt from the State Department’s 1999 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices:

Burma continued to be ruled by a highly authoritarian military regime. Repressive military governments dominated by members of the majority Burman ethnic group have ruled the ethnically Burman central regions and some ethnic-minority areas continuously since 1962, when a coup led by General Ne Win overthrew an elected civilian government. . . .

The Government’s extremely poor human rights record and longstanding severe repression of its citizens continued during the year. Citizens continued to live subject at any time and without appeal to the arbitrary and sometimes brutal dictates of the military regime. Citizens did not have the right to change their government. There continued to be credible reports, particularly in ethnic minority-dominated areas, that soldiers committed serious human rights abuses, including extrajudicial killings and rape. Disappearances continued, and members of the security forces tortured, beat, and otherwise abused detainees.

The Clinton-Albright foreign policy was a failure even on its own terms (or at least on the terms she sets forth in today’s op-ed). And indeed, why would you expect U.S. humanitarian interventions against repressive regimes in Haiti and the Balkans to make the Burmese junta any more willing to risk its own power to help the people over whom it rules? Albright’s position is simply incoherent.

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The Albright Not-So-Bright NYTimes Piece:

The End of Intervention

By MADELEINE K. ALBRIGHT

Washington

THE Burmese government’s criminally neglectful response to last month’s cyclone, and the world’s response to that response, illustrate three grim realities today: totalitarian governments are alive and well; their neighbors are reluctant to pressure them to change; and the notion of national sovereignty as sacred is gaining ground, helped in no small part by the disastrous results of the American invasion of Iraq. Indeed, many of the world’s necessary interventions in the decade before the invasion — in places like Haiti and the Balkans — would seem impossible in today’s climate.

The first and most obvious reality is the survival of totalitarian government in an age of global communications and democratic progress. Myanmar’s military junta employs the same set of tools used by the likes of Stalin to crush dissent and monitor the lives of citizens. The needs of the victims of Cyclone Nargis mean nothing to a regime focused solely on preserving its own authority.

Second is the unwillingness of Myanmar’s neighbors to use their collective leverage on behalf of change. A decade ago, when Myanmar was allowed to join the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, I was assured by leaders in the region that they would push the junta to open its economy and move in the direction of democracy. With a few honorable exceptions, this hasn’t happened.

A third reality is that the concept of national sovereignty as an inviolable and overriding principle of global law is once again gaining ground. Many diplomats and foreign policy experts had hoped that the fall of the Berlin Wall would lead to the creation of an integrated world system free from spheres of influence, in which the wounds created by colonial and cold war empires would heal.

In such a world, the international community would recognize a responsibility to override sovereignty in emergency situations — to prevent ethnic cleansing or genocide, arrest war criminals, restore democracy or provide disaster relief when national governments were either unable or unwilling to do so.

During the 1990s, certain precedents were created. The administration of George H. W. Bush intervened to prevent famine in Somalia and to aid Kurds in northern Iraq; the Clinton administration returned an elected leader to power in Haiti; NATO ended the war in Bosnia and stopped Slobodan Milosevic’s campaign of terror in Kosovo; the British halted a civil war in Sierra Leone; and the United Nations authorized life-saving missions in East Timor and elsewhere.

These actions were not steps toward a world government. They did reflect the view that the international system exists to advance certain core values, including development, justice and respect for human rights. In this view, sovereignty is still a central consideration, but cases may arise in which there is a responsibility to intervene — through sanctions or, in extreme cases, by force — to save lives.

The Bush administration’s decision to fight in Afghanistan after 9/11 did nothing to weaken this view because it was clearly motivated by self-defense. The invasion of Iraq, with the administration’s grandiose rhetoric about pre-emption, was another matter, however. It generated a negative reaction that has weakened support for cross-border interventions even for worthy purposes. Governments, especially in the developing world, are now determined to preserve the principle of sovereignty, even when the human costs of doing so are high.

Thus, Myanmar’s leaders have been shielded from the repercussions of their outrageous actions. Sudan has been able to dictate the terms of multinational operations inside Darfur. The government of Zimbabwe may yet succeed in stealing a presidential election.

Political leaders in Pakistan have told the Bush administration to back off, despite the growth of Al Qaeda and Taliban cells in the country’s wild northwest. African leaders (understandably perhaps) have said no to the creation of a regional American military command. And despite recent efforts to enshrine the doctrine of a “responsibility to protect” in international law, the concept of humanitarian intervention has lost momentum.

The global conscience is not asleep, but after the turbulence of recent years, it is profoundly confused. Some governments will oppose any exceptions to the principle of sovereignty because they fear criticism of their own policies. Others will defend the sanctity of sovereignty unless and until they again have confidence in the judgment of those proposing exceptions.

At the heart of the debate is the question of what the international system is. Is it just a collection of legal nuts and bolts cobbled together by governments to protect governments? Or is it a living framework of rules intended to make the world a more humane place?

We know how the government of Myanmar would answer that question, but what we need to listen to is the voice — and cry — of the Burmese people.