Left Flank

Matthew Lee pursues the question of which countries can aid Myanmar, by what the UN calls the "right to protect" (R2P). The Burmese case doesn't fall into the four categories, genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing or crimes against humanity, that would trigger R2P. That would rule out UN action. Mark Leon Goldberg, however, advocates a less rigorous criterion: "...the international community is permitted to violate the sovereignty of a country when that country is unwilling or unable to prevent mass atrocities from being visited upon its own citizens."

Although western-donated aid is mostly stymied by Burmese authorities, Chinese and Indian-donated aid has reached Myanmar, according to Lee's reporting. Spencer Ackerman confirms this willful obstructionism, and pleads for a solution, even by force. I think Lee is onto a pertinent issue: not R2P, but how states disburse aid.

...developments this week lead Inner City Press to wonder why China does not develop and publicize its own humanitarian machinery, its own Chinese Bernard Kouchner. It could fly aid into Yangon, and film itself doing it. It could say, "we don't need these Western NGOs, we'll do it ourselves." Supposedly China hired a U.S. public relations firm to burnish its image. Where are they? Then again, the Chinese mission has not done an on-camera stakeout interview outside the Council since October 2007.

On the other hand, or foot, at the Security Council stakeout after China's Amb. Liu said that China flew into Yangon "tents and money," one wag muttered, "And guns." Still another said that the French oil industry active in Myanmar ought to be delivering aid. We will continue to explore these issues.

There's a difference between France's hunger for limelight and PRC's quiet approach. Could this be the foundation of a Bolton-PRC alliance against UN empowerment explicit in R2P? I'm not comfortable with the notion of world government, but that doesn't rule out governance. There needs to be accountability somewhere, whether it's Beijing's responsibility or aid NGOs.

Could beef start a war?

As I was sitting here in Busan, working on a paper about natural resources and civil war and listening to news of South Korean protests against the importation of American beef, I discovered the War of the Farrapos. According to the Correlates of War database, this civil war between Brazilians resulted in over 200,000 deaths on both sides and lasted ten years. The cause was trade.

The uprising is believed to have began due to the difference between the economy of Rio Grande do Sul and the rest of the country. Unlike the other provinces, the state economy focused in the internal market rather than exporting commodities, the state's main product, the charque (bovine dried and salted meat), suffering badly from the competition of charque imported from Uruguay and Argentina, which had free access to Brazilian market while the gauchos were charged high tariffs inside Brazil.

Crazy, huh? Maybe, but Seoul Searcher thinks South Koreans are even crazier.

Incidentally, watching and reading about the protests against American beef imports, I was quite mystified by the meek, almost inaudible, protests, much less action, against harmful products imported from China. So many Chinese goods, including foodstuff as well as toys, have been scientifically proven to be toxic and harmful to our health and yet not a «boo» has been uttered against their import.

Does this mean that we, Koreans, are such a gullible people that we can only react when the biased media and some unconscionable politicians and entertainers spread groundless rumors and unalloyed lies? Yes, this, I am afraid, is true to a large extent.

But what makes us so gullible? Are we collectively naïve or stupid so that we can easily be manipulated and swayed by politicians or other interest groups? I don't think so. We may be often blinded by or made to believe in something because of monetary and material greed, but never because of naivety or stupidity.

If anything, Koreans, on the whole, are very emotional and hasty rather than coolly rational and deliberate in making judgments on any social and political issue. And let's face it, we are also a pretty insecure and paranoiac bunch of people as we have long been suffering from an inferiority complex.

Because of these regrettable national traits, we easily become prey to the demagoguery of a few unscrupulous people who have their own ax to grind or political hay to make at our expense. But we are smart enough and are living in an advanced society where we should be able to make our own judgments and decisions based on objective facts, not just listen to other people and follow them blindly.

Yet, USTR Susan Schwab might be the wackiest of all! But, just in case, I'll be looking out for South Korean gauchos!

Minding my Chinese readers, there is a certain symbolic "WOW"-ness related to the lighting of a torch on Mt. Everest. I just wish it weren't an Olympic torch. And, I hope those torch-bearers clean up after themselves.

Image via Wikipedia

The US needs Beijing to tackle the DPRK issue, but not how you might think.

Realizing this, the US, South Korea, and Japan should urge the one state with true leverage of Pyongyang - China - to press its own model of economic reform on the North's leadership.

Two complimentary reasons stand out for this long-term policy course. The first is that, as hinted above, without doing so, there will be little incentive for Pyongyang to cease its involvement in the trade of illicit goods. There is a much greater chance of reigning this activities in if sustainable revenue - with positive consequences for the state that do not threaten its neighbors, international security, or international markets - is a tangible reality for North Korea.

The second is that there is no alternative. A maintenance of the status quo does little to rescue North Korea's incentives to remain mired in the black market. Seeking to choke the regime, as Washington was doing until recently, can only force it into a desperate corner. Moreover, forcing a state collapse in Pyongyang is not, and probably never will be, an attractive or feasible option for a number of reasons. First and foremost, it assumes that Washington is capable of doing so, which in turn assumes that the US has any real leverage over North Korea. This is not the case so long as Beijing remains the regime's true financier and largest external source of goods. Furthermore, North Korea's neighbors have no desire to see the regime collapse anytime soon primarily because they will be the ones tasked with picking up the pieces. China, for instance, already struggles with the flow of refugees from North Korea and knows very well that in the event of a North Korean collapse, those problems will worsen exponentially and might even materialize a host of unknown (and perhaps worse) scenarios. South Korea, for its part, fears a North Korean collapse that would force it to absorb the poverty-stricken Northern state into its territorial protection - an immediate reunification that no one would have anticipated or truly planned for. The result would be a premature merging of the world's twelfth largest economy with one of the world's weakest states. Seoul is not opposed to Korean reunification in principle, but it is not willing to do so at the expense of its own economic growth, hence its emphasis on raising the standard of living in North Korea (something designed to soften the eventual blow, apart from the obvious humanitarian reasons).

This argument sounds familiar! Didn't a Heritage or AEI fellow characterize DPRK as a failed Stalinist state that needed to return to orthodoxy, by abandoning the quirky leader cult and military-first policy?

Michael T. Klare first warned about "conflict over valuable resources" in Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict in 2001, and he has now updated that geo-economic argument.

The great risk is that this struggle will someday breach the boundaries of economic and diplomatic competition and enter the military realm. This will not be because any of the states involved make a deliberate decision to provoke a conflict with a competitor--the leaders of all these countries know that the price of violence is far too high to pay for any conceivable return. The problem, instead, is that all are engaging in behaviors that make the outbreak of inadvertent escalation ever more likely. These include, for example, the deployment of growing numbers of American, Russian and Chinese military instructors and advisers in areas of instability where there is every risk that these outsiders will someday be caught up in local conflicts on opposite sides.

This risk is made all the greater because intensified production of oil, natural gas, uranium and minerals is itself a source of instability, acting as a magnet for arms deliveries and outside intervention. The nations involved are largely poor, so whoever controls the resources controls the one sure source of abundant wealth. This is an invitation for the monopolization of power by greedy elites who use control over military and police to suppress rivals. The result, more often than not, is a wealthy strata of crony capitalists kept in power by brutal security forces and surrounded by disaffected and impoverished masses, often belonging to a different ethnic group--a recipe for unrest and insurgency. This is the situation today in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria, in Darfur and southern Sudan, in the uranium-producing areas of Niger, in Zimbabwe, in the Cabinda province of Angola (where most of that country's oil lies) and in numerous other areas suffering from what's been called the "resource curse."

The danger, of course, is that the great powers will be sucked into these internal conflicts. This is not a far-fetched scenario; the United States, Russia and China are already providing arms and military-support services to factions in many of these disputes. The United States is arming government forces in Nigeria and Angola, China is aiding government forces in Sudan and Zimbabwe, and so on. An even more dangerous situation prevails in Georgia, where the United States is backing the pro-Western government of President Mikhail Saakashvili with arms and military support while Russia is backing the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Georgia plays an important strategic role for both countries because it harbors the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline, a US-backed conduit carrying Caspian Sea oil to markets in the West. There are US and Russian military advisers/instructors in both areas, in some cases within visual range of each other. It is not difficult, therefore, to conjure up scenarios in which a future blow-up between Georgian and separatist forces could lead, willy-nilly, to a clash between American and Russian soldiers, sparking a much greater crisis.

What makes the 2008 version "new", though is, that Klare has dropped his 2001 call for a "global authority", an extension of the International Energy Agency, to coordinate research on alternative fuels and protect current resources. Instead, Klare tepidly advocates "...rather than engage in militarized competition with China, we should cooperate with Beijing in developing alternative energy sources and more efficient transportation systems." Klare reprises Alfred Thayer Mahan, to underscore the US Navy's redeployment from its Cold War Rimland strategy to routes near Africa, the Persian Gulf, and the Malacca Strait, and bases in Iraq. Finally, Klare raises the issue of the military industrial complex: military spending to compete with PRC and Russia will dry up funds for research into alternative sources of energy. But, that funding also perversely ensures the US will seek conflict.

I'm uneasy about Klare's retreat. Certainly, PRC is a formidable competitor—CIA Director Michael Hayden's comment is encouraging—for resources and diplomatic influence, and the Washington should engage it. However, bilateral relationships can degenerate into animosity. In the wake of Iraq, the US needs to simplify its relationship with the world to facilitate better ties with the rest of the states it has marginalized in the last eight years. In other words, it needs a policy, not a monkey on its back. Global cooperation on energy spurring global growth, backed by American naval power, is as good as any power point presentation could offer. The monster of military procurement needs to be shoved into a cave where it can scare pirates and dictators but not impede commerce. Klare can only follow the last eight years' nightmare of nationalism with a stronger dose of responsible internationalism.

One of the reasons this site was down was, because I was celebrating my mother-in-law's birthday at a Korean-style sashimi place down the hill from our house. BTW, it's my favorite meal (and, obviously my mother-in-law likes it, too!) A few photos were lost to the...ahem! drunkenness of photographer, including the last hour at a nearby pub with family and friends. A big messy table full of side dishes, soju and beer, and raucous conversation-that's a Korean-style birthday!

How much it warms my heart to hear Bryan Curtis dismiss the Olympics! And, Robert Lipsyte is right-watch a sporting event, but let's not make it into a big deal. Good people have better things to do than worry-or better ways to help-the Chinese people get respect.

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