Wednesday, 05.28.08

Cyclone Politics

KHIN MAUNG WIN/AFP/Getty Images

More than three weeks after Cyclone Nargis, Burma's military junta has permitted a trickle of UN aid into the country -- but no relief supplies from the U.S., French, and U.K. warships that sit just off Burma's coast.

The warships in the Bay of Bengal have not been rendered useless. Their very presence has no doubt played a role in the junta's decision to let the UN operate in cyclone-ravaged areas to the degree that it has. From the junta's viewpoint, better a few UN helicopters and a modest number of international relief workers than a massive aid operation mounted by Western militaries, which would have embarrassed the junta and perhaps threatened its grip on power.

Also on the junta's mind: China, which influences Burma more than any other foreign government and keeps Than Shwe and the other junta members in power. China deals with Burma the same way it does with North Korea. Both regimes are convenient to Beijing, but also embarrassing and troublesome. China may well have seen the political and public-relations danger of another U.S. military-led relief operation -- like the one after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami -- and pressured its Burmese surrogates to be reasonable in their negotiations with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, which produced a pledge to allow international aid workers access to the devastation.

The junta, meanwhile, has been helped by China's own tragedy. Beijing has allowed the international media access the Sichuan-province earthquake, and the affected zone's heavily urbanized terrain -- where the destruction is clearly visible in collapsed buildings -- has provided visuals that are more inherently interesting visuals than cyclone damage in a rural delta area that had few hardened structures and a lot of water to begin with. The result: Burma and its disaster have been sidelined in the media coverage, thereby helping the Burmese leadership.

We can expect that the UN relief operation in Burma will be too little, too late, despite good intentions and expertise. But the Burmese drama is just beginning. The junta cares little about the cyclone victims -- many of them ethnic Karens, whose compatriots are fighting against the Burmese army in the country's eastern hills. The junta's generals are all ethnically Burman, the dominant group in the country, and they have long considered the Karens and Shans their principal enemies. But who knows how the mid-level officers and lower ranks in the military feel about the junta after the cyclone? It could take days, weeks, or much longer to know the real political effects that this natural disaster has wrought on the Burmese power structure.

— Robert D. Kaplan

Filed Under: Burma, foreign affairs, military