Bomb Rangoon — With Aid
- 05.12.2008 - 11:09 PMWhile the death toll in Burma rises, its government continues to block foreign aid shipments, and Western governments fret about what to do, some outspoken voices across the pond are offering up some useful ideas. British Conservative Party leader David Cameron has come up with a novel proposal to the crisis in Burma: air-drop supplies to civilians with or without the consent of their government. “The case for unilateral delivery of aid by the international community will only grow stronger,” as the death toll grows, he said yesterday. Meanwhile, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates all but rules out American aid drops, telling reporters that he “cannot imagine us going in without the permission of the Myanmar government.” It’s good to know that the spirit of Tony Blair still exist in British politics, if not within the higher ranks of his own party.
Writing in yesterday’s Times of London, David Aaronovitch goes for the Full Monty, so to speak, and says that the only justifiable objection to military intervention is whether or not it is feasible:
How often do we need it proved? The issue isn’t whether we have the right to intervene - because the consequences of vicious dictatorships usually catch up with us in time - but whether or not, practically, we can. Everything else is a polite conversation in a sunny church.
Nick Cohen, another liberal hawk, echoes the call. If the arguments of these men are not morally pure enough for the Left, a coalition of domestic opposition groups in Burma released a statement explicitly calling for international intervention:
To save thousands of lives before it’s too late, we would like to urge the United Nations and foreign governments to intervene in Burma immediately to provide humanitarian and relief assistance directly to the people of Burma, without waiting for the permission of the military junta.
With the United States stretched thin in both Iraq and Afghanistan, intervention in Burma ought to be left to the British (they could put to use soldiers they withdrew from Basra last year). Not only are the British better equipped to deal with this crisis, but Burma is a former British territorial possession, and so the Brits probably have a better understanding of the lay of the land. The moral and legal case for military intervention is airtight. The question is whether or not Great Britain could ever pull it off.
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May 13th, 2008 at 1:26 AM
After Britain’s pullout from Basra (and the subsequent Maliki offensive to purge the area of the undesirables that the Britsh couldn’t/didn’t purge), and their naval defeat to an Iranian row boat last year, something tells me that Britain is ill-prepared to undertake any such operation in Burma. Never mind the Chinese response.
May 13th, 2008 at 1:40 AM
You can’t be serious. Britain go it alone? Wthout Blair (and us) Britain (sadly) has no spine. Neither do the rest of the European poseurs.
May 13th, 2008 at 7:27 AM
The British still have 4,000 troops in Iraq and 7,800 in Afghanistan. Would have to agree with you regarding the way they messed up in Basra, but the troops that were withdrawn went (eventually) to Afghanistan. The problem in Iraq was inspired by the usual suspects, the prevalence of the lets not provoke the Iranians view at the Foreign Office and a government deciding that Iraq was an unpopular war that would cost them votes. British units are therefore hamstrung by ludicrous rules of engagement. Hence the naval patrol in a rigid inflatable being captured by a much superior Iranian force (no row boats on their side Ritchie!).
Britain has a small military and like most European states has not given it the resources it needs, but the military itself must take some of the blame as its preference for conventional warfare leads the equipment budget to be consumed by big ticket items and not the equipment needed for the conflicts they are currently fighting. As to an ‘humanitarian intervention’ in Burma, look at the map. Do you honestly think that any of the states surrounding Burma would give the British base facilities? It is obvious that the US is the only power with the capabilities to mount a humanitarian intervention mission of the scale required in Burma.
Britain is not a world power these days and has limited resources to make a contribution. Despite this the British troops who have fought and died in Iraq and Afghanistan and continue to do so, perhaps deserve a bit more respect than the blog and the comments appear to give them.
May 13th, 2008 at 12:30 PM
David #3 and David Aaronovitch
The British Army Rules of Engagement are, that there are no rules of engagement, ever. Maybe beating up on some “coolies”, when no one’s watching, or betraying/whining/ badmouthing one’s friends and allies though, while playing Simon Achmad says, could be deemed to be today’s english equivalent of tough basic training.
It’s just like Ritchie Emmons said. My G-d, how they must have suffered, throughout that entire cruel naval engagement, in the great tradition of Lord Nelson and of Churchill’s Admiralty…… only to finally have to submit, bravely, and only, at the very last moment, to an Iranian row boat.
Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha.Ho.Hu Hu Hu.Guffaw Guffaw Guffaw.
Maybe they can still get the BBC to “deconstruct ” the event, though, as yet another great victory for post WW2 almost great britain; they of The Guardian, The Independent, and Kim Philby, surely this is not something beyond their collective ken.
Say guys. In light of some of these recent events, I’m now toying with the idea of actually convening a public debate [sponsored, of course, by one of our better known universities, to attract more attention, and to give the event a bit of british “gravitas”, you know, with the motion-for-debate possibly going something like this:
” In light of some its less than salutory recent achievements, this house resolves that the grubby little english isles, should, in fact, no longer have a right to continue to exist”
I realise that it’s only a rather modest proposal, sort of like not-so-great-britain, itself; but, on the other hand, it’s also probably also a little too radical, perhaps, dontcha think? Nah, it’s more like something that should be debated about some other little country, like say, Israel, perhaps.
May 13th, 2008 at 12:57 PM
David, I of course have great respect for those British troops who have fought and died in Afghanistan and Iraq (not to mention in previous wars in the 20th century and even earlier). The fault of their recent ineptitudes lies more in the political realm than in the military realm. Their rules of engagement permitted the Iranian “row boat” to whisk those sailors to the mother ship, when the British mother ship, after a customary warning, should have blown the Iranian mother ship back to the proverbial Stone Age (7th century would be appropriate I figure).
As for Basra, Britain knew from General Petraeus how to defeat the Shiite extremists, but there was no political will to follow through. Luckily there was enough political will from the USA, and more recently Maliki, to pick up the will that London couldn’t muster.
May 13th, 2008 at 1:17 PM
I still say the Brits should take the lead, and get Australia to do the actual work.
May 13th, 2008 at 2:03 PM
For once, I agree with you, Jamie.
Good post.
May 13th, 2008 at 2:11 PM
Ritchie,
In an ideal world I am sure the Royal Navy would have liked to and been able to sink the Iranian mother ship. The only problem is that nobody in London was prepared to have a serious incident with the Iranians, after all diplomacy on the nuclear issue was still taking place (EU-3) and as we all know how successful that has been (!!!), it was deemed necessary to be humiliated and not respond. Big win for the Iranians. Another big win was in Basra, appeasement of the Iranians became policy and paralysed the British. Sadly London is not alone in caving in to the Iranians or looking the other way. You do not need to be a genius to work out the Iranian role in supporting both Sunni and Shia insurgents in Iraq and the insurgents in Afghanistan - yet what has the US done about it?
As for friend ‘hamutzi’ try growing up! We are in a very dangerous time now where the US needs to play a real leadership role and the British and the other Europeans need to grow some testicular fortitude. Sadly one cannot see any real action on the fortitude front in Britain or Europe, and if the US goes the Obama route then appeasement will become the policy of choice and you can see what a European-type foreign policy is really like.
May 13th, 2008 at 3:37 PM
OK, OK, I’m sorry.T
I, too, have great respect for the brave fighting men of the British Army,and the sacrifices they made in Basra, and elsewhere.
Darn right we are entering a very dangerous time, and WhaT i’m really trying to say is that we need each other,kay,and that that cuts both ways,especially as far as Israel is concerned.Mea culpa,OK?
May 13th, 2008 at 4:08 PM
Also, for Ritchie Emmons — the tactical disposition of forces in that engagement (Brits with the Iranian commandos) was not conducive to the solution you and many others have proposed. The real failure in that case was of imagination at the operational level, where the following decisions were made:
1. For Coalition naval forces to routinely operate very close to the territorial waters dividing line just outside the Shatt-al-Arab; while
2. Accepting as routine the presence of Iranian speedboats in proximity to boardings and inspections, without taking precautionary measures to have appropriate means of defending against attacks by them.
(Although a separate issue, these operational choices are not the same thing as “rules of engagement.” The Brits have very sound ROE, as our allies go, but even the best ROE could not get them out of this untenable operational situation.)
The British destroyer did not, in fact, have an effective means of attacking the Iranian boats, in the situation she found herself in. The geometry of the situation put the Iranian boats closer to the ship’s boarding party, and its RHIBs, than the destroyer was. US Navy information on the incident showed that the UK destroyer was 4 nautical miles (8000 yards) from the scene, which means that the destroyer did not have a weapon to attack the Iranian boats with, on the short timeline on which the event developed. The destroyer was too far away for her 20mm deck cannon to be effective, and her naval guns, while they had the range, would have been unlikely to hit maneuvering speedboats. What the naval guns WOULD have hit is other maritime traffic in this heavily dhow- and freighter-infested area. Had the destroyer attacked the speedboats with naval guns anyway, once the commando seizure was underway, she would have faced the high probability of killing her own personnel. (Indeed, if the ship had been closer and able to use her 20mm guns, she still might not have had the reaction time to fire on the Iranian speedboats BEFORE they held the British boarding party at risk. Firing into the incident once the British Marines and sailors were at risk would have resulted in at least some of them being killed.)
The fundamental error in this situation was operating in such close proximity to Iranian territorial waters, without taking precautions against hovering Iranian speedboats. The boarding party was only 1.7NM, or 3400 yards, from the territorial waters dividing line when the Iranian boats darted across it to begin the attack.
A similar posture had been routine for the US and UK navies since 1991. Although the ships of both navies sat further from Iraq’s narrow coast during the years of UN sanctions (1991-2003), it was always very common and unremarkable for Iranian speedboats to operate in the vicinity. There is some excuse for all of us having become sanguine about the Iranian speedboats, at least in that kind of situation. (This does NOT mean that we don’t, and didn’t. take the threat of speedboat attacks seriously. The US Navy has been training to that threat since Desert Storm, and we train to it jointly with our NATO allies.)
The Iranians caught us all napping in the British hostages incident. Options always existed for deploying extra security measures against the Iranian speedboats, such as keeping a naval helicopter aloft during all boardings, or deploying extra RHIBs to patrol the boarding area and protect the boarding party. We now use them. Our operational posture has changed — not the rules of engagement.
The behavior of the British hostages, while in captivity, did not accord with the US serviceman’s code of conduct. There is no question about that. But the development of the incident was not due to faulty rules of engagement, or British military weakness, but to an ill-considered Coalition operational posture. The Iranians could have seized American hostages, since we operated the same way the Brits did before this incident. The political reputation of the US is what stopped Iran from doing that, not a significant difference in our tactical naval proficiency or ROE.
Moreover, if this blog’s regular correspondents are not aware of it, the following is the case: it is no part of any nation’s ROE, including ours, to court the slaughter of one’s men in order to avoid capture. The military premise accepts the possibility of death in the achievement of OBJECTIVES, but does not stipulate that troops must die to avoid capture. In the situation as it unfolded, death was the British boarding party’s only alternative to capture.