Comment by mschuster91 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mschuster91 | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

> It looks like Russia (and China) are vetoing any UN action. What are the alternatives?

There are no alternatives, that is part of the problem. The UN was primarily created to prevent all-out war between the US and Russia... young people like me expect it to be more than that though.

In the past, as a result the US and various European nations have gone off on their own to engage in various conflicts, both in military actions and in economic sanctions, on sometimes extremely thin or nonexistent legal grounds.

That's unrealistic to expect here:

- there isn't much trade between Myanmar and the EU to sanction (and the bit that is can and will be covered by Russia and China)

- military action is out of the question since the US has more pressing problems to solve than a military junta - Taiwan and interior issues - and the EU is blocked by its 100% consensus requirements on foreign action, incompetent and underfunded armies and general instability

- generally, outside of human rights activists no one cares about human rights abuses, that is the sad and tragic reality.

- as for the UN: there isn't any hope for multilateral action any more there either, it's a dead paperweight. No single nation there acts on good faith and a sense of common humanity, everyone is just looking for their own interests.

> There are no alternatives, that is part of the problem. The UN was primarily created to prevent all-out war between the US and Russia...

Please don't pervert the history. This wasn't the case. The UN was created as a reaction to the horror of WWII and the failure of the League of Nations.

It was to become a League of Democracies, an iron fist against the next Nazi Germany wannabe, a guarantor of the "Never Again."

It was the US who go the idea to get USSR into it, pretty much sabotaging it on the day 1.

> There are no alternatives

The alternative is here, and it's the resolution 377 action.

This is not a Nazi Germany wannabe, it's just a garden variety tinpot dictatorship. There are a lot like it in the world, and we've figured out that outside intervention is not a good idea in such cases. It's the responsibility of a country's own people to pursue free government for themselves, assuming that they care to. Reap what you sow, and all that.

> It's the responsibility of a country's own people to pursue free government for themselves, assuming that they care to. Reap what you sow, and all that.

This isn't possible often enough. There are countless dictatorships that use any means necessary to ensure their survival, from starving their populations (North Korea) to murdering or beating them up on the streets (Tiananmen massacre, Arab Spring revolutions) or silencing any opposition (Hongkong, Belarus).

Most freedom movements need some form of support from the outside, be it arms, money, logistic or ideologic support.

> There are countless dictatorships that use any means necessary to ensure their survival

These things only matter in the short run but successful, enduring democratization is a very long game. Look at Taiwan and South Korea - relatively straightforward when looking at them from the outside, and yet they took decades to become stable democracies with real respect for fundamental rights. More challenging cases might take generations.

> Most freedom movements need some form of support from the outside, be it arms, money, logistic or ideologic support.

Most often, the needed support can come from the inside, as influential groups within the country start supporting a peaceful transition to liberal democracy. Arguably, this is even the best possible case.

> as influential groups within the country start supporting a peaceful transition to liberal democracy

For that, you need influential groups that can benefit from changing the status quo. In a country that has been suffering from decades of corruption, the elites are generally so widely despised by the population that they have to fear to be imprisoned at best and executed at worst, were they to lose power.

It's even worse in countries like the Lebanon, Syria, Yemen or former Yugoslavian member states, where religion, ethnic disputes and sometimes hundreds of years worth of land disputes and squabbles come into the mix.

> For that, you need influential groups that can benefit from changing the status quo. In a country that has been suffering from decades of corruption ... religion, ethnic disputes and sometimes hundreds of years worth of land disputes and squabbles come into the mix.

I don't exactly disagree, but this is why it can make sense to pursue basic state-building ("good government") and liberalization (respect for basic rights and freedoms) well before worrying about electoral democracy, or a transfer of power away from current policy makers. In practice, the latter is essentially useless without the former - but in the long run, more freedom opens up opportunities for more democracy.

You clearly have no idea what you're talking about or any knowledge of Burma's history. General Hlaing's junta has already committed one genocide against the Rohingya in 2017 and given the continued opportunities will turn Burma into a failed state, cause the death of millions and destabilise the region. Just because they lack Nazi Germany's industrial capacity and sharp uniforms doesn't mean they won't continue to murder, maim and slaughter.

Funny that you bring the Nazis into play.

I've read somewhere that the Rohingya aren't liked that much in all the regions they dispersed into, because much of them worked as the shock troops of the British Empire, protecting its interests. That seems to be true even for the time when their home was called Arakan, and they weren't so dispersed.

So they are shunned where they did the shock trooping for the Brits, or tried to separate and do their own islamic thing afterwards, in multiethnic regions.

Karma is a bitch, isn't it?

> It was to become a League of Democracies, an iron fist against the next Nazi Germany wannabe, a guarantor of the "Never Again."

That is what both you and I hope that the UN would have been, but unfortunately not much based in reality.

> It was the US who go the idea to get USSR into it, pretty much sabotaging it on the day 1.

Without Soviet cooperation, the purpose of the UN would have been moot from day 1.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com