The numbers are staggering, even by the grisly standards of modern history. Over 700 civilians massacred in six months by Myanmar’s military junta. The body count is not a typo, not a rounding error, but a grotesque tally of state-sponsored murder. And what does the United Kingdom do? It calls for a UN Security Council meeting. How very Victorian. How very impotent.
Let us be clear: Myanmar’s generals are not rogue actors. They are the logical endpoint of a military culture that has never faced serious consequences for its brutality. From the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya to the systematic slaughter of pro-democracy protesters, the junta has learned that the world’s response is a sternly worded letter followed by sanctions that never bite. The UK’s latest motion in New York is the geopolitical equivalent of waving a rolled-up newspaper at a rabid dog.
History offers a grim parallel here. In 1938, the League of Nations did nothing as Japan ravaged Nanjing. In 1994, the UN stood by as machetes fell in Rwanda. And today, as Myanmar’s soldiers burn villages and gun down farmers, the Security Council will debate, deliberate, and issue a resolution that the junta will use as toilet paper. The pattern is so predictable it would be funny if it weren’t so tragic.
Do not misunderstand me. I am not arguing for immediate military intervention. The last two decades have taught us that Western boots on the ground in Asia rarely end well. But what about the tools we do have? Freeze assets. Arrest visiting generals on war crimes charges. Impose a no-fly zone if the neighbours (India, China, ASEAN) will not. Instead, we get press releases. The junta’s response? They have already rejected any “foreign interference” and promised to continue their “operations against terrorists.” The terrorists, in this case, being schoolchildren and shopkeepers.
What makes this particularly galling is the intellectual decadence of our response. We talk about “norms-based international order” as if it were a spell that can ward off evil. It cannot. Norms are only effective when backed by credible force. Today, the only thing credible about the UN’s stance on Myanmar is its irrelevance. The junta does not fear the Security Council because the Security Council has proven it will do nothing of consequence.
So what is to be done? First, admit that the UN is broken. Reform it or bypass it. The UK, as a permanent member, could push for an ad hoc coalition of the willing to enforce targeted sanctions. Arms embargoes that actually stop shipments from Russia and China. A referral to the International Criminal Court that leads to actual arrests, not just warrants gathering dust. But this requires a spine. And Western spines, as we know, have been remarkably flexible since the end of the Cold War.
Second, stop pretending that national sovereignty is an inviolable shield for mass murder. The junta hides behind a fiction of statehood. If a government is butchering its own people, it forfeits the right to be treated as a legitimate state. We used to understand this in the 1990s when we intervened in the Balkans. Now we have forgotten.
Seven hundred dead in six months. If this were happening in Europe, NATO would be bombing the presidential palace within a week. But it’s happening in Southeast Asia, to brown people with no oil, no strategic importance save a few pipelines. So we wring our hands and call for meetings. We write op-eds and tweet our outrage. The junta kills another hundred. And the world, as always, finds a way to look the other way.
History will judge us for this. And it should.
