I am often accused of interfering in the private lives of citizens. Yet, if I did not, had I not done that, we wouldn't be here today. And I say without the slightest remorse, that we wouldn't be here, we would not have made economic progress, if we had not intervened on very personal matters - who your neighbor is, how you live, the noise you make, how you spit, or what language you use. We decide what is right, never mind what the people think. That's another problem-Lee Kuan Yew

Barack Obama's face, with his cinched-together eyebrows and wide-open smile, is among the most recognizable in the world. His voice and manner of speech—those pregnant pauses between words, when you can almost see those giant gears grinding inside his head—are universally familiar.

"Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping shared the same view of China’s ‘cultural exceptionalism’ and the country’s modern mission. According to the modern Chinese narrative, China’s achievements over the past five thousand years give it a ‘mandate’ to dominate Asia based on its perceived economic, cultural, and moral superiority. Up to the fifteenth century,Chinese technological know-how was the most advanced in the world. It had been the largest economy in the world for eighteen of the past twenty centuries. As recently as 1820,China could boast that it produced one third of global output , and it remained the world’s largest economy until around 1885. In many respects, China’s perception of itself shares something with America’s: they both feel strongly about their moral rectitude, both feel their respective cultures and values havesomething unique and invaluable to offer the world, and both believe that they are destined to become truly great powers in human history. "

From the New York Times: The End of Intervention by Madeleine Albright

THE Burmese government’s criminally neglectful response to last month’s cyclone, and the world’s response to that response, illustrate three grim realities today: totalitarian governments are alive and well; their neighbors are reluctant to pressure them to change; and the notion of national sovereignty as sacred is gaining ground, helped in no small part by the disastrous results of the American invasion of Iraq. Indeed, many of the world’s necessary interventions in the decade before the invasion — in places like Haiti and the Balkans — would seem impossible in today’s climate.

The first and most obvious reality is the survival of totalitarian government in an age of global communications and democratic progress. Myanmar’s military junta employs the same set of tools used by the likes of Stalin to crush dissent and monitor the lives of citizens. The needs of the victims of Cyclone Nargis mean nothing to a regime focused solely on preserving its own authority.

Second is the unwillingness of Myanmar’s neighbors to use their collective leverage on behalf of change. A decade ago, when Myanmar was allowed to join the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, I was assured by leaders in the region that they would push the junta to open its economy and move in the direction of democracy. With a few honorable exceptions, this hasn’t happened.

A third reality is that the concept of national sovereignty as an inviolable and overriding principle of global law is once again gaining ground. Many diplomats and foreign policy experts had hoped that the fall of the Berlin Wall would lead to the creation of an integrated world system free from spheres of influence, in which the wounds created by colonial and cold war empires would heal.

In such a world, the international community would recognize a responsibility to override sovereignty in emergency situations — to prevent ethnic cleansing or genocide, arrest war criminals, restore democracy or provide disaster relief when national governments were either unable or unwilling to do so.

During the 1990s, certain precedents were created. The administration of George H. W. Bush intervened to prevent famine in Somalia and to aid Kurds in northern Iraq; the Clinton administration returned an elected leader to power in Haiti; NATO ended the war in Bosnia and stopped Slobodan Milosevic’s campaign of terror in Kosovo; the British halted a civil war in Sierra Leone; and the United Nations authorized life-saving missions in East Timor and elsewhere.

These actions were not steps toward a world government. They did reflect the view that the international system exists to advance certain core values, including development, justice and respect for human rights. In this view, sovereignty is still a central consideration, but cases may arise in which there is a responsibility to intervene — through sanctions or, in extreme cases, by force — to save lives.

The Bush administration’s decision to fight in Afghanistan after 9/11 did nothing to weaken this view because it was clearly motivated by self-defense. The invasion of Iraq, with the administration’s grandiose rhetoric about pre-emption, was another matter, however. It generated a negative reaction that has weakened support for cross-border interventions even for worthy purposes. Governments, especially in the developing world, are now determined to preserve the principle of sovereignty, even when the human costs of doing so are high.

Thus, Myanmar’s leaders have been shielded from the repercussions of their outrageous actions. Sudan has been able to dictate the terms of multinational operations inside Darfur. The government of Zimbabwe may yet succeed in stealing a presidential election.

Political leaders in Pakistan have told the Bush administration to back off, despite the growth of Al Qaeda and Taliban cells in the country’s wild northwest. African leaders (understandably perhaps) have said no to the creation of a regional American military command. And despite recent efforts to enshrine the doctrine of a “responsibility to protect” in international law, the concept of humanitarian intervention has lost momentum.

The global conscience is not asleep, but after the turbulence of recent years, it is profoundly confused. Some governments will oppose any exceptions to the principle of sovereignty because they fear criticism of their own policies. Others will defend the sanctity of sovereignty unless and until they again have confidence in the judgment of those proposing exceptions.

At the heart of the debate is the question of what the international system is. Is it just a collection of legal nuts and bolts cobbled together by governments to protect governments? Or is it a living framework of rules intended to make the world a more humane place?

We know how the government of Myanmar would answer that question, but what we need to listen to is the voice — and cry — of the Burmese people.

Madeleine K. Albright was the United States secretary of state from 1997 to 2001.

http://www.likecool.com/Marcin_Sacha--Pic--Gear.html

" Secular Israelis, for their part, live in perpetual dismay over the fact that their successes have never led them to where they expected to arrive. Their parents’ generation, and that of their parents, expected to be vindicated, that the value and truth of the ideology they embraced would be confirmed by the society they built. After Zionists produced the Good Society, they reasoned, no one could doubt that Zionism itself is a social good. And for some time, it seemed that this formula had proven itself to be Israel’s self-image, broadly, as the country passed through two phases.

In the first phase, Israel saw itself as a model of state-building, the only country in the world in which voluntarist socialist communities -- kibbutzim -- thrived, producing not only a plurality of the country’s food, but providing in extraordinary numbers charismatic leaders in government and the army. Even beyond the green lawns and gates of the kibbutzim (which accounted, after all, for only a bit over 3 percent of the country’s population), economists determined that Israel was the country with the smallest “socioeconomic gap” in the world; the difference in income between the richest and poorest 10 percent was smaller than anywhere else. Israel had undertaken and succeeded in massive development projects. The country had absorbed several times its population in immigrants, many poor, and many refugees arriving from dreadful circumstances. Israel reversed the regional trend towards desertification, reclaiming tens of thousands of acres of arid land for productive agriculture. Israelis became agricultural advisors through much of Africa, helping to spark a short-lived but significant increase in African agricultural production. And of course, Israel had assembled an army and airforce recognized for its effectiveness and creativity. Generals like Moshe Dayan and Yitzhak Rabin became international celebrities and found themselves dining at the tables of princes and starlets.

No one holds a heroic view of Israel anymore, not abroad and not here. Today’s kibbutzim are not a source of national pride. In the past decade, dozens of them have “privatized,” dividing up what was common property (it took a Supreme Court ruling to stop kibbutzim from selling to developers valuable government-owned lands that had been lent to them for agriculture). Israel’s social gap is now considered among the greatest in the developed world. The most recent wave of immigrants, from the former Soviet Union, are largely disgruntled, and surveys suggest that a large percentage of them are not even Jews. Several of Israel’s large development projects have caused great harm to the local environment. Israelis are unwelcome in African capitals. They are mostly unwelcome anywhere. And most important of all, Israel’s military excellence has been tested in a 20-year misadventure occupying southern Lebanon, and in laboriously maintaining the peace in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The disastrous last war in Lebanon, and the wrenching recent war in Gaza, won support by most Israelis, and censure by some, but together they have left little doubt that the country’s army is not heroic in the sense that it once was. " --Foreign Policy