As hundreds of thousands of survivors of Cyclone Nargis wait for relief supplies amongst debris and dead bodies, western politicians and commentators seem to be mostly concerned with moralising over the difficulties of delivering aid.
Distrustful of Burmese leaders, western nations are unwilling to let them distribute the aid themselves. Some commentators such as Benedict Rogers and Nick Cohen are backing the demand of French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner that disaster relief should be forced on the Burmese. It's becoming increasingly obvious that many view the tragic disaster as a potential force for good, hoping that it will help to undermine the Burmese regime. It seems no disaster is so bad that political capital cannot be made from it.
The Burmese need as much help and relief as necessary, to be delivered as quickly as possible. If the Burmese government wants to organise the distribution of the aid, then so be it; the aid should come without conditions. So far, Burma has accepted aid mostly from neighbouring countries - India, Thailand and China - but it is unwilling to open its borders to the west. The reasons for this are not hard to fathom.
As ex-relief worker Conor Foley pointed out last week, some aid agencies and western governments are intent on using the crisis in Burma to push for political change. Events in Burma have quickly been turned into a morality play centred on the Burmese regime.
Burma has been under military rule since 1962. For most of the past 46 years, western powers paid little attention to the country beyond giving it a few rhetorical slaps on the wrist, holding UN debates and imposing sanctions. However, the crackdown on the Buddhist monk-led protests in Burma last year resulted in increasingly strident denouncements of the regime, and there were attempts to encourage China to side with western diplomatic efforts to force through changes in Burma.
The current criticism of Burma's seemingly intransigent approach to offers of western expertise, but not aid, is a continuation of this pressure. For some, events in Burma have been an opportunity to display their moral worth and the Burmese government's gross moral turpitude. Some commentators can barely hide their excitement at the impact the disaster may have on the Burmese regime. Just imagine if a newspaper columnist had written days after the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004, with its estimated death toll of 230,000, that at least it would potentially lead to the ending of the civil war in Sri Lanka and hamper the efforts of Muslim rebels in Indonesia.
Much of the criticism of the Burmese government centres on the fact that it only wants to let in aid, and not aid workers. This refusal to open its borders and airspace to western agencies has led to widespread condemnation. I'm no supporter of the Burmese regime, but the junta really cannot be blamed for doubting the motives of western powers, in particular the US and European governments. As David Steinberg, an expert on Burma, has observed in the New York Times: "From what I have heard, the US wants to send in an assessment team, to which the Burmese object. They are very suspicious of the US because of our vitriolic language toward the regime and our call, in effect, for regime change."
If you think Burma is simply an isolationist and paranoid regime, just look at how the US responded to the cyclone. Three days after the disaster, Laura Bush, in a rare White House question-and-answer session, criticised the Burmese government's plans to proceed with a referendum on a new draft constitution, then chastised it for not making it easier for western aid relief to get into the country.
She also blamed the regime for not alerting its people to the coming cyclone and suggested that the Burmese army may misuse any aid given by the US. The White House then announced that its embassy in Burma had made a donation of just $250,000 for emergency relief. Though the US has subsequently thrown in another $3m, the message here was clear: we want it done our way.
Later, the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, urged the junta to open the country's borders: "This is not a matter of politics. This is a humanitarian crisis." In fact, for the US government, the aftermath of the cyclone is very much a matter of politics, and an opportunity to heap pressure on the Burmese to begin political change.
Given this unfolding scenario, does one really expect the Burmese government to open its borders to countries explicitly demanding its removal from power? Is it any wonder they are suspicious of westerners demanding to be let in just because they say they work for a relief agency?
It is not only the US administration that has been using the disaster in Burma for its own advantage. In the UK, the foreign office minister Mark Malloch Brown said: "The junta has neither the will nor capacity to distribute aid." He seemed to suggest that the regime would use the disaster to deal with its domestic opposition.
Those simply trying to get aid relief into Burma, rather than using the disaster to prop up their own political careers, have thankfully reacted against such bombast. Justin Byworth, international programmes director at World Vision International, argues forcefully: "The priority is to get more humanitarian aid in now. We don't need to be lambasting a government that is doing its best to open up a little."
But if there is one man who is using the Burmese crisis more than anyone else to promote his own agenda, and his country's profile, it is gung-ho French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner. Since Sarkozy's election last year, France has adopted an increasingly activist and often bellicose foreign policy, urging greater action against supposed international threats such as the Iranian nuclear programme. Kouchner is the living embodiment of the humanitarian intervener. He has advocated the "right to intervene" (thus ignoring the domestic democratic structures of nations) in every crisis from Biafra in the 1960s to the Balkans in the 1990s.
Kouchner believes western powers have a moral imperative to supply humanitarian aid, even to nations who don't want it. For him, national sovereignty and domestic democratic structures are less important than "doing good". His response to the problems of getting aid into Burma has been to argue that the UN should, if necessary, use force to deliver aid. Kouchner's argument, backed by the French ambassador to the UN, is that the UN now recognises the "responsibility to protect" doctrine in situations where governments cannot or will not protect their own citizens. In these situations, the UN would act on behalf of those citizens - a sort of international loco parentis.
Though not legally binding on UN members, this concept has become established as an acting principle, even if it means violating the national sovereignty of member states. In practice, however, the prospect of such intervention is entirely one-sided. Effectively, might is right. Just imagine if Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez had, in a moment of generosity or political theatre, decided to fly relief aid to the inhabitants of New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The response of the White House would be entirely predictable.
The "responsibility to protect" and "the right to intervene", far from being the "minimalist conception of a moral requirement" that Nick Cohen wants foisted on the Burmese, would imprison them within the embrace of western largesse and allow western military powers to operate without borders or responsibility.
The image of UN troops fighting their way into the flooded Irrawaddy delta with an Armalite rifle in one hand and a bag of rice in the other is now not so far-fetched.
I am reminded of the remark of an anonymous American army major to the journalist Peter Arnett during the Vietnam war. Asked why the army had attacked the town of Ben Tre, the major's response was: "It became necessary to destroy the town to save it."
