A local approach to dealing with tyrants
First Myanmar, then Zimbabwe. Twice, in recent months, thuggish regimes in distant corners of the world have rigged popular polls, wantonly escalated human suffering, played petty politics with the global community and blithely ignored insistent howls of protest.
The reaction of western powers to such outrage is typically to issue loud rebukes and push for targeted UN sanctions. This happened when Myanmar's Than Shwe first crushed democracy protests late last year, and then stood in the way of aid for cyclone victims earlier this year. It happened again when Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe brutally beat his way to re-election last month.
In neither case did much concrete engagement result, however. In the UN Security Council, China and Russia used formal vetoes to block resolutions tabled by the US and Britain, and supported by a clear majority. On the ground in Asia and Africa, regional powers exercised informal, foot-dragging vetoes to thwart calls for aggressive action against the dictators in their midst.
The result is that global responses to Myanmar and Zimbabwe have now settled into an uneasy holding pattern. Western leaders are not happy, but at the same time find they have few viable options. Regional leaders are discomfited both by the tyrants they live with on a daily basis and by the public pressure applied by attention-grabbing outsiders.
Is this, then, the way things have to be when crisis erupts in a tin-pot dictatorship far from the main spheres of western influence? In many regional theatres, the answer is probably 'yes'. Only when western leaders actually listen to their counterparts and try hard to work with them, rather than against them, will things be different.
At the Security Council, no change in internal dynamics is on the cards. Similarly, in Asia and Africa, few alterations to regional dynamics can be expected.
In future dealings with countries where unilateral action lies beyond the realm of practical politics, and some form of coalition building must take place, the US and its allies need to recalibrate their responses. In place of ritual posturing, they need to adopt more nuanced approaches that seek, as a first priority, to foster regional support for change. This does not mean western nations have to abandon their principled opposition to political oppression. However, such voices should speak in terms that are not jarring to neighbourhood sensibilities.
This points to a strategy of committed multilateral engagement through the UN, and through regional powers and bodies like China, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the African Union and the Southern African Development Community. In the long run, it is only by acting with and through such bodies that western powers can achieve their objectives.
In both Myanmar and Zimbabwe, western nations are currently little more than a Greek chorus mouthing comments on events unfolding on stage.
Professor Ian Holliday is dean of social sciences at The University of Hong Kong
