Hope Amid Despair

Catastrophes often have a double affect on those blessed enough to survive them. First, there is a numbness as the scale of horror sinks in. But then comes action, as the lucky ones turn to doing what they can to help the less fortunate, and, in time, to ameliorate the conditions that gave rise to disaster in the first place. This second reaction isn't just a personal one — that of neighbors trying to assist those who have been harmed. It can extend to an examination of whole systems of government. The Mexico City earthquake of 1985 was the catalyst that convinced a generation that a nation's political system needed radical reform. A year later, after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, Mikhail Gorbachev saw that the Soviet Union could not continue in its old ways, and redoubled his nascent commitment to glasnost and perestroika. The Asian tsunami of 2004 prompted those who lived in the devastated Indonesian province of Aceh to find a political solution to the divisions that had long blighted them.

It is natural to hope that the destruction wrought by Cyclone Nargis in Burma will have a similar impact — that it will force the military junta that, in one guise or another, has ruled Burma for decades to change its ways: win the trust of its citizens, and devote its resources not to sustaining a bloated, corrupt military but to helping people live better lives. But assessing how governments will conduct themselves is not like the common law, where precedents accrete until they solidify into doctrine that shapes future conduct. The dreadful famine in North Korea in the 1990s, for instance, did nothing to change the outlook of the brutal regime in Pyongyang.

Optimists will hope that the junta in Burma will learn the lessons of Chernobyl and Mexico City, and realize that they cannot continue as they have before. Realists, sadly, will note how long Burma's rulers have defied the manifest will of their own people, and guess that they will hunker down again. It would be nice if the realists were to be proved wrong. Until then, those within Burma as well as those from afar who genuinely care about its prospects can do little but hope for better, cloudless, days to come.