In the book The Bottom Billion, the author Paul Collier talks about the growing international apathy at the suffering of millions of people around the world. This, he says, has been reinforced by a general dislike of interventionist measures especially after the Somalia and Iraq fiascoes. Somalia made the US be wary of military interventions even in dirt poor third world countries like Somalia that hasn’t had a functioning government since Siad Barre was deposed in the early nineties. Enough has been said about Iraq.

But are these two cases enough to make the international community completely abandon millions of people to be tormented and killed by their own governments? I am thinking about the horrible situations that are currently playing out in Burma, Chad, Sudan, Zimbabwe, and many other places where governments are killing their own citizens or letting them die for political or ideological reasons. This is unacceptable and should not be allowed to continue.

I echo Collier’s call that the international community set a precedence; that tyranny against civilians will not be tolerated anywhere on the globe. This is not a call for haphazard invasions all over the place. But there are extreme cases that should be addressed more forcefully. The genocide in Darfur should not be allowed to continue simply because Northern Sudan is a Muslim country with a potential for being jihadist. Thousands of people should be let to die in the jungles of the DRC simply in honor of that ungovernable country’s sovereignty. And does Mugabe really deserve to be sovereign in a country that he continues to drive deeper into hell? And what claim does the military junta in Burma have on sovereignty when they let tens of thousands die and hundreds of thousands without help even when the international community itches to help after a devastating cyclone hit the country?

All these extreme cases should be considered as exceptions. Somalia and Iraq should not stop the international community from ever acting again in an effort to save human lives. I am not calling for a neoconservative style democratization of the world, dictators can be tolerated, but only when they are not actively killing their own people or denying them food and other basic needs. Is this too much to ask of them?

Sovereignty should not be seen as an end in itself. Political leaders should know that the international community will only let them enjoy sovereignty when they act responsibly. I happen to believe that democratic government is the ideal but different places have different needs in different stages of their history. For instance young countries may not necessarily thrive as democracies, but this does not give their leaders a right to act like the Al-Bashirs and Than Shwes of this world.