Their paranoia and mistrust of the outside world are such that Burma's generals have been criminally tardy in permitting emergency humanitarian supplies and personnel to come into the country. More than 100,000 may have been killed and over 2 million displaced and made homeless by the cyclone.
The rising tide of anger, outrage and frustration led French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, the founder of MSF (Doctors without Borders), to suggest invoking the "responsibility to protect" (R2P) duty in the U.N. Security Council as the legal means to force open Burma's borders to outside help.
Kouchner's call has generated an intense debate in policy, advocacy and media circles that is worth parsing into moral, legal, political and practical components. There is also the question of which is more damaging to R2P in the longer term: invoking or ignoring it in the context of Burma since Cyclone Nargis.