And the refugee crisis, where are the questions?

Quora. It’s been obvious for a long time that one doesn’t come here to intelligently discuss anything serious.

As I’ve been browsing through the Home page of the NY Times, I see a lot on the refuge crisis but have not been reading any articles. I’ve heard people talk about Africans flooding into Italy and Portugal, and I’ve for a long time been hearing about Muslims going all over, but I’m not “up” on it. Can someone post a good link or provide a summary to enlighten?

I was heartbroken over the photo of the 3 yr. old Syrian boy whose little drowned body washed up on the beach. It is a tragic situation but alas, what to do, what to do, what to discuss? Just another sad event to go down in history.

Here is a link explaining more.
www.syrianrefugees.eu

I agree @stanleybmanly ,but trying to just eek out a living and stay above water here,it seems like a world away.
It is heart breaking,I can’t really do anything to change things over there, wish all our Governments would do more to help those poor people but that is about it.

In addition to asking questions, if you want to do something to help refugees, International Rescue Committee is a reputable organization that you can donate to. There is also information on their page about the various refugee crises around the world.

I think it reflects the fact that no one has a solution. Europe can’t let them all in, since their economy is already so fragile. They can’t turn them back, because that would be a death sentence for many. They can’t leave them in refugee camps, because that would be politically untenable. They can’t tackle the problem at its source, because that would involve a full scale invasion of certain parts of the world, which is what created much of the problem in the first place. It would also involve regime change in Turkey, a major ally that can’t be interfered with without catastrophic consequences.

There is no easy solution to this problem. And that means that people don’t tend to discuss the issue openly, because there is nothing to say beyond expressing sorrow at the loss of life. We’re all hoping that the governments can deal with it, yet waiting to condemn any move they make.

Where is Russia and China, with their millions of square miles of unsettled lands? Both countries have expressed internally that they wish these areas to be developed and at times in their long histories have had very generous incentive programs to do so. Why not allow these refugees to do this? In a sane world, this would make sense.

But it is apparent to me that we are concentrating on the symptom and not the disease. What is causing this mass migration? Countries with incompetent governments. Take Libya, for example. Here is a country that has been left in chaos after Qaddafi’s demise. This is an oil-rich country experiencing anarchy. What if a Norwegian-style social democracy was imposed upon them by a huge force of military and commissioners through the UN by those countries? Change these apparently uninhabitable regimes one country at a time, by force if necessary. And use a world force to do it.

Is it so naive to believe that this can’t eventually be done and the initial UN military government would be eventually replaced by a more equitable system—like was done to Japan during the post-WWII MacArthur era? They are now one of the major trading partners in the world. It is hard and expensive, but not so hard as if this migration continues and even increases (as I believe it will), becomes violent and destabilizes the European economies that have already been weakened by this latest recession. As much as state-building is distasteful in the post-colonial era, I think this is necessary to the countries of origin and to the countries now about to be affected by this migration.

There is often good reason for the destabilization of these countries of origin beyond that of bad government. There are ecological reasons as in the sub-Sahara desert encroachment. Often the results of starvation and internal migration, homelessness, has caused the destabilization. Fix it with technology. Move water from one place to another an irrigate, produce, remove the cause of destabilization. The US irrigated the west. The movement of water from the sources to the populations and farmland in California is a technological miracle and today the San Joaquin Valley produces enough food in calories to feed the world. Eighty years later, we have the technology to do the same thing on a much larger scale. It will take determination, effort and a magnanimity like the world has never seen before.

There are one million Syrian refugees in the small country of Lebanon waiting to go to Europe. The Russians have just sent in troops to Syria to bolster the regime, a traditional Russian trading partner. Let’s not exacerbate the situation by sending in our own or one of our many proxy armies in response. Let’s talk to the Russians about creating a government in Syria where Syrians would like to live. They would have a more productive trading partner, and the emigration would stop. It’s time we started thinking more rationally about these things.

Well, it will be called magnanimity afterwards as we congratulate ourselves afterwards on this grand endeavour. So be it. But it’s really all about saving our own economic ass (read stability) through the only real rational decision.

The developed countries of the world need to fix these other broken countries if this migration is to stop. It’s not going to go away.

NOBODY wants to immigrate to Russia or China, and the thundering silence from those 2 huge nations on these matters says it all. After all, Russia and its formal vassals are much better situated for those seeking to escape areas of conflict. Yet witness the despair evinced from those detained in former East block countries fighting their way toward the holy grail of Germany and other mainline E U nations. The moment that Russia or China laid out the welcoming mat to the torrent of migrants, both countries would face the embarrassment of no takers, and everyone knows it. The only benefit I could see coming from such a humiliating demonstration of underlying realities is that it would put the lie to the fiction that these are not economic refugees.

@Espiritus_Corvus To pick on just one point, I don’t think an imposed social “democracy” would even remotely work. People resent force, even when that force is doing them good. There are countless examples throughout history of invading forces that have improved the quality of life of the conquered, yet they still yearn to throw off their chains. As soon as the force could be overcome, or it drew down to allow the democracy to become a reality instead of a farce, the society would quickly degenerate into the same violence it suffers now.

Post-war Japan is a completely different scenario. The Japanese were always industrious people, and the talents they learned in building their military were relatively easily redeployed into building quality cars, motorbikes, and technology. Libya has always relied on its oil wealth, and the cultural opposition to paying taxes means any government there will always start on the back foot. They have never been industrious or technologically adept like Japan, and they have no existing exportable goods or services beyond oil. Japan was relatively united during the war, with each person doing what they could to support the war effort. Libya has deep cultural divides that have caused the current sectarian upheaval.

There are only two things that could make Libya stable – another dictator as powerful as Gaddhafi was, or a complete dismantling of its cultural identity. Neither of these options are palatable to the West, so we pat ourselves on the back for having removed a dictator, and ignore the uncomfortable truth that the power vacuum we created has created the circumstances for the current sectarian violence.