It has been a rough couple of weeks for natural disasters. In Chile on May 2, the Chaiten Volcano erupted near the city of the same name, forcing mass evacuation; the ash-covered city has since flooded. In Myanmar, Cyclone Nargis hit on the same day, and the Red Cross estimation of the death toll now exceeds 60,000. In China on Monday, one of the most powerful earthquakes the country has seen in decades toppled buildings in an area populated by 15 million people, and the death toll has reached 15,000 according to government estimates.

On my Stanford email lists, I’ve already seen that students are responding to try and help those afflicted. But on a broader note, how much help should the international community provide when stuff like this happens? What do we do if, as is the case with the Myanmar cyclone, that help is refused?

Chile has been able to manage the evacuation and displacement itself — which is not surprising, considering the smaller scale of the problem. China scaled up a massive rescue effort, including over 50,000 soldiers, and has been happy to accept international contributions to help those affected, even though it declined foreign aid workers.

Myanmar’s government, in the meantime, has told everyone — aid organizations, other countries and essentially its own citizens — to piss off. The repressive and paranoid junta that rules the country is likely culpable for much of the destruction, given its failure to warn its own citizens of the impending disaster so they could take shelter before the cyclone struck. Maybe they didn’t even know themselves. But even worse, with palpable fear of losing political power in the chaos, the junta has said no to almost any international help for the thousands of victims of the disaster.

It’s worth mentioning as a side note that the United States and Britain still officially refer to Myanmar as Burma, its historic name that was only changed a few years ago under the junta’s leadership. Acceding to the name change has been considered a symbolic nod to the ruling party, since so many countries still use the old name.

This week, after much pleading, the decision was finally made to allow four relief planes to land in Myanmar (which led to the embarrassing and tragic discovery that the regime didn’t even have the equipment to unload them), and a few international experts have been allowed in to analyze the extent of the damage. But most relief organizations predict that the lack of access to food, water and basic healthcare could cause the death toll to triple — something that can only be averted with a full and unencumbered relief effort like the one in the wake of the December 2004 tsunami in Indonesia.

So the question then is: what do you do when someone tells you they don’t want your help? Despite the minimal concessions, the leader of Myanmar’s junta has still refused to take all phone calls from Ban Ki-Moon, the Secretary General of the U.N.

Fueled by Bernard Kouchner, France’s Foreign Minister, much discussion has followed over whether military force should be used to force Myanmar’s government to let emergency aid get to those who need it most. Kouchner and many others argue that the U.N. does have a “responsibility to protect.” Furthermore, in his book “The Bottom Billion,” Oxford economist Paul Collier finds well-performed military interventions to be incredibly cost-effective in preventing further humanitarian losses.

In an op-ed in yesterday’s New York Times, analyst Robert Kaplan points out that the United States does have forces nearby in Thailand. And the people of Myanmar certainly deserve help. But for us, now, another military adventure just seems like a bad idea. Whether by working with China or through the U.N., something needs to happen in Myanmar, and as the last two weeks have shown, there are plenty of people who are willing to give money to help.

After the 2004 tsunami, the outpouring of help from the international community was inspiring. Today, help is available; someone just needs to convince the rulers to take it.

Are you sick of military dictatorships too? Tell Michael at wilkerson "at" stanford.edu.