Realism comes with a hefty price tag. Iraq was supposed to have put paid to the internationalist impulse in foreign policy. The gathering outrage at the behaviour of the military junta in Burma reminds us that foreign policy, like life, is never quite so simple For realists on the political right the heavy cost in blood and treasury of toppling Saddam Hussein has provided an object lesson in the folly of regime change and nation building. At the other end of the spectrum, what Britain's Tony Blair called the doctrine of international community has been denounced as a flimsy excuse for US-led imperialism. These critics hold aloft the centuries-old Treaty of Westphalia: now as then, the mantra runs, nations should eschew interference in the domestic affairs of other sovereign states. The effort to foist western values on others has always been scorned by the realists; for their new allies on the left of politics, the pro-democracy mission is simply colonialism by another name. My guess is that if Slobodan Milosevic had waited 10 years before marching into Kosovo, the west would have wrung its hands and turned its back. The implications of live and let live are self-evident. To respect the inviolability of national frontiers is to invite nasty dictators everywhere to do as they please. The Sudanese regime has thus been given a free pass over genocide in Darfur; so has Robert Mugabe for the systematic impoverishment of Zimbabwe. You could add probably another dozen lesser-known despots to the list. Events in Burma are a dramatic reminder of the costs of looking the other way. Systematic repression soon drops from the headlines. Horrible events grab our attention. And this one is truly horrible. In the aftermath of cyclone Nargis, Burma's military junta has turned an unavoidable natural calamity into a calculated human catastrophe. Six months ago the generals were crushing peaceful protests led by Buddhist monks. Now they are denying aid to the wretched victims of last week's storm. Tens of thousands seem likely to die because of the refusal to accept large-scale aid. The military rulers are unabashed. General Than Shwe, head of the junta, has refused to take the calls of Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary-general. An effort to discuss the crisis in the Security Council was blocked by China because France suggested decisions could be made under the rubric of the UN's "responsibility to protect" provisions. The Chinese government has been lauded this week for the openness it has shown to international assistance in the wake of its own natural disaster. Perhaps, you hear westerners mutter, the Olympics have made a difference after all. As far as Burma goes, however, none is truer than Beijing in its defence of Westphalia. So the clamour is for something to be done. The call has been heard from every western government and aid agency and from every part of the political landscape. In Britain, the Conservatives' David Cameron has been if anything more outspoken than Labour's Gordon Brown. France's Nicolas Sarkozy has echoed America's George W. Bush. Angela Merkel of Germany has been characteristically forthright. The sentiment is admirable and the outrage genuine. But it all counts for nought if these leaders take at face value that section of the UN's founding charter that enshrines the sovereignty of states. The implications of such literalism are clear: outsiders can exhort, plead and voice outrage. But Burma has committed no act of aggression, so they are powerless to intervene. The death of a million Burmese is not "a threat to international security". One response has been to say that if the generals remain impervious to reason, the UN charter could be respected by dropping supplies from the air. The US and France, after all, have military assets in the region. The idea is well-intentioned and profoundly naive - a fig leaf to salve the conscience of realism. As the aid agencies admit, dropping packages from 10,000ft in the hope they land in the right place is a hopelessly inadequate response to the grave threats of disease, water and food shortages. And what if the junta shot down one of the aircraft? Would that be a moment to send in the marines? The problem with the Burmese regime, as we perhaps should have learnt during the past several decades, does not lie in its response to a single tragedy, however horrible. The regime is the problem, entirely indifferent as it is to the fate of citizens when weighed against the preservation of its own power. For those at the hard edges of foreign policy realism, inaction in the face of such a standoff carries no dilemma. The west cannot right all the terrible wrongs in the world, so why pretend? Sure we should offer Burma our help, even feel the pain of its people. But if aid is refused all the rest is futile bleating. Liberal internationalists confront a more complicated world. The ideal would be to help the Burmese people overturn a regime as loathed by its own people as reviled abroad. But how could that be done except by force? Who would suggest the return of American troops to south-east Asia more than 30 years after the helicopters left the embassy roof in Saigon? The question answers itself. Yet the reality denied by the realists is that the world has moved decisively beyond Westphalia; and beyond the strict interpretation of sovereignty in the UN charter. Inviolate frontiers were fine for an age when all that really mattered was whether armies crossed them. But global interdependence demands more - a truth attested to by the plethora of UN treaties and conventions that have successively qualified the sovereignty of states. The responsibility on states, and failing that on the international community, to protect is a staging post on this uncompleted journey. International order, of course, will always require respect for national sovereignty. But the security of all demands that states also respect some basic rules of the international road. The trouble is there are no straight lines between the two. Deciding which should take precedence will always be an uncomfortable balancing act. As a matter of principle, the Burmese junta has bestowed the right, if not the obligation, on the international community to intervene. But the geopolitical circumstances of that country also remind us that what should be done will always be tempered by what can be done. There is no escape. Liberal internationalism can never be a comfortable place. Weighing the moral against the practical will always involve contradictions and sometimes hypocrisies. Better that, though, than the ugly certainties of realism. philip.stephens@ft.com Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008