CHAPEL HILL - As the estimated death toll in Burma from Cyclone Nargis climbs to terrifying figures, it is easy, alas, too easy to take potshots at the military government there for dereliction of duty.

Consider the following incidents from earlier this week. On Monday, Laura Bush, that noted authority on Burma (Myanmar to the current government), stated publicly that the junta's failure to warn people before the cyclone hit the Irrawaddy delta on Saturday, along with its tardy response to the ensuing disaster, should be seen as two more failures of authoritarianism in that God-forsaken part of the world.

A day later, President Bush castigated the generals for their political practices and lectured them about opening up to the outside world. "We want to do a lot more" for you, the president said, but you need to open up. And just to punctuate the point, Bush simultaneously signed legislation awarding a Congressional Gold Medal to Aung San Suu Kyi, the junta's sworn enemy.

Talk about ham-fisted foreign policy! Let me count the ways.

As several experienced international observers have already pointed out, the immediate aftermath of a colossal natural disaster is not necessarily the most propitious time to give lectures about the shortcomings of disaster preparedness/responsiveness on the part of the government in charge, particularly when the country struck is one of the poorest and least developed in the world, and when those doing the lecturing live in a glass house known as Hurricane Katrina. Indeed, it is difficult to improve upon the irony of having George W. Bush pontificate upon this particular subject. FEMA, anyone?

As any climatologist will tell you, cyclonic storms are endemic in many parts of tropical Asia -- including Southeast Asia -- with activity peaking in the North Indian basin between May and November. It is impossible to predict the particular path of any given storm, however, and, historically speaking, neither the incidence nor the effects of horrendous cyclones such as Nargis have been coincident with types of governments.

The Bhola Cyclone that struck the Ganges delta in Bangladesh in November 1970 killed more than 300,000 people, for example, and five years later Typhoon Nina killed more than 100,000 in China. In 1991 two cyclones in Bangladesh each resulted in over 125,000 deaths, and in that same year Tropical Storm Thelma killed tens of thousands in the Philippines.

Over the years, other storms in Asia have proven almost as devastating. Those looking for a harrowing account of what such a storm is like can do no better than to take in novelist Amitav Ghosh's account in "The Hungry Tide" (2004) of one such storm in the Sundarbans, the huge mangrove forest in the Ganges delta between West Bengal and Bangladesh.

However problematic some of us in the United States might find the governments of Bangladesh, China, the Philippines -- and Burma -- few would suggest that they are governed in the same way. There are times and places to make debating points about democracy, and times and places simply to shut up and help.

Perhaps we should still be thankful, though: No one in Washington, at least at this point, has suggested sending Rambo back to Burma to give Sylvester Stallone -- another self-styled Burma expert, by the way -- a second crack at the shadowy military junta known as the SPDC (State Peace and Development Council).

(Peter A. Coclanis is associate provost for International Affairs and Albert R. Newsome professor of history at UNC-Chapel Hill. He writes on the economic history of Burma and has been to the country 13 times since 1993.)

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