The catastrophe - perhaps 100,000 dead in Myanmar, the nation once known as Burma - has occurred before, and it will happen again. Rising sea levels and more intense storms fueled by global warming will increase the frequency of weather-related disasters. America's response - about $3.5 million in pledged aid and help from the military seems woefully inadequate - until one considers that the generals who have run Myanmar with an iron fist for decades only want help from friendly nations. They also want all aid to pass through the hands of a government legendary for its corruption.

U.S. naval ships, aid workers, helicopters and emergency supplies have amassed on Myanmar's borders, but the generals do not want help from America or many other nations. They built their capital safely inland from Myanmar's low-lying rice bowl, a region just a few feet above sea level that's regularly scrubbed by floods and storm surges.

In 1970 more than a half-million of the nation's residents were killed by a storm. A 1991 storm claimed another 191,000 lives. Like other threatened coastal areas, the region could eventually become uninhabitable.

It is easy to assume that, as the world's sole superpower, America could do more to aid Myanmar. And help we should, though five years after Hurricane Katrina, parts of New Orleans and the Gulf region are in ruins and thousands of Americans are still homeless. But help for Myanmar should come predominantly from its powerful neighbors, India and especially China. Myanmar's ruling military junta that's amassed one of the world's worst human rights records could not remain in power without at least the tacit support of China.

With the Olympic Games just a few months off and protests of China's role in the genocide in Sudan and its suppression of Tibet widespread, it will be interesting to see how much China helps out. At a minimum, is should pressure the junta to lift complicated visa requirements that are keeping more than 1,000 aid workers from entering the country and encourage the generals to accept assistance from all who offer it.

If Myanmar's leaders won't risk losing face by accepting help, people will begin dying in droves from exposure, hunger and disease. The United Nations should step in. France's foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, has called upon the U.N. to use its newly approved "responsibility to protect civilians" policy to enter Myanmar and deliver aid over the objections of the generals. This would be a dangerous, perhaps precedent-setting course, but the world's nations should consider it.

Globally, an unfortunate number of human beings are at risk of dying in natural disasters. Many of them live under the thumb of governments whose pride or policies may delay help and increase the suffering and death toll.

Today it is the people of southern Myanmar who face years of homelessness, hunger and disease. Tomorrow, next week or next month, it will be the people in some other storm-ravaged nation. In the long run, people living in areas prone to flooding will have to move. There will never be resources enough to protect them the way canals, dikes and storm barriers protect residents of Venice and Amsterdam. But until they move, the world must decide whether national sovereignty always trumps the moral responsibility to alleviate human suffering.