The world, as students of political science are taught, operates on the basis of self-help. In other words, there is no one to call, when crisis strikes, this despite the severity of wars, vast refugee flows, genocide and pestilence.

Hence, such ghastly specter as the massacre in Rwanda back in 1994, where more than 1 million people were killed in less than 3 months.

Indeed, only a series of sustained pleas would allow countries to form into vital coalitions to attenuate the problem(s); by which time the moral outrage while strident is clearly too late and too little in coming.

The arms embargo on Bosnia, for instance, was not lifted until 2 years into the conflict, where hundreds of thousands of Bosniaks were already killed by the Serbian chetniks (i.e. armed militias).

More recently, the belated relief provided to victims of Darfur in Sudan, come only after the Arab militias went on a killing spree for more than 6 months. It took just as long for the United States, and the UN Security Council, to define the blood-letting as "genocide".

But the slow, almost retarded response of the international community to the Asian tsunami victims on December 26 -- with death toll surging to 55,000 in 3 days -- shows a form of ineptitude that is both sad, and depressing.

Not only is the flow of aid slow in coming, but they come in trickle. The relief operations coordinated by the UN, while worthy, are not given the necessary financial backing to take important measures to salvage the situation.

Jan Englend, head of the UN relief operations, has criticised the rich countries for their slow, almost halfhearted, response.

World Bank has pledged to do what it can to help, but there has been no mention of debt-relief, or development aid, to help the 10 affected countries, of which the most severely hit are some of the poorest in the world.

The US, which spends more than US$ 300 million daily on its war efforts in Iraq, has merely pledged US$ 15 million in total; leading one foreign policy specialist to affirm that this donation is equaled to the cost of a B-2 bomber's toilet. Indeed, Kuwait, which is a US ally in the Middle East, has merely given US$ 1million.

Colin Powell, the outgoing Secretary of State of the US, has responded that the US is not "stingy." Maybe.

But US has certainly been grotesquely slow in coming to the aid of the tsunami victims, this in spite of the fact that several hundred American citizens were also killed in the tsunami.

European Community has in turn agreed to provide US$ 45 million only, even though the International Federation of Red Cross is based in Finland. Japan has sent doctors, nurses, and rescue teams. China has merely pledged US$ 1 million. These are encouraging actions, but hardly enough.

In contrast, Li Kah Shing, arguably the richest Chinese entrepreneur in the world, quickly donated US$ 3 million alone, with assurances to offer more. It is such speed that is vital to the very meaning of emergency relief.

As such, with the death toll rising quickly, and millions of people displaced, most of whom lost entire families, we have to ask ourselves if the world is only good at launching wars, or stopping them only slowly?

Judging by the slow response of the rich countries to the aftermath of the tsunami, it is clear that the world does not have the skills and networks to respond to complex humanitarian crisis.

To the victims who now resort to looting to fend off their hunger pangs, this clearly seems to be the case. But as one NGO specialist working in Aceh, Indonesia, one of the worst affected areas, affirmed: "The looters are not evil, they are hungry and afraid."

To be sure, this tsunami has caught everyone by surprise. But there is a huge difference between being surprised, which no one can deny, and working speedily to contain the damage, disease and dysentery. These are the 3 Ds of the tsunami that must be handled quickly.

The world community, especially the 25 OECD members, is clearly lacking in the latter, even when the rescue mission is as simple as generating the sufficient financial means to allow the affected governments and NGOs to do their jobs more effectively.

Undoubtedly, the world is structured on the selfish principle of self-help. But the UN was also created in 1945 to over-ride this problem as quickly as possible back in time of natural and other man made calamities.

By not being more prompt and generous with the money pledged to UN, the world is allowing more to suffer un-necessarily.

On December 29th, Fox News, which is a pro-US network, asked rhetorically: "Where will the money go? How would it be used? Would it be used to fix top vacation resorts in Thailand and Indonesia?" This is a wrong and mischievous question.

Emergency relief, which is hyper sensitive to time, as literally every minute counts, cannot be second-guessed by questions of feasibility and modalities.

Obviously the money is required for the acquisition of food and water. But it could also be used for sanitation, human carcass disposal, and basic medical care, all of which are important.

Without foreign economic assistance, the affected local governments, which are already shell-shocked by the impact, cannot respond adequately.

They must be helped, and assisted quickly. And, the route is to pledge more financial support to UN without too many questions asked, as not merely thousands, but millions of lives, are now on the line. vJapan has been correctly described by Yoichi Funabashi as the "global civilian power". It can flex its muscles by doing more for the victims of the tsunami which not only affect Asians but Africans too.