The trouble with not doing anything at all, is that a refugee crisis inevitably ensues and countires neighbouring the war zone become swamped with people trying to escape fighting, and even genocide. And refugees don't stay put in one place. They then start to move around, looking for somewhere to settle permanently. Many end up here.
Personally, I'm glad when we are able to help. In my opinion, we SHOULD take as many refugees as we can.
I half suspect from your message though, that you think people living in war zones would simply sit tight in the hope that the fighting will go around them and that they won't be affected. That's not a realistic scenario.
The worst element of how the war in the Balkans got so bad wasn't that nobody tried to stop it happening (although the failure of any attempt to resolve the differences diplomatically was bad enough), but that we stood by for too long and allowed the worst of the violence to civilians happen. By the time the west woke up to the humanitarian crisis, the worst atrocities had already been committed.
I don't advocate sending in combat troops whose mission is to join in with the war. I also agree that the UN is all too often riddled with factions who will interfere with well meaning attempts to resolve a situation, in order to pursue their own countries political agendas. If one permanent member of the Security Council (say, Russia) has a national interest in destabilising a region, they will exercise their veto to prevent diplomacy or peacekeeping operations. If they don't exercise their veto, they horse-trade outside the chamber to get amendments to the resolution put in place that will have the same effect.
The end result is the same. People suffer.
Much has been made of the refugee crisis in Europe, particularly in Italy which has borne the brunt of much migration from war zones. It's not surprising that economic migrants also latch onto the refugees, hoping to slip through the net. People traffickers and smugglers also see a window of opportunity and exploit it where they can.
The problems are very complex and no simple answer fits all. An example of the complexity of the consequences of regional conflicts being exploited by others from outside the area, is that the atrocities committed in the Balkans against Kosovan Muslims was a major factor in the expansion of Al Qaeda, who were able to use what happened to those who were massacred, to recruit a lot of very angry young men who were easily persuaded that the West had to be punished. And we all know how that turned out.
I know this will go down like a lead fart, but we need to be more proactive in diplomatic missions and if they fail, more amenable to refugees and supportive of people in regions via effective aid packages and their distribution.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.... charity begins at home... I know all that .... but the amounts involved in diplomacy or aid are negligible compared to the cost of being involved in a war*, or having to deal with a refugee crisis.
We can't simply say "It's sod all to do with us" because it doesn't work like that. The refugees will come. The consequences to British political, business and trade interests could be astronomic.
We ignore them at our peril.
* At the height of the Iraq / Afghanistan wars, the cost to the British taxpayer of being involved was running at £800 million a week.
