Burma Redux: Global Justice and the Quest for Political Reform in Myanmar (24 page)

On a positive note, Japan maintained close ties for the full extent of the Ne Win era, as a “substantial community of interests” developed between Rangoon and Tokyo.
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More widely, several other foreign powers tried to engage with an economy reduced to ruins by the mid-1960s and kept that way to the end of the socialist period. Indeed, in the 1970s annual official development assistance expanded considerably from about $20 million at the start of the decade to some $400 million by the end. However, agreed economic reforms were only partially implemented and external influence remained slight.
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On a negative note, China for some years backed communist insurgents fighting to overthrow the state, and in 1967 allowed Cultural Revolution turmoil to spill into Burma, though again the eventual impact was limited.
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By and large, then, these years saw the extreme chauvinism and xenophobia of a battle-hardened military elite hold sway. Moreover, for most foreigners Burma was off the map in an almost literal sense. Largely inaccessible behind an effective wall of stringent visa restrictions, it was of little or no concern.

Inattention remained the predominant global stance even when, following on notably from the anti-Marcos People Power revolution in the Philippines in 1986, street protesters built mass mobilization around the four eights uprising. “The death knell for Burmese socialism tolled an entire year before Tiananmen Square burned and the Berlin Wall crumbled, but few outside Burma heard it. Television news teams were not present to record the extraordinary events surrounding Burma’s democracy movement in summer 1988.”
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Gradually, though, the tightening of SLORC control and the global recognition conferred on Aung San Suu Kyi above all by award of the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize enabled the country to emerge from the shadows of media attention and secure a place on the list of activist concerns.
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Other than during episodes of extreme national crisis, however, it has never fully captured outside interest. In 1993, John B. Haseman, US defense attaché in Rangoon from 1987 to 1990, registered widespread neglect: “Perhaps the world has seen too much in recent years. Massacre and repression in China, war in the Middle East, the breakup of the communist empire in Europe, and the end of the cold war have been striking events that have riveted the world’s attention. In the process, however, the world has overlooked the abuses conducted against its people by Burma’s military government for almost five years.”
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Much the same could be said about the decades since.

Despite this generalized disinterest, many foreign powers did recalibrate their policies in the late 1980s and several initiatives were taken. Indeed, when SLORC’s internal coup gave an unwelcome twist to the Burma story in 1988, a span of specialist opinion in diplomatic circles was jolted into action, and fresh proposals for external involvement were formulated and implemented. Present from the outset was a wide range of formal and informal pressure reaching from Asia across much of the rest of the world. Far more visible were sanctions, which emerged at the end of the Cold War as the instrument of choice for western states intent on dealing with pariah regimes.
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Imposed initially through
ad hoc
embargoes, sanctions came rapidly to dominate US policy and were deployed in differing forms by many of its allies.
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Entrenched military control and an ersatz transition to democracy in 2011 triggered no more than limited change in foreign engagement.

Looking in the period since 1988 at how decisions driving external policy have been reached, and by whom, it is clear that little attempt has ever been made to engage or determine public opinion inside Myanmar. The primary reason is obvious. Fear spread throughout the land by ruthless military action against street protesters notably in 1988 and 2007, against opposition groups throughout the period, and against ethnic minority peoples across all of the years since independence has always made for a highly restrictive environment and placed most political discussion off-limits.
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As far as many outsiders are concerned, in a context where the very notion of the public sphere is enervated and corrupted it is simply not possible to gauge internal views on options for external action.

In this daunting setting, foreigners with an interest in shaping Myanmar’s politics tend to fall back on a series of proxies. First and foremost, they appealed for years to the events of 1988–90, and occasionally continue to do so today. They also cite aftershocks delivered by the military machine, which are documented by local journalists and activists and picked up by national and regional groups such as the Burma Campaign UK (founded in 1991), the Free Burma Coalition (1995), the Alternative ASEAN Network on Burma (1996), the US Campaign for Burma (2003), and the Burma Partnership (2006). Sometimes they turn to diaspora groups incorporated into global civil society, such as the exile National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma (based in Washington, DC), the National Council of the Union of Burma (based in Mae Sot, Thailand), and webs of ethnic minority concern. In addition, they parse the often Delphic remarks of Aung San Suu Kyi, which during long periods of house arrest were necessarily few in number and transmitted through intermediaries.
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However, while activist voices are convincing in denouncing the litany of military abuse, there is rarely much insight into popular thinking.
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This is a notably serious problem as the most widely cited proxy of all, more than 8 million votes cast for the NLD and its affiliates in 1990, recedes ever further into history. By the time of the generals’ praetorian transition two decades later, the citizens who had participated in the 1990 poll constituted no more than a very small segment of the population.

This procedural deficiency has long stood at the heart of much substantive dispute. For countries clustered around the US and high-profile activist groups, aggressive strategies focusing on sanctions in the state sector and boycotts in the non-state sector are fully justified by the extent of military oppression, signals indicating a fervent popular desire to take a new path, abundant documentary reports, and above all the stance taken by Aung San Suu Kyi and the NLD.
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By contrast, no Asian country has ever sought to move much beyond diplomatic engagement at least in part because evidence from inside the country is judged to rule out anything more coercive. Indeed across much of the region, the stated and possibly self-serving belief is that local people not only do not welcome tough external action, but also do not favor foreign involvement of any kind in their politics. Even here, however, close discussion with citizens is largely absent. Rather, policy preferences are projected into Myanmar on the basis of readings of regional values and practices, often reinforced by naked self-interest.

Policy debate is thus deeply flawed, with few protagonists making any attempt to determine how local people might like outsiders to help them, if indeed they seek external assistance at all. While many circumstantial explanations can be given, none is wholly acceptable. On the one hand, few outsiders make much effort to gauge grassroots feelings among regular citizens, community leaders, civil society groups, business organizations, and so on. On the other, many foreigners nevertheless take entrenched policy positions on no more than limited information. Even basic cost-benefit analyses are uniformly absent.
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This state of affairs is highly problematic, for it means that no program of either action or inaction is secured by endorsement inside the country. This is a critical procedural context for the following survey, which first examines engagement strategies and then turns to isolation. In the absence of significant popular input from Myanmar, the evaluations made in the two sections look chiefly to the internal plausibility and coherence of distinct approaches.

Engagement strategies

In the period since military control was reasserted in 1988, many outside actors have devised engagement strategies designed to coax Myanmar’s leaders down the path of reform through diplomatic pressure and a range of positive incentives. Indeed, some measure of engagement has long been endorsed in principle by every major external stakeholder, both state and non-state. From the UN down through leading powers in international society to prominent activist groups promoting human rights and political reform, the common call has long been for the military elite to open up and sponsor meaningful change facilitated by outsiders. Whether the issue is national reconciliation, response to humanitarian emergency, or monitoring of plebiscites, the wider world routinely presents itself as a key player. The UN has thus sent a stream of envoys over the years. The UN and ASEAN joined in working with the Myanmar government on post-Nargis reconstruction. ASEAN, the UK and US all offered to send monitors for the 2008 referendum and the 2010 election (and were all rebuffed).

In practice, however, engagement strategies have been advanced most vigorously by regional states led by ASEAN and China, and by humanitarian organizations working on the ground inside the country. By contrast, western states clustered around the US and prominent activist groups tend to invest so heavily in aggressive responses that options for engagement rarely gain much traction, and in any case are hard to undertake with any credibility. Some change has been registered in the past decade following recalibrations first by Australia and the EU, and eventually by the US. In October 2002, Alexander Downer, Australian Minister of Foreign Affairs, visited Myanmar to explore engagement options, and for some years his government experimented with an in-country program of human rights training for military personnel.
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From 2002 the EU made a major effort both to construct a large aid presence and “to launch a serious dialogue with the Myanmar government aimed at accomplishing longer-term policy change, while also strengthening efforts to build social capital and civil society.” By 2006 it had assembled what the ICG termed “by far the most comprehensive aid portfolio in Myanmar.”
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In 2009 the US sought to open dialogue channels with senior officials.
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In 2011 the EU suspended some political sanctions and reiterated its willingness to talk.
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However, conflicting signals have ensured that no major western power has significantly altered its political profile inside Myanmar. This section thus focuses on Asian nations and largely inconspicuous INGOs. The entry point is China’s role in dealing with a state with which it shares a 1,350-mile border.
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This bilateral relationship naturally stretches back into the mists of time, and has long cast a deep shadow over all forms of foreign engagement.
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When sovereignty resided in the person of a supreme ruler both sides operated tribute systems, and as recently as 1818 Burma was required to pay tribute to the Chinese emperor once every 10 years, with missions advised to travel through Yunnan.
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As well as disrupting Burmese domestic governance, however, British imperialism subverted external relations. Not until the end of the colonial period were Burma and China able to build fresh ties, and by then it was as modern states that they confronted each other. Much can be read into the fact that in December 1949 Burma was the first non-communist country to recognize the People’s Republic.
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Although relations became fraught in the 1950s and 1960s, especially at the time of the Cultural Revolution, bonds were reformed in the 1970s. Later, when army repression of mass revolt in Rangoon in September 1988 was mirrored by the Beijing massacre in June 1989, they became strong.
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In between, collapse of the CPB in April 1989 removed a contentious issue that by then was already something of a relic from a bygone age.
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Although relations were never entirely cordial, political elites did find themselves on the same page on many questions.
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In defiance of much western opinion, but in conformity with most Asian thought, state leaders today particularly agree that the core realist principle of national sovereignty trumps any other in the global arena, and that matters like human rights and democracy are chiefly of domestic concern.
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Each holds firmly to a “one X” policy both at home and abroad, and projects unbending hostility and fierce resistance to any form of irredentism. Through trading links and Chinese investment inside Myanmar, citizens of the two countries also work together ever more closely.
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