Burma Redux: Global Justice and the Quest for Political Reform in Myanmar (30 page)

To some degree Miller’s prescriptions overlap with Pogge’s in pointing to “inequitable frameworks” imposed by the developed world on the developing.
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This aspect of his work is thus equally relevant to Myanmar. He also makes a significant departure, however, in tracing relational rights and duties in two important areas: imperial action and business engagement in the developing world. He argues that through diverse forms of exploitation, global powers and corporations have amassed major duties of restitution. While specifying the content of such duties requires meticulous examination of the historical record, some broad evaluations of the Myanmar case can nevertheless be made.

Looking first at state action, rectification could be required of Burma’s imperial masters. Here, though, Miller notes that while outsiders certainly incur liabilities to make good cross-border damage, it must also be understood that injustice “can fade and finally disappear over time, cancelling the moral debt.”
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He thus proposes a “moral statute of limitations of about two generations on the transnational duty of repair.”
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Searching no farther than Asia and focusing on only one case among many, however, the wisdom of such a move is questionable. A still vital feature of regional politics is Japanese wartime atrocities dating from the 1930s and 1940s. Brought to broad attention notably by the 1997 publication of Iris Chang’s
The Rape of Nanking
, focused on events of 1937–38, Japan’s record of occupation many decades ago remains a source of deep tension across East Asia.
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Indeed, in the period from 2001 to 2006, when Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi made annual visits Tokyo’s Yasukuni Shrine, the issue of cross-border harm perpetrated more than two generations into the past and corresponding duties of repair became central to regional relations. Widely held to glorify Japanese militarism, notably because it holds the remains of 12 convicted and two suspected Class A war criminals, Yasukuni still stands as a provocative public reminder that distant moral debts may not yet have been paid.
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Equally, looking to the future Miller’s statute could tempt current or prospective transgressors to prevaricate over settling accumulated debts until the two-generation rule had eliminated them. Thus, while it would evidently be wrong to argue that no moral debt will ever be cancelled, it is also mistaken to implement a universal statute of limitations. Rather, detailed examination of actual historical episodes is preferable.

The case of Burma under colonialism is hard to judge. On the one hand, there is no doubt that British rule had deep programming effects on the society, sweeping away much that had gone before, subjecting the territory to disparate and often harmful influences, and setting in place a path dependence that remains prevalent and damaging today.
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While Japanese imperialism did not have such a deep impact, it was also ruinous through harsh occupation and widespread destruction. On the other hand, though, duties of repair owed by the two powers were long ago acknowledged and at least partially discharged. When the British negotiated with Burmese leaders in the immediate postwar years, they were widely seen as trying to give the emergent state a fair start. All financial debts were erased, an offer of Commonwealth membership was made (and declined), and in common with withdrawals by many other democratic imperialists no overt conflict took place.
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“We need harbour no resentment,” said Prime Minister Nu in a broadcast to the nation on the day of independence. A decade later, Maung Maung wrote that “it was fortunate that Burma had finally to deal with the British and no other.”
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For years, the UK joined fellow western nations in providing aid and advice to Rangoon. For its part, Japan moved on quickly from reparations to become the leading foreign donor, and long positioned itself to advise successive regimes. Even in bad times, Tokyo tried hard to cultivate constructive relations.
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Moreover, when British and Japanese action stopped it was often because the Burmese government indicated that foreign assistance was no longer welcome.

In these circumstances, arguments for rectification can be made either way. Certainly the considerable impact of British and to a lesser extent Japanese imperialism means that the case for positive duties of repair cannot be definitively closed. When colonial impacts still shape much that transpires in the society, the two-generation rule does not seem appropriate. At the same time, though, means by which ongoing duties might be discharged when extreme hostility to foreign engagement has long been central to domestic governance is not easy to determine.

A further argument made by Miller is that it is essential to look beyond remote instances of formal colonization to recent modes of informal imperialism, notably the global effects of the “American empire.”
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In the Myanmar case, the point already made about the role of a US-led group of nations in imposing aid, trade and investment sanctions thereby comes sharply into focus.
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Such action has certainly harmed local people by withholding billions of dollars annually in assistance, and incalculable amounts of economic activity. Whether imperfect, special duties of justice arise is thus a critical issue. Proponents will insist that embargoes were imposed in the name of global justice, and can hardly be used now to ground a case for rectification. Critics will argue that sanctions have long been known to be ineffective and are presently maintained not for principled reasons of global justice, but rather for pragmatic reasons of domestic politics. In February 2009, US Secretary Clinton acknowledged that “Clearly the path we have taken in imposing sanctions hasn’t influenced the Burmese junta.” In October 2009, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner was more blunt: “Sanctions are useless and everyone recognises that.”
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For years western embargoes, both formal and informal, have spectacularly failed Bossuyt’s six-prong test. In this context, the negative duty to stop visiting harm on the Myanmar people becomes pressing. Positive duties of repair may also ensue.

Additionally in the sphere of contemporary state action, the role not only of isolating western nations, but also of engaging Asian governments needs to be examined. Above all since 1988 it is China, India, Thailand and the wider ASEAN membership that have ensured the survival of authoritarianism in Myanmar, less through any course of positive action than through culpable inaction.
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In any weighing of historical injustice in this case, a significant neighborhood effect therefore needs also to be placed in the balance. Again, special duties of rectification could arise.

Turning to non-state action, charges of exploitation in the transnational economy are substantially reduced by the low level of corporate engagement with Myanmar. Certainly, western companies involved in resource extraction are ruthlessly targeted by campaign groups, but largely for this reason only very few now work inside the country. Fair and balanced scrutiny of their practices should nevertheless continue. By the same token, however, Asian businesses operating across borders in Myanmar must also be made fully accountable. At present, such companies function mainly beyond independent evaluation, even though anecdotal evidence suggests that many of their corporate practices are deeply damaging to local people, local cultures and the local environment. Reports on illegal logging have already been cited. Much criminally dangerous mining is also undertaken by Asian entrepreneurs. Chinese involvement in dam and pipeline projects is often damaging. Other forms of inward investment are equally harmful. While some adverse activity declined in the late 2000s, notably as a result of activist pressure on logging companies, wider Asian business engagement is on the increase. Not all of it is beyond moral doubt, and some of it may generate special duties of justice.

Among communitarians, scope for global justice is restricted by prioritization of communal integrity. By another route, however, these theorists do permit cross-border action since the Burkean notion of historical continuity allows for rectification of past injustice through special duties.
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David Miller, not part of the communitarian mainstream but linked to it, argues that because a nation extends through time as well as space, it can be called to account for abuse committed by previous generations. Individuals cannot legitimately enjoy the benefits of membership of a national community, such as inherited territory and capital and a sense of pride in national achievements, “without at the same time acknowledging responsibility for aspects of the national past that have involved the unjust treatment of people inside or outside the national community itself, and liability to provide redress in whatever form the particular circumstances demand.”
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This contention is important, for it opens the door not only to global-level special duties listed by Pogge, but also to national-level special duties identified by Richard W. Miller. Indeed, lacking a moral statute of limitations, quasi-communitarian Miller traces duties of repair farther back into history than does quasi-cosmopolitan Miller. If taken seriously, his prescriptions could generate major duties of rectification of historical cross-border abuse in the Myanmar case.

Universal justice

Still wider concerns open up when attention turns to universal justice and duties owed to the Myanmar people not because of any identifiable course of action taken by outsiders, but rather by virtue of bonds entailed by membership of the human race. This switch from special to general duties moves analysis onto home territory for cosmopolitans, the ground on which much argument is pitched. Notwithstanding their focus on the local and particular, communitarians also make significant contributions.

Cosmopolitans are largely defined by a refusal to take state frontiers as given in debates about justice. “Why should the boundaries of states be viewed as presuppositions of justice rather than as institutions whose justice is to be assessed?,” asks O’Neill.
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Their argument is that justice cannot be fully captured in spatial fragments, but necessarily spans the whole world. The consequences for cross-border political action are substantial. First, all individuals have basic rights. Some 30 years ago, Shue put it like this: “One of our most appealing moral concepts, I believe, is the concept of (universal) human rights: the conviction that every person ought to be guaranteed a few basics by other people when helpless to secure them for herself.”
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This orientation is fundamental to the case made by cosmopolitans committed to positive rights. Second, political institutions must be judged, in large part, on the extent to which they uphold basic rights. Third, basic rights generate a duty in others to ensure they are safeguarded. Fourth, reaching across an established international border can be an effective way to do that.
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Positive, imperfect, general duties are thereby mandated.

This need not be an argument for world government, however, and cosmopolitans have generally been careful not to insist on that.
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Rather, the focus is on making global governance more responsive and accountable through democratization reforms proposed by Daniele Archibugi, Richard Falk and David Held, representation reforms outlined by Andrew Kuper, network reforms promoted by Anne-Marie Slaughter, decentralization reforms sought by Iris Marion Young, and so on.
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Common to all cosmopolitan accounts is the need to trump the sovereignty claims of state rulers when basic rights face serious abuse within their jurisdiction. O’Neill thus acknowledges potential dangers in concentrating too much power in a borderless world, and argues instead for just but permeable frontiers. “A better set of just institutions might be one that is constructed in the light of considering carefully to whom and to what (to movements or persons, of goods, of information, of money) any given boundary should be porous.”
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Moreover, the agents who most productively cross borders in the name of justice will not necessarily be state employees, but could come from religious institutions, professions, corporations and INGOs.
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Caney holds that global political institutions should be built to protect civil and political rights and cosmopolitan distributive principles, to enable people to affirm cultural and national commitments, and to permit citizens to make their rulers accountable.
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He thus argues for a system of multilevel governance in which power moves from states up to global bodies, and down to local communities. He also proposes “a reformed United Nations incorporating a democratically elected second assembly,” procedures that “enable people to hold powerful international institutions (such as the WTO, IMF, and World Bank) to account,” and “a UN volunteer force charged with ensuring that people’s civil and political rights are upheld.”
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