Burma Redux: Global Justice and the Quest for Political Reform in Myanmar (36 page)

Clearly a bleak scenario is all too plausible. Myanmar’s controlling military elite may refuse to condone any form of cross-border political engagement, and attempt to derail any proposal for interactive intervention. While post-Nargis action coordinated jointly by the government, ASEAN and the UN is a positive step, official displeasure remains highly likely, making internal deliberation extremely problematic.
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Indeed, in a country where terror remains the basis for governance, scientific approaches are difficult in realms deemed politically sensitive, with solid quantitative and qualitative social research only rarely possible.
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Nevertheless, much information about the domestic context is already available, and a great deal more could be gathered. Inside the country, many reports are compiled by UN agencies, INGOs and local bodies.
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Together, they provide quite a full picture of economic, social and political conditions. Beyond that is material collected by aid agencies stationed on Myanmar’s frontiers. In Thailand, for instance, border town Mae Sot and regional center Chiang Mai are prime hubs for INGO activity. Further sources are vibrant journalistic networks animated by DVB,
The Irrawaddy
, Mizzima, and a host of smaller organizations. Assembling all these data, a large background dossier could be compiled.
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Despite this wealth of evidence, however, popular opinion about foreign engagement remains somewhat unknown. The most substantial and visible activist reports tend to address situations of extreme crisis, such as military repression of the saffron uprising, scandalous government inaction in the wake of Cyclone Nargis, and ongoing army offensives in ethnic nationality areas. These certainly trigger foreign awareness of significant problems stretching well beyond Walzer’s common brutalities of authoritarian politics. Typically, however, they provide only partial insight into insider perspectives on ways forward. Although one clearly important source of views on external action can be found in statements issued by the NLD and by political parties that won seats at the 2010 general election, the body of information is still rather limited. In these circumstances, listening projects provide one way to fill the gap. There, often abstract possibilities for cross-border action could be brought to life through real-world case studies. Brief analyses of foreign involvement with post-Nargis reconstruction or wider Southeast Asian issues could be presented, ideally detailing problems and failures alongside achievements and successes. As well as enlivening debate, this would give local people an informed sense of available options.

Once the in-country exercise is complete, the external forum can convene through an assembly of major duty-bearers and key stakeholders. The first order of business will be to consider the dossier compiled inside Myanmar, and to seek broad agreement on its implications for future action. In itself this will be challenging. Thereafter, the task will be to deliberate ways forward. Throughout, the procedural point made earlier must be respected. In the external forum, views collected inside the country are privileged and voices from the neighborhood have a special status. Again, any problems encountered here should not be allowed to stand in the way of an effective response to pressing need.

The practical consequence of an Asian focus in the Myanmar case is that the reach and extent of foreign action may be significantly curtailed, and the demands of justice interpreted in a very conservative manner. Nevertheless, due process must prevail, and remote actors must find ways to secure if not active participation then at least passive acceptance and perhaps behind-the-scenes support from leading regional powers. As Zakaria argues at a much broader level, in the post-American world the US must embrace, celebrate and accommodate other powers by making them stakeholders in the new global order.
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Major INGOs and corporations with an existing or potential stake inside the country should also be fully involved. Ideally, a broad plan of action will be agreed, as well as an understanding of who will do what, and when they will do it. As a final step, the coordinating body will plan implementation. In principle, this could comprise a published strategy spelling out in some detail agreed interventionist options, and a mechanism for monitoring action items against an approved timeline. In the messy world of practice, however, full transparency may not be possible.

Through a process of interactive intervention, foreigners can perform imperfect duties of global justice owed to the Myanmar people. At the outset, the procedure enables rights-bearing citizens inside the country to say how those duties should be framed and understood, thereby safeguarding notions of communal integrity that give intervention meaning and are valued by all communitarians and many cosmopolitans. Subsequently, it permits valid regional concerns to be heard. Throughout, it embraces duty-bearers and makes them integral to the process, allowing for obligations to be picked up and met in ways that are broadly acceptable to insiders and outsiders alike.

8

Intercession and investment

At a time when global policy responses to entrenched military control in Myanmar are failing and contested, heavy duties of mostly imperfect justice nevertheless weigh on outsiders. Using processes of interactive intervention to structure analysis, this chapter explores substantive options. The opening section surveys both discursive and assertive possibilities, and for three main reasons argues for discursive. The second section looks in some detail at practical ways forward within this domain, and outlines an agenda going well beyond business as usual for outsiders. The third section follows up by considering the external actors who might be drawn in to implement this agenda, and arguing for foreigners to invest in reform through aid agency action and calibrated corporate engagement. The final section reviews the interventionist strategy sketched here and assesses its potential political impact. It holds that significant long-term change is possible. Acknowledging that actual choices among available options must be made only after hearing the voices of Myanmar people, and accepting that existing reports on their preferences allow for no more than remote and provisional contributions to debate, the chapter nevertheless makes a cautious case for discursive intervention. Its core aim is to show how intercession and investment, designed as twinned parts of a unified and responsive strategy, can partner and reinforce indigenous pursuit of national reconciliation and sustainable democracy.

Interventionist options

Focusing first on discursive forms of intervention, foreigners have engaged extensively with Myanmar since the late 1980s. Chiefly, however, they have operated in the external realm, and have only launched a limited range of political projects inside the country. Thus, while much expressive pressure has been applied through diplomatic initiatives and activist campaigns, comparatively little consensual engagement has taken place. The reasons for this imbalance lie mainly in the difficulties put in the way of internal action by the Myanmar authorities, who have always been highly resistant to foreign engagement with the millions of citizens they view as uniquely theirs to shape and govern.

Notwithstanding the extent of expressive pressure directed at Myanmar over the past two decades, much more could still be done. In particular, ways could certainly be sought to intensify diplomatic pressure. All major external powers recognize that military rule in Myanmar is problematic, yet only rarely do they adopt a coordinated approach. Indeed, the main problems with state engagement since the late 1980s have been deep division among key players, and disappointing results flowing from their diplomatic initiatives.
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Notable in this regard is frequent disagreement between the two dominant external powers, China and the US, which take very different positions on core issues such as human rights, democracy, economic development and national sovereignty.
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While this strategic reality should not be viewed as a permanent blockage, it does hinder concerted action. To date, the closest international society has come to a measure of coordination is the UN Secretary-General’s Group of Friends. However, that has limited interventionist aims, and in any case has not been notably effective in building a united diplomatic front.

At the next level, a long history of broad social conflict, deep political cleavage and often open civil war makes Myanmar a major concern for specialist external agencies, and an obvious target for consensual engagement. However, headline state action is seldom on the agenda. One option sometimes cited is multiparty talks on the North Korean model, which by reaching into Myanmar to embrace government leaders would move beyond expressive pressure.
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While this proposal has been floated for years, it has not been paid much attention by leading foreign powers and is currently no more than a remote prospect. Also possible is UN peacekeeping, though this too is rarely considered, and even reports such as
Threat to the Peace
, the 2005 Havel-Tutu study, issued no call of this kind.
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Most feasible from within the state sphere is then a wealth of development action seeking to reshape the society from the bottom up. Here options for expanding existing programs are plentiful. In the non-state sector, consensual engagement takes place through still limited INGO action. Some agencies seek to boost social welfare. Others invest in civil society capacity building. A few others conduct peace training and conflict resolution workshops in Myanmar or across the border in Thailand, where participants come mainly from migrant groups displaced by interethnic warfare in peripheral zones. There is thus both experience to build on, and scope for fresh initiative. Indeed, at a time when many important local actors point to the pressing need to boost grassroots engagement this is a prime area for new thinking.

Crossing the line into the domain of assertive strategies, foreigners have again been active since the late 1980s. Here though they have restricted themselves entirely to the external realm, and have given no serious thought to action inside the country. Thus, the repertoire of aggressive pressure, both state and civil, has been extensively mined, notably through formal sanctions and informal consumer boycotts. By contrast, there been no real support for belligerent engagement, and cross-border military action and terrorism are entirely absent from the mainstream political agenda. Given the degree of regional hostility to such extreme forms of intervention, and the absence of interest in them anywhere else, they are best excluded from analysis.

In the sphere of aggressive pressure, the case for state sanctions continues to be made. In late 2010, 1998 Nobel Economics Laureate Amartya Sen was a firm advocate, holding that embargoes should be smartened by targeting elite interests, and broadened through Asian participation.
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However, smart sanctions have long been the main policy thrust of all major sanctioning powers, yet none has succeeded in delivering on its core aims and none ever could without substantially damaging other regional interests.
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Similarly, tightening the global economic embargo through Asian sanctions has always been a major policy objective, but after many years of no progress must now be judged a possibility that even the moral authority of an Asian Nobel Laureate will not realize. Much the same can be said about the non-state sector, where threats of consumer boycotts have driven most major western corporations from the country, but have had little or no impact on Asian companies. Realistically, the scope for innovation here is minimal.

Nevertheless, one further assertive option remains to be explored in the emergent sphere of universal jurisdiction, where creation of the ICC as a permanent tribunal in The Hague has opened up new possibilities for states to deal with extreme forms of hitherto domestic injustice. For years a stream of analysis has built a case for referral of Myanmar’s military elite to the ICC on grounds of grave human rights abuse.
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In the course of 2010, many governments in the broad western camp indicated an interest in this agenda.
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By the time of Myanmar’s praetorian transition in early 2011 the campaign thus had some momentum, though intractable Asian resistance made it in no sense overwhelming.

In contemporary debate, universal jurisdiction is often lauded for promoting peace in conflict-ridden societies.
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When the UN Security Council created
ad hoc
criminal tribunals in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda in 1993 and 1994, it said that each would contribute to “restoration and maintenance of peace.”
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Similarly, the Preamble to the 1998 Rome Statute establishing the ICC held that part of the case for a permanent tribunal lay in “grave crimes [that] threaten the peace, security and well-being of the world.”
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Later, the December 2002 UN General Assembly resolution on Khmer Rouge trials took as a core aim “pursuit of justice and national reconciliation, stability, peace and security.”
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Many observers also maintain that external justice can contribute to internal peace. A common instrumental claim, found in the 1998 Rome Statute, is that it deters future abuse by challenging a culture of impunity.
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A second argument is that it helps to uphold and strengthen the rule of law by enforcing international standards and promoting learning at the individual level.
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A third is that it removes manipulative leaders from office.
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A fourth is that it generates truth and a corroborated account of historical events, thereby furthering reconciliation.
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A fifth is that it is a debt owed to victims of abuse that helps them heal and achieve closure, and also mollifies any retributive emotions they may feel toward perpetrators.
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