The Battle Over Burma:
What can be done to solve the problem?
By
Michael Green and Derek Mitchell
U.S.
policy toward Burma is stuck. Since September 1988, the country
has been run by a corrupt and repressive military junta
(which renamed the country Myanmar). Soon after taking power,
the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC), as the
junta was then called, placed Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader
of the opposition party the National League for Democracy,
under house arrest. In 1990, it allowed national elections
but then ignored the National League for Democracy's landslide
victory and clung to power. Then, in the mid-1990s, amid a
cresting wave of post-Cold War democratization and in response
to international pressure, the SLORC released Suu Kyi. At the
time, there was a sense within the country and abroad that
change in Burma might be possible.
But this proved to be a false promise, and the international
community could not agree on what to do next. Many Western
governments, legislatures, and human rights organizations advocated
applying pressure through diplomatic isolation and punitive
economic sanctions. Burma's neighbors, on the other hand, adopted
a form of constructive engagement in the hope of enticing the
SLORC to reform. The result was an uncoordinated array of often
contradictory approaches. The United States limited its diplomatic
contact with the SLORC and eventually imposed mandatory trade
and investment restrictions on the regime. Europe became a
vocal advocate for political reform. But most Asian states
moved to expand trade, aid, and diplomatic engagement with
the junta, most notably by granting Burma full membership in
the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in 1997.
A decade later, the verdict is in: neither sanctions nor constructive
engagement has worked. If anything, Burma has evolved from
being an antidemocratic embarrassment and humanitarian disaster
to being a serious threat to the security of its neighbors.
But despite the mounting danger, many in the United States
and the international community are still mired in the old
sanctions-versus-engagement battle. At the United Nations,
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has appointed the former Nigerian
diplomat and UN official Ibrahim Gambari to continue the organization's
heretofore fruitless dialogue with the junta about reform.
The U.S. State Department and the U.S. Congress have fought
over control of U.S. Burma policy, leading to bitterness and
polarization on both sides. Although the UN Security Council
now does talk openly about Burma as a threat to international
peace and security, China and Russia have vetoed attempts to
impose international sanctions. And while key members of the
international community continue to undermine one another,
the junta, which renamed itself the State Peace and Development
Council (SPDC) in 1997, continues its brutal and dangerous
rule.
Regimes like the SPDC do not improve with age; therefore,
the Burma problem must be addressed urgently. All parties with
a stake in its resolution need to adjust their positions and
start coordinating their approach to the problem. Although
this may seem like an unlikely proposition, it has more potential
today than ever before. Burma's neighbors are beginning to
recognize that unconditional engagement has failed. All that
is needed now is for the United States to acknowledge that
merely reinforcing its strategy of isolation and the existing
sanctions regime will not achieve the desired results either.
Such a reappraisal would then allow all concerned parties to
build an international consensus with the dual aim of creating
new incentives for the SPDC to reform and increasing the price
it will pay if it fails to change its ways.
BURMESE WAYS
After
General Than Shwe became chair of the junta in 1992, repression
grew more brazen. Thousands of
democracy activists
and ordinary citizens have been sent to prison, and Suu Kyi
has been repeatedly confined to house arrest, where she remains
today. Since 1996, when the Burmese army launched its "four
cuts" strategy against armed rebels -- an effort to cut
off their access to food, funds, intelligence, and recruits
among the population -- 2,500 villages have been destroyed
and over one million people, mostly Karen and Shan minorities,
have been displaced. Hundreds of thousands live in hiding or
in open exile in Bangladesh, India, China, Thailand, and Malaysia.
In 2004, the reformist prime minister Khin Nyunt was arrested.
Two years ago, Than Shwe even moved the seat of government
from Rangoon (which the junta calls Yangon), the traditional
capital, to Pyinmana, a small logging town some 250 miles north
-- reportedly on the advice of a soothsayer and for fear of
possible U.S. air raids. And this past summer, the government
cracked down brutally on scores of Burmese citizens who had
taken to the streets to protest state-ordered hikes in fuel
prices.
Burma's neighbors are struggling to respond to the spillover
effects of worsening living conditions in the country. The
narcotics trade, human trafficking, and HIV/AIDS are all spreading
through Southeast Asia thanks in part to Burmese drug traffickers
who regularly distribute heroin with HIV-tainted needles in
China, India, and Thailand. According to the U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration, Burma accounts for 80 percent of all heroin
produced in Southeast Asia, and the UN Office on Drugs and
Crime has drawn a direct connection between the drug routes
running from Burma and the marked increase in HIV/AIDS in the
border regions of neighboring countries. Perversely, the SPDC
has been playing on its neighbors' concerns over the drugs,
disease, and instability that Burma generates to blackmail
them into providing it with political, economic, and even military
assistance.
Worse, the SPDC appears to have been taking an even more threatening
turn recently. Western intelligence officials have suspected
for several years that the regime has had an interest in following
the model of North Korea and achieving military autarky by
developing ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons. Last spring,
the junta normalized relations and initiated conventional weapons
trade with North Korea in violation of UN sanctions against
Pyongyang. And despite Burma's ample reserves of oil and gas,
it signed an agreement with Russia to develop what it says
will be peaceful nuclear capabilities. For these reasons, despite
urgent problems elsewhere in the world, all responsible members
of the international community should be concerned about the
course Burma is taking.
FRUSTRATED NEIGHBORS
ASEAN may be the most important component of any international
Burma policy. The organization invited Burma to join it in
1997 partly on the theory that integration would enhance ASEAN's
influence over the junta more than would isolation (and partly
out of concern over China's growing influence in the country).
More recently, however, the ten-member organization has come
to recognize that Burma is not only a stain on its international
reputation but also a drain on its diplomatic resources and
a threat to peace and stability in Asia. In 2005, ASEAN members
began to pressure the SPDC to give up its turn to take over
the group's rotating leadership, which was scheduled for 2007;
they breathed a collective sigh of relief when Than Shwe allowed
the Philippines to take Burma's spot. But particularly after
Than Shwe's bizarre decision to move the capital and his rebuff
of all international efforts, including by the Malaysian foreign
minister, to persuade him to improve the junta's behavior,
ASEAN states have only grown more concerned about Burma's direction.
Political liberalization in Indonesia and growing activism
in Malaysia and the Philippines have also led ASEAN to redefine
its mandate and apply greater pressure for change in Burma.
When ASEAN was created four decades ago, its five founding
states undertook not to interfere in each other's internal
affairs as a way both to distance themselves from their colonial
pasts and to avoid conflict in the future. But last January,
ASEAN members prepared a new charter for the twenty-first century
that champions democracy promotion and human rights as universal
values, and they have established a human rights commission
despite the SPDC's strong objections. With ASEAN's underlying
principles under revision, leadership by Southeast Asian nations
will become an even more essential component of any new international
approach to the junta.
Japan will
be another important force for reform. Tokyo and Washington
perennially disagreed over their policies toward
Burma in the 1980s and 1990s, but there has been a promising
shift in Japan's attitude recently. Now that Tokyo has to contend
with the slowdown in Japan's economic power and the rise in
China's, it is articulating its foreign policy objectives and
diplomacy in different terms. In November 2006, Japanese Foreign
Minister Taro Aso made a speech promoting an "arc of freedom
and prosperity" from the Baltics to the Pacific and touting
Tokyo's commitment to human rights, democracy, and the rule
of law. His speech conspicuously omitted any mention of Burma,
but there is no question that Japan's Burma policy has been
shifting significantly. In September 2006, Tokyo finally agreed
to support a discussion on Burma in the UN Security Council.
Members of the Diet have created the Association for the Promotion
of Values-Based Diplomacy, which seeks to infuse Japanese foreign
policy in Asia with a renewed emphasis on promoting democracy.
And last May, former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi joined
43 other former heads of state in an open letter calling on
the SPDC to unconditionally release Suu Kyi.
Securing Japan's cooperation will be especially important.
The Burmese people generally have a positive memory of Japan's
assistance in helping the country throw off British colonial
rule in the 1940s. Both the junta and the democratic opposition
see opportunities for Japanese aid to help rebuild the country
(although they disagree on the conditions under which that
aid would be welcome). Furthermore, Burma presents a unique
opportunity for Japan to demonstrate its bona fides on promoting
democracy, protecting human rights, and advancing regional
security -- especially at a time when the rhetoric and policies
of China, the other Asian giant, continue to focus on outdated
mercantilist principles.
UNHEALTHY COMPETITION
If ASEAN and Japan are critical components of any international
approach to Burma, China and India could be the greatest obstacles
to efforts to induce reform in the country. China has many
interests in Burma. Over the past 15 years, it has developed
deep political and economic relations with Burma, largely through
billions of dollars in trade and investment and more than a
billion dollars' worth of weapons sales. It enjoys important
military benefits, including access to ports and listening
posts, which allow its armed forces to monitor naval and other
military activities around the Indian Ocean and the Andaman
Sea. To feed its insatiable appetite for energy, it also seeks
preferential deals for access to Burma's oil and gas reserves.
Beijing's engagement with the SPDC has been essential to the
regime's survival. China has provided it with moral and financial
support -- including funds and materiel to pay off Burmese
military elites -- thus increasing its leverage at home and
abroad. By throwing China's weight behind the SPDC, Beijing
has complicated the strategic calculations of those of Burma's
neighbors that are concerned about the direction the country
is moving in, thus enabling the junta to pursue a classic divide-and-conquer
approach.
In its own defense, China continues to assert its fealty to
the principle of noninterference. In early 2007, China and
Russia cast their first joint veto in the UN Security Council
in 35 years to block a measure that would have sanctioned the
SPDC. The move was consistent with both states' historical
objections to any attempts by the Security Council to sanction
a country for human rights violations. It also aligned with
Beijing's overall strategic goals of the past few years: to
secure the resources, markets, and investment destinations
to fuel China's remarkable economic development; to shun risky
international moves that might destabilize its neighborhood
and distract the Chinese leadership from urgent domestic challenges;
and to promote noninterference as an alternative model for
international diplomacy -- all interests that will make it
difficult to induce China to change its Burma policy.
But China's position could shift, particularly as Beijing
considers its longer-term interests. China, like many other
states on Burma's border, must be concerned about the effects
of its neighbor's tortured development on its own security.
In fact, Chinese officials in Beijing and the governor of Yunnan
Province, which borders Burma, are reported to have been putting
pressure on the SPDC to reform and urgently address drug trafficking
and health issues. This quiet shift could track the recent
change in Beijing's approach to another wayward neighbor: North
Korea. As soon as Beijing realized that being hands-off did
not prevent Pyongyang from testing nuclear weapons and ballistic
missiles over its objections -- thus damaging China's reputation
and threatening its security -- it agreed to UN Security Council
sanctions to try to bring Pyongyang under control. The same
could happen with Burma, and all the more readily because it
occupies a less strategic position for China than does North
Korea (China's northeastern border has historically been an
area of strategic vulnerability and competition).
Another possible source of change is growing pressure from
ASEAN nations, which have been suspicious of China's dealings
with Burma over the last 15 years. Once Beijing comes to recognize
that its current approach to Burma undermines its professed
desire to be a responsible international actor, it will have
good reason to redefine its real interests in Burma. The key
will be for the United States and others to prioritize Burma
in their diplomatic efforts with China in order to get Beijing
to reach this conclusion.
It will also be a challenge getting India on board. Despite
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's trumpeting of democratic values,
India has actually become more reticent when it comes to Burma
in recent years. This is particularly regrettable considering
that Congress was one of the Burmese democratic opposition's
strongest supporters during much of the 1990s and that Suu
Kyi continues to cite Mohandas Gandhi as a model for nonviolent
resistance. The change occurred during the past decade, after
New Delhi detected that China's political and military influence
in Burma was filling the void left by the international community's
deliberate isolation of the junta. Like China, India is hungry
for natural gas and other resources and is eager to build a
road network through Burma that would expand its trade with
ASEAN. As a result, it has attempted to match China step for
step as an economic and military partner of the SPDC, providing
tanks, light artillery, reconnaissance and patrol aircraft,
and small arms; India is now Burma's fourth-largest trading
partner. Singh's government has also fallen for the junta's
blackmail over cross-border drug and arms trafficking and has
preferred to give it military and economic assistance rather
than let Burma become a safe haven for insurgents active in
India's troubled northeastern region.
Yet this shortsighted policy is clearly not in India's interests.
Persistent repression and turmoil in Burma will continue to
threaten India's security along its border. Internal political
reform leading to a more open and reconciled Burma would be
far more beneficial for India than anything that would result
from India's current tactical accommodations. Of course, India
is eager to counter Chinese influence and strengthen its linkages
to ASEAN through Burma. But its efforts to become more integrated
into East Asia would be better served by following the example
of like-minded democracies such as Indonesia, which has spearheaded
efforts to change ASEAN's positions on democratization and
human rights, than by parroting outdated rhetoric advocating
noninterference or pursuing pure mercantilism.
COORDINATED ENGAGEMENT
Given the differing perspectives and interests of these nations,
a new multilateral initiative on Burma cannot be based on a
single, uniform approach. Sanctions policies will need to coexist
with various forms of engagement, and it will be necessary
to coordinate all of these measures toward the common end of
encouraging reform, reconciliation, and ultimately the return
of democracy. To succeed, the region's major players will need
to work together.
Bringing them together will require the United States' leadership.
One way to proceed would be for Washington to lead the five
key parties -- ASEAN, China, India, Japan, and the United States
-- in developing a coordinated international initiative and
putting forth a public statement of the principles that underlie
their vision for a stable and secure Burma. The five partners
should develop a road map with concrete goalposts that lays
out both the benefits that the SPDC would enjoy if it pursued
true political reform and national reconciliation and the costs
it would suffer if it continued to be intransigent. The road
map should present the SPDC with an international consensus
on how Burma's situation affects international stability and
the common principles on which the international community
will judge progress in the country. One purpose of such a road
map would be to reassure the SPDC of regional support for Burma's
territorial integrity and security and demonstrate the five
parties' commitment to provide, under the appropriate conditions,
the assistance necessary to ensure a better future for the
country. This would be an important guarantee given the Burmese
military's traditional paranoia.
Clearly, any process of reform and national
reconciliation in Burma will have to begin with the immediate
release of Suu
Kyi and other political prisoners, including other members
of the National League for Democracy and ethnic leaders, and
involve their full participation in the institution of democracy.
The guidelines for a new constitution that were announced in
September, ostensibly as a "road map to democracy," do
not come close in this regard. Than Shwe and the SPDC despise
Suu Kyi, of course, which is why some U.S. supporters of engagement
with Burma argue that it would be imprudent to peg the international
community's treatment of the SPDC on the junta's treatment
of Suu Kyi. However, her party's success in the 1990 elections
and the fact that Burmese society continues to venerate her
mean that any legitimate and credible approach to reform in
Burma will have to take her perspectives into account.
Potential chinks are also appearing in the SPDC's armor. Than
Shwe's erratic behavior, his decision to imprison former Prime
Minister Khin Nyunt and thousands of Khin Nyunt's military
associates, and his efforts to create a Kim Il Sung-like cult
of personality are signs of brittleness and division within
the junta. If the SPDC were faced with an offer of new economic
and political opportunities from other states in the region
-- or greater international pressure and isolation should it
fail to reform -- some of its members might eventually feel
compelled to seek a different course for themselves and their
country.
The five parties should not be expected to agree on everything
or even on a single, uniform approach to the SPDC. Rather,
the objective of such discussions would be to encourage a degree
of compromise among the participants and coordination among
their respective policies so that they may be channeled toward
a common end. The current approach -- with each party pursuing
its individual policy with an eye as much toward competing
with the others for its own advantage as toward promoting change
in Burma -- has clearly played into the junta's hands. It has
allowed the Burmese government to avoid united international
action while still gaining the resources necessary to hold
on to power.
The participation
of China and India, currently the SPDC's greatest enablers,
will be critical. The United States could
begin to influence both nations' thinking by making Burma a
higher priority in bilateral dialogues. In discussions with
Beijing, Washington could make China's Burma policy another
test of its readiness to be a "responsible stakeholder," much
as it has already done in regard to Darfur. With New Delhi,
Washington could make India's Burma policy an important component
of the two governments' evolving strategic dialogue and nascent
partnership on international issues, including democracy promotion
and regional stability. Even more important, the U.S. government
should initiate a new approach with ASEAN, Japan, and actors
outside of Asia, such as the European Union, which has had
a long-standing interest in political reform in Burma. ASEAN
alone does not have the cohesion or the clout to shape China's
or India's policy toward Burma. But with help from the United
States and others, it could take a leading role in spearheading
a new coordinated, multilateral approach that neither Beijing
nor New Delhi would be able to ignore. China was reluctant
to host the six-party talks on North Korea at first, but it
eventually preferred to take on that role rather than leave
the job of dealing with Pyongyang's nuclear activities to the
United States, Japan, and South Korea. Once a new multilateral
approach to Burma begins to take shape, China will not want
to be viewed as obstructing progress on an issue of importance
to its neighbors.
In order to participate fully and effectively, the U.S. government,
for its part, will need to relax its strict prohibition on
official high-level contact with the SPDC. This will require
close consultation between the White House, the State Department,
and Congress; Congress should grant the administration diplomatic
flexibility in exchange for appropriate oversight. The president
should appoint a special adviser to serve as the coordinator
of U.S. policy on Burma and as the United States' lead contact
in its international outreach (and eventually as the U.S. envoy
to the Burmese regime itself). In the meantime, U.S. sanctions
regarding trade and investment should remain in place, both
to avoid too sudden a shift in posture and to keep in reserve
potential carrots that could later be offered to the SPDC to
encourage reform. The United States should also continue to
push for UN Security Council action on Burma in order to keep
the issue at the top of its agenda with China.
The international community needs to act now to begin a process
of concentrated and coordinated engagement for the benefit
of the Burmese people and of broader peace and stability in
Asia. As with the six-party talks on North Korea, a multilateral
approach will require some compromise by all participants.
The United States will need to reconsider its restrictions
on engaging the SPDC; ASEAN, China, and India will need to
reevaluate their historical commitment to noninterference;
Japan will need to consider whether its economics-based approach
to Burma undermines its new commitment to values-based diplomacy.
But all parties have good reasons to make concessions. None
of them can afford to watch Burma descend further into isolation
and desperation and wait to act until another generation of
its people is lost. In addition to humanitarian principles,
there are strategic grounds for stepping up diplomatic efforts
on Burma: it is now the most serious remaining challenge to
the security and unity of Southeast Asia. Of course, change
will eventually come to Burma. But without the coordinated
engagement of the major interested powers today, that change
will come at a great cost: to the stability of Southeast Asia,
to the conscience of the international community, and, most
important, to the long-suffering Burmese people, who languish
in the shadows as the rest of the world concentrates its energies
elsewhere.
Michael
Green is Associate Professor of International Relations at
the
Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown
University and a Senior Adviser and Japan Chair at the
Center for Strategic and International Studies. Derek
Mitchell is a Senior Fellow and Director for Asia Strategy at CSIS. Its
views are not necessarily those of PETROLEUMWORLD.
