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Multilateral Approach desirable to address the Myanmar Issue

Rajaram Panda, Ph.D. - 11/17/2009

Myanmar has emerged as a new test case for the success of US engagement in Asia, especially when the military junta has shown no sign of complying with the international opinion of restoring democracy and has been tightening control further on its people. No amount of carrot and stick approach by the US has proved successful. The latest volte force in Washington’s Myanmar policy has been applying the carrot approach and abandoning the application of stick as the means for seeking peace dividend.

Even within the ASEAN and for critics of the ASEAN, Myanmar has long served as proof of the organisation’s ineffectuality. The country’s military junta has successfully defied the world and suppressed democracy, oppressed its people and ignored worldwide demand for observing human rights. The ASEAN member countries have refrained from applying economic sanctions because the founding agreement does not allow intervention in the internal affairs of fellow members. However, in the wake of international clamour of restoring democracy in Myanmar and worldwide condemnation of keeping the democracy advocate and opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest, the ASEAN member states are facing critical test in its quest for legitimacy. It is unclear if and how the ASEAN member states will pressure the military regime to accept the organisation’s governing norms. Strategic economic sanctions with the intention to bring the military junta and thereby demonstrating the world that ASEAN is a legitimate and effective regional organization may be a tempting option. But there is also a possibility that such an approach might further harden the stance of the junta and the repressive rule could be more repressive.

Probably having realized the futility of such an option, the Obama administration is seeking to engage the military junta by sending senior leaders to initiate dialogue. Here some parallel can be drawn with the US policy towards North Korea. Both Kim Jong Il of North Korea and General Than Shwe seem to be pursuing the policy of repression at home to extract economic aid from the US and as a bargaining tool to come to the negotiating table.

The last highest-level US diplomat to have visited Myanmar was in 1995 when Madeleine visited Myanmar as the chief US representative to the United Nations. Now under the Obama dispensation, senior US officials were allowed to meet Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of Myanmar’s pro-democracy movement. A high-ranking group led by Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell, the top American diplomat for East Asia, met privately with the Nobel Prize winner in the first week of November 2009. Campbell also held talks with top generals in the government, including Prime Minister Gen. Thein Sein and leaders of Suu Kyi’s political party.

Campbell’s visit was a demonstration of US commitment to repair relations between the two countries, while assuring democracy activists US’ support for their cause. It is premature at this stage to expect dramatic change in the regime’s authoritarian tactics, many of which have been in place since the military seized power in 1962.

Campbell’s two-day exploratory mission to Myanmar came nearly a month after US Senator Jim Webb became the highest-ranking US official to have met with the junta and a week after US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced the Obama administration’s plan to engage with the reclusive military junta. Jim Webb, chairman of the Asian subcommittee on foreign affairs, has been a strong advocate of engaging the government of Myanmar. There are two views on the latest US overtures on Myanmar. One view is that it is a positive step towards a fresh engagement with Myanmar. The other is that talking with the top generals at this moment guilty of flagrant abuses of human rights undermines the US goal of democracy promotion. Clinton has said that though sanctions would continue to remain as part of US policy, these by themselves have not produced the desired result. Though the new US initiative to engage the military junta is laudable, any unilateral action is unlikely to succeed because of historical and geopolitical reasons.

Though the junta may have shown some interest in warming ties, it has a history of stringing visiting Western diplomats along without changing course. Since the 1990s, successive UN special envoys have returned empty-handed and been snubbed by junta leaders. Early this year, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon tried to meet with San Suu Kyi but was rebuffed by the military government.

Suu Kyi has been in jail or under house arrest for 14 of the last 20 years. She was further sentenced additional 18 months of house detention early this year for harbouring an uninvited American veteran of Vietnam war who swam to her lakeside villa. There are suspected to be 2,000 political prisoners who remain locked up. The military junta’s attitude towards ethnic minorities is deplorable. The junta also depends on the country’s rampant narcotic trade.

The military regime has contemptuous distrust of the Western powers, which dates back to nearly 60 years. The military assassinated the Burmese freedom fighter Aung San and sought to consolidate power by isolating the state as a defense against foreign powers bent on re-establishing colonial rule. It is possible that for this single reason the military junta moved the nation’s capital from Yangon to a remote location 200 miles to the north in November 2005. Was it because of possible fear of American-led invasion? At least the junta thought that way. The junta’s decision to retreat the capital to a hill side was probably for the reason that the regime could neither be harassed by domestic opposition fighters nor attacked by Western powers. Thereby, the regime aimed to consolidate its authority and at the same time isolate from the rest of the world.

The US’ engagement policy may be because of the general elections that the junta has promised to hold in 2010. Much so the international community may wish the release of the detained opposition leader and other political prisoners enabling them to campaign in elections, any expectation is bringing legitimacy without inclusive participation seems remote at this moment. However, Obama administration needs to keep in mind that the regime comprises of an elite group of military leaders deeply suspicious of any US action. So much so that even in the wake of Cyclone Nargis when thousands of people succumbed to disease and starvation, the junta refused nearly all Western Humanitarian assistance and in fact did not even allow US ships carrying relief materials to enter Burmese waters out of fear of attack. How to break into this distrust is a huge challenge for Obama.

The bright side of Obama administration’s engagement policy by sending top diplomats to talk with junta as well as opposition leaders marks the end of a Bush administration policy of isolating the regime and seeking to corral Asian powers into punishing it. But it is unlikely to succeed for now.

The question that begs an answer is whether only carrot without stick will make the military junta change course. Past experience does not appear to be so. Pressure may still be needed. If there is to be a political thaw, trading partners such as Thailand and China need to put pressure on the junta. Sanctions are seen as useful tools and are likely to remain so for a while

According to David Steinberg, a Myanmar expert at Georgetown University, the isolation in direct dialogue with Myanmar has also been reflected in US-imposed economic isolation through the imposition of various degrees of sanctions since the failed people’s revolution of 1988. There is a view that the détente between the regime in Myanmar and Washington is meant to counter China’s growing influence in the region. Beijing is Myanmar’s closest ally and the largest economic benefactor. As is well known, Beijing is sourcing in areas much beyond its frontiers for securing uninterrupted supplies of critical raw materials that are needed for its growing domestic economy and using its soft power of economically interlinking supply sources with a view to expand its strategic outreach. The Chinese development of ports in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka may be seen from that perspective. No wonder, China has begun work on a large natural gas pipeline that will bring Myanmar’s robust energy resources into southern China.

Notwithstanding the sincerity of Obama’s engagement strategy, the truism is that the US’ economic leverage over the regime is extremely limited stemming from lack of trade following sanctions. As a result, the US lacks a political enforcement mechanism. As said, unilateral approach is unlikely to yield any positive result and the US ought to vigorously strive to cooperate with other nations if it wants to effect any positive change in Myanmar.

China’s interests may be in pursuance of its long term strategic economic interests. The truism, however, is that China is the only country which provides support to the junta and sells arms to the military. China has blocked any action by the UN Security Council that targets Myanmar. More recently, however, China is getting to feel the negative consequences of sharing its border with a failed state. Thousands of refugees from Myanmar fled into south-west China following clashes between forces and an ethnic group in the north-east region. Since 8 August, more than 10,000 people fled into south-wrest Yunnan province, which borders Myanmar, after the military government sent its troops to the Kokang ethnic region to crack down on drug trade. The Kokang region is populated with ethnic Chinese and it is feared that the unrest could break out into a full-scale civil war and lead to instability on China’s south-west frontiers. Though there is in existence of a ceasefire accord between Yangon and 17 ethnic groups, the recent violence threatened the accord to break down. Under the circumstance, the Obama administration needs to leverage the Chinese pressure on the junta on key issues of mitigating cross-border violence into its foreign policy frame and engagement strategy to obtain maximum peace dividend.

Both China and the ASEAN states are not comfortable with the recent developments in Myanmar. Yet, both are unwilling to intervene in the internal affairs of Myanmar. However, since there is a realization both in China and the ASEAN members stare of the negative impact stemming from refugee flows, spill-over armed conflicts or a bustling drug trade, the Obama administration’s engagement strategy ought not to be unilateral backed by threats of sanctions that have in any case proved to be ineffective, but take China and the ASEAN member states on board in engaging the military junta.

The situation in Myanmar is more complex than it appears. The military ruler General Than Shwe is opposed to make any concession to Suu Kyi, whose party won the country’s 1990 elections but those results were annulled by the junta and Suu Kyi was placed under house arrest. Under Myanmar’s 2007 constitution, which Suu Kyi’s League for Democracy opposed, one-quarter of the seats in parliament are reserved for military officials. Other clauses empower the military to take charge in case of threats to national security in a country that is battling decades-old ethnic insurgencies. Myanmar’s suspected nuclear links with North Korea is yet another worrying factor not only for the US, the ASEAN member states but also to India. If Myanmar’s perception that China is supporting the rebels to stem the refugee problem is strengthened, the military junta might respond positively to the US overtures. As said, a multilateral approach is a better option than a unilateral one by the US to address the Myanmar issue.