Giving Up the Burma Fantasy
Englehart, Neil A.
POLITICS ABROAD Giving Up the Burma Fantasy NEIL A. ENGLEHART The U.S. announcement that it would reopen direct contacts with Burma/Myanmar’s military government promises a welcome change...
...It is irrational to expect that it will make concessions based on a promise to lift sanctions, when it has thrived in the face of them...
...Never very high in comparative terms, tax as a proportion of GDP reached its maximum level in independent Burma at around 10 percent in the mid1970s, but began a steep decline in the mid1980s, reaching a low of 2 percent in 2001, when the available data end...
...Progressive engagement may even require tolerating a seriously flawed first election in 2010, just as the United States has tolerated flawed first elections in other countries, including Afghanistan and Iraq...
...But one has to ask what would happen next...
...The Obama administration’s new engagement shows a refreshing pragmatism, as opposed to the isolation and sanctions employed fruitlessly by successive U.S...
...Most of the insurgent groups retain their armed forces and could easily resume military operations if they chose...
...Yet the United States never responded...
...Regime change will solve the country’s problems...
...None of the conditions that led to the 1958 coup have been resolved, and many have gotten worse...
...credibility in the country...
...All that is wrong is the government...
...In 1989, the Communist Party collapsed, and the government began negotiating ceasefire agreements with the remaining insurgent groups...
...Most telling is the decline of tax collection, perhaps the single core government function...
...The most effective part of the state was the military, which reformed itself under Ne Win in response to the insurgencies and a Nationalist Chinese incursion in the North...
...Today only a handful of active insurgents remain in the field, and the army has increased in size to 400,000 troops and can now operate unhindered in most of the country...
...Both the Clinton and Bush administrations imposed successively tighter sanctions on the country, in the hope of punishing its military rulers and stimulating democratic reform...
...This policy may lack the moral satisfaction of sticking it to the bad guys and the political satisfaction of triggering sudden change, but it stands a better chance of actually helping the longsuffering people of Burma/Myanmar...
...The only substantial pools of skills and pockets of competence that exist in the government are in the military, which has set up a parallel educational system for its officers...
...Unable to recruit or act effectively in the absence of its leader, Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, who remains under house arrest, it has become irrelevant in the eyes of many citizens...
...Writing in the New Republic, Joshua Kurlantzick suggests that twice in the last twenty years the junta has feigned reform to extract concessions from the international community “before reverting to its natural state...
...These small but important steps suggest that the junta may be serious about permitting some level of competition in the 2010 elections...
...reorganizing the Executive Committee will be a crucial next step, but this required a functioning Central Committee...
...Any forward movement will necessarily be slow, but a longterm progressive policy of engagement holds more hope for stimulating democratic reform than the fantasy that sanctions and isolation will force the military to give up power...
...Such initiatives can help foster progress on the issues Burma/Myanmar most needs to address: economic development, health care, education, corruption, and good governance...
...Tax collections will need to improve to sustain the salaries necessary to lure talented people into public service without forcing them to resort to corruption...
...pressure could serve the high moral purpose of bringing democracy to Burma/Myanmar was a fantasy that did not acknowledge the country’s serious problems...
...If a transition took place without the cooperation of the military leadership, it would produce a power vacuum at the local level, which would not be conducive to democratic governance...
...Progress will be slow given the country’s many overlapping problems, and as in places like Chile and Nigeria it is unlikely that abusive military officers will be held accountable...
...Starved for wages and repeatedly purged, its employees’ only incentive to join is the opportunity to extract bribes...
...administrations for the past twenty years...
...Widespread corruption has effectively privatized public services, with teachers and doctors demanding bribes to perform their basic duties...
...The NLD has also been allowed to resume the process of reorganizing its women’s organization...
...There are no quick fixes, and no policy—sanctions, engagement, or otherwise—can deliver rapid and stable regime change...
...The question is not how U.S...
...Yet this is a premise of the new policy, with the U.S...
...A government that cannot tax cannot govern...
...No one believes that the elections now scheduled for 2010 will be truly democratic or return the country to civilian control...
...Given its total dominance, change can only weaken its control...
...The completion of a new constitution in 2008 (a process begun in 1990 and utterly stalled for over a decade) signals recognition by the military that it cannot sustain its political dominance...
...When this prompted the junta to revert to the status quo ante, the United States further tightened sanctions...
...Service delivery, including education, health care, and in many urban areas even sanitation and garbage collection, has nearly collapsed...
...Clearly a change of regime would eliminate the repression of the democracy movement, at least nominally restore civil and political rights, and end the continuing detention of democracy leaders, including Aung San Suu Kyi...
...Although the insurgencies have largely been neutralized through a series of ceasefire agreements, the ethnic inequalities, suspicions, and tensions that produced them persist...
...The vacuum would probably be filled by local military commanders and political bosses, recreating an environment like that of the earlier democratic period in which the legal rights of citizens were compromised by the realities of local power structures...
...This failure to respond positively was extremely costly to U.S...
...N A.E works on state failure, state formation, and human rights and specializes in Southeast Asia...
...Economically, the government has moved from selfimposed isolation to thriving trade with all its neighbors, who are happy to invest in the country to benefit from its natural resources—and choose not to exercise the influence this gives them to promote political change...
...Ending sanctions can help by building a more trusting relationship with a government that now regards the United States as a declared enemy...
...Local military units are now required to be selfsufficient for their food and labor requirements, leading to a host of severe human rights abuses connected to forced labor and military confiscation of food, land, and goods...
...The military regime has survived twenty years of sanctions and is now in a stronger position than ever before...
...These bosses could reliably deliver a strong AFPFL vote using resources that included control of land, illegal businesses, government patronage, and private bands of thugs to control polling places and intimidate voters...
...POLITICS ABROAD Giving Up the Burma Fantasy NEIL A. ENGLEHART The U.S...
...It also undermined the primary proponent of improving relations with the West, the junta’s intelligence chief, Khin Nyunt, who was subsequently purged...
...Displaying its gift for Orwellian doublespeak, the junta chillingly describes its goal as a “disciplineflourishing democracy...
...Prior to the new constitution, the military operated in an environment in which there were no constraints on its power...
...Minority ethnic groups are justifiably suspicions of the Burman majority and the central government, having suffered a long history of violence and atrocities at their hands...
...The current regime can be removed through external pressure...
...It may reflect realization that the regime’s legitimacy is in tatters following its 2007 crackdown on Buddhist monks—and perhaps even that its selfimposed mission of bringing prosperity and 12 DISSENT SPRING 2010 POLITICS ABROAD order to the country has failed...
...The key question, therefore, is how the military can be induced to cooperate...
...Burma/Myanmar has a singularly Manichean politics, as indicated by its dual name: the government and opposition cannot even agree about what to call the place...
...Continuing or increasing sanctions, however, might well stifle progress, strengthen hardliners, and help the junta remain in power, in much the same way that continued U.S...
...A weak central government, however, would provide them the opportunity once again to assert de facto autonomy, an opportunity they would be unlikely to forgo in such a highly uncertain environment...
...Yet from the junta’s point of view, it got burned...
...The end of sanctions will not lead to the fall of the current government...
...Sanctions have utterly failed to do this, but there are small hopeful signs coming, surprisingly, from the junta itself...
...rhetoric is undermined by the fact that it has repeatedly moved the goalpost for relaxing sanctions...
...The United States has not relaxed sanctions at any point, despite the fact that the junta has periodically made what are, for its members, significant concessions, including releasing Aung San Suu Kyi from house arrest, allowing the NLD to reopen branch offices and to recruit new members, and cooperating with the United States on counternarcotics issues...
...There is no question that Burma/Myanmar has a repressive government guilty of terrible abuses...
...While the political struggle between the junta and Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) draws the most international attention, these quotidian abuses of persons and property are the most common form of human rights abuse in the country...
...The idea that U.S...
...sanctions helped the Castro government survive the fall of its Soviet patrons...
...Coming to power after years of British colonial administration and the disruption of the Japanese occupation, the new government was immediately challenged by a serious insurgency and had little capacity to govern...
...We are already seeing some fruits of the constitutional process: Aung San Suu Kyi has been allowed to consult with members of the NLD’s Executive Committee to discuss recruiting new members and reorganizing the party’s leadership...
...Indeed, it is perversely reassuring that the military built into the constitution mechanisms to ensure its continued influence, including giving itself onethird of the seats in the legislature...
...No government, democratic or otherwise, can govern Burma/Myanmar without the assistance of the military...
...However, the State Department’s initial articulation of its new policy continues to reflect the flawed premises of the sanctions policy: that all that is wrong with Burma is its government, that a change of regime will solve the country’s problems, and that the current regime can be removed through external pressure...
...Many of the ethnic insurgencies assisted refugees from the crackdown in forming their own resistance groups, but remain wary about the intentions of the NLD should it ever come to power...
...The development of natural gas reserves has further bolstered the government’s balance sheet...
...Other political parties have begun to organize as well...
...With the new constitution, the junta’s power is no longer unbounded...
...State Department announcing that it “will maintain our existing sanctions until we see concrete progress...
...Even the International Monetary Fund considers the taxcollection rate in Burma alarmingly low, citing a narrow tax base, evasion, and corruption as causes...
...officials...
...Elections were held, but the quality of the democracy was problematic...
...He is currently in the political science department at Bowling Green State University...
...No policy is capable of doing that, given the problems that plague the country after years of isolation, war, economic stagnation, and educational decline...
...Aung San Suu Kyi and the NLD never reached out to the ethnic minorities prior to the 1990 crackdown, when they suddenly became desperate for allies...
...This represents an advance, even if it has been made in a way favorable to military interests...
...The weak and incompetent civil service inherited from the British at independence has gotten even weaker and more corrupt...
...policy can bring about regime change, but rather how it can help lay the groundwork for a future transition by fostering gradual progress...
...Such a weak central government would almost certainly face renewed insurgency...
...investment, foreign aid programs, humanitarian NGO operations, and citizentocitizen contact...
...To focus on the elections, however, misses the real significance of the current constitutional process: the military has agreed to create competing forms of authority in exchange for guaranteeing its future influence...
...In 1988 the military commanded 180,000 troops and was constantly embroiled in conflict with ethnic insurgent groups and the Burmese Communist Party...
...Such transparently undemocratic features suggest that the constitution might be more than a propaganda document...
...Fundamental reform of the state is required, including rehabilitating an educational system crippled by years of neglect and training a new generation of civilian civil servants...
...Yet these have had no positive effects on the political situation...
...Politically, the junta’s primary opposition, the NLD, has also been crippled...
...14 DISSENT SPRING 2010...
...The military government has been disastrous for the country, exacerbating problems of poverty, poor delivery of services, and civil service corruption and incompetence...
...policy in Burma/Myanmar, but any true resolution to the country’s manifold problems will require transcending moral absolutism and focusing on longterm progress rather than immediate regime change...
...The junta and its abuses are as much a symptom as a cause of these problems...
...After years of restrictions on meetings and recruitment, the NLD’s youngest leader is the sixtyfouryearold Aung San Suu Kyi, with others ranging in age from the seventies to the nineties...
...The absence of transparent accounting or a public budgeting process makes it impossible to know exactly how these revenues are being distributed, but it is clear they are not being invested in the delivery of services to the general population or the rehabilitation of the civil service...
...The demands of the sanctions policy are SPRING 2010 DISSENT 13 POLITICS ABROAD simultaneously too hard, because it requires the total disempowerment of the junta, and too easy, because it assumes that a change of regime will solve the country’s problems...
...It does not follow, however, that removing it will solve the country’s problems—because they long predate it...
...It is not clear that the removal of sanctions is a major goal for the junta, which has only become stronger since they were imposed...
...It is still too early to tell if Burma/Myanmar is becoming one of the small number of countries in which an autocratic military government has surrendered power, but in the current context of unchecked military power even the seemingly minor changes brought about by the constitutional process represent unlookedfor improvement...
...Such change cannot happen without the cooperation of the military...
...Instead, power devolved to local party bosses affiliated with the dominant political party, Aung San’s AntiFascist People’s Freedom League (AFPFL...
...For many people they are more immediate and serious than the lack of political and civil rights...
...It is remarkable that the military seeks to advance any form of political change at all...
...Thus, much more needs to be fixed than just SPRING 2010 DISSENT 11 POLITICS ABROAD eliminating the junta...
...Foreign activists and governments have been drawn willingly into this conflict, imagining themselves champions of a democratic opposition against a military junta...
...Reducing or ending sanctions would open up opportunities for U.S...
...announcement that it would reopen direct contacts with Burma/Myanmar’s military government promises a welcome change from a failed policy of twenty years of isolation and sanctions...
...As is often true with sanctions, they have hurt only the country’s ordinary citizens, the very people they were meant to benefit...
...Burma had a democratic government between independence in 1948 and 1958, and its history is instructive...
...Each of these assumptions is false, and adherence to them will undermine the new policy just as it undermined the old one...
...Democracy and improved human rights conditions rightly remain the ultimate goal of U.S...
...Although military rule has not worked, it does not follow 10 DISSENT SPRING 2010 POLITICS ABROAD that removing the military from government would remedy these problems...
...A government attack on a Kokang Chinese group in August 2009 stoked fears of renewed violence and prompted the different groups to discuss an alliance...
...These problems require a long process of rehabilitation, one that can only begin with the active cooperation of the country’s military rulers...
...Aung San Suu Kyi has recently been allowed to meet with representatives of the government and U.S...
...Perceiving (not unreasonably) the civilian politicians who governed the country to be fractious, corrupt, and selfinterested, the military took over the country in 1958 and has ruled in various guises ever since...
...It will have to deal with political parties, a parliament, and even possibly a presidency whose occupant may not fully agree with the military leaders...
...Only under these conditions can a stable transition to a less repressive, more representative government be seriously contemplated...
...Given the pathetic state to which the civil service has been reduced, what governance takes place in the country today happens only through the military...
...A democratic government without military support would simply have no way to govern...
...In February it was allowed to hold a national election for a new Central Committee, which had been abolished by the government in 1991...
...Trust between citizens and state institutions needs to be rebuilt...
...instead, it made new demands...
Vol. 57 • March 2010 • No. 2
