In 2004 a new sanctions law was enacted by Washington, restricting Burmese imports into the United States and prohibiting almost any payments into the country. The already struggling textile industry was crippled. Those in Rangoon who argued that recent reforms would lead to an easing, rather than toughening, of sanctions quickly lost ground. Burma was labeled an “outpost of tyranny,” bundled together with North Korea and Iran.
And in 2005, even the Global Fund (which fights the spread of HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria) withdrew under heavy political pressure from pro-democracy activists.
In the inner meeting rooms of Rangoon’s War Office, the hardliners saw their paranoia justified and their intransigence easier to defend. While the Americans and the European Union cut off aid and imposed sanctions, the government started to benefit from new economic opportunities. For a while, there was investment from the region, but this largely dried up, partly as a result of the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s, but mainly the result of a still poor business environment. But by the late 1990s, discoveries of huge offshore natural gas fields, valued in the tens of billions of dollars, suddenly meant a steady supply of hard currency, more than enough to keep the military machine going. Voices that had called for free-market reform quieted down. The economy that was evolving under sanctions was exactly the opposite of one that could create a strong middle class and pave the way for progressive change.
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In almost every way, this policy of isolating one of the most isolated countries in the world—where the military regime isolated itself for the better part of thirty years, and which indeed has grown up and evolved well in isolation—is both counterproductive and dangerous.
That a democratic government for Burma should be the aim is not in doubt. Especially for a country as diverse as Burma, with so many different peoples, languages, and cultures, only a free and liberal society can provide a lasting stability and lead to real prosperity. What needs to be asked is: What sort of transition to democracy is possible, what are the actual obstacles, and what international policy will work best?
Any transition to democracy is always difficult. In many places around the world, attempts to transform dictatorships into democracies have led to many new problems, including interethnic violence and civil war. Burma’s transition will be especially difficult. This is a country that has already been at civil war for sixty years and where that civil war is not yet concluded; where there are hundreds of different ethnic and linguistic groups, many inhabiting remote mountain areas; where poverty is endemic and where a humanitarian crisis is looming; where there are hundreds of thousands of people displaced by the fighting and tens of thousands more who are refugees; and where there is a resilient narcotics industry and where some of the richest businessmen (always the most likely to be influential in a democracy) are tied to the drugs trade. And there are two especially difficult factors, legacies of Burmese history.
The first is the long history of failed state building. The nineteenth-century kings Mindon and Thibaw attempted to remake traditional institutions and create new ones to deal with the fast-changing world, but these initiatives in the end went nowhere because of the steady approach of British imperialism. The traditional order collapsed entirely. The British Raj then tried, as in other parts of its Indian domain, to transplant familiar institutions—a civil service, a judiciary, a professional police force and army, and eventually an elected legislature—but these remained largely alien institutions, unwedded to local society, and the abrupt end of colonial rule meant that they didn’t long survive the British withdrawal. Then there was the attempt in the U Nu days to fashion a democratic state, but these efforts were crippled from the start by the civil war, the Chinese invasions of the 1950s, and the steady growth of General Ne Win’s military machine. Today the military machine is all there is, with only the shadow of other institutions remaining. In Burma it’s not simply getting the military out of the business of government. It’s creating the state institutions that can replace the military state that exists.
The second factor is more in the realm of ideas. In the way that Burma’s royal institutions collapsed in the wake of Thibaw’s exile, the onset of colonial rule meant the fast disappearance of many earlier notions of kingship and the relationship between government and society. An entire tradition of learning, subtle and complex, based on centuries of court and monastic scholarship, ended almost overnight. In its place a militant nationalism came forward, merging at different times with different visions of the future. There is also a strong utopian streak, going back to the Student Union days of the 1930s, a proclivity for abstract debates, on communism, socialism, democracy, endless conversations about diverse constitutional models and long-term political schemes, which never see the light of day. What is altogether missing is a history of pragmatic and rigorous policy debate, on economics, finance, health care, or education as well as a more imaginative and empathetic discussion of minority rights and shared identities in modern Burmese society.
Of course some things could change overnight for the better. Political prisoners (there are estimated to be more than a thousand) could be released, restrictions on the media relaxed; there could even be fresh elections leading to a new civilian government. But what then? All these things could be overturned, also overnight, in a new coup, as in 1962. The army would still be there, lurking in the wings. There is a tendency to see Burma as a failed Eastern European–style revolution, where all it will take are new crowds to take to the streets, when a more apt comparison is with similarly war-torn societies like Cambodia or Afghanistan, where only a multifaceted path of institution building, social change, and economic development can lift the country from a long history of ills. And in the case of Burma this can only begin with breaking down Burma’s isolation, reviving connections with the outside world, bringing in new ideas, providing fresh air to a stale political environment and—in the process—changing long-festering mentalities.
If Burma were a country where those in charge wanted to engage with the wider world or had much to lose by being isolated, then a policy of sanctions might make sense. If the ruling caste in Burma were actually committed to the benefits that more trade and interaction with the West could bring, then sanctions might be seen as a type of pressure. But this is not the case. Since 1988 and the first attempts to liberalize the economy and climb out of isolation, the officer corps had been at best halfhearted in its desire to actually open up and engage with the world. Many would prefer to keep the West at arm’s length and deal only with China and perhaps a few other neighbors, worried of the dangers to the status quo inherent in allowing foreign businesses and foreign tourists to descend in large numbers and (to borrow a phrase from a different conflict) create new facts on the ground.
What is sometimes hard to perceive from the outside is just how damaging forty years of isolation—in particular, isolation from the West and the international scene—has been to those trapped inside. Trade with China and a few other (still developing) economies is no substitute for renewed contacts with people and places around the world. It is this isolation that has kept Burma in poverty; isolation that fuels a negative, almost xenophobic nationalism; isolation that makes the Burmese army see everything as a zero-sum game and any change as filled with peril; isolation that has made any conclusion to the war so elusive, hardening differences; and isolation that has weakened institutions—the ones on which any transition to democracy would depend—to the point of collapse. Without isolation, the status quo will be impossible to sustain. This is not to say that problems will disappear overnight, but rather that solutions, so elusive today, will become more apparent and easier to reach.
In isolation, though, the army will simply and quite confidently push forward its agenda. A new military-dominated constitution will be adopted. And a new military-dominated government put in place. More statues of long-dead generals will go up, and the opposition will be largely decimated, the armed groups in the hi
lls being forced to give up their arms and accept a new order. But of course that wouldn’t be the end. Grievances would only fester underneath. Some might try their hand at terrorist tactics, something that has thus far remained nearly absent from the political scene. And all the while whatever governing institutions outside the army still exist will become even more enfeebled, as the last generation educated abroad reaches retirement age or dies.
When General Ne Win came to power in 1962, there were military regimes everywhere in Asia. The difference between the Burmese military regime and its counterparts in South Korea, Thailand, and Indonesia is not that the Burmese regime has been any more repressive, but that the others trusted the advice of technocrats, presided over long periods of economic growth, and allowed for the development of civil society. All these things were possible because these countries were not isolated from the international community, and because trade and tourism strengthened rather than weakened the hand of those who eventually demanded political change. If Thailand and Indonesia had been under U.S. and European sanctions the past twenty years, they would not be democracies today. Would China be better off today if it had been kept poor and isolated since the demonstrations of 1989?
This is not to say that every type of interaction with the outside world is a good one or that there should not be ethical standards for trade and investment. But to say that companies should not tarnish themselves by doing business in a politically repressive country is very different from saying that sanctions on business will actually effect positive change.
So what of the future? There are no easy options, no quick fixes, no grand strategies that will create democracy in Burma overnight or even over several years. If Burma were less isolated, if there were more trade, more engagement—more tourism in particular—and if this were coupled with a desire by the government for greater economic reform, a rebuilding of state institutions, and a slow opening up of space for civil society, then perhaps the conditions for political change would emerge over the next decade or two. Though not a particularly encouraging scenario, it is a realistic one, however much it might lack the punch of more revolutionary approaches.
There is a second and much worse possible scenario—that Burma’s international isolation will only deepen through an unholy alliance between those outside who favor sanctions and inside hard-liners who advocate a retreat from the global community, that this isolation will further undermine institutions of government, that a new generation will grow up less educated and in worse health, and that a decade or two from now, the world will be staring at another failed state, without any prospect of democratic change and with the military no longer holding things together. There would be a return to anarchy and the conditions of 1948, only this time with more guns, more people, and strong, confident neighbors unlikely to idly stand by. If that were to come to pass, the remaining years of this century would not be enough time for Burma to recover.
Notes – 13: PALIMPSEST
1. Terry McCarthy, “The Twin Terrors,” Time Asia, 7 February 2000.
2. Lintner, The Rise and Fall of the Communist Party of Burma, 39–46.
3. James George Scott, Gazetteer of Upper Burma and the Shan States, vol. 1 (Rangoon: Printed by the Superintendent, Government Printing, Burma, 1900), part 1, 496.
4. Ibid., 499–500.
5. Ibid., 500.
6. For an overview of Burma in the 1990s, see David Steinberg, The Future of Burma: Crisis and Choice in Myanmar (New York: Asia Society, 1990).
7. Financial Times, 9 November 1989, 6; Far Eastern Economic Review, 21 December 1989, 22.
8. Financial Times, 21 June 1990, 6.
9. Far Eastern Economic Review, 21 December 1989, 22; Financial Times, 19 May 1990, sec. 2, 1, and 25 May 1990, 6.
10. Andrew Selth, Burma’s Order of Battle: An Interim Assessment (Canberra, Australia: Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian National University, 2000).
11. Anthony Davis, “Law and Disorder: A Growing Torrent of Guns and Narcotics Overwhelms China,” Asiaweek, 25 August 1995.
12. Aung San Suu Kyi, Freedom from Fear and Other Writings, ed. Michael Aris (New York: Penguin Books, 1991).
13. Yew, From Third World to First, 323.
AFTERWORD
For a few days in September 2007, Burma stood for the first time in the international spotlight, the people and places of what had been a small and peripheral story suddenly on a global stage. Television sets around the word were filled with images of crimsonrobed Buddhist monks and tens of thousands of ordinary longyi-clad Burmese, walking defiantly along monsoon-soaked streets, calling for a better life and greater freedom. Millions of people around the world saw the steel-helmeted young soldiers and riot police jumping off their trucks and brandishing automatic weapons. News analysts spoke of the generals in their remote jungle lair and wondered aloud whether the military regime would finally crack. And there was the fleeting, almost ephemeral picture of Aung San Suu Kyi, shown just inside her University Avenue compound, paying her respects to the column of quietly chanting monks outside. Whether on cable or on the Internet, it was easy to feel the tension, the sense of good versus evil, and the hope that Asia’s next revolution was soon at hand.
The timing was almost perfect. Whilst the 1988 uprising had been at the height of the summer holidays, this time the peak of the protests and the beginning of the crackdown coincided exactly with the first day of the UN General Assembly in New York. There were few other crisis stories in the news. At the UN, where he had a longstanding speaking engagement, President George Bush made Burma a centerpiece of his speech and said that the “people’s desire for change is unmistakable.” Whereas in other circumstances Burma would have been at best a minor talking point at a few bilateral meetings, it now topped the agenda. Heads of government hurried to express concern and diplomats telephoned one another. The actor Jim Carrey even broadcast an appeal on YouTube to Ban Ki-Moon.
The images were poignant in themselves, and perhaps it wasn’t important for outside observers to know that the protests were taking place over a special landscape in Burmese history. Many of the pictures were taken from or near the Sulè Pagoda, at the heart of Rangoon’s downtown. Nearly two centuries ago, this was where the musketeers and war elephants of Thado Maha Bandula met the East India Company troops of General Archibald Campbell. It was where hundreds of thousands of ethnic Indians made their home in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, only to be expelled later. The Sulè Pagoda Road was the same road down which General Aung San had led nationalist demonstrations, where there would later be massive Communist rallies, and where, in late 1946, the Labour government of Clement Attlee sent a battalion of West African Rifles to help restore calm and order.
That road was also at the epicenter of Burma’s last big protests, in 1988. Apart from the international context, the protests of the fall of 2007 seemed strikingly similar to those of nineteen years ago: the rain-washed streets, the dilapidated buildings, the determined young protesters, the eerie silence from the regime, and the sense of the crackdown to come. It was like a play being performed all over again, with fewer and more interesting actors (the Buddhist monks in the lead this time), but for a more attentive audience.
For me, it was hard to imagine the ending would be any different. When the 1988 protests began, I found myself on Lake Lugano, at the beautiful mountainside home of Sir Peter Smithers, the renowned horticulturist, retired spy, and diplomat, friend of Ian Fleming and supposed inspiration for James Bond. We listened together to the news reports on the BBC. Despite Sir Peter’s words of caution, I expected an unstoppable revolution, leading to democracy and independence. I doubted that the military government could simply put an end to demonstrations or that it would be able to live with the public-relations consequences of a crackdown. A few days later, having traveled to Bangkok, I felt irritated when a foreign journalist told me that the army could still stage a comeback. Even after the protests were crushed, I was angr
y when a Korean diplomat told me that democracy in Burma would take “another twenty years.” It must be just around the corner, I thought.
This time I had no such feelings, only a terrible sense of the lives that would be lost or destroyed. The protests seemed less a catalyst for change than an awful sign of how low things had sunk. They had begun with anger at a sudden rise in fuel prices, a tipping point for many urban workers who are barely eking out a living on a dollar a day. Then Buddhist monks began to join in, their numbers growing exponentially after government forces brutally attacked some of their brethren in the provincial town of Pakkoku. The monks asked for an apology; the people asked for a better life. I had hoped all along I would be wrong, but few in Burma could have been surprised when, in 2007 as in 1988, the army reinforcements approached, the shots rang out, the curfew was imposed, and the arrests began.
Unlike 1988, however, condemnations came swift and thick. The government of Singapore organized a statement of fellow ASEAN members declaring their “revulsion” at the recent violence, and the French foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, welcomed the condemnation as appropriately “incendiary.” The first lady of the United States, Laura Bush, published an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, and a new group on Facebook (Support the Monks’ Protests in Burma) attracted nearly half a million people. The UN Security Council was convened to discuss the crisis and the secretary-general’s special adviser, the former Nigerian foreign minister Professor Ibrahim Gambari, was soon dispatched.
The River of Lost Footsteps: A Personal History of Burma Page 45