Burma/Myanmar: What Everyone Needs to Know (20 page)

The goals of U.S. policy toward Burma—regime change and the seating of a civilian government—have not been reached in two decades. Instead, it has produced a nationalistic reaction and the fear of invasion that, however unrealistic to the outside world, is palpable in Myanmar among the
tatmadaw
. Spurred by an effective lobby of democracy and human rights groups and expatriate Burmese, the United States essentially has allowed its policy toward Myanmar to be made by Aung San Suu Kyi, or by what others claim to be her current views, since she is unavailable and under house arrest.

Two aspects of U.S. legislation create unanswered legal questions. In the Foreign Affairs and Reform and Restructuring Act of 1998, a provision (Section 1106) states that any U.S. assistance to the UN Development Program cannot be given to the government but only through nongovernmental organizations and only after “consultation with the leadership of the National League for Democracy and the leadership of the National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma.” Because the NCGUB is a “parallel” government (or government in exile), questions of the legality of such legislation arise. In the Burmese Freedom and Democracy Act of 2003 (the third tranche of sanctions), Section 2 (14) states: “The policy of the United States, as articulated by the President on April 24, 2003, is to officially recognize the NLD as the legitimate representative of the Burmese people as determined by the 1990 election.” The 2008 legislation stipulates that the U.S. policy is to “identify individuals responsible for the repression of peaceful political activity in Burma and hold them accountable for their actions.” This is in opposition to the 2008 Burmese constitutional provision legally absolving officials from prosecution for past actions.

The U.S. government has officially decried both the proposed constitution of 2008 and the referendum that will bring it into effect following the 2010 elections. One practical result of this attitude has been the Burmese refusal to allow U.S. ships and helicopters to deliver relief supplies directly to the victims of Cyclone Nargis, causing great external consternation about the callousness of the SPDC. This refusal, and the initial reluctance (or neglect) by the Burmese government to provide assistance to the victims of the cyclone, led the French foreign minister to propose employment of the United Nations Responsibility to Protect (R2P) provision that would allow foreign assistance to a state even when it denied such action. This was originally passed in 1995 to be used in cases of war. Wisely, this was not implemented. The Burmese feared a U.S. invasion, and the cyclone relief effort seemed a plausible
excuse to carry it out, since the United States had been calling for regime change for almost two decades. Had the United States insisted on a military intervention for solely humanitarian purposes, it seems likely that there could have been a Burmese military response that could have escalated into some form of skirmishes or limited warfare.

In January 2007, the United States brought to the UN Security Council a resolution calling for censuring Burma/Myanmar as a threat to regional peace and security. This was vetoed by both China and Russia, which claimed that the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations should handle the problem of Burma/Myanmar. They opposed Security Council involvement because none of Myanmar’s neighboring countries had indicated that such a threat existed. That a veto was anticipated indicated that the U.S. attempt to place Burma/Myanmar on the agenda was more to satisfy internal U.S. pressure groups than to effect change. The 2007 Congressional Gold Medal was awarded to Aung San Suu Kyi. In 2008, the United States agreed to admit a large number of Karen refugees from the camps in Thailand along the Myanmar border.

The White House under President George W. Bush increased worldwide attention and pressure on the regime. On January 18, 2005, the presumptive secretary of state referred to Burma/Myanmar as an “outpost of tyranny.” In May 2007, President Bush called Burma “a continuing unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.” First Lady Laura Bush met with dissidents, issued a number of public statements against the junta, and even held an unprecedented press conference on the subject. Both President Bush and his wife met with dissidents and others in Thailand shortly before the 2008 U.S. elections.

Even though some members of the administration had recognized that the sanctions policy had not achieved its objective and was not likely to do so, publicly condemning Burma/Myanmar remained politically popular and no doubt was also motivated by personal conviction. In the waning days of the
Bush administration in the fall of 2008, the administration nominated an ambassador-level appointment to coordinate Burma policy (as stipulated in the 2008 sanctions legislation), but this person could not be confirmed before the Obama administration came into power. Myanmar will continue, in the words of an Obama administration official, to be a “boutique issue,” but U.S. policy, according to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, is under review in 2009.

Although we can only speculate on Chinese motivation for the close relationship with the Myanmar authorities, strategic and economic issues seem paramount. Chinese influence in Myanmar is potentially helpful in any rivalry that might again develop with India, although Sino-Indian relations now are quite cordial. As China expands its regional influence and develops a blue-water navy, Myanmar provides access to the Bay of Bengal and supplements other available port facilities for the Chinese in the Indian Ocean in Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka—called a “string of [Chinese] pearls.” Although the southern reaches of Myanmar are at the extreme western end of the Straits of Malacca, the free use of these straits are critical strategic concerns to China, Japan, Korea, and the United States. Some Chinese sources consider continued access to the straits to be a critical policy objective, and a close relationship with Myanmar is a potential advantage. Eighty percent of imported Chinese oil passes through these straits. To the extent that pipelines for oil and gas cross Myanmar and relieve Chinese dependence on the vulnerable Straits of Malacca, this is clearly in China’s strategic interests.

Access to energy sources is both a strategic and economic concern. Diversification of the supply of oil, natural gas, and hydroelectric power is an issue in which Myanmar looms large. The exploitation of offshore natural gas fields in Myanmar is
important, as is the ability to transport that gas, as well as Middle Eastern crude oil, to China avoiding the Straits of Malacca, which is a strategic plus for China. China is helping construct some thirty dams, most of which will supply electricity to Yunnan Province as well as power and irrigation water to parts of Myanmar.

Under the SLORC/SPDC, China has become the single most important economic and military support of the Myanmar government. Its military assistance is estimated at more than US$3 billion, and its economic assistance is in the hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars. It has and continues to build extensive infrastructure: roads, railroads, ports, dams, and irrigation facilities. The trade relationship is close, officially estimated at US$1.577 billion but likely to be much higher. There are perhaps some 300,000 legal Chinese registered with the Myanmar government, but unofficial estimates of Chinese illegal migration into Myanmar are as many as 2 million. Chinese goods now dominate many of Myanmar’s markets, and Mandalay, the seat of Burman culture, is said to be 20 percent Yunnanese, whereas the population of Lashio, the most important city north of Mandalay, is estimated to be 50 percent Chinese. China has negotiated to buy a significant share of the offshore Rakhine gas, which will be sent to Yunnan via pipeline. China also plans to build a second pipeline for Middle Eastern crude oil across Myanmar to Kunming.

Constantly, delegations from both the central government in Beijing and from individual provinces like Yunnan visit and meet with Myanmar officials, and those from Myanmar travel frequently to China.

The continued development of Chinese interests in Myanmar depends on the stability of that Burmese government. There is evidence from the carefully crafted Chinese remarks (designed not to insult the Burmese) on the need for positive changes in Myanmar that they recognize as in their own (Chinese) national interests. Although much of the Western world believes Chinese influence is paramount there, the Chinese claim that
their ability to effect change is limited. They also seem to want the Burmese to have better relations with the United States. In addition, they are said to have convinced the Burmese to speed up a visa for UN special envoy Gambari.

The Chinese have also been heavily involved in exploiting Myanmar’s natural resources, especially timber, and they have dealt with both the government and minority cease-fire groups. There are many problems; their gold mining operations in the Kachin State, for example, have led to extensive pollution of the rivers. The Chinese seem to have brought Chinese workers, thereby providing even less benefit to local communities. Individual Chinese provinces, especially Yunnan, have their own supplementary interests in Myanmar, and they pursue them with considerable vigor.

Chinese penetration of Myanmar has unique aspects, but it is also related to their broader strategy in Southeast Asia. To date, it has been quite effective, both toward ASEAN as an organization and toward the individual countries of the region.

The Western world has questioned India about its policies toward Myanmar. There is considerable sympathy for the Burmese democracy movement in India (itself the world’s largest democracy), both in government circles and among segments of the knowledgeable public. There are probably Indians once resident in Burma who might like to go back there and who believe that a nonmilitary regime could be more receptive to their presence. But geopolitical issues take precedence.

Following the Burmese coup of 1988, India—led by Rajiv Gandhi, who emphasized India’s regional influence in Sri Lanka, the Maldives, and Nepal—was extremely critical of the military junta. All India Radio (AIR) was known as the most vocal adversary of the military, and the station even hired U Nu’s daughter to head its Burmese language service. There
was, in addition, a long history of Burmese military antagonism to India, demonstrated most forcibly by the
tatmadaw
’s expulsion of some 200,000 people from the subcontinent following the military coup of 1962.

As India saw Chinese penetration and influence grow in Myanmar, in the 1990s India sought to discuss its concerns about growing Chinese influence there with the United States, but Washington was not interested in such discussions. The Indian foreign minister went to Myanmar, and programs began in which India attempted to counter Chinese influence. This relationship has grown, and although it cannot now compete with the Chinese presence, it is significant. In October 2004, Than Shwe became the first Burmese head of state ever to visit Delhi.

India has several motivations, primary among them the attempt to limit Chinese influence in the Bay of Bengal. New Delhi has considered the Indian Ocean and the Bay of Bengal as their primary waters. Chinese access to the bay is of great concern to them. India has also competed with China for access to the rich offshore natural gas reserves of the Rakhine coast in Myanmar but has lost out to China. New Delhi wants Burmese cooperation in the elimination of Burmese-based sanctuaries for Indian Naga rebels, as well as those among the Mizo, Kuki, Bengali, Assamese, and Manipur groups in India’s poor and volatile northeast. In addition, India hopes that its support to the development of the Burmese port of Sittwe (near the Bangladesh border) will enable them to anchor an economic development program through western Myanmar (the Chin State) to Manipur and the Northeast that would help alleviate the poverty of that region and cut down on separatist sentiments in that area. It has allocated US$120 million to upgrade the Sittwe port and construct the Tamu-Kalewa-Kalemyo road, among other programs. The target for increased trade was US$1 billion by 2006/2007, but it only reached US$733 million, less than half of that with China.

During the influential tenure of General Ne Win, Japan had the closest association with Burma of any industrialized foreign state. This relationship was at first personal and started through Ne Win’s Japanese training (along with Aung San) as part of Burma’s “Thirty Comrades” just prior to December 1941 and the U.S.–U.K. entry into World War II in the Pacific. (Aung San had first intended to contact the Chinese communists but was intercepted by the Japanese.) Institutional and foreign assistance relationships grew from this association, but they remained in large part personal in nature. Until the coup of 1988, the Japanese ambassador was the only foreign ambassador with relatively easy access to Ne Win, who was quite friendly with the ambassador and his wife. If Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamad of Malaysia had an explicit national “look east” policy focused on Japan, Ne Win had a personal, more inchoate one.

Ne Win seemed quite taken with Japan, and during the Caretaker Government even brought up the possibility of importing Japanese farmers to teach the Burmese how to be more productive. This never occurred. Quiet Japanese pressures for economic reform in March 1988 led to Myanmar opening its private sector. At that time, Japan and Burma had a “special relationship,” but it was based on warm friendships that had developed among the older Burmese military and the Japanese during World War II. These continued until the turn of the century.

Japan’s assistance to Burma started with World War II reparations in 1955. Japanese aid until 1988 has been calculated at US$2.2 billion and comprised over half of all foreign assistance to that country at that time and about two-thirds of all bilateral assistance. Japanese aid kept Burma afloat during those difficult years. During the BSPP era, imports from Japan were about 40 percent of all imports (Chinese imports were about 5 percent), but under the SLORC/SPDC the pattern was
reversed; Japanese imports after 2002 were about 5 percent, whereas Chinese imports were 35 percent.