Following their recent visit, however, both Mitchell and Posner said that they have seen the beginning of a transition in Burma, and Mitchell hinted that if Burmese reforms were substantive and concrete, the US would respond in kind—meaning that the US would consider relaxing sanctions and restrictions commensurate to the substance and sustainability of the reforms taken in Burma.

Mitchell, a former Pentagon official, also met with Gen Min Aung Hlaing, the commander-in-chief of Burma’s armed forces, and opened up a long-severed line of communication between the US and the Burmese military.

After Burma achieved independence in 1948, its army continued to send its officers to the best military academies in the West, including West Point in the US. When Burma’s Gen Ne Win staged a coup in 1962 and the same year blew up the historic student union building at Rangoon University, killing scores of student activists, Washington never condemned the Burmese strongman.

Four years after coming to power, Ne Win even visited the US and had lunch at the White House with then President Lyndon Johnson. While Ne Win was not an American ally in Southeast Asia and had not yet joined the Association of Southeast Asia Nations, it was fighting against Chinese-backed communists in northern Burma and therefore was treated with kid gloves by Washington.

In the 1970s, the US provided military support for Burma’s anti-narcotics campaign, including the sale of a fleet of Bell 205 helicopters and M 16 automatic rifles, and the helicopters were reportedly used in combat offensives against ethnic groups. During the same period, Burma’s feared spy agency received training from the US Central Intelligence Agency.

After the crackdown and massacre in 1988, however, the US halted shipments of military equipment to Burma and stopped providing CIA training. Today, Burma’s main source of military hardware comes from China, which was the strongest ally of the previous Burmese regime and early-on forged a strategic relationship with the current government.

In addition to its concerns about China, Washington has also expressed worry and frustration about the military relationship between Burma and North Korea. Reports in the past suggested possible nuclear cooperation between the two rogue nations, Washington has consistently raised non-proliferation issues with Burma and the North Korea issue is often mentioned as one of the obstacles to the lifting of sanctions. 

After the meeting between Mitchell and Min Aung Hlaing, Burma’s state-run newspaper said, “They focused on promotion of bilateral relations between Myanmar [Burma] and the US and cooperation of the armed forces of the two countries.”

For his part, Mitchell said that his meeting with Min Aung Hlaing was very fruitful and that he was able to openly discuss human rights abuses in ethnic areas, internally displaced persons and other issues related to the Burmese government’s military conflict with certain ethnic armed groups.

“We talked about discipline of forces if there are things that occur in these war fighting areas, that there is some accountability for these actions,” said Mitchell.

But when a reporter asked him about military-to-military relations, Mitchell responded that he wouldn’t overstate the promotion of this type of ties. “That will have to wait for much further down the line,” he said.

It seems that Washington is now as focused on Asia and Burma as it has ever been. “One of the most important tasks of American statecraft over the next decade will therefore be to lock in a substantially increased investment—diplomatic, economic, strategic, and otherwise—in the Asia-Pacific region,” Clinton recently wrote in an article published in Foreign Policy magazine.

As things stand at the moment, the US’s political investment in Suu Kyi and the Burmese democracy movement is beginning to pay off and the partnership will no doubt continue in the future.
 
The US certainly does not deserve sole credit for the modest changes that have taken place thus far in Burma, or for the hoped-for more substantial changes to come. What has happened to date has resulted from a combination of forces and circumstances both inside and outside of Burma, as well as both inside and outside of the Burmese government. Internal and external pressure, dialogue, geopolitical concerns and the realization by the generals, ex-generals and their cronies that certain reforms are in their own self-interest have all played integral roles in getting the intransigent rock that is Burma rolling slowly towards reform.

But Washington has been one of the key forces leading to what Aung San Suu Kyi has called an environment where “real change is possible,” and if the international community would form a united front with the Obama administration, it would give Suu Kyi the strongest hand possible in negotiating reforms with Burma’s President Thein Sein and his new government.