Burma is nowhere close to America geographically—the Southeast Asian nation is sandwiched between the two most populous countries in the world, rising powers China and India. However, Washington has a growing strategic interest in Burma and is a vital player in shaping the international community’s Burma policy and the collective efforts to bring democracy and human rights to the long-oppressed people of the country.

Some critics have argued for years that Washington’s brand of megaphone and big stick diplomacy will never work to bring about change in Burma. But it seems that the Obama administration’s current dual track approach—of engagement coupled with sanctions—has been the most effective international Burma policy to date, helping both to prod the Burmese government into opening up to constructive dialogue and motivating it to make changes that it may not otherwise have made.

“In Burma, where the United States has consistently advocated for democratic reforms and human rights, we are witnessing the first stirrings of change in decades,” US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in an address to the East-West Center in Honolulu, Hawaii on Thursday.

Aung Zaw is founder and editor of the Irrawaddy magazine. He can be reached at [email protected].

As the US secretary of state said, the US has long supported Burma’s democracy movement, investing diplomatic capital in the effort and openly supporting its leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, for the two decades following the deadly crackdown by the previous Burmese military regime on the 1988 mass uprising.

In the subsequent years, Washington downgraded its diplomatic relationship with Burma, cut off foreign aid and imposed strong sanctions on the previous regime, its leaders and its cronies—sanctions that were passed by the US Congress and continue to receive bi-partisan support.

In 2010, the Burmese regime orchestrated an election under the auspices of a military-drafted Constitution. Most of the political leaders of the new government, both in the executive and legislative branch, were senior generals in the previous brutal regime that thumbed its nose at, deceived and manipulated the Burmese people and international community for two decades. The Obama administration appropriately stated that the election was neither free nor fair, and US sanctions carried over and now apply to the new Burmese government, its leaders and its cronies as well.

At the same time, however, the door to dialogue between the US and Burma clearly opened with the Obama administration’s new engagement policy and US officials have received warm receptions in Burma since, especially after the election.

During the year leading up to the election and continuing to date, high-ranking US officials have made many visits to Burma. They have sent a consistent message that it wants Burma to rejoin the international community and will work with the current government and reduce or eliminate sanctions to the extent that concrete democratic and human rights reforms are instituted.

Among the parade of officials delivering this message in person has been US Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell and, more recently, US Special Representative to Burma Derek Mitchell and US Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor Michael Poser, all of whom have met with senior Burmese government officials and opposition and ethnic leaders.

The US has already demonstrated that it will loosen its restrictions if doing so will aid the process of communication and reform—the Burmese foreign minister, who previously was subject to a US travel ban, was permitted to visit Washington D.C. and meet with Campbell and other high-ranking state department officials.

But the lifting of US sanctions is another matter, and the Burmese government still has a long way to go if it wishes to see that happen. As Mitchell noted in his press briefing, the US sanctions are US law, so the Obama administrations could only lift sanctions in consultation with the US Congress.

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.