It’s no secret that the regime in Burma wants to repair its frosty
relationship with America. It would especially like to see the lifting
of US sanctions, which have an impact not only on the general
population, but are also hampering the junta leaders’ ambition to build
a modern armed forces.
Historically, there is little reason for
the two countries to regard each other as enemies. Despite the
US-backed occupation of northern Shan State by the Chinese Kuomintang
in the 1950s, Burmese military commanders have never felt the same
hostility toward the US that they reserve for Burma’s former colonial
masters, the British.
Burma’s current rulers have not forgotten
that their predecessor, Gen Ne Win, was a guest in the White House just
a few years after seizing power. At the time, the US was keen to get a
foothold in a country on China’s doorstep. Ironically, when Ne Win
killed unarmed students in 1970s, it was Beijing, not Washington, that
expressed outrage.
Fearing Communist China’s growing influence in
the region, the US had no qualms about forming close military ties with
Burma. For decades, top officers in the Burmese armed forces attended
West Point and the Command and General Staff College, while key members
of Burma’s most feared spy agency were trained by the CIA.
Washington
was also generous with its military hardware. Until the late 1980s,
Burma’s army and air force employed US jet fighters, helicopters and
M-16 assault rifles. Bell helicopters supplied by the US to help Burma
wage a war on drugs were also used in operations against ethnic
insurgents. And when Burmese riot police fired on students in 1988,
they were armed with American-made M-16s.
But it was at this
point that US-Burma relations rapidly deteriorated. After decades of
ignoring Burma’s poor human rights record and political repression,
Washington suddenly became a staunch champion of the country’s brutally
suppressed pro-democracy movement and an outspoken critic of the junta
that seized power in 1988.
Now, after two decades of treating
Burma’s rulers like pariahs, Washington is reviewing its policy toward
the country as part of President Barack Obama’s new, less
confrontational approach to dealing with the world’s dictators. Even as
he tells “those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and
the silencing of dissent” that they are “on the wrong side of history,”
Obama says that he is ready to offer his hand to those who are “willing
to unclench their fist.”
The Burmese generals were quick to read
this as a sign that the US was likely to soften its stance toward them,
and were only too happy to share Obama’s conciliatory message with the
people of Burma in state-run media—except for the part about the need
for dictators to “unclench their fist” if they want to enjoy better
relations with the US, which was deemed too “sensitive” by the junta’s
censors.
In August, the generals finally got their chance to show
the world that they, too, were ready to extend their hand in
friendship. The highly publicized visit of US Sen Jim Webb was lauded
in the state-run press as “a success for both sides as well as the
first step to promotion of the relations between the two countries.”
A commentary in The New Light of Myanmar,
a regime mouthpiece, noted that Webb did not act like a typical
“neocolonialist” or “loud-mouthed bully.” However, it cautiously added
that Webb’s visit was just “the first step toward marching to a
1,000-mile destination.”
What was most remarkable about this
encounter was how starkly Webb’s reception contrasted with that of UN
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who traveled to Naypyidaw in June but
was denied a meeting with Aung San Suu Kyi. The difference signaled the
junta’s eagerness to cut a deal with Washington.
The immediate
outcome of Webb’s visit was the release of John Yettaw, the American
who had been sentenced to seven years in prison for illegally entering
Suu Kyi’s residential compound in May. Meanwhile, Suu Kyi and her two
live-in aides are now serving a further 18 months under house arrest
because of Yettaw’s actions.
To the junta’s way of thinking, all
of this makes perfectly good sense. Just as Suu Kyi’s trial and
conviction were obviously politically motivated, Yettaw’s release was
clearly a political gambit intended to improve the regime’s chances of
repairing ties with the US.
But the regime is going to have to go
a lot further if it expects the Obama administration to meet it
halfway. Following Webb’s visit, the White House issued a statement
welcoming the junta’s gesture, but also urging “the Burmese leadership
in this spirit to release all the political prisoners it is holding in
detention or in house arrest, including Aung San Suu Kyi.”
Clearly,
then, Webb’s visit was not the breakthrough that he and other champions
of engagement with the regime hoped it would be.
