Burma's Stubborn State
How to Curtail the Military Junta
Article Summary and Author Biography
Although freeing Aung Suu Kyi may allow Burma’s military leaders to escape scrutiny for now, their budding nuclear ambitions could rejuvenate international interest in placing pressure on their regime.
MICHAEL GREEN is Associate Professor of International Relations at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and a Senior Adviser and Japan Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He served on the staff of the National Security Council from 2001–5.
Essay
Over the past decade, Burma has gone from being an antidemocratic embarrassment and humanitarian disaster to being a serious threat to its neighbors' security. The international community must change its approach to the country's junta.
Snapshot
Alongside Myanmar's political reforms, tens of billions of dollars of foreign direct investment are flowing into the country. But investors chasing high returns have overwhelmed fragile, newly opened economies in the past, and Rangoon's undeveloped financial sector, fledgling commodities market, and weak governance structures all warrant caution.
In November 2007, Derek Mitchell and I published an essay in Foreign Affairs (“Asia’s Forgotten Crisis,” November/December 2007) arguing that U.S. policy toward Burma (renamed Myanmar by the country’s military junta) needed to move beyond the debate over whether to place sanctions on the country’s repressive military junta or engage it. We also asserted that Washington must form a comprehensive strategy that leverages regional relationships and uses a mix of incentives to nudge the isolated regime toward democracy.
Three years later, the junta has released the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, the longtime inspirational leader of Burma’s democratic opposition who had been under some form of house arrest or detention for the last 14 years. Although the release of Suu Kyi has to be welcomed by her supporters worldwide, it falls far short of objectives set for Burma policy by the Obama administration and others in the international community. They sought not only Suu Kyi’s unconditional and permanent release but also the inclusion of the democratic opposition and ethnic minorities in Burma’s political process, as well as the establishment of international standards and monitoring for the country’s elections on November 7.
None of this happened. Meanwhile, the regime has opened a dangerous new path by partnering with North Korea to explore nuclear capabilities, a potentially explosive issue given recent revelations that Pyongyang has successfully moved forward with its own program for highly enriched uranium. Although freeing Suu Kyi may allow Burma’s leaders to escape scrutiny for now, their budding nuclear ambitions could rejuvenate international interest in placing pressure on their regime...
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