Myanmar Crackdown

Myanmar is a country very rich in energy, teak, minerals and gems, consists of 19 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and billions of barrels of crude oil reserves, and has been under military rule since 1962. The current junta came to power after snuffing out a 1988 pro-democracy movement against the previous military dictatorship, killing at least 3,000 people in process. Myanmar is the name invented to change Burma, 18 years ago by the benighted junta, known as SLORC back then and the State Peace and Development Council now, when it seized power through force.

The generals called elections in 1990 but refused to give up power when Aung San Suu Kyi’s party won. The opposition leader has spent nearly 12 of the last 18 years under house arrest.

The basic reason for the crackdown triggered the uprising anti-government protests led by Buddhist monks is misgovernance. Two years ago fuel prices shot up nine fold, with current 15 doubling of diesel prices and fivefold increase in the cost of compressed natural gas, a hike passed on to passengers using public transport. The transfer in November 2005 of government offices to the new administrative capital of remote Naypyidaw, in a jungle wasteland 300 kilometers from Rangoon, apparently to boost government secrecy, is unjustified and believed to have cost hundreds of millions of dollars. Then, to help compel disgruntled civil servants to go along with the move, the government raised their pay 500%. Myanmar’s 375,000 men Army, key to the junta’s survival, got a tenfold pay raise. Then there's the construction of another huge project “the Yadanabon Silicon Valley cyber-city,” which serves to pull the plug on the Internet in a bid to prevent images of its repression from reaching the outside world.

When the army began attacking Buddhist monks and their supporters in the streets, they discovered that the world had changed, people are watching. But critics from the international community and foreign media International pressure on Myanmar are not biting.

On the other hand, Myanmar’s military rulers accused foreign governments of trying to destroy the country, while soldiers carried out more overnight raids to arrest people suspected of joining a pro-democracy uprising.

The strongest condemnation came from the United States and Britain. US President George W. Bush announced new sanctions, including a ban on visas and a freeze of the assets of 14 Burmese officials. But the United States realizes it has a weak leverage to influence the junta, and this is the reason Bush called on “all nations that have influence with the regime to join us in supporting the aspirations of the Burmese people and to tell the Burmese junta to cease using force on its own people.” These include China, India and Japan, all of which have substantial investments in Burma in exchange for access to its vast oil and off-shore gas resources.

The United States, very quick to announce new sanctions, seems to have reached an impasse in its foreign policy, where reflexive invocation of punitive measures, together with Washington's exhausting preoccupation with conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, may have resulted in diminishing returns.

George W. Bush said China was the only country with a hope of convincing Myanmar’s rulers to speed up moves towards political reform. The Chinese may not want to be seen as protecting another dictatorial and brutal regime. Although they are unlikely to exert public pressure on Myanmar, Western nations are hoping they will take up the cause behind the scenes.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said, “I want to see all the pressures of the world put on this regime now-sanctions, the pressure of the UN, pressure from China and all the countries in the region, India, pressure from the whole world.”

Russia said it viewed developments as Myanmar’s internal affair, while India, one of Myanmar’s biggest trading partners, limited itself to an expression of concern and said it was closely monitoring the situation.

Democratic India would like to vie with China for influence in Myanmar and has so far taken an ostrich-like approach to the crisis, as if believing that looking the other way will make it cease to exist. The world, meanwhile, waits for a more democratic ethos to manifest itself in India's foreign policy.

By getting China and Russia to even agree to a press statement from the council will be an uphill struggle because both countries contend that the situation in Myanmar is an internal affair and doesn't threaten international peace and security - as required for Security Council action.

In January 2007, China and Russia cast a rare double veto on a US-sponsored resolution calling on Myanmar's military government to release all political prisoners, speed up progress toward democracy, and stop attacks against ethnic minorities.

China, which needs Myanmar’s fuel resources for its rapidly developing economy and energy-hungry industries, managed a weak protest by saying it “hopes that all parties in Myanmar will exercise restraint and properly handle the current issue.”

Is it really as simple as China flipping a switch and Myanmar will be democratic overnight? In reality, China is not the only country the Burmese crisis puts on the spot. France has tremendous oil interests in Myanmar, and how its influence will be used and what kinds of sacrifices a Paris under new leadership is willing to make in the name of principles like human rights remains an open question.

China has interests and involvements in Myanmar, but faced limited leverage too. Myanmar is not some kind of client state of China. It is a xenophobic, divided, tribalized country with a nationalistic government by its own; it bears more resemblance to one of the less coherent sub-Saharan African states than to most other East Asian countries. It’s not an easy place to influence, through most of the 1980s there was a Burmese Communist Party, which consisted primarily of the ‘Wa tribe’ plus Chinese leadership. When the Wa decided to turn anti-communist in the late 1980s and chased the Chinese leadership, China’s influence in the country was drastically reduced but there was little China could do without military intervention. Beijing basically sat by passively when it happened.

Still, for China the Burmese crisis conjures especially difficult questions, all the more because, unlike its Western counterparts, the country is fashioning a new identity for itself on the world stage, not merely managing one.

China has economic involvements in this neighboring country and sells weapons to doesn't mean anything more when big U.S. companies are involved in some third world country and the U.S. government also sells weapons to it. Those things imply neither political commitment to a certain regime nor any ability to change the regime. The Chinese have been pressing Rangoon diplomatically for some time to liberalize the political system. Going beyond that to some kind of active Chinese attempt to impose a new kind of politics would be like the U.S. invading Mexico to clean up Mexican politics, but much messier because Burmese nationalism and tribalism make Mexico's nationalism and Iraq's tribalism seem modest by comparison.

The regime change in Iraq by U.S. would not temper somewhat the occasional neocon fantasy that China could simply install a new regime in North Korea or the apparent new fantasy of some liberals that China could just install a different kind of government in Burma.

Whether next year's Olympic Games factor into China's calculus on Myanmar, as many news outlets are suggesting that China's motives in relations with Myanmar have nothing to do with the Olympics. It is doubtful that even the idea of some connection has ever crossed the minds of Chinese leaders.

Myanmar is one of the world's most serious human rights problems. The world doesn't like what’s happening there, but isn't willing or able to do much about it. It has become the Great Game in the scramble among Asian powers for access to its resources. The junta is playing this card to the hilt to keep power and to suppress the democracy movement in Myanmar.

The world including China is pushing Myanmar in the same general direction but with little success. Hopefully the monks, the UN special envoy, Ibrahim Gambari arrived in Rangoon from Singapore last weekend, with an urgent mission from the Security Council and the position of Asean, of which Myanmar is a member, are going to change the structure of the game.