COMMENT Myanmar sanctions defy
logic By David I Steinberg
WASHINGTON - It was inevitable. The US
Congress was not about to let the sanctions on
Myanmar, also known as Burma, die. The ritual of
the annual renewal was held up in congress because
it was attached to some legislation about Africa,
on which there were disputes.
The renewal
seemed set to lapse, but congress came through and
on August 2 again approved sanctions on Myanmar
imports into the US. President Barack Obama then
signed the legislation, despite his government's
earlier encouragement of the positive political
changes underway in Myanmar under President Thein
Sein's year-old administration.
So once
again, and in spite of significant and applaudable
progress on Myanmar
policy, including a recent lifting of a ban on US
corporations making new investments in the
country, the US is still behind the reformist
curve on Myanmar. Sensible foreign policy on
Myanmar is being held partly captive to an arcane
American internal political process.
The
sanctions' renewal was strongly endorsed by
Republican Senator Mitch McConnell, with whom the
Obama administration arguably has many more
important items to debate than Myanmar. Many
Americans will comment that contradictory policies
(improving international relations and pursuing
opposite internal US policies) is nothing new. It
occurs in so many instances, so why consider it
important, or even consider it at all? They
would be right on the frequency, but wrong on the
impact. The US pays far less attention to the
effects of its policies abroad, which are usually
not seriously considered, than to internal US
considerations. Yet the impacts in the affected
areas and on the image of the US as a significant
world leader are often undercut. The US is now the
only country in the world that has import
sanctions against Myanmar.
The argument in
support of such a policy position runs along these
lines: sanctions forced Myanmar's former military
rulers into reforms and internal political
accommodations, including allowing for opposition
leader Aung San Suu Kyi to win a seat in the new
parliament, that have so far been made. So
continuing some form of sanctions is a type of
"insurance" policy that those instituted will be
continued, and that others will follow.
Yet the reforms continue, including an
official announcement on Monday that the
government will end pre-publication censorship of
the press and shift to a system of ex post facto
reviews. This is a significant first, but still
insufficient, step toward full liberalization of
the media, until recently considered by press
freedom and human-rights groups as among the most
repressed in the world.
Even so, US
sanctions can be re-imposed at any time. (The
European Union "suspended" theirs for a year).
Congress would be ever so willing to do so with a
nod from Suu Kyi and others prominent in the
opposition - so the "insurance" argument is
specious. But the purpose of sanctions under both
the Clinton and both Bush presidencies was not
reform of the government in power, but rather
regime change, a policy which clearly failed. Did
the Myanmar people want the sanctions removed?
Yes, in part because they believed the sanctions
could not take down the military junta, and they
were proven correct.
The continuation of
US sanctions in any form is a public threat. Such
public threats against nations often cause intense
nationalistic responses, as they did for so many
years in Myanmar under the previous military
junta. But in the Myanmar case such threats are
interpreted as a vibrant sign of something more
subtle: a form of US arrogance. That is, that the
state under such restrictions cannot be trusted to
do what it has promised, and that only the US has
the knowledge and power to force adherence to the
rules of the game as defined by its most powerful
player.
The Obama administration made
important and positive changes to the US position
on Myanmar, advocating "pragmatic engagement" that
after over a decade of debilitating sanctions has
proven to be effective. These changes were based
on reforms instituted under Thein Sein and with
the agreement of Suu Kyi, not only the world
avatar of democracy but the long effective
determinant of US policy toward that country, even
while spending years under house arrest under the
previous military regime.
The US's removal
of certain restrictions aims to improve the lives
of the Myanmar people by helping to alleviate
their dire poverty and by allowing, among other
things, US investment in labor-intensive
industries that would provide badly needed jobs -
many of which had been eliminated through past US
sanctions that resulted in the closure of
factories.
Although that goal is certainly
appropriate, by not allowing Myanmar imports into
the US (some US$356 million annually in garments
before sanctions were imposed on imports) that
were produced by tens of thousands of Myanmar
workers, is the US not undercutting the very goals
for which the engagement policy changes were
designed? Since most of those so employed were
women, are we not also hindering the US policy of
trying to improve women's lives and livelihoods?
The US has recently made substantial
progress on what it calls its "Burma" policy, and
these changes have been welcomed by many who have
some realistic appreciation of the country's
history, the role of the military in that society,
its complex ethnic composition, and its strategic
location. That such progress is encumbered by
unnecessary impedimenta diminishes both the
significant changes recently seen in Myanmar and
that the most effective US policy shift under the
Obama administration in Asia.
David
I Steinberg is Distinguished Professor of
Asian Studies, School of Foreign Service,
Georgetown University.
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