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SPEAKING
FREELY
Taking Myanmar's generals to the
tipping point
By Roland Watson
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times
Online feature that allows guest writers to have
their say. Please click here if you are
interested in contributing.
The
military junta in Myanmar is under great stress.
Political dictatorship is untenable and ultimately
unsustainable in the modern world. For the ruling
State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), as the
junta is known, the strains are beginning to show.
Among them are serious internal divisions,
beginning with and deriving from the purge of
military intelligence; a flawed National
Convention, unacceptable to the international
community and which has given the ethnic ceasefire
groups in attendance a forum to express demands;
ill-considered treatment of the International
Labor Organization, which has the power to call
for strong sanctions; failure to fulfill promises
and obligations to the Association of Southeast
Asian Nations (ASEAN), the United Nations, and
other state and multi-state parties; and a failed
economy, which is placing great stress on the
people of Myanmar, and which is attractive to only
the most ruthless and profiteering of
international businessmen.
In other words,
there has been a major series of disturbances to
the equilibrium of the SPDC, its power structure
and its ability to maintain absolute control. The
junta is close to the tipping point, at which the
generals could be pushed over the brink, causing
them to lose control and the phase transition to
democracy to be initiated.
Never has it
been clearer that talk is not enough. We must have
action, to tip the balance. Otherwise, the SPDC
likely will adapt, reassert its control, and
regain its equilibrium.
Chaos theory says
that a phase transition can be initiated by the
smallest of events. This is known as the Butterfly
Effect, where the flapping of a single butterfly's
wings can lead to changes in regional and even
planetary weather systems. In the Myanmar
democracy movement, we are all in effect striving
to be the butterfly - to conduct a single action
that triggers democratic transition.
To be
practical, though, the more likely event is that
different pro-democracy groups will coordinate
their actions (1) to create direct pressure on the
SPDC sufficient to cause it to break; or (2) to
create indirect pressure by influencing other
parties - parties that have great power to
motivate change in Myanmar - to act.
The
key to democracy in Myanmar, to reaching the
tipping point, lies with one of the following five
groups: the SPDC, the people of Myanmar, the
United Nations, the European Union, or the United
States.
The military regime
As
for the SPDC, it is conceivable that it will break
of its own accord, that the two most powerful men
in the SPDC, Senior General Than Shwe and his main
rival, Vice Senior General Maung Aye, will shoot
it out and self-destruct. Than Shwe is ready to
retire, but he cannot do this until he is certain
that his chosen successors will be secure.
Otherwise, Maung Aye could purge him and his
family, as occurred to former rulers Ne Win and
Khin Nyunt, and which is the traditional fate of
the followers and families of deposed Burmese
kings. Than Shwe fancies himself a king, and in
this regard his fate is likely to be the same.
However, we cannot rely on this scenario
to occur and should therefore exploit the schism
at the top and also the general weakness of the
Tatmadaw (Myanmar army), including through appeals
to junior officers to rebel.
The people
of Myanmar
The people of Myanmar are
intimidated. They risk imprisonment and worse if
they engage in political activities. Having said
that, though, there is great underlying tension -
everyone wants change - and some groups are
starting to become more assertive (such as the
authors of a recent democracy pamphlet distributed
in Yangon). We on the outside have to find ways to
assist these groups directly, to help them
escalate their resistance and once again take to
the streets.
The people of Myanmar came
out in great numbers for opposition leader Daw
Aung San Suu Kyi, who currently is under house
arrest. But she did not call for an uprising. She
is now being held incommunicado. The SPDC clearly
will not allow her another opportunity to issue
such a call.
This leaves her National
League for Democracy (NLD) party in other hands,
and for the moment it appears severely weakened.
The NLD without Suu Kyi is a shadow of its former
self, a fact the SPDC knows well and has been
exploiting. The people of Myanmar would rise up
for Suu Kyi. The question is: will they also take
to the streets without her, following other, new
leaders?
The United Nations
The
UN has no strategy for Myanmar. This is an obvious
focal point for our efforts, to persuade Secretary
General Kofi Annan to act. We have been trying to
do that for years, but Annan seems impervious to
his failure on Myanmar and, more important, to the
suffering of its people. His only approach has
been to try to engage the regime, and he refuses
to admit that this will not work. He also refuses
to replace special envoy Razali Ismail. Annan
needs to replace Razali with someone who would
bring a singular determination to the position
through creating constant, public attention to the
tyranny that is being perpetrated in Myanmar.
The UN under Annan's direction is a
counterproductive force to the political
development of the world community. The Millennium
Project initiated by Annan should have begun with
the issue of membership, and not only of which
nations should be in the Security Council, but
also in the General Assembly itself. The UN cannot
be positioned to make a positive contribution to
the long-sought goal of international stability,
peace and harmony, until it is reconstituted,
beginning with the expulsion of all nations that
systematically and routinely deny their citizens
their basic human rights.
The European
Union
According to the EU's external
relations commissioner, Benita Ferrero-Waldner,
the European Union will also continue to promote
engagement with the SPDC. But trying to talk to
the SPDC is the same, and as useful, as talking to
a wall. It seems the best the international
community's senior diplomats can say is, "Yes, we
have an extremely challenging problem, and which
is leading to great suffering, but we will only
try one tactic, which we also understand will
never work."
Europe criticized the United
States, rightly, for invading Iraq before clear
evidence of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) was
found. It said every alternative should have been
explored before force was used. As for Myanmar,
however, everything "diplomatic" has been tried.
Surely, consistency would demand that Europe be
willing to back stronger measures. The fact that
it does not reveals its hypocrisy. Iraq was not
about WMD, and Myanmar is not about dialogue.
But Myanmar is not in Europe's back yard,
so it's not willing - or does not want - to put
pressure on the regime. Life in the cafes of Paris
and Frankfurt is nice. Why should the people
enjoying their cappuccinos have to worry about
brutality in some far-flung land? They - at least
non-Jewish and non-Gypsy Europeans - survived
their own Holocaust, thanks to the United States.
But this does not mean they have an obligation to
help elsewhere.
As with the United
Nations, we in the Myanmar democracy movement have
been trying, for years, to persuade the EU to act.
But in the face of such denial, inconsistency and
intransigence, we can expect little support.
The United States
From the
international community, then, this leaves only
the US. Many people, particularly the bureaucrats
in the UN and in Europe, say they do not want the
US to be the world's police officer. Granted. The
burden clearly should be shared. But if it is not,
if the UN and Europe will not meet their
responsibilities, then perhaps we should ask the
world's subjugated populations what they want. If
the US will help them, should they say no?
The US is already leading the way with
sanctions, but it needs to do more. There is now a
public willingness, on the part of both Congress
and the administration of President George W Bush,
to consider new and more aggressive options. But
the US is also preoccupied with numerous other
situations, including the threat of nuclear
proliferation in North Korea and Iran. We must
persuade it to pay attention to Myanmar.
No US administration, Republican or
Democratic, has ever initiated action on Myanmar.
The two sanctions bills were organized in
Congress. Presidents Bill Clinton and George W
Bush merely signed them into law. Now is the time
to set a new precedent.
The logic for
Myanmar to become a democracy is irrefutable, even
to its neighbors China and Thailand, which
currently back the regime. East Asia is committed
to legitimate development and trade. China and
Thailand, and also India and Bangladesh, will
yield far greater returns if Myanmar is open and
democratic, rather than a dictatorship.
The benefits for the United States would
also be profound. Were it to lead the way to a
solution, which would be a natural role since it
is already the international leader in putting
pressure on the regime, it would create a strong
and long-lasting alliance with the people of
Myanmar. Such an alliance, with a nation that lies
at the crossroads of the most populated and
rapidly developing region of the world, would have
many positive consequences.
The United
States faces two primary challenges with Myanmar,
and neither are the SPDC. It cannot be put off by
Thailand, or China; and it cannot allow itself to
be perpetually distracted by the problems in the
Middle East. The US government is huge.
Furthermore, since World War II the US military
has been prepared to be involved in two major
conflicts, in different regions of the globe, at
the same time. Surely the US can find a way to
walk the walk in Myanmar, while it continues to
pursue its objectives in the Middle East.
We cannot permit Myanmar to be warehoused
as a dictatorship. We cannot allow the suffering
in the country to continue until democracy is the
norm in the Middle East and North Korea has been
contained.
We need to pose the following
questions, again and again: Does the United States
truly want to establish democracy in Myanmar? Will
it go the extra mile, or are the strong statements
from Washington only words? The US needs to back
up its words with action. To facilitate this, we
need to organize, and then communicate to
Washington, as many ways as possible by which the
US can and should help to better the situation
facing this country.
Used by
permission of Dictator Watch.
Roland Watson can be reached by
e-mail at roland@dictatorwatch.org.
(Copyright 2005 Roland Watson.)
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times
Online feature that allows guest writers to have
their say. Please click here if you are
interested in contributing. |
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