When United States Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton visited Myanmar, she pointedly
raised Washington's concern about the country's
military links with North Korea. While most of the
news out of Myanmar since has focused on President
Thein Sein's reform signals and the US's positive
responses, the state of Naypyidaw's bilateral ties
with Pyongyang looms quietly over Washington's
engagement gambit.
Isolated and sanctioned
by much of the international community, North
Korea has traded its weapons-making expertise with
rogue regimes in Syria, Libya and Myanmar.
Bilateral relations and commercial exchanges with
Myanmar had taken on greater importance after the
Arab Spring upended Libya's Muammar
Gaddafi regime and
threatens to topple Syria.
The question
now is whether the US's recent rapprochement with
Myanmar, a process that began behind the scenes in
2009, will cost the North Korean regime another of
its few, arms-purchasing allies. While the US has
predicated the removal of its sanctions against
Myanmar on democratic reforms, severing ties with
Pyongyang could be highly lucrative for Thein
Sein's nominally civilian, military-backed
government.
To be sure, Myanmar's ties to
North Korea are based on shaky historical
foundations. Myanmar, then known as Burma, broke
off ties with Pyongyang in 1983 after North Korean
agents attempted to assassinate then South Korean
president Chun Doo-Hwan in a bombing in the old
capital of Yangon that killed over 20 people,
including a South Korean deputy prime minister.
Myanmar restored formal diplomatic
relations with North Korea in 2007, notably at a
time it came under rising pressure from the US.
Before that, Myanmar and North Korea has conducted
several underground deals. For instance, North
Korean "foreign advisers" were depicted in
photographs helping Myanmar to build an extensive
tunnel network, including near the new capital of
Naypyidaw, between 2003 and 2006.
While it
is still unclear whether these tunnels were
related to Myanmar's alleged efforts to build a
nuclear weapon capability, they certainly would
have served the dual purpose as an emergency
shelter in case of any foreign attack or internal
insurrection. The US Navy has in recent years
turned back at least two North Korean ships
destined for Myanmar that were suspected of
carrying weapons and possible nuclear materials.
It is also unclear how much of Myanmar's
recent engagement with North Korea was meant as a
deterrent against a possible US attack similar to
the pre-emptive assault against Iraq. The George W
Bush administration frequently referred to Myanmar
as an "outpost of tyranny", along with Iran and
Syria. Former First Lady Barbara Bush openly
cheered on street demonstrators who protested
against the Myanmar government in the so-called
2007 "Saffron" revolution.
In return for
North Korea's tunnel-building assistance and
weapons sales, Myanmar provided North Korea with
rice to help the former Kim Jong-il regime
alleviate the country's chronic food crisis. The
terms of recent deals are unclear, but Myanmar has
a steady source of foreign exchange earnings from
natural gas sales to China, India and Thailand to
purchase North Korean wares.
Now, with the
gathering US-Myanmar rapprochement, security
analysts are looking for outward clues that
Myanmar has downgraded ties with North Korea. As
part of its terms of engagement, the US has
demanded that Myanmar come clean about its past
dealings with North Korea, particularly concerning
weapons procurements and possible nuclear
contacts.
United States Senator Mitch
McConnell, a steadfast critic of Myanmar's
military regime, has called on Naypyidaw to sever
its relationship with North Korea altogether.
President Thein Sein, on the other hand, has
consistently denied that Myanmar has had any
nuclear weapons-related contacts with North Korea.
(An expose report by the exile-run Democratic
Voice of Burma argued with compelling evidence
that Myanmar was actively pursuing a nuclear
weapons capability, most likely with North Korean
help.)
The US is also apparently working
with regional ally South Korea to drive a wedge
between Myanmar and North Korea, including through
conventional arms sales from Seoul. Unlike the US
and European Union, South Korea does not maintain
formal sanctions against Myanmar.
When
Thein Sein began his tentative political reforms
in 2011, South Korea resumed offering loans to the
country for the first time since 2005. South Korea
had temporarily halted lending because of the
military junta's abysmal human-rights record,
exhibited by the regime's brutal clampdown on
anti-government protests in 2007.
Before
2005, South Korea had provided aid and grants
worth an estimated US$120 million. South Korea
also maintains various natural gas concessions in
Myanmar waters. The resumption of South Korean
lending will give the Myanmar economy a
much-needed boost while it undertakes badly needed
reforms to its distorted financial architecture.
Washington is wagering that the carrot of
removing economic sanctions will influence Myanmar
to move away from North Korea and a potential
nuclear brinksmanship scenario. That trade-off and
the promise of less international isolation
probably look increasingly attractive from Thein
Sein's perspective.
Kim Jong-il's son and
successor, Kim Jong-eun, is beginning his reign
more isolated than either his father or
grandfather, Kim Il-sung. Meanwhile, North Korea's
past proliferation partners, Libya and Syria, are
no longer reliable customers. And with Myanmar
drifting into the US's orbit, an isolated Kim
Jong-eun may be forced to negotiate a detente with
the US and South Korea.
Instead, the
evolving engagement between the US and Myanmar
could serve as a guide for a potential US-North
Korean accommodation. By tempering relations with
the US and suspending its nuclear program,
including cooperation with Iran, North Korea could
be rewarded with reduced economic sanctions and
with Western investments that mitigate Pyongyang's
economic and financial dependence on China.
Both were apparently key motivations for
Myanmar's recent diplomatic shift towards the US
and potential drift away from rogue regimes like
North Korea.
Jacob Zenn is a
lawyer and international security analyst based in
Washington, DC. He writes regularly on Central
Asia, Southeast Asia, and Nigeria and runs an
open-source research, translation, and due
diligence team through http://zopensource.net/
and can be reached at jaz@Zopensource.net.
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