COMMENT Ritualistic rhetoric in
US sanctions By David I
Steinberg
WASHINGTON - A "national
emergency" should not be easily invoked, nor
should the security and foreign policy of the
United States be claimed to be under threat unless
there are clear and present indications that
something serious is amiss. Yet in 1997, the US
invoked the national emergency claim against
Myanmar, even though risks to US interests have
been, and remain, minimal and security concerns
non-existent.
Washington uses the same
language towards Myanmar it uses in applying
sanctions to North Korea, where the threats to US
interests are real and imminent. Yet this
ludicrous language is a ritual built into
legislation that allows the president to make such
a determination only if these terms are employed.
On May 17, President Barack Obama for
another year continued
the sanction policies of
the US toward "Burma" - it still insists on
calling by that name even though officially most
of the world, including the United Nations, has
accepted that state's designation as Myanmar. If
the president had not continued this claim within
90 days of their expiration, sanctions would have
ended on May 20. They must be renewed every year
using this national emergency phraseology.
This action seems to have been in response
to a concerted campaign among some in the
human-rights community and among certain
expatriate Burmese designed to slow the
elimination of sanctions in spite of the widely
recognized and extensive recently implemented
internal reforms.
Sanctions under both the
Bill Clinton and George W Bush administrations
were a tactic designed explicitly to accomplish
regime change, to force the military junta's
recognition of the right of the opposition
National League of Democracy to govern based on
their sweeping victory in the May 1990 elections
that the military annulled.
Sanctions
obviously did not achieve their goal, although
they did negatively affect the lives of many
ordinary Burmese and their administration. In
contrast, the Obama administration has not called
for regime change, but has opted for what it calls
"pragmatic engagement"- high-level dialogue with
the prospect for modifying the sanctions regime
toward the goal of reform. This policy has been
far more successful in promoting positive results
in Myanmar than its predecessors.
The
European Union recently has suspended sanctions
for a year. Although this is clearly a euphemism
for their elimination, for sanctions can be
re-invoked at any time, it leaves the US as the
only major state that still imposes them. Does the
US really believe they have had, or continue to
have, a constructive purpose? Even opposition icon
Aung San Suu Kyi, who previously was a strong
advocate of sanctions, has recently agreed to
their suspension.
The timing of Obama's
announcement was exquisite - it happened on the
only day Myanmar Foreign Minister Wunna Maung Lwin
was visiting Washington and meeting with Secretary
of State Hillary Clinton.
Hardly
inadvertent, the message conveyed two messages:
the first was that the US was still concerned
about incomplete reforms initiated by President
Thein Sein that it wished to see continued and
strengthened, and; second, that the administration
was not prepared to forfeit any support it might
receive in an election year from the
sanctions-prone congressional community or the
public.
While inviting Wunna Maung Lwin to
Washington in return for Clinton's visit to
Myanmar in early December 2011, Washington,
perhaps with inadvertent arrogance, indirectly
insulted his country. One wonders what the US
reaction might have been if Myanmar had done
something similar during Clinton's trip, the first
secretary of state to visit the country since
1955.
At the same time, foreign ministers
and secretaries of state do not simply get
together without an agenda having been
established, and often a joint communique either
drafted or written before the meetings take place.
Wunna Maung Lwin would not have come to Washington
without some clear indication that his visit would
produce fruitful results as interpreted in
Myanmar, just as Clinton would not have visited
Myanmar without assurances that it would have
positive repercussions.
So later in the
day, Clinton announced the lifting of some
sanctions on US financial services and investments
that Myanmar officials had indicated informally to
US visitors in early March 2012 were important to
their anti-poverty program. Signaling an upgrade
in bilateral relations, Clinton also indicated
that ambassadorial coordinator Derek Mitchell was
to be nominated as the US's new resident
ambassador in Myanmar.
These were
positive, important and welcome moves. No doubt
there has been progress both internally in Myanmar
and in US-Myanmar relations. Yet the gratuitous
continuation of the sanctions policy with its
misleading, formalistic, and inaccurate language,
together with its timing, managed unnecessarily to
reduce the effectiveness of what has otherwise
been a positive policy shift. It need not have
been thus.
David I Steinberg is
Distinguished Professor of Asian Studies, School
of Foreign Service, Georgetown University. His
latest book (with Fan Hongwei) is Modern
China-Myanmar Relations: Dilemmas of Mutual
Dependence (2012).
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