Engage with Burma, don't isolate it by Vikram Sood

From "The Asian Age," a national newspaper in India.
http://www.asianage.com/presentation/leftnavigation/opinion/op-ed/engage-with-burma,-don%E2%80%99t-isolate-it-.aspx
Engage with Burma, don't isolate it

By Vikram Sood

A people might get the government they deserve, but the Burmese people — wonderful, amiable and innocent — have never had the chance to choose one for nearly 50 years. U Thant's grandson, Thant Myint-U, in his remarkable book The River of Lost Footsteps describes his own people best when he says: "For many Burmese today the stories of King Bayinnaung and his contemporaries are the stories of a nation naturally inclined to fracture but which through heroic action can be welded together and made whole, of a country that will fall apart without the strong lead of soldier kings, where greatness will only follow an iron fist. For some this was an exciting tradition, even for others the past meant something altogether different."

Colonial experiences have helped shape mindsets and different societies have reacted differently. The Burmese simply withdrew into their collective cocoon. Possibly not only authoritarianism but isolationism too sits easy with the Burmese. Independence had brought traumas of another kind. Soon after independence, Karen rebels, encouraged by Baptist missionaries, had reached Insein on the outskirts of Rangoon while the Chinese-aided Communists were sitting in the Pegu jungles not far from the capital. The Shan revolt in 1958 was followed by the Christian Kachins in 1961 and U Nu's democratically-elected government lost control.

There was every justification for Ne Win's rescue act. Ne Win shut the door to the outside world, and apart from episodic interest, the rest of the world remained preoccupied elsewhere. Uninterrupted military rule since then has played havoc with the country and its people.

Since Burma did not pose the kind of threat that China and Pakistan did, India too lost interest after U Nu's downfall and Nehru's death. Until the mid-1990s India remained unable to reconcile its security and economic interests with the desire to support democracy in the neighbourhood. A change of policy in the 1990s was a reflection of realpolitik. The desire to engage the generals was part of a "Look East" policy, seeking access to Burma's energy reserves for India's growing needs and with the hope that this engagement would possibly lead to greater cooperation in dealing with insurgencies in India's Northeast.

Burma would provide access to Southeast Asia through overland rail and road links, once established, and also act as a buffer against China, the pre-eminent foreign power in Burma today.

China seeks an outlet into the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean to reduce its dependence on trans-shipping energy supplies from West Asia and Africa through the Malacca Straits. The Chinese have been building the Irrawaddy Corridor involving road, rail, river and energy links between the Arakan Coast and Yunnan. This will be in addition to the Trans-Karakoram corridor through Pakistan, linking Xinjiang to the Arabian Sea at Gwadar. All these are economic corridors but provide China with the capacity to use them strategically. Intentions become meaningful when there is a capability to fulfil them.

There is often talk in the West about organising another of those spectacularly unsuccessful "colour" revolutions to usher in democracy. Assuming for a moment that there is a complete breakdown leading to a regime change, what next?

Burma does not have the professional and socio-political expertise to handle the vacuum. A civilian government will hardly be equipped to deal with the situation. It will take decades to build various institutions — social, political, economic, education and professional. The popularity of an Aung San Suu Kyi will sink rapidly. Armed ethnic groups will use the situation to make space for themselves. Assistance to ethnic insurgent groups to break away from Burma or to use violence for the fulfilment of their goals will only break and further weaken the country. We could end up with an Iraq/Afghanistan kind of situation. India would dread another unstable border.

From the dust of the resultant chaos, another general will rise. The regime's thinking is reflected in an interesting provision in the just-approved draft constitution for Burma's road to democracy. It reserves 25 per cent of parliamentary seats for the Army and also provides that the President should have a military background.

Demonisation of the regime and sanctions as an instrument to bring about a regime change or even a change of policy and relief to the people have simply not worked. They hurt the very people they are intended to help, putting them into a downward spiral of poverty and ignorance. Instead, the regime gets richer and stronger. Sanctions enable the regime to blame external forces for the plight of the people. They are doubly ineffective if they are selectively applied.

Sanctions on industries like textiles and tourism, Burma's main provider of employment, have hurt millions. Burma's revival is not possible without massive external and Western assistance sustained over a long period of time, ensuring that the aid reaches the people and is not spent on administrators, as is happening in Afghanistan.

The future is imperfect for Burma. Nearly half a century of authoritarian and isolated governance has left the people impoverished and ill-equipped to handle the problems that lie ahead. Democracy has to be carefully crafted over years; it requires patience and investment of money and skills. Burma has to be brought back to the international system instead of being ostracised and banished in this manner. Isolated rulers will continue to do as they please.

The first step would be to assure the paranoid regime that there is no attempt to break the country. In fact, this is something neighbours would endorse. The countries most interested in Burma are China, India, the Asean bloc, Japan and the United States. A multilateral approach through these countries could produce the required goalposts.

Above all, the rest of the world must engage with Burma, especially now that the country has been struck by a natural disaster. Now is not the time to admonish and hector.

There is hardly anything to be gained by pointing out that the regime did nothing despite the warnings of an impending cyclone. The regime simply does not have the capacity to deal with this as all infrastructure has broken down.

If the US can engage with China after the Tiananmen Square shootings of 1989, it could surely engage with Burma after the Sule Pagoda shootings of 1988. If participating in the Olympics after Tibet is possible, why not talk to the Burmese generals in spite of the September 2007 disturbances? Or is Burma a poor hapless country that allows the world the luxury to practice its high principles of democracy and liberty without loss of strategic and economic interests?

Vikram Sood is a former head of the Research and Analysis Wing, India's external intelligence agency. This article is based on a talk delivered at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University.