Don't push Rangoon into Beijing's o

[ausgeo@xxxxxxx]

Subject: Don't push Rangoon into Beijing's orbit 

Date: 13 Jun 1997 

The Nation 

Don't push Rangoon into Beijing's orbit 


By admitting Burma into its fold, Asean is countering China's influence on the 
buffer country. 

Defying US objections, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations has voted to 
admit Burma. When asked why they took this controversial step, Asean leaders 
referred repeatedly to ''strategic considerations". ''Strategic" is a code 
word for China. The Southeast Asians fear that Burma is becoming a Chinese 
satellite; it is a fear that Washington should share. 

The Clinton administration has imposed tougher economic sanctions against 
Burma, citing continued human rights abuses by the junta in Rangoon. It is a 
morally satisfying and politically popular initiative. It is also bad policy. 

It is not often that the theatre of world affairs produces a drama of good 
versus evil as pure and gripping as the one being played out in Burma. This is 
a government that has massacred pro-democracy demonstrators in 1988, 
suppressed political dissent, engaged in large-scale forced labour, probably 
collaborated in heroin trafficking and annulled the results of a democratic 
election while imprisoning the leader of the democratic movement, Nobel 
laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. 

Not surprisingly, US policy toward Burma has reflected moral outrage. 
Washington has regularly condemned the actions of the ruling State Law and 
Order Restoration Council, has halted all bilateral economic and military aid, 
has suspended trade privileges, has opposed lending by international financial 
institutions and has tried to rally support for such policies among other 
countries, including a proposed international embargo on arms shipments to 
Rangoon. Members of Congress have vied with editorial writers in urging still 
harsher, more punitive sanctions. 

Since the earliest days, US foreign policy has exhibited two often conflicting 
tendencies. The first is a normative, ''idealist" impulse to use policy to 
further American political values, notably democracy and human rights. The 
second is a geopolitical ''realist" approach that stresses the pursuit of 
national interest defined largely in terms of power and economic advantage. 

In the case of Burma, the normative approach has governed policy for most of 
the last decade in a uniquely pure form. This has been possible because the 
United States has viewed Burma as geopolitically irrelevant. There have been 
no significant national-interest costs to a policy of principle. 

But this is changing and the agents of change are China and Asean. Following 
the upheaval in 1988, the beleaguered and ostracised regime in Rangoon turned 
to the one country more than ready to overlook its transgressions: China. 
Beijing has become a near monopoly supplier of military equipment to Burma 
while the country's north has been flooded with Chinese consumer goods and 
immigrants. Chinese engineers are building roadways and bridges in Burma and 
press reports suggest the presence of Chinese intelligence installations on 
the coast. In short, Burma is becoming something very close to a Chinese 
satellite. This has occurred at a time when the strategic landscape in Asia 
has begun to shift with the growth in Chinese economic and military power. 
Chinese leaders have increasingly portrayed Southeast Asia as China's natural 
sphere of influence. 

All this has been watched with growing concern in Southeast Asia. Uneasiness 
concerning China's strategic aims is the principal motive behind Asean's 
decision to admit Burma. Asean is trying to offer Burma a strategic 
alternative to its dependency on China before the dragon's embrace becomes 
unbreakable. But this effort at ''constructive engagement" conflicts with 
Washington's policy of pressure and ostracism. In this there is no small irony 
because the American strategic interest vis-a-vis China in Southeast Asia is 
identical to Asean's. Someone is not thinking clearly, and it is not Asean. 

Any policy, if it is to be maintained, must meet a basic test. Is it working? 
Does it have a reasonable prospect of doing so? The current policy of 
isolation and sanctions fails that test. The essential repressive character of 
the Burma regime has remained unchanged over three decades despite heavy 
foreign pressure. Deeply unpopular and oppressive, it nevertheless holds 
apparently firm control over the army and ethnic Burman population. 

Quarantining Burma has simply reinforced the regime's xenophobia. 

Ironically, successful sanctions would weaken an already vulnerable economy, 
leaving the junta with little choice but to rely more heavily on Chinese 
support and on revenue generated from increased opium and heroin production. 

Isolation is further obviated by a host of US friends and allies in Asean that 
increasingly oppose that policy. 

Burma is not an Asian reincarnation of South Africa. The South African white 
elite was vulnerable to Western sanctions for a number of reasons, including 
the fact that the surrounding black African states supported their imposition. 
No such regional support exists in Southeast Asia. 

Washington can and should remain outspokenly critical of abuses in Burma. But 
there are security and other national interests to be served. Let's recognise 
that present US policy is not working and has no serious prospect of working. 
It is time to think seriously about alternatives. 

Marvin Ott is a professor of national security policy at the US National War 
College. The views expressed are his own. The article first ran in the Los 
Angeles Times.