{"id":27227,"date":"2013-04-08T12:00:56","date_gmt":"2013-04-08T11:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=27227"},"modified":"2013-03-29T18:27:19","modified_gmt":"2013-03-29T18:27:19","slug":"burmamyanmar-its-conflicts-western-advocacy-and-country-impact","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2013\/04\/burmamyanmar-its-conflicts-western-advocacy-and-country-impact\/","title":{"rendered":"Burma\/Myanmar: Its Conflicts, Western Advocacy, and Country Impact"},"content":{"rendered":"

Burma\u2019s conflicts are neither new nor are they singular. Conflicts along multiple-lines \u2013 class and ideology, civil society and the military, and ethnic groups\u2013 have been going on for nearly 65 years, that is, since Burma\u2019s independence from Britain in 1947\/1948.[1] <\/a>Understanding its conflict requires appreciation of the \u2018deep\u2019 historical dimensions; Burmese modern history is conflict-soaked(1947-present). Historically, the country was born out of pre-colonial and colonial conflicts in terms of ethnic relations, class divisions, and domestic power cliques, and into a new set of conflicts upon independence in January 1948. We can roughly divide the periods of conflict thus: the Cold War (1945-1989), the immediate post-Cold War period with its signature Western triumphalism (e.g., \u2018The End of History\u2019) (1988\/89-2008), and the \u2018new Cold War\u2019 or new \u2018Containment\u2019[2]<\/a> (2008-present)<\/p>\n

When we talk about conflicts and advocacy, this periodization is crucial, because shifting external contexts and macro-level developments in international relations and the world economy have had significant impacts on both the country\u2019s internal conflicts and the Burma advocacy, whether the advocacy is done by the West or the Burmese themselves.<\/p>\n

It is inaccurate to frame Burma\u2019s conflicts as \u2018internal\u2019 and advocacy as \u2018Western.\u2019 The term \u2018internal conflicts\u2019 is misleading because it implies neat discursive boundaries, as if Burma\u2019s internal conflicts were simply confined within the country\u2019s geographic national boundaries, with no real or significant outside players or interests (for instance, the U.S., the EU, ASEAN, China, India, and so on).Historically and sociologically, the methods of advocacy, the ethics or official rationale behind certain Western policy stances, and the impacts on the targeted conflict(s) (that is, Burma\u2019s conflicts) shift depending on the discourse of security at play.<\/p>\n

Three discourses of security as a macro-analytical framework dominate:<\/p>\n

1)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u2018National Security\u2019 (i.e., \u2018regime security\u2019) \u2013 internal interests and value system<\/p>\n

2)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Global Security (For whom? Toward what end(s)? In whose interest?)<\/p>\n

3)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Human Security (i.e., security of humans as individuals and communities) (a liberal humanistic discourse of well-being, physical safety, and public welfare, which contrasts sharply with the former two institution-centered securities\/interests)<\/p>\n

The first two are more or less two sides of the same dominant coin. Interstate global capitalism is stitched together by the UN, ASEAN, the EU, the ANU, the OIC, and IFIs (IMF, World Bank, ADB, etc.), where nation-states, both the institutions and the individuals who manage them, serve as building blocks of the global political economy in which private corporate interests reign supreme. This is a marriage of convenience\u2014although there may or may not be love in these marriages, namely an ideological\/cultural affinity or compatibility. And there is certainly room for intra-marriage conflicts and competition, but also internal elite interests and outside\/external interests.<\/p>\n

The third \u2013 human- or people-centered \u2013 security trails as a distant third in Western policy making. This reality is opposed to public discussions, where the omnipresent rhetoric of human rights masks its diminished status.<\/p>\n

Advocacy in the Burmese context<\/b><\/p>\n

My discussion will be confined to two periods: the post-Cold War Western triumphalist era (starting with the fall of Berlin Wall in 1989 and ending with the first Obama presidency, which marked the beginning of a radical shift in Washington\u2019s Burma policy) and the new \u2018Cold War\u2019 or \u2018China Containment.\u2019<\/p>\n

In the Post-Cold War era<\/span>, he chief advocates were (in order of importance and influence):Aung San SuuKyi and her Burmese followers and international supporters, individual and institutional, from grassroots to \u2018high-level advocacy\u2019 (a loose global coalition of activists, advocates, lobbyists, and institutions in the fields of Human Rights, Environment, Policy and Legislative Affairs, Corporate Social Responsibility, Religion, Social Justice, and Women\u2019s Affairs); and ethnic minority advocates. Their work was grounded in liberal ideals including freedom, democracy and human rights, as well as non- violence and new environmental\/ecological outlooks and ideas.<\/p>\n

Their methods of <\/b>advocacy included <\/span>old-fashioned face-to-face lobbying, grassroots direct actions, media advocacy, personal connections (the \u2018champions,\u2019 GOP Senator Mitch McConnell, Andrew Samak, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, and St. Antony\u2019s College web of Michael Aris and colleagues and friends). The policies they advocated were largely punitive, more sticks than carrots. There were three waves of punitive measures since the uprisings and bloody crackdowns in the fall of 1988, further facilitated by the nearing end of the Cold War: starting with the downgrading of U.S. diplomatic relations from Ambassadorial to Charge d\u2019Affairs, eventually culminating in various economic sanctions, including the highly restrictive financial sanctions, denial of \u2018development assistance,\u2019 humanitarian aid, and resumption of loans from the World Bank and other IFIs and development banks).<\/p>\n

Here it is crucial to recognize the \u2018circularity\u2019 or \u2018circular nature\u2019 of policy substance, messages, and rationales. To be more specific, the chief advocate in Burma, Aung San SuuKyi and her National League for Democracy (NLD), and Western Burma advocates \u2013 Burmese and non-Burmese, individual and institutional, grassroots and high-level \u2013 crafted the messages and rationale in a concerted fashion for about twenty years. Some messages originated in Rangoon and were amplified in the West, while others were formulated in key Western capitals such as Washington and London and subsequently \u2018blessed\u2019 by the NLD leadership.<\/p>\n

Unlike during the Cold War era, with regard to Burma policy advocacy efforts, insofar as they existed, the effective promotion of circular Burma policy ideas and substance was greatly enhanced by the rise of the information technology, such as the worldwide web, personal e-mails, fax machines, and other digital technologies.<\/p>\n

Impacts on the conflicts inside Burma\u2014and society at large <\/b><\/p>\n

Burma has already been isolated for 25 years under the one-party dictatorship of General Ne Win (1962-88),which was fully supported by the West, when, following the Cold War, the West shifted its Burma policy discourse and priorities, and, in line with calls from the NDL activists, further isolated the country internationally. The result was to arrest Burma\u2019s \u2018natural\u2019 political and societal evolution with devastating long-term social and institutional consequences.<\/p>\n

Contrast this to the Western approach to the equally repressive VietNam, especially Washington\u2019s embrace of VietNam while both Rangoon and Hanoi attempted to open their countries\u2019 economies along the state-led \u2018Free Marketization\u2019 process. Western advocacy further inflamed the main society-military conflicts as the former pushed for democratization and human rights in Burma. Among the ruling military circles in Burma and in ASEAN and Asian governments, this was nothing more than a typical Western double standard (as the West continued to support Suharto\u2019s Indonesia and patched up with authoritarian VietNam).<\/p>\n

Fearful of the West\u2019s \u2018hidden agenda\u2019 under the disguise of human rights and democracy, the military intensified its repression against the Western-backed dissidents led by Aung San SuuKyi, while making ceasefire deals with armed ethnic minority resistance groups, thereby constraining the Burmese generals\u2019 fight to a single-front battle, against the mainstream opposition of Aung San SuuKyi and the West.<\/p>\n

This liberal Western advocacy was made possible because Burma was one of the places where the West felt it could afford to live out its liberal values, as it was pursuing its \u2018core interests\u2019 in places like the Middle East and, to a lesser extent, elsewhere in East and Southeast Asia. In other words, advocacy of human security was allowed to dominate Burma policy discussions and media coverage because other Western interests in Burma were not deemed very important.<\/p>\n

Further, a typical defense of the West\u2019s pro-isolationist and categorically punitive policies towards Burma in those years is that as a liberal democratic bloc it had no choice but to adopt the sanctions against the country under military rule.\u00a0 For the military held the general elections in 1990 and then simply nullified the NLD\u2019s landslide electoral victory, a rather weak rationale considering that the West behaved differently towards Algeria and Nigeria which too held the elections the same year.<\/p>\n

One significant negative impact of the last twenty-five years is the manufacturing of Aung San SuuKyi as a human rights icon and the adoption of her as \u2018the darling of the capitalist West\u2019 whose messages of individual rights lacked any critical class and economic analyses. Consequently, mainstream society\u2019s conflict with the ruling military came to be personalized, erasing all other important aspects of the domestic conflicts such as class and ideological differences within the pro-democracy opposition and promoting the narrative of an Oxford-educated daughter of a martyred Asian nationalist taking on a beastly military regime of home-grown thugs and brutes\u00a0 This liberal narrative devoid of a crucial class understanding resonated with do-gooding Western audiences that generally view their West as a global force for good.<\/p>\n

Despite the circulation of liberal vocabularies such as human rights or democracy, Suu Kyi\u2019s opposition \u2013 and its societal supporters \u2013 failed to internalize any ideals they advocated \u2013 human rights, ethnic equality, liberty, universal brotherhood (and sisterhood). The opposition\u2019s notable silence, starting with Aung San SuuKyi\u2019s refusal to condemn the state-facilitated violence primarily against the Muslim Rohingya population<\/a>, to the second and third line leaderships, is a case in point of the absence of any value transformation in the Burmese opposition in particular and in the pro-opposition society in general. This needs to be viewed as the inefficacy of the Western advocacy model to facilitate diverse voices for human rights and democratization. The West was trapped in its choice method of anointing a single voice \u2013 that is, Aung San SuuKyi \u2013 as the sole voice of the voiceless Burmese people, \u201cthe<\/i> hope of Burma\u201d.<\/p>\n

Also noteworthy is that the nearly two dozen ethnic minority resistance groups, with the exception of the Karen National Union (KNU), the oldest armed non-state revolutionary group, did not feel a need to engage with Western advocacy because they were in various disparate ceasefire arrangements with the Burmese military . Even if these groups had engaged with the West on its Burma policies, it is doubtful whether their voices would have been taken as seriously as that of Aung San SuuKyi and the National League for Democracy. The KNU certainly did not gain any support, material or otherwise, from any Western government it had lobbied.<\/p>\n

The New Cold War Era (2008-present)<\/b><\/p>\n

There is a new crop of chief advocates that has come to overpower the old Burma democracy advocates, including Aung San SuuKyi. With regard to outside interests, for instance, Washington and the EU, both national governments and as a bloc, have reassessed and re-prioritized their respective Burma policies in the context of the decline of Western global influence and economic woes at home .None other than Obama\u2019s White House led the charge in shifting Western advocacy from a focus on democracy and human rights, into line with the \u2018Asian pivot\u2019 or \u2018new balancing\u2019 paradigm.Luckily for the West, because it has long made Aung San SuuKyi the \u2018voice of the voiceless\u2019 in Burma, it found it relatively easy to bring on board a single dissident leader to accept the terms of (her) engagement with the ruling military.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, a \u2018new\u2019 discourse of \u2018civil society\u2019 has been developed and promoted by various Western advocacy groups, INGOs, media outlets, business interests, and faith-based organizations backed by Western governments, international development agencies, the UN, and other multilateral organizations. I put the word \u2018new\u2019 in quotation marks because this political and analytical notion has been around in modern political history since the days of the resistance movements against authoritarian regimes in Eastern Europe. But, only in the later days of Western advocacy did Western governmental-sponsors of social and institutional change along \u2018free market\u2019 lines (for instance, the U.S. State Department and the U.K.\u2019s Department of International Development) begin to promote the language of civil society, breeding a new group of urban elite Burmese tolerated by and\/or with symbiotic ties to the Burmese military and its ruling circles.<\/p>\n

One of the most crucial developments to note here is that Western advocacy is no longer circular in its direction or substance. In the new era of \u2018re-balancing\u2019 or the \u2018Asian pivot,\u2019 the West, specifically Washington, no longer needed Burmese dissidents, morally speaking, for the substance of its strategic and policy messages beyond Aung San SuuKyi\u2019s public \u2018blessings.\u2019 On their part, the mushrooming of civil society groups and advocates \u2013 many of them led by Western-funded and -trained \u2018civil society actors\u2019 \u2013 are used as an alternative \u2018domestic\u2019 social force, a dynamic alternative to the snail-paced, elderly-dominated National League for Democracy of Aung San SuuKyi. Many of these Burmese \u2018civil society\u2019 actors are used in Western advocacy at multiple levels: at the grassroots, these local groups are supported by the West in what I call the \u2018NGO-ization\u2019 of national and local politics, while the ones with close ties to the generals and ex-generals serve as \u2018fixers\u2019 or \u2018high-level advocacy\u2019 local proxies for Western interests.<\/p>\n

Further, since 2008, when the Obama Administration began its Burma policy review as part of its overall national security interest paradigm shift, the West has focused on lobbying the Burmese regime. This time, Washington has a new Burma mission: to create a new comfort zone for the generals and ex- generals wherein they would do business with the West, one step removed from Beijing. The new Western advocacy is about realpolitik while it continues to speak of Burma\u2019s internal national reconciliation, gradual democratic transition, and human rights.<\/p>\n

One other important development in terms of the emergence of new chief advocates is the fact that individuals and institutions with close ties to Western strategic and commercial interests (for instance, the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, the Brussels-based International Crisis Group, the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, etc.) have come to occupy the center stage of Burma advocacy. Instead of the usual liberal human rights discourse, Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke of bringing world-class American investors to Burma and sending the CIA chief to Burma in promotion of the country\u2019s reforms. On their part, international financial institutions (IFIs), development banks and organizations, the UN, and humanitarian INGOs have gotten with the program.<\/p>\n

As is to be expected, Burma advocates and advocacy groups \u2013 with their human rights, environmental issues, corporate social responsibility, women\u2019s and ethnic rights, etc. \u2013have found themselves on their back foot in the face of the \u2018new\u2019 Burma advocacy groups who speak the language of \u2018political pragmatism,\u2019 \u2018economic developmentalism,\u2019 \u2018the Middle-Class-before-human-rights,\u2019 \u2018gradualism,\u2019 and so on.<\/p>\n

Despite the same pervasive human rights violations, perpetual humanitarian crises, the genocide against the Rohingya, a full-blown war against the Kachins in northern Burma, and mining and development-induced mass displacement of rural and ethnic communities, President Obama went on to frame Burma, in effect, as \u2018a success story\u2019 of his U.S. foreign policy.<\/p>\n

The Messages<\/b><\/p>\n

Human rights is out. \u2018State capacity building\u2019 is in. Ethnic conflicts are no longer to be resolved, but to be allowed to run their course without outside intervention \u2013 the kind that Ed Luttwak suggested in the case of the Israel-Palestine conflict and the kind the Sri Lankan army pursued.<\/p>\n

In the name of political realism, the same Western advocacy that punished the Burmese generals for refusing to honor the results of the 1990 general elections, which would have made Aung San SuuKyi effectively a new Prime Minister in the post-Ne Win era, is now rewarding the same military, albeit under a new management, for allowing her to take her a largely symbolic seat in the Parliament that was created in accord with the anti-democratic \u2013 not just unfair or undemocratic \u2013 Constitution written by and for the military.<\/p>\n

The Ethics<\/b><\/p>\n

In spite of the liberal veneer of reforms, democratic transition and the operational rationale behind a new Western advocacy \u2013 this time dominated by powerful national security and commercial interests in Western capitals \u2013 is realpolitik through and through. When \u2018pragmatism\u2019 roars, liberal humanism retreats into quiet if disgruntled quarters populated by marginalized Burmese dissidents and their international Western solidarity groups. The new discourses of civil society, gradual reforms, and democratic transition are still justified in the name of human welfare and the human progress of the Burmese. This new \u2018messaging\u2019 can only be fully understood and appreciated if one places the new Western advocacy \u2013 insofar as it has been completely taken over by national security and commercial interests \u2013 in the typology of the \u2018three securities\u2019 \u2013 national\/regime security (of the Burmese regime), global security of commercial and strategic interests, and human security.<\/p>\n

This time, the dominant Western advocacy no longer deems the promotion of human rights, beyond the rhetoric of Western and Burmese officials, as something affordable. But the ugly realities of human insecurity as lived by the great majority of Burmese Buddhist farmers, Rohingya Muslims, and Burmese Christians are difficult, if not impossible to address. So, Western advocacy is experiencing a Buddhist turn for the first time in the past twenty-five years: it\u2019s all in the state of mind. If you can\u2019t change the reality, change your perception, and the way you frame it, especially when doing so advances your national interest, however defined \u2013 hence, President Obama and his showcasing \u00a0Burma as \u2018a success story\u2019 of his foreign policy.<\/p>\n

The Impacts<\/b><\/p>\n

The full consequences of this new Western advocacy will not be known for a long time. But if history is any indication, Western engagement with Burma\u2019s authoritarian regimes (or, for that matter, with any other unsavory regimes) that is not informed by any humanistic principles but is largely driven by the West\u2019s \u2018core interests\u2019 in Burma has not advanced the cause of public welfare.<\/p>\n

NOTES:<\/b><\/p>\n

[1]<\/a>Post-WWII Britain in effect agreed to Burma\u2019s independence the same year as India\u2019s independence\u20131947, but for astrological reasons the Burmese nationalist leaders chose to do the formal transfer of power only in the early morning of 4 January 1948.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a>I amusing the Cold War-era vocabularies with full awareness of differences and new developments in the emerging \u2018balance of power\u2019 scenarios and the Cold War-past.<\/p>\n

_____________________________<\/p>\n

Dr. Maung Zarni is a <\/em>member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment<\/i>, founder and director of the Free Burma Coalition (1995-2004), and a visiting fellow (2011-13) at the Civil Society and Human Security Research Unit, Department of International Development, London School of Economics. His forthcoming book on Burma will be published by Yale University Press.<\/em> He was educated in the US where he lived and worked for 17 years. Visit his website www.maungzarni.com<\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 sites.tufts.edu<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Burma\u2019s conflicts are neither new nor are they singular. Conflicts along multiple-lines \u2013 class and ideology, civil society and the military, and ethnic groups\u2013 have been going on for nearly 65 years, that is, since Burma\u2019s independence from Britain in 1947\/1948.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27227","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-transcend-members"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27227","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27227"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27227\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}