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101 6 michael vatikiotis Three Scenarios for Myanmar’s Future Myanmar’s relationship with Southeast Asia has been problematic for most of the postcolonial era. It did not start that way. When the British left Burma in 1949, the splendid colonial capital of Rangoon was the region’s most developed and progressive city, a regional hub for communications, education, and finance, and the country it represented was Southeast Asia’s most dynamic export economy. But as the rest of Southeast Asia emerged from the cold war and grew prosperous, Myanmar became detached and withdrawn from the region. With all the international concern about Myanmar’s torturous internal political struggle, the country’s changing position in the region over time is rarely the focus of scrutiny. But for a brief effervescence of economic reform and openness in the early 1990s, Myanmar’s relationship with Southeast Asia has mostly been colored by growing criticism of military rule and crossborder fallout from the ongoing internal conflict that besets much of the country’s hinterland. Today, even conservative states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) like Malaysia and Singapore quietly regret the decision to admit Myanmar as a member, and most people in the region have given up waiting for the reclusive military regime to either relinquish power or open up the country with gradual economic and political reform. Without a substantial change to the internal status quo, it begins to look like Myanmar will remain suspended between India and China, neither contributing to nor benefiting from close ties with its Southeast Asian neighbors. This chapter explores the strategic and geopolitical dynamics of Myanmar’s relationship with Southeast Asia and attempts to project future scenarios based on Myanmar’s possible trajectory in the next few years. 06-0505-5 ch6.indd 101 8/30/10 6:11 PM 102 Michael Vatikiotis Three Scenarios The term Southeast Asia was coined relatively casually toward the end of World War II to help define a theater of operations and an allied military command. This Southeast Asia has always been an imprecise geographical combination of territories that carries a good deal of colonial baggage. Myanmar’s inclusion in the entity called Southeast Asia was mostly determined by the Japanese invasion and occupation, which extended across all of Europe’s colonial territories east of India and south and west of Japan. In fact, Myanmar was annexed and governed by the British and became known as part of Farther India when viewed from the colonial seat of Calcutta. However, in its precolonial form as a kingdom, Myanmar was one of a string of states that owed loose but diligently acknowledged allegiance to China. In this sense, precolonial Myanmar had a great deal in common with Siam, Annam, the Malay Peninsula, and the sprinkling of princely states in between. In terms of Myanmar’s contemporary relations with Southeast Asia, the precolonial period is therefore of rather more importance than the colonial one, since the memory of Burmese military aggression up and down the mainland has helped define not just contemporary boundaries but also perceptions of cultural affinity and enmity. That said, Myanmar has developed in virtual isolation from the rest of Southeast Asia for much of the past half century. From the 1960s onward, countries like Thailand and Indonesia, together with Singapore and the newly established Malaysia, were emerging from the early vicissitudes of their struggles for independence and embarking on more open policies of trade and investment, turning away from radicalism toward mainstream pluralistic politics, initially with a firm stamp of authoritarianism. Myanmar by contrast was moving in the opposite direction: embracing socialism and turning inward on self-reliance and isolation as a measure of defense against external enemies real and perceived. The trend continued through the early economic boom years of the 1970s and 1980s as economic growth advanced in ASEAN countries and they shook off the image of being poor and underdeveloped . Foreign investment poured in, and stock markets in the region boomed in the 1990s, but Myanmar’s economy trailed behind the others. Even when Myanmar was eventually admitted to ASEAN in 1997, the contrasting socioeconomic indicators were shocking. During a brief period from the late 1980s to the mid-1990s, Myanmar seemed to be limbering up to open its doors to foreign investment on a grand scale and poised to transform itself from a largely closed economy into 06-0505-5 ch6.indd 102 8/30/10 6:11 PM [3.137.170.183...

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