ASEAN-U.S. Relations: What Are the Talking Points?

10. Shift in U.S. Policy towards Myanmar

99 10 Shift in U.S. Policy towardS MyanMar U Myint Soe In September 2009, the United States announced a new course in its policy towards Myanmar following a seven-month review undertaken by the Obama administration. Recognizing that decades of pursuing policies of isolation and sanctions had done little to influence change among Myanmar’s military leaders, the United States decided to maintain its sanctions on Myanmar while simultaneously undertaking direct dialogue with senior leaders of the regime in Naypyidaw. Dialogue, according to the United States, will supplement, rather than replace, decades of U.S. sanctions policy. These talks have already begun, and the United States has indicated that any improvement in relations between the two countries is possible only when Myanmar’s military regime enacts meaningful and concrete reforms in the country, particularly in the areas of democracy and human rights. On the other hand, in adjusting its policy towards Myanmar, the United States must face reality with a clear vision. Among other things, this vision must recognize that the United States’ 100 U Myint Soe ability to help solve Myanmar’s problems and to influence the course of the country’s governance is extremely limited. American influence in Myanmar is unlikely to outweigh that of increasingly powerful Asian neighbours. Therefore, the United States’ priority must be to clarify its fundamental objectives in Myanmar and follow them through consistently with some flexibility. Moreover, Myanmar is not likely to rank very high on the list of U.S. foreign policy priorities in the foreseeable future; so resources to address U.S. goals in Myanmar will be limited, compared with priority countries and regions.1 obServation of the MyanMar iMPaSSe: breakthroUgh or falSe dawn? Recently, there have been signs of a thaw in U.S.-Myanmar relations in light of the Obama administration’s policy review on Myanmar. In August 2009, Myanmar’s State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) allowed Senator Jim Webb to visit and meet with the junta chair as well as with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, leader of the National League for Democracy (NLD), and it subsequently released American John Yettaw who had been convicted of breaching security laws by sneaking into Suu Kyi’s home. The release of more than 7,114 prisoners that included over a hundred political detainees and Prime Minister Thein Sein’s attendance at the U.N. General Assembly (the first in fourteen years) are interpreted by many observers as conciliatory moves on the part of Myanmar in the face of demands to free all political prisoners and honour the (non-binding) U.N. resolutions on Myanmar. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had expressed the view that both sanctions and engagement had failed to deliver what the West wanted and to choose one over the other was not helpful. And this was reiterated in her statement after the second “High-Level Meeting of the Group of Friends of Myanmar” convened by the United Nations Secretary-General (UNSG) on 23 September 2009, in which she mentioned, “Engagement versus Shift in U.S. Policy towards Myanmar 101 sanctions is a false choice in our opinion. Going forward, we will be employing both of these tools.” This immediately caught the attention of the news media and hopes were raised, with Seth Mydans of the New York Times calling it the “most significant modification of administration policy towards Myanmar”. In response, Suu Kyi’s lawyer reported that she accepted direct engagement, but it must be on both sides, meaning engagement with both the government and the opposition. Kurt Campbell, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, was later named as the point person for the U.S. initiative. In his press briefing, Campbell reiterated that the United States’ core concerns regarding Myanmar remained unchanged, that the envisaged direct dialogue would include specific discussions of democracy and human rights inside Myanmar, and that cooperation on international security issues and areas of mutual benefit, such as counternarcotics, would remain. Whether this new engagement policy can herald the beginning of rapprochement between the United States and Myanmar, and whether the United States can successfully perform the difficult balancing act between carrot and stick in engaging Myanmar’s military, depend on the military leaders’ perception of the apparent U.S. policy change. Despite the fact that the first real step to engage was initiated by Myanmar’s interlocutors, which came with the...