Making Enemies: War and State Building in Burma (review)

The tatmadaw (loosely translated as armed forces) seized power in Burma in 1958 and have never relinquished it, and in the process they have established a state in which the military enjoys unparalleled power and influence. In and of itself, the fact that Burma (or Myanmar—the choice itself is contentious for while the latter is preferred by some who wish to distance themselves from colonial nomenclature, it is also a label taken up by a regime that many view as illegitimate) succumbed to military rule is not that surprising given the often depressing history of civil-military relations in so many of the countries carved out of the remnants of the ex-colonial empires in the aftermath of World War II. But what is notable, and forms the foundation for this engrossing study, is that military rule has persisted longer and has penetrated more deeply into Burma's body-politic than has been the case elsewhere in Asia and Africa. Periods of rule by and for the generals have become commonplace in Pakistan and Nigeria, and in Benin and Indonesia, but in these countries and others the army has however halfheartedly been persuaded to return to its barracks on occasion. According to Mary Callahan, the army in Burma has such a strong grip on power that there is little likelihood of a peaceful transition to civilian rule in the foreseeable future.

Such a bleak prognosis begs the question of why is Burma unique: some have sought to account for this in terms of traits inherent to the Burmese character (a form of orientalist social psychology that is speedily dispatched here) while political anthropologists have pushed theories that emphasize the stateless nature of traditional Burmese polities. Callahan rejects such deterministic efforts, choosing instead to frame her analysis in terms of historical contingencies. To do so, she has exhaustively mined not only resources available in the United Kingdom, but most astonishingly she has actually managed to undertake research in Burma itself, both archival as well as oral interviews. By itself such access merits our admiration; as anyone familiar with Burmese history knows all too well, the extreme isolationist nature of Burma has effectively blocked access to historical researchers for many years. Getting in is difficult; getting in to study the very heart of the state is well nigh impossible. It was also, as she informs us, surreal. For example, the two minders assigned to the author were entomologists from the Ministry of Agriculture. In the end, Callahan was not able to consult all the documents she requested, nothing after 1962 for example, yet at the same time there did not appear to be any logical pattern as to what she was given and what was refused, at least as far as content was concerned.

Military despotism in Burma was not preordained. It was the consequence of a fateful conjunction of historical events, notably the failure by the British to develop a secure and stable political and administrative structure (they instead simply introduced, usually inappropriately and without adequate resources, the institutions, practices and personnel that they had used in India), the Japanese conquest of Burma and their subsequent ejection which in the first instance destroyed the fragile foundations of civil society and in the second resulted in the arming of large segments of Burmese society, and the postwar invasion of northeastern Burma by Koumintang armies which created a potentially explosive situation with respect to China, a situation that was further exacerbated by the CIA who actively supported the Koumintang in their struggles against the Chinese communists. This threatened Burma with a potential attack from China and increased suspicions of western powers, in this instance the U.S. Furthermore, the U.N. failed to intervene which only reinforced growing isolationist tendencies and provided a further incentive for the army to become more centralized and cohesive, as the possibility of external attacks were joined to persistent fears...