Asia Times: Dealing with Burma: The unpleasant question



	September 21, 1999	atimes.com

Southeast Asia

Dealing with Burma: The unpleasant question
By David Steinberg*

PART TWO

Future actions

If we are talking about doing something other than simply analysing the situation in and around Burma, and if the above is reasonably accurate, we need to ask: how we do we negotiate? Right now the US has been negotiating by yelling and screaming. This is not negotiating. Basically we are not saying 'compromise', we are saying 'surrender'. It is a zero sum game and under those circumstances the processes of negotiation have been minimal. To negotiate you have to start by identifying the core values that all sides hold. If you understand what values one side holds, one can begin to say what values we can retain in our negotiations and what values we can compromise. I think that the SPDC and formerly SLORC have core values and this is very important for us to understand. These values go beyond propaganda and cant. These are values that people really believe in, and one has to understand that they take these quite seriously.

First, the military believes that it is the only group holding the country together. This may be a self-fulfilling prophecy. It has destroyed all the other groups that might have done so.

Second, the military believes that foreigners are out to divide the country. Historically this is substantiated-look at the history of the past 30-40 years. The British supported the Karen; the Americans the KMT; the Chinese the Burma Communist Party; the Thai four or five different groups to create buffer states between conservative Bangkok and radical Rangoon; the Bangladeshis supported the Rohinghas, and the Nagas and Mizo operated on both sides of the India border. So they say look, all you guys are out to destroy us.

We can say but no-one wants that now, times have changed. None of the separations are viable. The minorities now don't want independence but they want some form of federalism. The military is stuck in an earlier view of Burma-a view of two generations ago. It also believes that the minorities want to split off and become independent and it doesn't really trust them. And so it has eliminated the minorities from positions of power. There were minorities high up in positions of power in the Burma army-not just Karen but also Kachin. But they no longer have any real role in the military hierarchy. If you are a minority you play the Burma game and you play by Burman rules. We will return shortly to the composition of the future state of Burma.

The military really believes that the National League for Democracy is a tool for foreigners. Insofar as there is foreign support for the National League for Democracy, the argument makes some sense to the military. I don't think that Aung San Suu Kyi is anyone's tool-she is tough, strong, brave and very determined to do what she thinks is in the interests of the country and what she believes in, but the military doesn't believe in that.

The military has changed its position. It has now become an ideology. You have had a different set of ideologies over time. The first was a kind of moderate socialism-that was the way the country was founded. The economy was then in the hands of foreigners and socialism was the natural way to get the Burmans back into control of the country. The order of foreign control was first the British, then the Indians, and then the Chinese. Socialism came out of the London School of Economics at that time and it was also fashionable amongst independent countries. There were parallel developments, for example, in Tanzania.

Then you had Buddhism as the focus, then the Burmese Socialist Party. It was rigidly socialist. All of that failed and now the Burmese military has created itself as the ideology holding the country together. If you read the press, you get the feeling that the military is now calling itself the cohesive intellectual and ideological focus of that society. And it is rewriting history to demonstrate that this is true. It believes that civilians have been corrupt, incompetent, and should in no way control society any longer. It believes that the role of economic development in the private sector is to enable the government to continue its control. There is nothing inherent in the private sector or in a liberal market economy of value in itself. It is a means for the military to retain power. It very strongly feels the threat of retribution if it relinquishes power-the Pinochet syndrome. I think the military feels the threat of losing the perquisites of power from which it now benefits.

What we have in Burma today is a dual economy, but the sense of 'dual' has changed. In the development literature, we used to say that a country with a dual economy had a modern economy on the one side and a traditional economy on the other. In Burma this is not true. Here dualism means a military society and a non-military society. The military society runs its own health system, its own educational system, and a PX system which supplies commodities. And all the fabric of mobility in that society is controlled by the military.

It used to be that there were four avenues of mobility in Burma:

the military, which was volunteer army (since 1959 a universal conscription law on an Israeli model has existed so that women can be conscripted, but it has never been used because volunteers have been more than sufficient). The military offers a good career and free education;
there was a mass movement - there were peasant associations, labourers associations etc, and if you weren't educated you could still get power;
there was the Burmese Sangha, in which you could rise to a college education by becoming a monk, then leave the monkhood, which was perfectly appropriate, and go into society with great prestige;
and there was free education, so that the sons and daughters of the poor were often at the two major universities in the country.

So mobility was very diverse in this society. And the Burman part of Burma was also the only place in Asia where the pre-colonial elites did not return to some form of power in the postcolonial period. This was not true of the Shan State and the Kachin areas but in the Burman area it was certainly true.

All was stopped by the military. All mobility has been through military channels, which have controlled education, registered the Sangha, and controlled all the mass movements. Everything has become the product of the military. And lastly, the military considers that Aung San Suu Kyi is not capable of being the leader of the country. That it strongly believes. On the other hand, the National League for Democracy believe very strongly that they are the legitimate government. The question is, how is legitimacy is determined in society? This is something we can discuss academically. We say elections determine legitimacy, but in other societies elections do not determine legitimacy.

Then there is another issue. The NLD believe the military is out to destroy them, and wants to split Aung San Suu Kyi from the National League from Democracy. Not surprisingly, the National League for Democracy calls for continued sanctions, but not now on all humanitarian assistance, as long as the SPDC organisations do not benefit. Aung San Suu Kyi has modified her position on humanitarian assistance somewhat.

The US position is to recognise the 1990 elections, and continue the sanctions and travel prohibitions on high ranking Burmese officials. I recently wrote to Stanley Roth, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and the Pacific, a private letter asking whether the Burmese Foreign Minister might come to Washington for private talks and a panel discussion in an academic setting when he was going to the UNO in New York to talk. The verbal answer was no, we don't want to send any signals. The domestic constituencies within the US are mobilised by the technology of the internet. That prevents any amelioration of the position now. A few Congressmen can determined that things will not change because the administration will not use up any political ammunition they might have. Nobody in Congress wants to vote for a pariah regime. Congressman Bill Richardson told me that sanctions were going to pass long before the voting because that's the way politics works. You can't win elections any other way. Nobody is going to vote for these Burma guys.

Japan on the other hand has another set of views. It wants trade and investment. It is fearful of China and would like to strengthen an autonomous Myanmar, but it is under pressure from the US to refrain from aid. But they now provide some humanitarian assistance and some debt relief.

If one wants to negotiate into the future, one needs to take into account a few items.

One, the National League for Democracy will continue to weaken. It is not something one wants to hear but I am telling you what I think is likely to happen, not what I want to happen. The history of Burmese politics is one of factionalism, because power is very much personalised. It has been personalised from the start. If you look at the politics since 1937, when there was an Assembly, factionalism has been the rule. It was what split the AFPFL and allowed the military to take over in the first place. And there is no evidence that there is less factionalism now than then. Strong personality differences even exist within the military today. It is held together by different glues-the fear of retribution, the need for each other, the perks of office. But there is one other thing and that is Ne Win. Ne Win has been the most important personality in Burmese politics since independence. He changed the currency to add up to nine because a numerologist said he would live to 90 if he did this. So there were 45 denomination notes, 15 notes and so on. You can imagine what it did to the multiplication tables for kids in Burma. He is now 88, so he and the numerologist may have been right. When (if) Ne Win dies, the coherence of the military that has existed could come apart. All of the older leaders were of Ne Win's faction, the 4th Burma Rifles. There is a fear that the army may fragment when he dies. That may alarm groups in the army and cause them to make deals with the opposition to get some legitimacy. It could lead to civil war in the worst case, but it could also mean that there might be some amelioration of the problems in the society. Regarding the Burman army and the role of the 4th Burma rifles, there is an interesting conversation I had with the Military Attache to the Burmese embassy in Washington years ago. I asked him: 'Were you by chance in the 4th Burma Rifles?' He said, 'If I had been, I would be a minister by now'. How very true.

I think that it is unlikely there are going to be fundamental economic reforms, although there are plenty of people in government who want reforms. And I also think that whatever reforms do take place and whatever government comes in, even the opposition, it will be a highly dirigiste government. It will control that economy far more than one would like to see, far more than the IMF and World Bank would like. I think that there is a distrust of the private sector. Partly that is a Buddhist distrust. Un Nu said that capitalism is greed and greed is not a good Buddhist virtue. That was one of the appeals of socialism.

Since 1962, the military government has destroyed civil society. No organisation exists in that society which the government does not want to exist. The monks have been registered and controlled; the Sangha is controlled; local temples in villages are autonomous but they are not a threat to government. But civil society on which you build pluralism and eventually democracy does not exist. Essentially civil society, in so far as it existed (and it did exist even if the Burmese have no word for civil and no word for civil society as opposed to military, at least according to my Burmese scholar friends), existed under the AFPFL in the 1950s. You did get alternative small centres of power that were important, at that time lawyers associations, doctors associations, Buddhist associations, Buddhist temples and the Buddhist Sangha. These are gone today. They have been replaced by mass organisations and specialised groups completely controlled by the military.

The needs of Burma/Myanmar are enormous. We know the needs of economic reform-everyone will give you a list of what needs to be done-devaluation, an independent central bank, control of the money supply, macroeconomic reform, an urgent need to deal with minorities, and so on. We are going to see government give titular local autonomy to marginal groups on the Chinese model-a little autonomy but no power. But it will be done with minorities with which they have cease-fires. What we need to see is the development of civil society and an equitable minority policy.

We have the problem of cosmetic change. I asked the Japanese Foreign Ministry people what they would do if there were some movement, but only cosmetic movement, because the military recognised it had to do something, but it have no intention of giving up power. They did not answer. There is a danger here that foreigners will take cosmetics for reality.

The reporter asked this afternoon: what about this Australian human rights initiative today in Burma? I think it is better than nothing, and I applaud the initiative, but remember that they are not giving up power. You must not treat cosmetic change as real change. That is a real danger. There is a danger that the Japanese will move into a foreign aid program rapidly if something like this 'cosmetic change' takes place. My argument to the Japanese is, do not start a foreign aid program but do a humanitarian aid program. Aung San Suu Kyi said a year ago that she was not in favour of NGOs doing humanitarian aid in Burma because one could not control the process, and the government will benefit.

This is true, but it has to be weighed. You are helping people; is that more important that the extra, perhaps minor, legitimacy accruing to the government of Burma? The problem is that you are dealing with a mass mobilisation society. The Union Solidarity and Development Association (USDA) has over eleven million members, out of a population of 45 million-that is, one out of every three adults is a member, or half of the households. Everyone is tied into co-operatives, not Western co-operatives but government controlled outlets. You can't escape the government if you are going to do anything in that society. The government will benefit to some degree and it is a judgement call as to how much you want this to happen and what good you can do.

Any amelioration of the problem has to be by the Burmese themselves. I say amelioration, not solution. I am pessimistic on that basis. It seems to me that foreigners do have a role, but it is not yelling and screaming. That only satisfies our own moral ego. Our role is analysis, advocacy, suggesting, and supporting productive change and harmony.

The US is in an anomalous position-we want to isolate Burma but we don't want to isolate North Korea, and North Korea has a far more repressive regime than any in Burma. Yet we send North Koreans to the ANU to study economics but we don't want Burmese coming here to study. And what about Chinese and Vietnamese human rights?

There is an inconsistency in the US policy which takes away the moral virtues we might have established by such a position. We can analyse, suggest, consult. And we have to recognise a strong strain of Burmese nationalism. Xenophobia, say some. But when we yell and scream the reaction is to be expected. I am very critical of American foreign policy but when foreigners start attacking US policy, I get very nationalistic, and I'm basically a liberal. So I can understand how other people will react. We do have to recognise that there are no complete solutions to the problem.

We have to try to deal with what will be continued military control in some way and try to ameliorate that control as much as possible and push towards a greater pluralism in society. We all want a liberal democratic society that helps people and does appropriate things, but we have to understand that what we may want in the long run may be quite different to what we are able to deliver in the short run. The question we have to ask ourselves, and it is a very unpleasant question, is to what degree in the short run are the goals of the opposition the goals of foreign governments? They may not be the same. The Koreans have a saying about two people in the same bed but having different dreams. Maybe in Burma we sleep in different beds and have the same dreams. This is a problem that we have to face.

There is one last issue. As the military is held together by the need to continue in power, so the NLD is held together by the need to get power. If the NLD came power tomorrow, in perhaps 18 month's time they might fragment. That is the way Burmese politics has worked in coalitions. That does not mean that they should not come to power, but let us be realistic about our expectations.

*Professor David Steinberg, Dean, Asian Studies, Georgetown University. (Reposted with permission from the Virtual Forum on South Asia Security.)

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