President Barack Obama's visit to Burma last week lasted
just six hours. He did not visit Naypidaw, the political capital -- reportedly at
the request of democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who initially opposed
the visit as coming too soon in Burma's tentative reform
process. Instead, President Obama met with President Thein Sein and Aung San Suu
Kyi in Rangoon.
COMMENTS (0)
More...
Only as Obama arrived did the government announce it
would submit to inspections
of its nuclear facilities, a step meant to address concerns over Naypidaw's
dealings with North Korea. The government also released several dozen political
prisoners and agreed to a process for
reviewing the cases of others by the end of the year. "It's
like they're using political prisoners as political bargaining chips," Letyar
Htun, a former student activist told
The Irrawaddy after his release from
Tharrawaddy prison.
More from Democracy Lab
- Can You Save Diplomacy From Itself?
- Beware of Mirages
- Democracy Lab Weekly Brief, November 26, 2012
These steps, although welcome, didn't justify a
presidential visit, unless the administration's top priority in Burma has shifted,
from supporting a democratic transition to enlisting it in the "pivot,"
the administration's plan to reorient U.S. foreign policy towards Asia and away
from the Middle East. An aide's comments about the pivot and the president's "foreign
policy legacy" suggest that is the case. The
president's visit, following suspension of sanctions, and the return of an
ambassador to Rangoon makes a revival of ties with Burma's armed forces the
administration's next priority.
Relationships with militaries like Burma's often
bear the burdens of unrealistic expectations by civilian and defense officials
eager to justify them for strategic reasons. In Burma's case, that would be a
mistake. Washington has shunned Burma's military, known as the Tatmadaw, since
it crushed the 1988 student-led democracy protests and nullified the 1990
election results that overwhelmingly favored Aung San Suu Kyi's National League
for Democracy party and its ethnic allies. As recently as 2010, Washington
pursued a commission of inquiry into Burma's human rights abuses -- including
rape and child conscription by the military -- an effort that has been abandoned
as the United States inches its way toward a rapprochement.
The argument that exposure to the United States and
its military is good for officers from non-democracies sounds reasonable and so
far the Pentagon stresses it will focus on non-combat activities like disaster
relief, searching for the remains of American servicemen who died in Burma
during World War II, and engaging in dialogue.
123NEXT Source: http://www.news.myanmaronlinecentre.com/2012/11/27/beware-of-mirages/
No comments:
Post a Comment