During the past month, Myanmar’s political crisis has dominated international headlines and invited fierce debates over approaches to adopt in order to change the behaviour of the junta.
In the aftermath of the brutal suppression of the protesters, pessimism looms large over a qualitative attempt at national reconciliation in Myanmar. Many believe that even after concerted pressure from the international community against the regime, the unrest in Myanmar will be consigned to the annals of history and the junta will get on with life, as it knows. There are reasons to be pessimistic.
Power, as military regimes know so well, comes from the barrel of a gun. The junta is unlikely to give up power easily even after an ultimately failed ‘Saffron Revolution’, peppered by the empty rhetoric of the West.
It is obvious that there has never been much gumption in the way the West has handled the Myanmar issue. At the end of the day, the West’s credibility was blemished by the decision to invade Iraq and more recently, by the failure to place its immense resources at resolving the Darfur crisis.
Even when leaders of the democratic world displayed energy to defend the protests in Myanmar throughout the early part of October, they instead called for a renewal of sanctions. Little did they recall how ineffectual such measures had been in the past. Myanmar has long since immunised itself against Western sanctions by adroitly courting China and India.
As one muses about China and India, it is hard to imagine the foreign policy realists in Beijing and New Delhi honestly plonking for regime change. In reality, the position of China and India has remained unaltered over the years. Both countries are acutely security sensitive and unwilling to jeopardise their nascent, and often competing, business links with Myanmar for the sake of political correctness.
On another vitally critical issue, with the lessons of Iraq fresh in mind, assuming the military junta agrees to leave the stage, what preparations have been made to rebuild the country and to create a political system acceptable to all? Will Aung San Suu Kyi have an answer to this, and would it be fair to burden her with this expectation? After all, the junta has succeeded for so long by a policy of anti nation-building, pitting one ethnic group against the other.
This long list of difficulties compounds the complications in dealing with Myanmar. Two choices at this hour seem to be on the offer - one, that the issue is regionalised or second, that it is internationalised. The difference comes down to what the outside powers expect to see in Myanmar in the short and long term and whether any demands are to imposed on the junta.
It is an open secret now that United Nations special envoy Ibrahim Gambari, who has been touring various Asian countries, is seeking to build a consensus for serious political reform in Myanmar. With a green light from the UN Security Council, Gambari is working on the construction of a “Core Group” to help navigate and realise his vision.
The proposed Core Group comprises of permanent members of the UN Security Council - the US, Britain, France, Russia and China - together with India, Japan, Norway and Singapore. In a press release of the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, it stated that the Core Group would support Gambari’s work to facilitate a process of reconciliation in Myanmar.
The establishment of the Core Group suggests that the Myanmar issue is likely to be internationalised. Gambari might have thought that by inviting the members of the UN Security Council to form the Core Group, a greater sense of legitimacy would buttress his dealings with the junta. Western powers, in particular the US and Britain who have been bold advocates for pro-democracy movements in Myanmar, are likely to be in favour of this internationalisation as regional solutions in the past have been insipid, almost always ending in failure.
However, the efforts of the Core Group do not appear to have taken off on a positive note as some of its supposed members have already voiced their concerns over the “real agendas” behind this cooperative framework. It has been reported that China, one of the UN Security Council permanent members, is unhappy with the idea of the Core Group for a variety of reasons.
First and foremost, China has long considered itself as a regional power. Asia is China’s playground. Myanmar, in particular, is and has always been in Beijing’s sphere of influence. By internationalising the Myanmar issue, the perception dominates in Beijing that China’s hegemonic status in the region is being undermined. Ultimately, China, as reflected by the gestures of its leaders, would want to see the problem being solved regionally, where it can plot a course and steer the process in a direction that benefits it.
Myanmar would also be ready to eject the internationalisation of its own problem for fear that it may loose its grip on political power and that its leaders may be put on trial for crimes against humanity. The country is suspicious of US involvement since Washington has never been shy of lending support for the National League for Democracy (NLD), Aung San Suu Kyi, and other ethnic minorities who have refused to conclude ceasefire agreements with the junta.
More acutely, the internationalisation of the problem could potentially belittle the work and effort of ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) in attempting to initiate a breakthrough in Myanmar’s political stalemate. Ultimately, Myanmar is a member of ASEAN. What has happens in Myanmar, from an ASEAN perspective, should be addressed in the regional context.
Slowly but surely, over the last ten years in particular, ASEAN has grown in strength and more recently, has sought to reinvigorate itself through the upcoming process of rebranding via the ASEAN Charter. There is a perceptible sense that ASEAN is becoming protective of its own turf. Those in favour of internationalisation should not rule out the possibility of including ASEAN as an potential problem-solver to prove its relevance and vitality in finding a way-out of the Myanmar impasse, perhaps through mechanisms such as the ASEAN Troika, established in 2000.
ASEAN's potential misgivings aside, Gambari’s effort to diffuse tensions in Myanmar must be commended. But to put forward a new international framework that could potentially damage the reputation of a regional organisation, may not offer the only realisitic solution.