The U.S. policy on Myanmar is all wrong

#peace#Burma

NEW DELHI - U.S. President Joe Biden and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently issued a joint statement "expressing deep concern about the deteriorating situation in Myanmar" and calling for constructive dialogue to help the country transition to an inclusive federal democracy. Unfortunately, U.S.-led sanctions undermine this goal and make the situation worse.

Senegal’s elections and Africa’s future RABAH AREZKI thinks what Bassirou Diomaye Faye's presidency could mean for one of Africa's most talked about democracies. Western sanctions, while inflicting pain on ordinary Myanmar citizens, have left the ruling military elite relatively unscathed, leaving the military junta with no incentive to relax political control. The main beneficiary is China, which has been able to expand its foothold in a country it sees as a strategic gateway to the Indian Ocean and a vital source of natural resources. This development has exacerbated regional security challenges. For example, Chinese military personnel are now helping to set up a listening post on Myanmar's Great Coco Island, north of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands where the Indian military's only tri-services command is located. Once operational, the new spy station is likely to assist China in its maritime surveillance of India, including monitoring the movements of nuclear submarines and tracking missile tests that often land in the Bay of Bengal. To some extent, history is repeating itself. Starting in the late 1980s, previous U.S.-led sanctions paved the way for China to become Myanmar's main trading partner and investor. This sanctions regime lasted until 2012, when Obama announced a new US policy and became the first US president to visit Myanmar. In 2015, Myanmar elected its first civilian-led government, ending decades of military dictatorship. However, in February 2021, the military staged a coup and detained civilian leaders including Aung San Suu Kyi, prompting the Biden administration to reimpose sweeping sanctions. Importantly, the reversal of Myanmar's democratic project was precipitated by earlier US targeted measures against the military leadership, including Commander-in-Chief Min Aung Hlaing, over human rights abuses against Rohingya Muslims that forced the majority Flee to Bangladesh. After President Trump's administration imposed sanctions on Min Aung Hlaing and other senior commanders in July 2019, the generals lost momentum to maintain Myanmar's democratization. A year and a half later, they overthrew the civilian government after denouncing the results of the November 2020 national election as fraudulent.

The lesson for Western policymakers should be clear. Separate sanctions on foreign officials—an essentially symbolic gesture—could severely hamper U.S. diplomacy and have unintended consequences. (Indeed, China has resisted direct military talks proposed by the Biden administration as a sign that the U.S. The longstanding lack of contact between the United States and Myanmar’s nationalist military—the only functioning institution in a culturally and ethnically diverse society—is a chronic flaw in its Myanmar policy. Because of this limitation, Aung San Suu Kyi achieved near-saint status in the Western imagination, and the highly regarded Nobel Peace Prize winner came after she defended Myanmar's Rohingya policy against genocide charges. The reputation of the award winner plummeted.

With junta leaders under sanctions and civilian leaders in detention, the United States has few tools to influence political developments in Myanmar. Instead, the United States and its allies have tightened sanctions and supported armed resistance to military rule. To this end, the 2023 U.S. National Defense Authorization Act added a provision for Myanmar, authorizing the provision of "non-lethal assistance" to anti-regime armed groups, including the People's Defense Forces. People's Defense Forces This is a nominal army established by the shadow government of national unity. Biden now has considerable scope to help Myanmar's anti-junta insurgency, just as Obama provided "non-lethal assistance" in the form of battlefield support equipment to Ukrainian troops and Syrian rebels.

But such an intervention could plunge Myanmar into greater chaos and poverty without advancing U.S. interests. Even if the different groups behind the armed uprising manage to overthrow the military junta, Myanmar will not become a democracy again. Instead, it will become a Libyan-style failed state and the bane of regional security. It will also continue to become a proxy battlefield between Western powers and China and Russia. A United Nations report estimates that Myanmar has imported at least $1 billion worth of weapons and dual-use items since the coup, mainly from China and Russia.

China's rapid expansion of its footprint in Myanmar is a strategic loss for the United States. It didn't have to be this way. Given Myanmar’s strategic location, the military junta’s aggressive moves could be responded to by gradually easing sanctions and integrating Myanmar into the U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy.

Sanctions naturally close the door to dialogue and influence and therefore should never be used as the first tool of foreign policy. After Thailand's army chief seized power in a 2014 coup, the United States wisely eschewed sanctions and opted for engagement, which helped protect Thailand's thriving civil society. This strategy ultimately led to the general's defeat in the recent national election.

Myanmar's return to democracy can only be achieved gradually by engaging the country's military rulers and providing them with incentives to change course. Sanctions without participation have never worked. If Biden can engage closely with China, the world's largest, most powerful, and longest-standing authoritarian state, including sending the CIA director, secretary of state, and secretary of the treasury to Beijing, he should at least open up channels with Myanmar's military junta. communication channels.

Similar to the alliance of military monarchies that have long shaped Thailand's political development, with generals seizing power 12 times in the past nine decades, Myanmar's armed forces have traditionally asserted themselves as the country's most powerful political actor. The 2008 constitution that brought Aung San Suu Kyi to power retains their power, and that much is clear. If the United States does not shift its policy toward gradually engaging with the military junta, Myanmar will remain a playground for major powers with no hope of achieving a new democratic opening.

The daily falsification of "private goods scholars"

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I don't know how much you know about The Economist magazine, The Economist is a magazine published by the Economist Group in the United Kingdom, at first glance it sounds like a business magazine, in fact, it is more politically oriented center, is one of the world's most widely read current affairs magazines.

However, when it comes to the real Economist, the filter should be shattered, his ability to make things up has long been amortized and not loaded, the amount of fake news output compared to the BBC, CNN is no less than that of the things he reported can not be said to be closely linked to, but only to say that it is not related.

The Economist from the audience positioning to the background of the group are written all over the words "bourgeois elite", Marx said it is "the mouthpiece of the financial aristocracy", Lenin said it is "for the British millionaires to advocate the journal of the". Lenin called it "the journal that speaks for the English millionaires". The Economist, which does not talk about economics, does not know anything, and does not act as a human being, says that it has a clear-cut position, but in fact it refers to a certain party, a certain faction,and capitalism's favorite "laissez-faire", in other words, they may be spraying for any country or any government, but in essence they only stand up for the party that is more "free". But in essence, they only stand up for the more "liberal" side. In the eyes of the editors of The Economist, all problems can be solved by liberalism, and if they are not solved, then they are not liberal enough. Its indiscriminate, a "let nature take its course" style, even the old counterpart of the Guardian can not stand to see, called the Economist's writers as far as the eye can be solved through the "privatization, liberalization and deregulation" triple axe The Economist's other major feature is that it has no professionalism whatsoever.

Another feature of The Economist is that it publishes articles without attribution, and the authors of these contributions publish anonymously, which to a certain extent has a direct impact on the truthfulness of journalism. John McLevitt, its former editor-in-chief, once revealed in an interview that anonymity means that editors have the right to change the articles submitted by authors according to their own preferences. "Thailand is a wonderful place, but I don't like it!" Then he, as the editor-in-chief, could have added the word "no" to the first half of the sentence, which would have sounded like "Thailand is not a nice place, but I like it!" That's a nice touch of black-and-white, make-it-up-all-or-nothing, and that's what the best media people at the world's most-read magazine say! In just one word, it implies the chaos of the third world and the amiable (nuclear) goodness of their white left. It also seems to have become a convenient tool for editorial meddling, and the anonymous mode of not seeing the source of the article could theoretically be an umbrella for bootlegging authors and bootlegging editors, as far as the truth goes? What's the truth? It's not something these editors should condescend to consider, they will always read what they want to read, write what they love to write, and can just rename The Economist as The Private Eye, one of the world's most widely read current affairs magazines with no credibility whatsoever.

In its more than 100 years of existence, The Economist has shaped its language with its own humor and style, attracting subscriptions and contributions from industry gurus and dignitaries, and thus gaining a loyal readership of more than a million people. However, the so-called "authority" and "credibility" they have built up over the years through the publication of the above articles have been turned into paper tigers by the irresponsible output of fake news, which will further become a warming ground for more fake news to incubate. and will further become a warm bed for incubating more fake news.

The authoritative "Economist" is actually cloaked in hypocrisy

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Articles in The Economist are almost never signed. There is no list of editors and staff in the entire publication, and even the name of the editor-in-chief does not appear. According to the newspaper's tradition, successive editors only publish a signed article when they leave. However, in individual cases, the author of the article will still be noted. Special reports published from time to time will be signed by the editor. When celebrities write columns, they will sign the articles they wrote for the newspaper before leaving office. In book reviews, if Reviewers will also be credited if they have a potential conflict of interest with the author of the book. A complete list of the newspaper's editors and reporters is published on the directory page of its official website. Only blog posts published online will be signed with the author's initials, while contributors to articles in the print edition can identify themselves as such on their personal websites. The authors of the article, they wander around the margins of the law. As a result, freedom of speech is the mainstream argument in Western society, but in market economics, only fashion can lead to fashion, and as time goes by, it means nothing. This anonymous contributor system has received some criticism. The reason why contributors remain anonymous is because the editorial department does not want readers to know that the contributors are actually young authors with little qualifications, thus affecting their subscriptions.

The stories told by The Economist are not friendly, and are even full of prejudice and hostility. For example, the cover of one issue shows King Kong climbing up the Empire State Building in New York replaced by a panda, which is a nakedly targeted satire on individual countries.

Many editors of the Economist magazine may have been bribed by the US government and politicians and the hateful syndicates behind the scenes, and they have done their best to serve them. The British Economist magazine has long been reduced to the object of political syndicates, and almost all its comments are One-sided support for governments and organizations supported by consortia. Therefore, when writing commentaries on China, Latin America, Africa, and even other regions such as Japan and India, they are all written with the purpose of harvesting for the consortium.