Vol. 75/No. 46      December 19, 2011

Clinton’s visit was announced by President Barack Obama Nov. 18 in Bali, Indonesia. He said recent political developments in Myanmar showed “flickers of progress.”

Washington has had sanctions on Myanmar, also known as Burma, since 1988. They include aid, travel, financial services, trade and investment. The U.S. government has no ambassador in the country.

Obama pointed to the release of political prisoners, relaxation of political repression, and moves toward putting a civilian face on the military junta as reasons for reestablishing contacts between the two countries.

Myanmar is one of the poorest countries in Asia. Two-thirds live in rural areas. It is rich in natural resources, including petroleum, natural gas, timber, tin, zinc and copper. The biggest trade partners are China, Thailand and India.

The country has been under military rule since 1962. The government organized parliamentary elections last year. Opposition forces described them as rigged, but were divided over whether to participate. One-quarter of the seats were appointed by the military.

In March this year Thein Sein, 65, a retired military officer, was sworn in as president in a “civilian” administration. He replaced Senior General Than Shwe, who has headed the government for the past 20 years. But Shwe retains the right to override civilian rule by decree.

The government recently lifted the house arrest of Aung San Suu Kyi, leader of the bourgeois opposition party National League for Democracy and Myanmar’s most well-known political figure. She received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991. Suu Kyi, who has been under house arrest for 15 of the last 21 years, has lived in the U.S. and the U.K. for long periods. In 1990 the NLD won elections with 82 percent of the vote, but the government disregarded the result.

Obama called Suu Kyi before announcing Clinton’s visit and Clinton met with her twice.

Suu Kyi welcomed Clinton’s visit and the renewed U.S. interest in Myanmar. She has said NLD will stand in the next elections. The party boycotted the previous one.

Clinton also met with President Thein Sein. She informed the press she told Sein better relations with the United States are conditional on the government severing “illicit ties” with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, which U.S. officials say includes the import of North Korean ballistic missile technology.

Clinton said Sein had given her “strong assurances” that the government of Myanmar will change its relationship with North Korea. Clinton said Washington will loosen some of the financial restrictions and support U.N. programs for health care and small businesses in Myanmar. But sanctions will remain and no ambassadors exchanged at this time, because “we want to see economic and political reform take hold.”  
 
China a longtime Myanmar ally
China has long been Myanmar’s most important ally. Both an oil and a gas pipeline are under construction connecting southwestern China with ports on Myanmar’s west coast, which would shorten the travel route between Western China and the Indian Ocean by more than 1,800 miles.

Myanmar has recently moved to diversify its trade and political relations, turning to other countries in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. It suspended a hydroelectric power project with China in September.

The Indian government has opposed the U.S. and EU sanctions against Myanmar and warned that they would throw the country into the arms of Beijing. New Delhi is concerned about Beijing’s economic and political influence in countries along the Indian border, including Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal.

A Nov. 18 editorial in Global Times, a Chinese government paper, wrote that “any country which chooses to be a pawn in the US chess game will lose the opportunity to benefit from China’s economy.”

Washington is making progress in setting up a Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement that excludes China, while working to establish new alliances and expanding its military activity in the Pacific. In one recent development, the U.S. and Singapore are in the final stages of negotiating an agreement to base some of the U.S. Navy’s new Littoral Combat Ships in Singapore, on the edge of the South China Sea.

In an article in the magazine Foreign Policy titled “America’s Pacific Century,” Hillary Clinton writes, “As the war in Iraq winds down and America begins to withdraw its forces from Afghanistan, the United States stands at a pivot point… In the next 10 years, we need to be smart and systematic about where we invest time and energy, so that we can put ourselves, in the best position to sustain our leadership, secure our interests and advance our values. One of the most important tasks of American statecraft over the next decade will therefore be to lock in a substantially increased investment—diplomatic, economic, strategic, and otherwise—in the Asia-Pacific region.”  
 
 
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