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Matthew Davies, from the Department of International Relations in the ANU College of Asia and the Pacific, has recently weighed into the debate about international responses to politics in Burma. In his piece titled “Non-intervention the mother of reinvention in Burma” Davies argues:
The brutal truth is that there is nothing that guarantees the continued reform of Burma. ASEAN offers a way to engage the Burmese leadership and society in non-threatening discussions about rights in a forum where sovereign equality and non-intervention remain paramount. There will be no single case in front of the ASEAN rights Commission that sees Burma forced to democratise further, but given the nature of the Burmese government it is doubtful that such ostensible external interference would do anything but antagonise a government that has repeatedly proven a willingness to embrace isolation when under pressure. Given that there is scant evidence that US and EU sanctions achieved anything substantive, the soft approach ASEAN has always preferred is an intriguing alternative. The gradualism of ASEAN is often used as ammunition against it, but given the current Burmese situation, it also offers a unique opportunity to protect and nurture the green shoots of reform so long hoped for.
I expect in the years ahead that this argument will be made repeatedly, especially in ASEAN capitals. I anticipate that many regional statesmen will feel vindicated for their Burma policy decisions over the past two decades. Many will be quietly chuffed that they can claim to have read the situation with more accuracy than others. Their optimistic embrace of Burma’s generals was often criticised. Some will now point to their own regional awareness as an alternative to the hectoring that has, on occasion, emanated from Washington, London or Canberra.
An example of ASEAN’s successful engagement of Burma in contrast to the West’s aggressive, punitive-based approach occured in the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis in 2008. While Burma’s leaders recoiled from the West’s humanitarian offers, as figures such as then Aust. PM Kevin Rudd called on the international community to ‘bash the doors down’ to deliver aid, and French FM Bernard Kouchner invoked the R2P doctrine as a foundation for justifying intervention, ASEAN, as a regional, non-threatening institution, was able to act as mediator and coordinator of aid efforts. As norms of democracy, human rights and good governance solidify within ASEAN, Burma may also become increasingly forced to accept these norms as non-negotiable.
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Good point. I believe Obama’s dual approach took it on board, achieving the current outcome, firm but neither aggressive nor over-preachy, negative traits the Asian states with a colonial past do not take kindly to, and who can blame them? On top of that there is Burmese bloody-mindedness which defies Western logic. In the end states deal with states, and unless a regime change is the real goal diplomacy wins hands down. It’s woolly-mindedness that gets you neither here nor there.
You could almost hear the ASEAN states asserting it’s Asian values had the notion not had a controversial past, even if they all acted from self interest at the same time stealing a march on the West in market share now up for grabs to a wider spectrum of international big business. The Burmese regime is on a roll but expect little more than a trickle down for the long suffering peoples of Burma.
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ASEAN approach to Myanmar has ALWAYS been self interest at best.
Therefore cushioning the West useless careless”moral high horse” approach.
@ #1 True:
“As norms of democracy, human rights and good governance solidify within ASEAN, Burma may also become increasingly forced to accept these norms as non-negotiable.”
http://www.mizzima.com/gallery/mizzima-tv.html?task=videodirectlink&id=134
However this continuing idiocy of using of ‘ethnic conflicts/sufferings as a precondition expose the very HYPOCRISY of:
Ethnic conflicts is the very microcosm of the suffering of the whole Humanity within that the West policy has cause.
@ #2
Obama deserve no credit for appointing Mitchell.
The above link illustrate again the West neither care to learn from ASEAN, history nor willing get off the now “AMORAL high horse”.
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