Episode #119: Wading Through a Burmese Haze
When it comes to recent US-Burma relations, Erin Murphy is well-positioned to discuss the details.
Involved in Asia issues since 2001, she served as an analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency and was assigned to monitor potential violence during a constitutional referendum in Myanmar just weeks before Cyclone Nargis decimated the Irrawaddy Delta in 2008. Murphy has interviewed many of the key actors in American diplomacy in the region over the past fifteen years, and she relates details of these among other things in her recently released book, Burmese Haze.
The interview starts with Erin describing optimistic American assessments about Myanmar during the transition period, along with a rundown of the major players from the United States involved in Myanmar policy over the past thirty or so years. She contrasts the somewhat distorted, emotionally-charged view of Myanmar held by American policy-makers with the harsh, even brutal military reality in Myanmar that was always lurking just under the surface.
Murphy recalls the sheer callousness of the military government’s refusal to accept humanitarian aid in the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis, when over one hundred thousand Burmese had died and millions more continued to suffer unnecessarily for want of basic necessities. “They were just letting people starve and die! I think [it] tested the UN's patience, ASEAN’s patience. And I think what it really did was to bring the UN and ASEAN together to start working in a in a political way to deal with Myanmar.” She notes that one positive outcome of government inaction after Nargis was that it invigorated civil and humanitarian organizations within the country to form networks to respond to the crisis.
The fallout from this natural disaster also highlights the kind of rule that had come to characterize the military following the 1988 Uprising, up through the 2007 Saffron Revolution which occurred just before Nargis. Murphy describes a military leadership that came to define itself through decades of armed counterinsurgency activity against multiple ethnic groups. At the same time, it grew increasingly isolated internationally, while sharpening its message of strong Bamar Buddhist nationalism internally.
The conversation then turns to sanctions. While for some in the American government the push for sanctions against the Tatmadaw has become almost a moral crusade, Murphy explains that the effect of any sanctions imposed on the regime will not be that onerous if other countries, such as European or nearby Asian nations, do not follow suit. She explains how the projected efficacy of sanctions must take into account each country’s particular circumstances; for example, if a country isn’t tightly linked to the international financial system, sanctions will not have the bite that is hoped for. As for any role that China might play, Murphy states, “I think one word that summarizes [the relationship between Myanmar and China] is ‘complicated’.”
Murphy also believes that governments need to recognize when policies are outdated. Regarding Myanmar, for example, she explains that enforcing an investment ban during the country’s transition period was counterproductive, since the challenges of a very poor and underdeveloped nation trying to crawl out from under years of oppressive military rule were already so great. If countries don’t shape policy to fit each set of particular circumstances, their ability to effect positive change are likely to remain out of reach. As she asks rhetorically, “Are you being morally sound if you're withdrawing any economic development from the people of Burma?”
When asked to speculate about the motivations of Aung San Suu Kyi, Murphy says that we may never know exactly what she was planning as regards the military. The public has had decades to project almost magical thinking onto her, or more recently, becoming increasingly judgmental. Murphy believes that The Lady has had to walk a fine line, balancing priorities; on the one hand, trying to keep the quasi-democracy going and to uphold electoral results, while on the other, carefully maintaining relations with a military apparatus that still tended toward violent control. In the end, however, Murphy feels that no one really knows what her internal calculus was. “I think we'll never get a full story on how she was trying to negotiate with the military to buy time to keep the democracy experiment going and what she felt she had to sacrifice, like her trip to The Hague, which politically, domestically, was a big one for her, not with the military but [for] everybody else. I don't think we'll ever truly know. I know she had a plan.”
As for the Rohingya, one of many decades-long ethnic wars waged by the Burmese junta, far-removed from geographical proximity to the populations of Yangon or Naypyidaw, Murphy points out that “the issue against the Rohingya has been going on since the 1970s. And… I know Politico did a piece, ‘The Genocide the US Didn't See Coming.’ [But] that's not true. We knew and had always known that this was an issue! You have people who were desk officers in the 1990s, trying to reach out to the IOC countries, Islamic organization countries, to try to do something on this, could they take refugees? Is there any interest in supporting any resolutions in the UN? No interest whatsoever.” She characterizes this issue generally as an overall global failure, and in terms of its more recent history, an instance of unfortunate timing in which international attention got distracted by Myanmar’s nascent yet fragile democracy period.
Citing a recovery timeline of nearly thirty years following widespread unrest and oppressive military rule in Indonesia, Murphy explains that it usually takes quite a while to transition from military dictatorship to an elected, representative government. And during that thirty-year period in Indonesia’s case, there were the 1999 protests, when the move towards a freer society almost was torpedoed. But Indonesia eventually got there, and she adds, “They will say, themselves, ‘I breathe a sigh of relief after every election!’” Murphy speaks about the new reality initiated by the first coup in any country, with the ensuing difficulty of finding a way to establish a different trajectory after the rule of law has been so fundamentally violated. Turning to Myanmar, she wonders whether the coup in February 2021 wasn’t even somewhat inevitable, pointing to unresolved areas of dysfunction; after decades of suppression by a ruthless regime, how could there not be?
Murphy then segues to a sad situation, the recent state execution of Ko Jimmy along with three other democracy activists. While acknowledging how painful and tragic this was, she asserts that it was not an absolute loss. “Nothing has failed yet! And I don't see ‘88 as a failure, because look how we're celebrating the life of Ko Jimmy, and how he's inspiring everybody. He's a martyr, and all these people [are] making ultimate sacrifices that I hope I never have to. These are dark times. But with that brief, democratic experience in the most recent of memories, it is really hard to put that in the box. I think it's our responsibility to help it grow and thrive. I'm not sure if that means arming the opposition or whatnot. But there are ways. So, hopefully, these dark days won't last much longer.”
On a sobering but positive note, Murphy concludes by saying that none of the protests have been in vain. “These are lessons; I don't see them as failures. Did they succeed in getting a democracy? No. But did they succeed in getting their cause recognized by the world? People know about it. And that's important, laying the groundwork… What you do is you keep getting new generations of people interested and then they bring in their tools, and their thoughts and their experiences.”