Episode #143: The Burma Act
“I've been spending almost all of my energy trying to pass this thing called the Burma Act,” Michael Haack begins. “So I've been able to advocate about it and really learn about it from lots of different angles, from the way the State Department is looking at it, from the way that the Congress and the two different Houses are looking at it, and how it's viewed on the grassroots level. I've been sort of doing the Burma Act all the time, 24 hours a day!” Haack certainly is a person to talk to about this potentially significant piece of legislation.
The bill had its origins before the coup, in the previous Congress, sponsored by Congressman Gregory Meeks (D, New York), Former Congressman Steve Chabot (R, Ohio), and Senator Ben Cardin (D, Maryland). Its goal was to provide support for civil society while limiting the power of the military. In its early iterations, one of its major features was calling out the Rohingya genocide, as well as providing aid to that marginalized group. However, Haack notes that Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, feared it would reflect poorly on his close friend, Aung San Suu Kyi, who at that time was leading the country, and so blocked the bill’s passage.
Haack acknowledges that with Washington’s short attention span, it can be difficult to maintain momentum on issues for long. And as far as Burma goes, Haack adds that since 1988, the issues have consistently been drawn in “moralistic” terms, mirroring comments that author and former CIA analyst, Erin Murphy, made on a previous episode of Insight Myanmar Podcast. Haack concurs that this sort of condescending perspective has largely framed policy debates and decisions for decades when it comes to the Golden Land. “They used to really see it as like, ‘Okay, this is a place where the US could do some good. We could restore democracy to this place. We have this horrifying government, and this wonderful, angelic woman who's fighting against that horrifying dictatorship.’” And when this simplistic narrative ultimately broke down during the transition period, US paternalism was redirected to the developing Rohingya conflict. And this same perspective has colored debate on the current bill, even as it went major transformations following the coup.
Haack points out that the final version of the Burma Act drew rare, bipartisan backing in the House—literally unanimous support, in fact—a near impossibility in today’s polarized political landscape. However, it then faced uncertainty in the Senate, once again at the hands of McConnell. “Because of his unique relationship to Myanmar, he didn't see it in the same way that the Republicans in the House of Representatives saw it,” Haack explains. He described how McConnell continued to hold anything related to Burma as his “pet issue,” and always insisted that “The Lady” and the NLD be critical pieces of any legislation (and similarly, that the Rohingya should be effectively left out). This was a position that House Republicans had largely moved on from, as they became increasingly concerned about ethnic issues and other matters. “So he basically didn't greenlight his own party to let it leave the committee in the Senate,” Haack explains.
Because McConnell prevented the Burma Act from passing the Senate as a stand-alone piece of legislation, a decision was made to include it as an Amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), a bill that funds the US military and has passed annually since 1961. The fact that the Burma Act was attached to the NDAA has led to widespread confusion among Burmese democracy supporters, who assumed this now meant that armed resistance groups in Myanmar would benefit from direct funding and assistance. However, Haack notes that actually the opposite is true; the language of the Burma Act specifically allows for only non-lethal aid.
Yet while no actual funding will reach these armed groups, Haack emphasized the groundbreaking nature of the bill, in that it lists many of the Ethnic Resistance Organizations (ERO) by name, along with the NUG and PDFs. He credits this largely to diaspora Chin groups, who are American Baptists and live in largely Republican states such as Indiana, Texas, Kentucky, and Florida. So thorough were Chin lobbying efforts that they even played videos in their churches instructing members how to successfully advocate. And because the Republicans were the ones delaying the bill, they had an outsized influence in how it was shaped, which also enabled those Chin groups to strongly influence the language of the final bill.
Still, the version of the amendment that passed ultimately came through the Senate, not the House, and so was lighter in tone. For one, sanctions toward the Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise (MOGE) were discretionary rather than mandatory. Fortunately, however, there are extensive sections detailing the sanctions to be placed on individuals and organizations connected to the Tatmadaw, which places pressure on the Treasury and State Department to act further in this regard. And one of the big successes of the legislation is that it explicitly states US policy going forward is to support the NUG, the CRPH, the CDM, and even the EROs. This is partly because Congress recognizes how ludicrous it would be to send humanitarian aid through the Myanmar military, and so support must be coordinated through those other groups. Yet Haack says it is not as easy as it seems, and that there is confusion as to how to get funds to their intended targets, because the typical channels are not operable in Myanmar now. On the flipside, he is confident that once this is clarified, much larger support could come down the line. Towards this end, the NUG recently opened an office in Washington, DC, where it hopes to come up with more comprehensive plans that can build confidence in potential funders. Haack also points to Representative Barbara Lee, who is on the influential Appropriations Committee and represents an area around San Francisco that includes a very active Burmese community. Unfortunately, Haack notes, “[The diaspora community there] doesn’t necessarily have a strong understanding about how to influence US policy.” This echoes our recent podcast conversation with governance specialist, Philipp Annawitt, who similarly expressed concerns about the diaspora’s failure to effectively coordinate their efforts with local legislators.
Haack suggests a two-pronged approach to advocacy work. One is cultivating relationships and building trust with influential people and groups, as he explained above. The other is kicking off a well-coordinated media campaign, ideally with a compelling figure at its center. Haack can’t but notice the irony that this was exactly the model of the past few decades: for years, the persona of Aung San Suu Kyi single-handedly drove US-Burma policy. However, Haack describes how the perspective on Aung San Suu Kyi changed drastically because of the Rohingya crisis, from a widely-admired figure carrying on an anti-colonialist legacy and striding towards democracy to a Bamar nationalist whose past writings and statements suggest an inherent unease with Myanmar’s minorities. During this transformation, she not only became a persona non grata to many in the West, but even more disastrously, her behavior drove many away from the country’s development entirely, having left them feeling dismayed and even betrayed. Plus, given that many of Myanmar’s ethnic groups (like the Chin) now have their own direct lines of communication to the West—which was until recently not the case—it makes Burma-centric conversations and policy in the US far more complicated. Not only are past histories being contested, so also are visions of what a federal democracy even means (another point that Annawitt stressed last episode).
“The diaspora has a very special role in creating Burma policy,” Haack says, “but I do think that Burma policy has to be driven more for practical considerations… there's like 320 million Americans and maybe 300,000 people from Burma living in America, so it's not really enough to drive policy.” Haack’s concern is that the result could be separate, ethno-based policy initiatives, rather than “a democracy-driven policy [or] a policy that thinks about the general welfare of people.”
The lack of a single, compelling narrative about Burma in the US is also compounded by minimal media engagement. Indeed, the latter is a problem Haack has been working to rectify for years. Listeners may recall that soon after the coup, during his first interview with Insight Myanmar, Haack discussed his efforts in Hollywood and New York to bring celebrity support to the democracy movement. But instead, he found that no one would touch the issue, having had something like buyer’s remorse after their previous trust in Aung San Suu Kyi had turned sour. He still has the same concern today, noting that “both in like the educated US population, and then those are the people who staff in Senate offices, there just isn't a clear narrative about what's happening [in Myanmar].”
Part of this is perhaps inevitable, with the US invested in myriad other concerns. “There's like 193 countries in the world, and the US is involved in literally all of them in one way or another,” Haack says. “So it's not realistic to think that Burma is going to be a top priority. But you can control what is the narrative if you only have space in your brain for a little bit about Burma. I don't think we can just quite go back to the old narrative, which again, did drive US policy, but having more narratives about the uprising about the hope and the resistance would be helpful.”
All of this only underscores the importance of a unified resistance front to the military, which Haack does see the Burma Act as supporting. “There's so much conversation about the cooperation between the different ethnic groups and PDFs, and the many different forces that are fighting the regime right now, and that is beginning to get heard more and more at the highest levels. I do think it's a reflection of things on the ground, and I do think a more positive narrative, an anti-coup narrative, is beginning to coalesce.”
For Haack, the best thing about the Burma Act is that…it passed! “Congress runs on winning campaigns,” he says. “The last thing that's good in Congress is to lose a fight, right? They don't want to be on the side of the loser! They like getting reelected, and campaigns are in their blood. So the fact that we won is so important, because it creates momentum, it means that we're like the kind of people you want to hang out with, because we fucking win!” Haack explains that lawmakers have to deal with a multitude of bills but with limited time to read and understand them all. So they have to pick and choose what to attend do. Because of their political drive to support winning legislation, the subject of any bill that emerges successful is more likely to garner their future engagement. In other news, what is now good for Congresspeople is also good for the backers of the Burma Act. As Haack explains, “Now the next time we contact them, they're going to be that much more willing to kind of work on the next thing… the more you do, the more you can do!”
For now, it is just one step at a time. “What is the US role in Burma?” Haack asks himself. “That's a big, open question… People have a lot of hope in what the US is going to do, and then a lot of disappointment when it doesn't do that. I would say the Burma Bill is inspiring, it's important, but also temper your expectations. This is just a small piece of a very large equation. And unfortunately, it's only going to play a very minor role in the revolution.”