The War On Drugs comes to Burma
History is important because it teaches us how we got to the present moment. When the military coup was launched last year in Myanmar, many academics and journalists rushed to quick explanations while attempting to explain the reasoning behind the Tatmadaw’s seizure of power. On the other hand, Kenton Clymer is one historian who has studied Southeast Asia, and particularly Myanmar, for some time. He wrote an entire book on the history of US-Myanmar relations called “A Delicate Relationship,” which became the subject of our talk. Kenton does an outstanding job of explaining, both in the book as well as the podcast, how varying American administrations saw Myanmar over the decades. In the following excerpt, he discusses how the US’s War On Drugs came to influence its foreign policy in Myanmar. Listen to the full interview to hear more.
“American diplomats could actually talk to those in Burma who were involved in trying to suppress the drug trade.”
Kenton Clymer: This is the beginning of our famous war on drugs. President Nixon was concerned about cheap heroin and other opioids that were making their way to Vietnam, which American soldiers were taking and obviously hindering their military abilities.
He's very concerned about that, plus the fact that American cities were beginning to be kind of inundated with drugs, or at least reportedly so. As I understand it, in the past, most of these drugs had come from Turkey, through France, and ultimately came to the United States. But beginning in the 1960s, the Golden Triangle area where Burma and Thailand and Laos come together, there was a drug industry there, which was beginning to become increasingly important. And that was how the drugs were getting to the Americans in Vietnam, and then the United States as well.
If you've read Alan McCoy's book The Politics of Heroin, heroin and opium were coming, I don't know really what other kinds of opiates were being produced. But heroin was the big one, I have gathered, that was being grown at that time. And it involved different groups in in Burma, [for example] the Nationalist Chinese. Some of the ethnic groups were also growing opium; it was a lot more profitable than growing other crops.
The Burmese government, in fact, under Ne Win, initially was very much opposed to opioids. And that's why there was some cooperation between the United States and his government there on that one issue. He was happy to have American intelligence reports about this subject, caravans moving and so forth in various areas, which he accepted. Ultimately, he accepted American helicopters and American fixed-wing airplanes to suppress the trade. And that was controversial, because what they were spraying, among other things, was the chemical 2,4-D, which is partly the same thing that's in Agent Orange.
And eventually protests grew up about that. I don't know how effective it was. I talked with the one of the American ambassadors who had been there in the 1980s. And he seemed think that it was at least partly effective. Although, the amounts [of narcotics], which came out didn't seem to be decreasing over time. So, I don't know.
From the standpoint of American-Burmese relations, I think the one thing which stood out to me is that this was the only way, the only issue, about which the Americans could really talk to the Burmese. American diplomats could actually talk to those in Burma who were involved in trying to suppress the drug trade, or with American diplomats who had some interest in that whole thing. And that gave them some ability to get into what was happening in Burma.
Host: And the they were collaborating with the Americans who were providing, as you mentioned, different military equipment and chemicals meant purely for the eradication of the crops. But these were then used for different purposes. The ethnics suffered under the chemicals.
And as a side note that you might find interesting, I mentioned to a mutual friend that I was going to be talking with you. And she referenced a visit that she took to the Myanmar Defence Services Museum in Myanmar, that she went to with David Mathieson.
Referencing your book, David told my friend, as they were walking through - there were actually exhibits of some of the actual military helicopters in the museum that had placards indicating how they were being used for military missions – that these were some of the equipment, through David's knowledge, he knew that were provided specifically for the drug trade. The museum was openly promoting it as being used for military purposes, even though of course, this went against their promises that it would be used only for the opium in the eradication of drugs.
Kenton Clymer: Well, actually, it wasn't quite that cut and dried, because the agreements did give them the right to use it for other purposes, if it wasn't being used for spraying. There was a lot of debate about the Burmese interpreting that very, very liberally. And the Americans hoping that that wasn't entirely the case. At least, they certainly were not intended to be used mostly for military purposes, as the critics claim that they were.