OPINION : The Brunei Times

Myanmar, unusual threat to US?

Maung Zarni

26-May-07

THIS time of year, the United States President ritualistically signs
an executive order on Myanmar declaring "the continuation of the
national emergency with regard to Burma", on the grounds that the
Southeast Asian country poses "an unusual and extraordinary threat to
the national security and foreign policy of the US".

This phenomenon owes its existence to the Freedom and Democracy Act of
Burma that requires the President to review and renew sanctions
against Myanmar periodically.

Unquestioningly, the international media deems this ritual renewal
newsworthy. This helps further exceptionalise military-ruled Myanmar,
particularly when the media provides little historical or contextual
information about how the country got to where it is today.

Nor does it explain what the fundamental challenges prevalent in the
process of post-colonial nation building, which the country is
confronted with, beyond the well-documented rights abuses common
across countries under autocratic or authoritarian regimes, some
supported no less by Washington itself.

Economically mismanaged by successive national leaderships, Myanmar is
a post-colonial mess, left behind by the British 60 years ago. Its
World War II-devastated economy worsened as a result of the violent
internecine ethnic and ideological conflicts that broke out
immediately upon independence, only to be fuelled by the Cold War
immediately thereafter. Over the last two decades, the country has
been reeling from the legacy of externally-mandated isolation, while
suffering from a siege mentality that casts one eye on simmering
popular discontent at home, and the other on resource-hungry
neighbours and a hypocritical West.

Throughout Asia, Myanmar is generally viewed, with good reasons, as a
technologically backward, impoverished nation ruled by the military
leaders whose mindset and style of governance resemble feudal lords of
the 18th century, than one in tune with the age of globalisation and
interdependence.

So, Washington's framing of Myanmar as a "threat to national security"
must engender a panoply of emotions, not least a degree of numbness to
such polemic especially in the context of the purported WMD threat
from Iraq.

To be sure, no one in their right mind on Capitol Hill _ not even Vice
President Dick Cheney with all his pathological security obsessions _
believes in such nonsense.

But public bewilderment at how this Third World country, caught in a
50-year time warp and incapable of producing even toothpaste for its
own domestic consumer use _ is a national security threat to the
world's most militant and militarised nation should not be
underestimated. As if to belabour the point, the appendage of the term
"unusual and extraordinary", is even more perplexing when the
President of the United States ad verbatim employs the legalese of the
International Emergency Economic Powers Act.

Of course, the open secret in Washington is that the US continues to
ally with and prop up some of the most repressive regimes on earth,
despite its exceptionally moralistic and customarily denunciatory
policy towards Myanmar since 1988.

Even the painfully stale argument that the US adopts double standards
on human rights and democracy in Myanmar's case is misleading. For it
assumes incorrectly the US is a self-styled "indispensable" moral
force that supposedly shines light on otherwise dark places in the
world. Nothing can be further from the truth.

A separate assessment of the evolving nature of US power and its role
in the post-Cold War era tells a different story than this commonly
official portrayal of the US as a force for good. This is precisely
how Chalmers Johnson, former CIA consultant and now world-renowned
professor of Asian studies at the University of California at Los
Angeles, characterises the nature of US foreign policy, its global
politics and behaviour.

In a recent essay entitled Evil Empire: Is Imperial Liquidation
Possible for America? Johnson wrote, "(w)hen Ronald Reagan coined the
phrase 'evil empire', he was referring to the Soviet Union, and I
basically agreed with him that the USSR needed to be contained and
checkmated. But today it is the US that is widely perceived as an evil
empire".

While the US talks non-stop about nuclear non-proliferation, its
militarism makes the world at large progressively unsafe both from the
senseless violence of non-state organisations and sovereign states,
including itself. So far no international law or treaty, nor
institutions such as the United Nations have proven capable of
deterring, let alone, reigning in this American imperialism, although
in fairness, international legal institutions were not created to
combat the tyranny of the free world, so-called.

Given this, is the common man supposed to be shocked that sovereign
nations which Washington customarily labels as "unusual and
extraordinary threat(s) to US national security and foreign policy",
such as North Korea or Iran or, of late, Myanmar _ rush to go nuclear,
if only because they fear the extraordinary threat from Washington?

All said, both regimes in Myanmar and the US have more similarities
today than at any other time in their history. Both regimes have utter
contempt for international norms, public opinion, or well-being of
their own citizens. The only difference between both countries is that
Washington bothers to stage an elaborate international charade that is
calculatively sophisticated, or so it thinks.

Given the current circumstances, amplified by profound American
foreign policy miscalculations, Hollywood inevitably provides some
useful answers to the "unusual and extraordinary threat" posed by
Myanmar.

The messiah is John Rambo and his trusty crossbow. In the latest
instalment of Slyvester Stallone's epic due to be released next year,
the man-machine finds himself recruited by a group of Christian human
rights missionaries who deliver aid to the persecuted Karen people of
Burma. After Burmese soldiers take prisoner some missionaries, Rambo
is tasked to rescue them. Rambo is likely to face an unusual and
extraordinary threat from these Burmese soldiers, but America is
likely to remain very safe from Myanmar.

Maung Zarni is a Visiting Research Fellow (2006-9) at the Department
of International Development (Queen Elizabeth House), University of
Oxford. He was the founder of the Free Burma Coalition.OpinionAsia