The Wrong Target

Kerry Howley, writing in the Los Angeles Times, points out that the people arguing to pressure China over Burma are just plain wrong. China actually has little, if any, influence over the xenophobic military junta that rules that benighted country. China's economic ties are not as strong as is being implied by some and, worse, China actually backed the wrong side in a long, bloody civil war. Howley has some real credentials to know what she is talking about - she worked in Burma for a newspaper.

These are supposed to be humbling times for foreign policy analysts — chaos in Iraq having made it harder to cast the United States as omnipotent, omniscient and self-actualizing. But judging by the reactions to the recent protests in Myanmar, also known as Burma, the commentariat hasn't stopped ascribing otherworldly powers to ambitious governments. It's just that they're choosing different governments.

The "shame and misery of the Burmese junta," claimed Christopher Hitchens in Slate, will endure just "as long as the embrace of China persists." Hitchens isn't the only pundit casting China as puppeteer to the junta. "China must use its 'special relationship' with the junta," explained Nobel Peace Prize winner Jody Williams in the Wall Street Journal, "to arrange the release of Ms. [Aung San] Suu Kyi and hundreds — if not thousands — of other political prisoners." Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) has expressed similar sentiments, and various human rights groups are calling for the United States and Europe to boycott the Summer Olympics in Beijing.

But how much sway do Chinese leaders actually hold over Myanmar's famously intransigent, xenophobic military?

"They actually have very limited leverage, as all foreigners do," said William Overholt, who advised the pro-democracy coalition of 21 tribal groups that created the Provisional Revolutionary Government in Burma in 1989 and is now director of Rand's Center for Asia Pacific Policy. "The whole theory of this government is to cut itself off from the world so no one can influence it."

That certainly comes through in the propaganda, which I saw much of during the year and a half I spent living and working in Yangon. Under Burmese law, all printed material must contain a government statement of Burmese nationalist principles under the heading "people's desire." Principle No. 1? "Oppose those relying on external elements, acting as stooges, holding negative views." That message applies to China too: Stooges come in many stripes.

John H. Badgley, a retired Cornell University professor who has studied Myanmar for 50 years, says its rulers are best understood as a nationalist party not easily influenced or bought off. "The notion that some external group can come bludgeon them into behavior modification is just false," he said.

It will take more than talk to undermine the junta - they know that. They act while the west talks. It turns out that China isn't even Burma's biggest trading partner, Thailand is. It is possible that sanctions might create real pressures within Burma, but it would take coordinated efforts for them to be meaningful. China and Russia are resisting UN action and the European Union is holding trade seminars. So it is extremely unlikely that those sanctions will be forthcoming. It is terribly frustrating.