It has been well publicized that President Barack Obama often
does not attend the regular White House morning intelligence
briefings. Instead, we’re told, he prefers to read written
summaries, presumably later in the day or while dashing off
somewhere on Air Force One. Whatever the president’s actual study
and briefing schedule, it is apparent that he is not an avid
student of foreign political/economic affairs.
The explanation has been given that Mr. Obama is a “people
person” who prefers to have his impressions created by direct
contact rather than detailed analysis prepared by faceless
intelligence analysts. With the foregoing in mind, one wonders
exactly what Barack Obama knew about Burma before he arrived there
to lecture his hosts on what their country needs to do in order to
make a success of their struggle for democracy.
Reference to the ethnic diversity of Burma was included in
President Obama’s speech to his favorite audience — students. But
did he really understand the complications of a nation in which
more than 60% of the citizens are of one ethnicity (Burman) and the
rest made up of 135 distinct ethnic groups (many living on a
subsistence level) divided for governmental classification into 8
major ethnic races? One of the major ambitions for most all these
groups is a desire for ethnic autonomy. To emphasize and protect
their individual objectives, many of these groupings have their own
militias. Knowledge of this background is essential to begin to
comprehend the complexity of the region’s politics.
To begin with, one would hope that President Obama had been
briefed on the relationship that the United States military and
intelligence service had with the Kachin tribal fighters going back
to their work with the American OSS Detachment 101 during World War
II. It may seem ancient history to some, but to the Kachin these
lessons of the past are still important. The Americans of the OSS
employed their Kachin comrades in gathering intelligence and
harassing the occupying Japanese forces. In fact, it was these and
other ethnic minorities that provided the core of the anti-Japanese
resistance in Burma.
Part of this same historical reality is that the majority Burman
population actually cooperated with the invading Japanese. These
things are not forgotten by the minorities. In fact, Aung San Suu
Kyi’s late father, the famous General Aung Sang, rallied his
Burmese troops to assist the Japanese invasion. It wasn’t until
later in the war when the tide was turning that an indigenous OSS
intelligence agent guided General Aung Sang and his troops to shift
his allegiance back to Britain’s General Bill Slim in India. It’s a
tale that President Obama most certainly would have heard about had
he any contact with Kachin leaders several weeks ago — which in
fact he did not have.
General Aung San would once again shift his allegiance when he
led the battle after the war’s end to remove British colonial rule.
There is no doubt that his now equally famous daughter Aung San Suu
Kyi’s political and physical life was saved by the memory of the
General’s own earlier opportunistic exploits. Her perception as a
“princess” has been created by history as much as the adoration of
her political followers. Her popular appellation, “The Lady,”
derives from this. The Burmese have a princess because they created
one. The shifting scene of Burmese political life today values such
continuity as much as it fears it, and she is careful not to
overreach.
Then there is the suspended hydroelectric power project in the
state of Kachin known as the Myitsone dam. This multi-billion
dollar Chinese construction project was aimed at providing an
economical power source to China through the damming of the
Irawaddy River. The lack of substantive benefit to the resident
Kachin people made it a less than attractive development to them
and everything had to be halted part of the way through. Of course
there is also that old animosity toward the central Burmese
government that goes back to WWII. The several thousand-man Kachin
Independent Army is still the strongest of the ethnic militaries
always ready to take the field against the much larger Burmese
Armed Forces — and as recently as last year has done so.
The truth is that the Chinese have been able to take advantage
of lower paid displaced ethnic minority Burmese labor. The question
arises as to whether Obama realizes he is placing the United States
in a position of interference in an area that long has been, if not
a sphere of Chinese influence, certainly a convenient resource-rich
neighbor easily exploitable through its long border area with
China. Encouraged by Hillary Clinton’s personal friendship with
Aung San Suu Kyi and George Soros’ longtime interest in gaining a
foothold in the mineral rich potential of Burma, President Obama
has taken the first steps to exerting American influence in both
the political and economic life of this complicated Asian
country.
Is this what the American president meant last fall when he
announced his intention to “pivot” U.S. interests to the Far East
and away from Middle Eastern conflicts? Certainly Beijing does not
look kindly on Washington involvement in an area China has long
cultivated. The chances are that the Obama Administration, enamored
of the heroic story of The Lady’s struggle for democracy in Burma,
has leaped rather naively into a portion of Asia as complicated and
danger-filled as any in the region.
Barack Obama is attempting to make his mark in a part of the
world he sees as less of a problem than that with which he has been
struggling in the Middle East. He has been encouraged to see the
future democratization of Burma as a potential major policy
accomplishment. His aim to be acclaimed as a great peacemaker
internationally fits this targeting perfectly. The problem is that
Burma is just not the safe and innocent object that he views it as
being.
Whether because of (1) the Chinese perception that the U.S. is
involving itself where it has no rightful place, or (2) the ongoing
conflicts of the mountainous northern states with the Burman
majority’s government instruments, or (3) the pivotal role of the
country’s military structure and its authoritarian social class,
Burma is hardly a trouble-free part of the world. Washington should
involve itself only in a peripheral manner unless it truly wishes
to pivot to challenge Beijing’s broader ambitions.
