End of the Rogue

Newsweek's latest issue runs an interesting piece on rogue states. Burma gets a healthy plug, see below. Read the full article here.

Burma presents perhaps the starkest and most advanced case of the failure of Western strategies aimed solely at cutting off repressive regimes. The two-decade old policy of isolating Burma now looks like a carefully constructed attempt to weaken Western influence and open the door to China, while devastating Burma's legitimate economy and doing nothing to improve its people's human rights.

Rangoon today is a city in a time warp, with battered cars from the '50s driving down unpaved roads alongside rickshaws, and barefoot children selling Chinese-made trinkets to the few tourists walking among the dilapidated, abandoned villas of the city's faded colonial glory. Virtually no aspect of Western policy here has worked: the military junta is as firmly in control as ever; the democratic opposition is in disarray; and where Western policy toward Burma used to be primarily concerned with the regime's domestic behavior, it now must contend with the generals' suspected ties to North Korea, including in the area of nuclear cooperation.

This is not to say that the sanctions haven't had an impact—only that they have been entirely counterproductive. In a series of recent conversations with civil-society leaders, businessmen, and foreign diplomats in Rangoon, a grim picture emerged: a middle class decimated and forced into exile; an educational system entirely unable to develop the country's human capital; a private sector hollowed out, with only the junta's cronies able to profit from trade in the country's natural resources. One Burmese businessman I spoke with put it best. "We are twice sanctioned," he lamented. "First by the regime and second by the West." Hillary Clinton recognized as much recently, stating that "the path we have taken in imposing sanctions hasn't influenced the Burmese junta." She added, with considerably less evidence, that "reaching out and trying to engage them hasn't influenced them either." Now tentative signs of a thaw in U.S.-Burma relations suggest that engagement may well have an impact—just not one that satisfies the short-term needs of Western policymakers and their demands for dramatic concessions.

For the rogues, the rising powers provide both diplomatic cover and alternative political and economic models. In Burma, Western sanctions have provided an opportunity for China and India to gain unchallenged economic and political influence within a country they consider of strategic significance.