Ending Burma’s Disconnect

Madame Secretary acknowledges reality:

“Clearly, the path we have taken in imposing sanctions hasn’t influenced the Burmese junta,” she said, adding that the route taken by Burma’s neighbors of “reaching out and trying to engage them has not influenced them, either.”

The best possible policy the US could pursue at this point would be to connect Burma to American products, ideas and influence, rather than ceding them completely over to India, China and Thailand. While the generals skillfully play off their neighbors over gas and other resource exploitation contracts, America is shut out in the cold with little to show for it.

Pointing our fingers and chanting “Bad, Bad” is not going to dissuade the junta’s behavior nor convince its neighbors to change course.

A more engaged America can find ways to finesse the worst aspects of Burma’s misrule (the rampant drug trade, the hazardous health pandemic incubation policies, increased instability from conflicts within and around its borders) while profitably (in an advancement of national interest sense) exploiting suspicions among its neighbors about each other’s intentions to the hilt.