CIAO DATE: 12/2012
August 2012
The Geneva Centre for Security Policy
Since the summer of 2011, the country of Myanmar has been experiencing rapid democratic reform. Headlines lauding these positive changes have become commonplace in the international media. However, experts and academics who have been involved in the decade-long campaign to bring peace and democracy to Myanmar remain divided over how sincere these changes are. Some accuse the Government of carrying out “window-dressing” reforms to please the Western governments and enable the lifting of sanctions. They argue that the Government has a vested interest in maintaining the reins of power and that there is no incentive to make true democratic reforms. During a speech in Oslo in June 2012, Aung San Suu Kyi, the Myanmarese Pro-democracy leader described the recent reforms as positive but warned against blind faith in the process and pointed out the main challenges that remain unresolved – namely the ethnic issues and the ongoing imprisonment of political prisoners. This Geneva Paper will posit that the current reforms are a means for Myanmar’s Government to ensure the continuity of military power in a different guise in order to allow engagement with the international community, rather than a case of democratic reform for the sake of democratization itself. The reason that the Government is so keen to engage with foreign governments and companies after years of isolation, is the incentive of the lifting of all sanctions, as well as a diversification in both business opportunities and aid following years of sole reliance on China. From a Western perspective there is widespread enthusiasm for engagement with Myanmar. This is driven not only by businesses, who are lining up to profit from Myanmar’s resources, but also by the fact that a market democratic Myanmar would break potential proliferation links with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) and fit geo-strategically with the United States’ widely proclaimed Pacific Century.
Resource link: Virtuality, Perception and Reality in Myanmar's Democratic Reform [PDF] - 1.2M