8 May 1997
Far Eastern Economic Review
Editorial
Sanctioning Burma, Stick with Engagement Of the many arguments against economic sanctions, the one that we have always found the most persuasive is the simplest: They don't work. The threat of sanctions, of course, has worked to squeeze concessions out of countries desperate for business, but in this they represent the economic equivalent of Mutual Assured Destruction. In other words, sanctions work only as a bluff. Once invoked, everyone loses.
Burma is its own best argument against isolationism.
This southeast Asian nation, one of the jewels of the region at its independence, managed to reduce itself to a third-world basket case through a self-imposed policy of closed-door self-sufficiency that ultimately spawned the current State Law and Order Restoration Council. Nor is Burma alone here. Of the nasty regimes throughout the world, surely the nastiest have been those cut off from everyone else-North Korea, Cuba, Albania, China during the Cultural Revolution, Vietnam. Throughout this period sanctions imposed by Washington made not a dent in their respective human-rights practices and arguably made a bad situation worse by denying their citizens the salve of opportunity. Even in a place like Iraq, soundly defeated by the Americans in the 1991 Gulf War, sanctions have failed to temper its atrocious rights practices or its nuclear ambitions.
The sanctions announced by Madeleine Albright carry even less credibility. For one thing, they are so clearly half-hearted, applying only to new investment. Even worse, the effect of imposing sanctions on a small fish like Burma while letting the much bigger Chinese fish off the hook is not to advance the cause of human rights in the former but to discredit U.S. policy towards the latter.
Not that we think Asian's uncritical embrace of Burma is the necessary conclusion. While there are excellent arguments for a policy of "constructive engagement," Asian's eagerness to take this tar-baby straight to the altar raises its own questions. Last year's admission of Vietnam to the Asian family, for example, has already created new pressures in the group's relations with neighboring China. The pressures to incorporate Burma so soon afterwards are more emotional than strategic. By all means, trade with Burma. But don't marry it.
