18 August 1997
Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Editorial

City's Burma policy an endless, bad idea

Burma suffers under one of the world's worst regimes. The gaggle of generals who lord over that country's 47 million people has kept them subservient, isolated and poor. They have kept Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest for nearly a decade, and they fund their army with rake-offs from Burma's No. 1 export, opium.

Earlier this year, we supported President Clinton's executive order prohibiting new American investment in Burma. The sanction probably won't force a change in government, because unilateral sanctions rarely do. But at least it was an expression of American values.

The question now is whether Seattle's municipal government ought to one-up the president and adopt its own Burma policy. For this we have no enthusiasm.

City governments are about local things: police, courts, fire stations, parks, drinking water, signal lights and potholes. Municipalities have no power to regulate their citizens' investments abroad.

The proposal, sponsored by City Council president Jan Drago, would apply only to the city's own purchases. This probably makes it legal, but it also means that it is not an exercise of meaningful power. It is a political statement.

The proposal, as drafted now, would apply only to $100,000-plus bids "of equal value, as determined by the Executive Services Director." If two bids were about the same, the city would pick the company that didn't have investments in Burma. Says Drago, "It's a tie-breaker."

Few American companies have investments in Burma, and those are mainly in oil. The practical effect could be little more than buying fuel from Exxon or Chevron instead of Texaco or Unocal. This makes a political statement we agree with, but it sets the city down a road with no obvious end. Chevron has investments in Nigeria, a country whose leader stole an election and executed a prominent intellectual. Does Seattle single out Burma and not Nigeria because the Burmese have the better lobby here? Or do we try to set an honest standard by which we can distinguish among Burma, Nigeria, Cuba, North Korea, Libya, China, Vietnam, Rwanda and Sudan?

The easy answer is that we are following the federal government. They singled out Burma, so we can, too. But are we prepared to always follow Washington, D.C.? We didn't in 1984, when the Seattle City Council voted Managua, Nicaragua, a sister city. Prominent leaders here pushed to end the federal embargo of Vietnam, and to prevent federal sanctions of China.

Burma is easy to sanction: We have virtually no trade with it. But would this international port city dare discriminate against China, which last year was The Boeing Co.'s No. 2 foreign market? We may have little trade with North Korea, but one of our prominent companies, Fisher, has shipped flour there. Does the city want to slight Fisher, owner of KOMO-TV?

The time to think about these cases is when we're considering the first one. The Burma bill comes up in September. We hope the council thinks hard on such a policy - and realizes that Seattle having a foreign policy is a bad idea with no end.

Home |  About Us |  Resources |  Press Releases |  Federal Activity & Legislation
State & Local Activity |  NFTC Lawsuit |  Contact Us |  Site Index

.