What Clinton's comments on Burma might mean for Canada

http://communities.canada.com/ottawacitizen/blogs/worldnextdoor/archive/2009/02/19/what-clinton-s-comments-on-burma-might-mean-for-canada.aspx

By kate_heartfield 02-19-2009 COMMENTS(0) The World Next Door
Filed under: Burma, U.S., sanctions, Clinton
Hillary Rodham Clinton's comments on Burma seem to signal an openness to a change of policy — away from sanctions and toward engagement. This from the Washington Post story:

"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."

As The Burma Campaign points out, it's not quite accurate to say that sanctions haven't worked — for one thing, the sanctions have not been anything close to universal. Still, though, it's hard to deny that neither China's engagement policy nor George W. Bush's isolation policy has forced the regime to change.

It's a tricky question — sanctions in general are tricky — and I don't pretend to have the answer, although I am highly skeptical, as I explained in this post a while back, that any increase in trade and investment would trickle down to the suffering people of Burma.



The thing that tips the balance for me is that the democractically elected government in exile (made up of parties such as Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy that won the last election, although the ruling miiltary junta ignored the result) have asked for sanctions. To my mind, that's the only body that has any moral authority to speak for the people of Burma.

Anyway, if the Obama administration does attempt a rapprochement with the military kleptocracy, it will be interesting to see whether the Canadian government follows suit. Harper's cabinet has been pretty well in line with the Bush attitude of condemnation and sanction toward Burma, so far anyway. (Indeed, I've been pleased to see our country, which so seldom takes a real position on any international issue any more, take firm positions on Burma and Iran. But who knows what the Conservatives will do from hour to hour?) If the Liberals get in, well, Liberals over the last couple of decades have a tendency to favour engagement policies, so we'll see.


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