Myanmar

It’s that time of year again---when Washington cooks, the public transport goes on extended holiday, people head to the beach, and I offer some thoughts on books to take with you on vacation if you have an interest in Asian history, Southeast Asian politics, and Southeast Asian culture. Keep in mind that none of these books are exactly traditional “beach reads”---light page-turners that you can flip through while also watching your kids bury themselves in sand. One recent work that I recommend highly is China’s Future by David Shambaugh, director of the China Policy Program at George Washington University. Shambaugh is always worth reading on China, but in this relatively slim new work he concisely outlines his thesis that the Communist Party is beginning to crack---that China is actually less stable domestically than many outsiders think, and that China cannot defy the trend of history by continuing to get richer without opening its political system. I don’t share Shambaugh’s certainty that the Party is entering a “protracted” demise---Beijing has proven far more resilient than many Chinese and foreign observers had thought---but the book is insightful and clear. Another worthy new title, and one of several new works on Myanmar, is Blood, Dreams, and Gold: The Changing Face of Burma by former Economist Southeast Asia bureau chief Richard Cockett. During his time with The Economist, Cockett traveled widely in Myanmar, which was beginning to open up after decades of military rule and economic isolation. I wrote a longer review of Cockett’s new book, along with other new books on Myanmar, in the Washington Monthly earlier this year. In short, Cockett offers non-specialist readers an overview of the many, knotted reasons why Myanmar, a country that six decades ago had built a fragile democracy and seemed poised to take off economically, collapsed into a poor, military thugocracy that lasted for fifty years. In addition, Cockett has traveled so extensively in Myanmar today that he paints a full picture of the country seemingly on the verge of democratization, following the transition to civilian rule in the early 2010s and last November’s landmark national elections. He guides the reader in teasing out why the military, so long in control and so ruthless, was willing to give up power in the early 2010s, though it remains to be seen whether the military has fully retreated to the barracks. He also offers extensive reportage from some of the most economically depressed, conflict-torn parts of the county, like remote Chin State, where foreign reporters rarely venture. Cockett is not highly optimistic about Myanmar’s prospects for democratic consolidation; he believes its insurgencies remain too deeply engrained, its army retains too much influence, and its institutions are far too weak for democracy to take strong hold. For people who want to know more about the crisis in western Myanmar, where some 150,000 ethnic Rohingya have been driven from their homes since the transition to civilian rule in Naypyidaw in the early 2010s, I also recommend The Rohingyas: Inside Myanmar’s Hidden Genocide by Azeem Ibrahiim, a fellow at Oxford and a professor at the U.S. Army War College. The book is not the easiest to read---the prose is sometimes a bit confusing---but it is, right now, the essential guide to the ongoing, largely ignored crimes against humanity in western Myanmar. It is highly depressing material, especially considering how little pressure has been put on Naypyidaw to address the situation in the country’s west. Finally, consider picking up A Life Beyond Boundaries, the posthumous memoir of Benedict Anderson, perhaps the most influential Southeast Asia scholar of the twentieth century. Anderson, who died last year, was instrumental in expanding Southeast Asia studies in the United States. He also played a central role in bringing the massacres in Indonesia in 1965 and 1966 to the attention of the world. For his role in producing a report, done by a team of researchers at Cornell University, on the massacres, Anderson was banned from Indonesia until the end of the Suharto regime. Anderson later wrote multiple influential books on the Philippines and Thailand, and---in 1983---gained an even wider audience with his landmark work, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism. In it, he redefined the study of nationalism, arguing that nations are socially constructed, and that these large, constructed communities were only launched by the creation of the printing press and other modern inventions. In later life, as Southeast Asia began to democratize, and shed some of the sociocultural traditions Anderson had studied, Anderson dedicated himself to disparate projects on Southeast Asian culture and religion, and the impacts of modernization. In addition, he was apparently determined to show that scholarship should never mean narrowing one’s focus too much, a point he returns to regularly in his memoir.

Of all the ethnic, racial, and religious minorities in the world, wrote the Economist last year, the Rohingya may well be the most persecuted people on the planet. Today nearly two million Rohingya live in western Myanmar and in Bangladesh. Inside Myanmar they have no formal status, and they face the constant threat of violence from paramilitary groups egged on by nationalist Buddhist monks while security forces look the other way. Since 2012, when the latest wave of anti-Rohingya violence broke out, attackers have burnt entire Rohingya neighborhoods, butchering the populace with knives, sticks, and machetes. They beat Rohingya children to death with rifle butts and, quite possibly, their bare hands. Since then, half the population of Myanmar’s Rohingya has been displaced. Some have tried to escape to other Southeast Asian nations on rickety boats often operated by human traffickers. If the migrants do not die of dehydration or heat stroke, they are often picked up by pirates or the Thai navy—which may not be much better than getting nabbed by pirates. Exhaustive reporting by Reuters seems to suggest that Thailand’s navy is closely involved in shuttling Rohingya refugees into slave labor in Thailand’s seafood, fishing, and other industries. Rohingya women who do not have enough to pay traffickers are forced into marriages or prostitution. For more on the state of the Rohingya today, and how they might fare under the NLD-led government in Myanmar, see my new piece on the Rohingya in the Washington Monthly.

Rachel Brown, Lincoln Davidson, Theresa Lou, Gabriella Meltzer, and Gabriel Walker look at five stories from Asia this week. 1. China releases ambitious plan to clean up polluted soil. In 2014, the Chinese government disclosed that approximately 20 percent of its arable land was contaminated, primarily with heavy metals and agricultural chemicals from industry and farming. This Tuesday, the central government released a long-awaited action plan as a first major step to control and remedy the widespread problem, known as the last of the “three big campaigns” in Chinese environmental protection along with air and water pollution. The plan aims to stabilize and improve soil quality so that 90 percent of contaminated sites are safe for use by 2020, and 95 percent by 2030. It also includes provisions for improving the transparency of soil quality data and emphasizes more severe penalties for polluters. One Greenpeace expert praised the proposal as “pragmatic,” in that it would take steps to ensure that soil pollution would not “lead to major problems” for the millions affected. Since the cost of cleaning up all of China’s polluted soil will top $1 trillion, the plan may prove to be a lucrative opportunity for companies offering soil remediation services in the coming years. 2. Malaysia’s hudud law sparks controversy. Malaysia’s Prime Minister Najib Razak backed a bill originally put forth by the Parti Islam se-Malaysia to strengthen Islamic courts and introduce hudud, a system of punishment under Islamic law. The punishments included under hudud can be severe including stoning and amputation, although the prime minster said that Malaysia will not permit anything that will draw blood or cause injury. While the new punishments would apply just in the nation’s syariah courts, which are only for Muslims, the proposal has nonetheless launched considerable debate. Members of parties such as the Malaysian Indian Congress have said the bill violates Malaysia’s constitution and notions of a secular government. Additionally, two non-Muslim ministers in the cabinet, Liow Tiong Lai and Mah Siew Keong, announced they will resign if the bill passes after debate in October. Two east Malaysian states, Sarawak and Sabah, have also threatened to split with the rest of the country over the bill. Some speculate that the prime minister, who is tainted by the 1MDB corruption scandal, views the bill as a way to firm up support among Muslim voters before upcoming by-elections. A proposal that is already sowing discord among members of the ruling coalition and that threatens to inflame ethnic tension hardly seems like the path to success though. 3. Death of environmentalist sparks reflection on police brutality in China. Beijing city authorities are investigating the death of a young environmental official in police custody last month. The man, Lei Yang, was arrested by plainclothes police outside of a Beijing massage parlor on the evening of May 7 on suspicion of soliciting prostitutes. Less than an hour later, police took him to a hospital, claiming he had suffered a heart attack and died. The story is disputed by Lei’s family and friends, who say there is no history of heart disease in his family, claim he was on his way to the airport to receive relatives, and question why police took several hours to notify his family of his death and deleted messages from his phone. In response to these claims, police took to the press, trying to clarify their story, only to have public opinion flare up in anger against them after netizens began questioning inconsistencies in the official report of the incident. The debate over Lei’s death has raised questions about how commonly individuals die in police custody in China and if this incident would have gotten a full investigation if Lei had not been young, a new father, and a graduate of one of China’s best universities. 4. Number of internally displaced Afghans on the rise. Amnesty International reported on Tuesday at a press conference in Kabul that the number of internally displaced people (IDPs) in Afghanistan has doubled since 2013 to roughly 1.2 million.  Despite the fact that these are people living in camps lacking sufficient health, food, or water facilities, the financial resources allocated to the fifteen-year crisis are at their lowest point since 2009. The United Nations requested $393 million in humanitarian funding for 2016, but, as of May, has only been able to raise a quarter of this request. The majority of civilians have fled their communities in recent years due to a flagging economy with only 1.9 percent growth and continuing violence carried out by the Taliban. In fact, the UN Assistance Mission to Afghanistan has said that 2015 “was the most dangerous year on record for civilians since 2009” with at least eleven thousand casualties, one-fourth of whom were children. Although the Afghan government endorsed the "National Policy on Internally Displaced Persons" in 2014, corruption-ridden institutions and a state lacking capacity and expertise have been unable to deliver on promises made to IDPs and forced evictions are a daily threat. 5. Bangladesh conducts first census of Rohingya. The census, which began this week, will not only allow the Bangladeshi government to gain a more accurate count of how many Rohingya  live both inside and outside of refugee camps, but will also give greater insight into the group’s economic circumstances. Estimates of the number of Rohingya in the country range from three hundred thousand to five hundred thousand. A significant number of Rohingya began fleeing from Myanmar to Bangladesh beginning in 2012, and have continued with renewed cycles of violence. While Myanmar agreed to repatriate 2,415 people from Bangladesh in 2014, this has not yet occurred. Some expressed concern that the current census, conducted with assistance from the International Organization for Migration, would serve as preparation to deport Rohingya from Bangladesh. Censuses have proved difficult for the Rohingya in the past; during the 2014 census in Myanmar, the government did not allow individuals to identify as Rohingya and said they should register as Bengali instead. Bonus: North Korea says “Vote Trump, not that dull Hilary.” Presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump’s latest endorsement came from a surprising source: North Korea. Two weeks after Trump’s speech, during which he declared he would have “no problem speaking to [Kim Jong-un],” a North Korean state media published an op-ed praising Trump as a wise and far-sighted presidential candidate. This is not the first time Trump has expressed unconventional ideas related to U.S. foreign policy on the Korean Peninsula. In a previous interview, Trump stated that he would be willing to withdraw U.S. forces from Japan and South Korea unless they pay more for U.S. military presence. He also suggested that it might not “be a bad thing for [the United States]” for Japan to develop its own nuclear deterrent. Though a senior North Korean official has called Trump’s willingness to engage with Kim merely an insincere gesture for the presidential election, U.S. allies are increasingly worried about Trump’s “America first” agenda.

Rachel Brown is a research associate in Asia Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. China ranks first in many things – population, greenhouse gas emissions, foreign treasury holdings – but openness toward refugees is one arena in which it has not traditionally been considered a leader. It therefore came as surprise when China ranked first in Amnesty International’s recently released “Refugees Welcome Index,” a survey that polled over 27,000 people in twenty-seven nations on their attitudes toward refugees. This put it ahead of nations such as Germany and Canada that have already taken in thousands of Syrian refugees. China also topped the list in citizens’ reported willingness to accept a refugee into their homes, with a whopping 46 percent of respondents willing to do so. (In the next highest nation, the United Kingdom, the share was just 29 percent.) While the Chinese data may not be fully representative as it was collected from just 1,055 respondents in eighteen major cities, the survey nonetheless caught people off guard.  The results fly in the face of multiple aspects of China’s past policies and attitudes toward refugees, namely: The Chinese government provides little financial support for international refugees. In 2015, the Chinese government ranked just fifty-first among both private and national donors to the UN High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR), giving only $941,841, less than one-eighth the amount given by private Chinese donors. (The Chinese government has also provided other humanitarian assistance to Middle Eastern countries resettling refugees and donated ten thousand tons of food for Syrian refugees in February 2016). The government also has not shown particular tolerance toward those fleeing to China’s own borders. China is party to the 1951 Refugee Convention and the Convention against Torture, but as of December 2015, UNHCR reported just 727 displaced "persons of concern" in China. The same month, the UN Committee Against Torture criticized China’s policy of deeming North Korean defectors economic migrants not refugees and forcibly deporting them. This behavior violates China’s international treaty obligations since North Korean defectors may face “persecution, torture, prolonged arbitrary detention and, in some cases, sexual violence” after repatriation. And just two weeks ago, a report indicated that China planned to send home Kokang refugees, an ethnic Chinese population from Myanmar, who had been living in Yunnan province. Officials don’t respect refugee status abroad much either. Last year, multiple Chinese dissidents were returned from Thailand despite receiving arrangements for resettlement as asylees and being granted a UNHCR letter of protection. Chinese citizens may not actually be so enthusiastic about taking in refugees. In a poll by China’s state-run Global Times shortly after the Amnesty report’s release, 90.3 percent of respondents said they didn’t want “to receive refugees in their own homes,” and 79.6 percent opposed having them in their own city or as a neighbor. Popular comments on the survey echoed this less tolerant attitude and called on Western nations to bear full responsibility. One user wrote, “I’m only willing to accept a refugee from a natural disaster, and will absolutely not accept a refugee from a civil war because conflict refugees are of America’s own making and all of the consequences should be assumed by America. We absolutely cannot pay the bill for America’s homicidal maniacs!” Another wrote, “America, the ‘model for global citizens,’ can come do patrols in the South China Sea, why can’t they be a model for housing refugees????” So which survey is more accurate? Most likely neither entirely reflects national sentiments. The Global Times survey was open to anyone online, but the paper is known for its nationalistic readership and controversial positions; meanwhile GlobeScan, who conducted Amnesty’s survey, held phone interviews with members of urban, adult populations, who may be more tolerant of refugees. Linguistic confusion could also have skewed Amnesty’s results. A Quartz article noted that the word used for refugee in the survey, nanmin (难民), can refer either to someone fleeing across international borders or to someone internally displaced due to a natural disaster or other cause. In China, the authors observe, people might be more willing to host the latter. Indeed, China placed highly on questions including just the term nanmin but ranked nineteenth on a question that specifically referenced being “able to take refuge in other countries to escape war or persecution.” (Interestingly, the Global Times poll also only used nanmin, but did reference the Amnesty survey). Despite the Amnesty survey’s potential flaws, reasons for optimism remain. In the study, Chinese respondents placed first in one last category: the belief that their government should be doing “more to help refugees fleeing war or persecution.” 86 percent of respondents supported this statement. China has successfully integrated refugees before and could do so again. Most of the approximately three hundred thousand refugees resettled during the Vietnam War now enjoy full rights. If anywhere close to 86 percent of Chinese citizens truly believe their government should do more, it’s time for them to start advocating for policy changes, including potential resettlement.

Helia Ighani is the assistant director of the Council on Foreign Relations’ Center for Preventive Action. Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) won a majority of the votes after a landslide election in November 2015, becoming the first fully civilian-led government in Myanmar’s history. Once in power in April 2016, the NLD government released nearly two hundred political prisoners detained by the former military junta government, demonstrating Suu Kyi’s commitment to democratizing the country. However, the new NLD government has not yet attempted to reconcile animosity among Myanmar’s various ethnic groups—in particular, its Rohingya population. Up to 1.1 million Rohingya live in Myanmar, facing serious human rights violations, and thousands have been displaced due to violence with Buddhist nationalists (see CFR’s Global Conflict Tracker for an overview of the sectarian violence in Myanmar). Many have criticized Suu Kyi for refusing to touch the Rohingya issue, including the Dalai Lama. A new Center for Preventive Action (CPA) report, Securing a Democratic Future for Myanmar, highlights this concerns and the importance of U.S. involvement in the country’s transition to democracy. Priscilla A. Clapp, the former chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Myanmar and senior advisor to the U.S. Institute of Peace and the Asia Society, argues that reforms over the past five years have transformed Myanmar “from a country of little strategic interest to the United States into one that promises substantial benefit to core U.S. interests in Southeast Asia and beyond.” Yet, as the outgoing U.S. ambassador to Myanmar Derek Mitchell expressed at a recent CPA event, the “deep reservoir of mistrust in the country must be overcome,” regarding the reconciliation of the recognized 135 ethnic minorities in Myanmar and the “very delicate issue” of the Rohingya minority. Washington has already begun to change its tone on Myanmar. The new U.S. ambassador to Myanmar Scot Marciel said he will continue to use “Rohingya”—considered a controversial term by many hardline Buddhists who refer to the unrecognized population as “Bengali”—when referring to the large Muslim community in Myanmar, despite being asked by the government to not bring up the issue. While Washington hinted that it is considering reversing its sanctions policy toward Myanmar, it is counting on the new government to improve human rights conditions. The Obama administration will decide on whether to continue the sanctions when the underlying legal basis for the program expires next week. Clapp details policy options for facilitating a democratic transition with the NLD government, including U.S. policy recommendations relating to human rights conditions and sanctions on Myanmar. Over the coming year, she recommends that the United States should: • Assist with the establishment of a reconciliation government. • Provide assistance for economic development and conflict mediation in Rakhine State and encourage the new government to give legal status to the Rohingya minority. • Revise the legal structure of remaining sanctions and begin to sunset sanctions specific to Myanmar. • In consultation with the NLD, develop a strategy to expand dialogue with Myanmar’s military.   In the long term, she encourages the United States to: • Expand the purview of U.S. assistance to include capacity-building for government institutions. • Help rebuild the justice system. • Promote economic development at the state level to consolidate peace with ethnic minorities. • Lead a regional effort to find a humane solution to Rohingya statelessness and legal status in neighboring countries. • Promote Myanmar’s political and economic integration into the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).   Read Securing a Democratic Future for Myanmar to get Clapp’s full analysis and learn more about Myanmar’s transition to democracy.

Three new annual reports, from the U.S. State Department, Freedom House, and Reporters without Borders, add further evidence to worries that much of Southeast Asia is experiencing an authoritarian revival. Released this week, Freedom House’s annual Freedom of the Press report (for which I served as a consultant for several Southeast Asia chapters) reveals that in nearly all the ten ASEAN nations, press freedom regressed significantly last year. Freedom House’s findings are similar those of Reporters Without Borders annual Press Freedom Index, which was released earlier this month. In it, the scores of Thailand, Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, and other Southeast Asian nations dropped, as compared to their scores in 2015. Like Freedom House’s report, RSF’s analysts use a range of indicators to reflect the overall level of press freedom in each nation. These falls are not surprising---Malaysia has shuttered major publications that have reported on the 1MDB scandal swirling around Prime Minister Najib tun Razak, Thailand’s junta is proving increasingly intolerant of dissent, Brunei has promulgated harsh new sharia-based laws, and other Southeast Asian nations like Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam remain highly intolerant of independent reporting. And these declines in press freedom are indicative of a broader trend. As I have written, much of Southeast Asia has regressed from democratic transition over the past decade; its retrenchment is symptomatic of a broader, global authoritarian revival. Finally, the State Department’s annual country reports on human rights provides more evidence of the democratic downfall of a region that was once touted as an example of political progress. While Myanmar made significant strides toward democracy in 2015, and Indonesia and the Philippines remained vibrant democracies, the country reports show that most of the rest of the region regressed in terms of rights and freedoms. Thailand came in for a particularly harsh assessment, with the State Department noting, “The interim [Thai] constitution remained in place during the year, as did numerous decrees severely limiting civil liberties, including restrictions on freedom of speech, assembly, and the press.” The country reports further noted that in Malaysia, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, and Brunei, among other Southeast Asian nations, there were signs of growing repression in 2015. In the coming months, Southeast Asia’s political trajectory will become even clearer. The NLD-led government in Myanmar is beginning to develop a policy agenda, and its actions will clarify how successfully it can manage a difficult transition from military rule---whether Myanmar becomes more like Thailand, where the armed forces never really returned to the barracks, or like Indonesia, where the power of the armed forces has been curbed significantly. Thailand will hold a referendum, in August, on a new constitution midwifed by the junta. The Thai coup government has essentially barred any open discussion of the new constitution, which contains clauses that could perpetuate the military’s influence and drastically weaken the power of elected members of parliament in the future. However, it seems unlikely that the coup government will resort to outright rigging the constitutional referendum, though it will try its hardest to sway Thais to vote for the draft. The junta has cracked down on most types of dissent, so Thais may use the referendum to voice their frustrations. If the new constitution passes by only a small percentage of the vote, or is even defeated, it would suggest that there is sizable antigovernment sentiment bubbling up in Thailand. Finally, there are the upcoming elections in the Philippines, to be held next week. Some Philippine civil society activists worry that strong popular support for vice presidential candidate Ferdinand Marcos Jr, son of the former dictator, and for presidential candidate Rodrigo Duterte, who allegedly oversaw brutal anticrime strategies as mayor of Davao, marks a rising popular frustration with the difficulties of democratic government---a longing for a strongman who can just get things done, ignoring institutions or checks on power. Since the Philippines is the most established and vibrant democracy in the region, the results of its presidential election will be another powerful signal of regional trends.

The expectations for Myanmar’s new, National League for Democracy (NLD)-led government are almost impossibly high. After five decades under military or quasi-military rule, many Myanmar citizens expect the NLD government to make a decisive break with the country’s authoritarian past, while also promoting greater equality---and reforming the economy enough to foster stable growth that benefits more than just Myanmar’s elites. All these expectations are being heaped on a government led by ministers who, because of the country’s bleak political past, have little or no experience in governance and administration, and who belong to a political party organized around the dominating figure of Aung San Suu Kyi. The fact that the armed forces have little intention of simply receding from politics, a position reiterated by the head of the military on Armed Forces Day last month, only further complicates the NLD’s ability to govern. Although there are regional examples of countries, like Indonesia, where the armed forces have eventually been maneuvered out of politics, there are also many Southeast Asian examples, as like neighboring Thailand, where the generals never really returned to the barracks. Some younger NLD members worry too, about Suu Kyi’s dominance---she has not only taken two ministerial positions but also a newly created position as minister counselor, making her a de facto head of state. The combination of portfolios held by the Nobel laureate, and the weak popular credentials of many other ministers, gives Suu Kyi enormous power in the policymaking process. In addition, the creation of the minister counselor position was essentially rammed through the lower house, worrying some MPs about the NLD’s commitment to seriously debating legislation. Since taking office roughly two weeks ago, the new Myanmar government has made some positive moves. It has released most of the country’s remaining political prisoners, or announced plans to pardon them, a critical symbol that the new government will further relax freedom of expression and protest. Yet other signs from the new government are more worrying, if perhaps predictable. The NLD’s economic and financial platform remains muddled, with party insiders suggesting that the senior leadership has no clear plan for how to continue Myanmar’s economic reforms while tweaking them to address the problem of growing inequality. What’s more, during the campaign season last year, Suu Kyi and other NLD leaders remained ominously quiet about the campaign of violence against Rohingya and other Muslims in Myanmar, a campaign that has decimated the Rohingya community. When Suu Kyi did talk to the press or the public about Buddhist-Muslim tensions, she tended to downplay them, telling reporters not to “exaggerate” the problems of the Rohingya. Shortly after the new government took office in late March, it announced that the spokesman for the former, Thein Sein government, Zaw Htay, would be retained and promoted. Zaw Htay is widely known in Myanmar for his inflammatory remarks about the Rohingya, including posting photos online that exacerbated tensions between Buddhists and Muslims, according to the Irrawaddy. Meanwhile, the new minister for religious affairs, Aung Ko (who does not come from the NLD), last week called Muslims “associate citizens,” implying that they did not deserve the same type of citizenship as Buddhists. Myanmar media also revealed that Aung Ko has held meetings with U Wirathu, the firebrand nationalist monk, who is infamous for his anti-Muslim rhetoric. Meanwhile, many other ministers in the new government appear unimpressive. In addition to concern about some ministers’ dubious degrees, many members of the Cabinet are close political allies of the former speaker of the lower house, Thura Shwe Mann. As the Irrawaddy has noted, many of these allies of Shwe Mann have alleged links with companies that, under the military regime, were close to the generals and accused of illegal activities like corruption and drug trafficking, among others.

Last week, Myanmar announced the first Cabinet proposed by its NLD-dominated government. Although a handful of important ministries, like defense, were reserved for the armed forces, the NLD took most of the other important posts. In fact, Suu Kyi herself decided to take four ministerial posts, including the foreign ministry. As is common in any country transitioning to democracy, the list of Cabinet members was a mixed bag---some clearly qualified politicians and experts with deep knowledge in their ministry’s areas combined with party loyalists with dubious qualifications. Certainly, several jobs went to highly qualified people. The proposed new Minister of Hotels and Tourism, for instance, will be Ohn Maung, a hotelier with some four decades of experience in the travel industry. His Inle Princess Resort has been recognized as one of the best-run and most socially responsible hotels in Myanmar. Nai Thet Lwin, the proposed new Ethnic Affairs minister, is a longtime leader of the Mon National Party and is well respected by many ethnic parties. However, the fact that Suu Kyi is taking four ministerial posts herself adds further weight to the idea that she intends to rule the NLD and the government---and thus Myanmar, even though she is constitutionally prohibited from taking the presidency. As a I noted in a previous post, it is too soon to determine whether new president Htin Kyaw will be a Suu Kyi puppet, as Suu Kyi clearly intends. Still, by amassing so much power within the Cabinet, Suu Kyi will have an even stronger hand to control the president and the party. The second critical takeaway from the list of proposed ministers is that the NLD does not seem to have effectively vetted many of its Cabinet picks. Perhaps this lack of vetting is unsurprising; the NLD is putting together its first cabinet in a country that last had a democratic government five decades ago. But the lack of vetting is troubling, especially for those who worry that the NLD’s inexperience in governing will hinder its ability to run the country in these critical next two or three years. According to reports in the New York Times and some Myanmar media, Kyaw Win, the proposed new finance minister, received his master’s degree and a doctorate from a “university” based in Pakistan that was actually a group of websites that provided fake diplomas. (Late last week, Kyaw Win admitted to local reporters that his degree in finance was indeed fake, although he still seems to be the leading contender for the ministerial post.) It seems likely that Kyaw Win was chosen for the job not for his credentials but because he had been a longtime NLD member and a trusted member of the NLD’s economic committee. His selection casts more doubt over the NLD’s direction on economic policy. Meanwhile, the man expected to be minister of commerce, Than Myint, has a degree from what the New York Times called an unaccredited correspondence school. Businesspeople in Myanmar cannot be reassured by fact that the NLD chose these men for Cabinet positions in areas as important as finance and commerce. The picks should give pause, in fact, to anyone following Myanmar’s bumpy transition.

Last November, Myanmar held its first truly free national elections in twenty-five years. In the months leading up to the vote, members of the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD), foreign diplomats, and many Myanmar voters worried that, no matter who actually received the most votes, the results would somehow be invalidated. After all, Myanmar’s military had ruled the country since 1962, when it first took power in a coup, and had only given way, in the early 2010s, to a civilian government that was led by a former top general, President Thein Sein. The military-installed government had written a constitution designed to bar the NLD’s leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, from ever winning the presidency, and the military had created a political party, the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), that would hold power in a civilian parliament. (Myanmar’s president is not directly elected, but instead chosen by members of parliament, and the military wrote a clause in the constitution barring anyone who had a foreign spouse, like Suu Kyi, from running for president.) In the run-up to the November election, the government had used all the powers of the state---state media, state funds for local projects, arrests and detentions of opposition political activists---to help the USDP win control of parliament and the provincial parliaments across Myanmar. The USDP did not even have to win a majority of seats to keep the army in power; the constitution reserved 25 percent of the seats in the lower house for military officers, so the USDP only had to win 25.1 percent of seats for the army and its allies to have de facto control. And in some respects, the civilian regime led by Thein Sein had taken strides toward effective governance, opening the country to foreign investment, restoring closer relations with leading democracies, opening up the local media environment, and freeing hundreds of political prisoners, including many members of the NLD. Just before Election Day, Thein Sein gave a speech in which he obliquely warned that if voters did not choose the USDP, Myanmar’s reforms could easily be endangered. Surely, most USDP officials felt, the Myanmar public, appreciative of Thein Sein’s reforms and scared of voting against the military’s favored party, would support the USDP. It didn’t happen. On Election Day, the NLD dominated contests for the national legislature and the provincial parliaments. The party won 86 percent of the seats contested in the national parliament, taking a majority of seats in the lower house of parliament, even with the military still being allotted 25 percent of seats. The NLD’s majority allowed it to choose Myanmar’s new president, Htin Kyaw. The NLD also won a majority of Myanmar’s provincial bodies. Many of the USDP’s most powerful politicians, who had been sitting in the lower house since the handover to civilian rule, were ousted. And unlike the last time Myanmar held free national elections, in 1990, the military appeared ready to respect the people’s wishes. In 1990, after the NLD had won 392 of the 492 parliamentary seats contested, the army refused to recognize the result, and simply continued running the country for another two decades. But this time around, Suu Kyi quickly met with the army leadership, and army chief pledged that the military would not intervene in the transition to a NLD-led government. Top leaders of the USDP echoed the army’s call for a calm transition, with USDP acting chairman U Htay Oo telling Burmese reporters, “USDP has lost to the NLD. We will accept this result.” As the results trickled in from Myanmar’s election commission, Myanmar citizens held a raucous, nearly nonstop party in front of the NLD’s headquarters in downtown Yangon. The foreign reaction to Myanmar’s election was, in some ways, even more euphoric. Obama administration officials I met in the weeks after the Myanmar election seemed almost giddy that the Southeast Asian nations, so long a byword for thuggish army rule, could actually now be led by the NLD. Myanmar’s amazing election was even more remarkable given that, in the countries surrounding it, like Thailand, Bangladesh, and Malaysia, democracy seemed to be going into reverse. Foreign media outlets, too, celebrated the election as a massive breakthrough. The Washington Post, whose editorial board had been known for its hard-nosed view on the Myanmar military regime, touted the elections as “a triumph of hope … a triumph for those who kept the flame [of freedom] alive.” For the White House, such celebrations were not surprising. The United States had been the most forceful advocate of economic sanctions against the junta until Barack Obama’s presidency. Many who served in the Obama administration considered rapprochement with Myanmar one of the biggest successes of Obama’s presidency. Hillary Clinton, who visited Myanmar as Secretary of State in 2011, and developed a personal bond with the NLD leader, used a whole chapter of her recent memoir, Hard Choices, to highlight Myanmar’s transition, and the U.S. role in it. Myanmar’s democratization reflects “the unique role the United States can and should play in the world as a champion of dignity and democracy,” Clinton wrote. It is “America at our best.” Now, the payoff of this revamped U.S. policy apparently had come. Myanmar would become a democracy, and perhaps in the future a rewritten constitution would allow Suu Kyi to become president. A democratic Myanmar would be peaceful and stable, an example to other countries in one of the most turbulent regions in the world. A NLD-led Myanmar would surely tilt toward the United States and American friends like India and Singapore, end Myanmar’s lingering civil conflicts, crack down on the trade in illegal narcotics, gems, and wildlife, and create an economic environment ripe for U.S. companies. This rosy narrative has more than a few holes in it. For more on my assessment of the administration’s Myanmar’s policy, see my new book review in the Washington Monthly.

Htin Kyaw, who is almost surely going to be the new president of Myanmar, was so unknown to the international media that when he was nominated last week for president by the National League for Democracy (NLD), stories about him were riddled with mistakes. Some news reports suggested that he had attended Oxford University (his father actually attended Oxford, while Htin Kyaw studied at the defunct University of London Institute of Computer Science), while other reports suggested he had been Suu Kyi’s chauffeur, a rumor strenuously denied by NLD spokespeople. The Irrawaddy’s Aung Zaw offers a more thorough profile of Htin Kyaw, a longtime NLD member. Aung Zaw notes that Htin Kyaw is regarded by many associates as disciplined, capable of communicating well with both domestic and international audiences, and highly organized. Since the NLD dominates the powerful lower house of parliament, Htin Kyaw is almost sure to be confirmed as president. (Myanmar’s president is not chosen by direct election; the upper house and the military also nominated presidential candidates, but Htin Kyaw is almost certain to be selected.) Despite Htin Kyaw’s positive traits, his most important qualification for the job is his lifelong, unalloyed commitment to Aung San Suu Kyi, who is constitutionally barred from serving as president. Even before the November 2015 election, Suu Kyi made clear that, if the NLD won, she intended to govern the country by proxy, and she has not shied away from that stance. Htin Kyaw certainly has demonstrated his fealty to Suu Kyi and to the party, serving on the executive committee of the foundation named after her late mother. He has known Suu Kyi since childhood, and he is the son-in-law of U Lwin, who was a co-founder of the National League for Democracy. Larry Jagan, one of the most experienced reporters on Myanmar, offered this analysis of what the relationship between Suu Kyi and a President Htin Kyaw might look like: The iconic pro-democracy leader is set to become ‘senior minister’ in the cabinet---along the lines of Singapore’s former prime minister, Lee Kwan Yew after he officially retired from the top post, according to senior sources in the NLD. The new position will possibly be within the president’s office, where she will effectively run the government, or as head of a new ministry to oversee the transition [to democracy.] Although Suu Kyi and other party leaders appear to be assuming that Htin Kyaw will be a perfect proxy, doing whatever a small circle of other NLD elites want, such an assumption may be short-sighted. Once inaugurated, Htin Kyaw will, constitutionally, have a significant array of powers that he could wield even without Suu Kyi’s support. He will have the opportunity, if he wants, to build his own power base and team of advisors. Even if Suu Kyi stands firmly behind him, Htin Kyaw also will have to play a major role, himself, in ongoing and difficult negotiations between the government and ethnic insurgent groups over the possibility of a nationwide peace deal, and between the NLD and the military over reducing the army’s influence in politics. The new president has little experience dealing with the ethnic insurgencies or the military’s top commanders, and may leave his own imprint on both of these delicate negotiations. The country’s recent history offers more lessons that the NLD’s leadership would be wise to heed. In recent years, other powerful leaders in Myanmar also mistakenly assumed their proxies would carry out their intentions unquestioningly. When Myanmar began its transition from junta role in the early 2010s, the junta’s leaders apparently believed that Thein Sein, the man they chose to manage the change, would be a perfect servant of the military. Yet soon after assuming the presidency in 2011, Thein Sein embarked upon a wave of reforms that , in many ways, appeared more ambitious and rapid than the former junta leaders had imagined. The reforms quickly won popular support, making the transition almost impossible to reverse.

Over the past six months, the Obama White House has rapidly bolstered diplomatic and economic ties with Cuba. Last month, Washington and Havana signed a deal restoring commercial flights between the two countries for first time in over fifty years; the deal, one of many agreements recently reached, came at the same time as Washington allowed a U.S. factory to set up in Cuba. The outreach to the island is an attempt, according to deputy national security advisor Ben Rhodes, to ensure that the U.S.-Cuba rapprochement is nearly irreversible by the time that Obama leaves office. To further cement ties, Obama will visit Cuba later this month—making him the first U.S. president to do so since Calvin Coolidge. Recently, White House officials also have begun mentioning a more specific template for this bilateral rapprochement, and for how Cuba might open up its economy and its political system: Myanmar. Since the first days of Obama’s first term, administration officials placed a priority on restoring closer U.S. ties with Myanmar. Myanmar was, at the time, isolated from the United States and most other democracies by decades of junta rule, destructive economic policies, and sanctions imposed after massive rights abuses by Myanmar’s leaders. The Obama administration believed that sanctions had failed to change the course of Myanmar politics, and that America’s inattention to the Southeast Asian country was making Myanmar a virtual Chinese client state. To reverse U.S. policy toward Myanmar, over the past seven years, the White House has indeed relaxed sanctions on the country, appointed ambassadorial level representation to Myanmar (the United States had an embassy in Myanmar, but it had been led by a charge d’affaires), launched new aid programs in Myanmar, and even considered restoring military ties down the road. The Obama administration sees Myanmar as a success story, and one in which the United States played a major role in the transition. Now, it apparently sees U.S.-Myanmar relations as a model as well. As Hillary Clinton notes in her memoir Hard Choices, the administration believes that it played a central role in pushing the Myanmar generals to move toward elections, and that the rapprochement with Myanmar was an example of U.S. diplomacy and soft power at its finest. A recent Washington Post article effectively summarized administration views on U.S.-Myanmar relations and how they could be a model for relations with Cuba. “There are important similarities” between the White House’s approach to Cuba and its approach toward Myanmar, the Post reported. U.S. deputy national security advisor Ben Rhodes told the Post that in both cases the White House was breaking from years of isolating these nations, and that the administration would set the foundations for a new relationship to be built over generations. For more on how the U.S.-Myanmar relationship could---or could not---be a model for ties with Cuba, read my new article on World Politics Review.

Read Part 1 here and Part 2 here.  Part 3 Southeast Asia’s decade of democratic regression, which I examined in the previous blog post, reflects a worrying global retrenchment. Freedom House’s annual Freedom in the World report, which measures the spread or retrenchment of freedom globally, has reported ten straight years of declining global political freedom. In Freedom House’s 2016 edition of Freedom in the World, more than seventy countries registered declines in political freedom as compared to the prior year. The implications of this democratic regression are broad and significant. On a human level, the regression of democracy means that, compared to a decade ago, more of the world’s people are living today under governments that restrict economic, social, and political rights. People living under authoritarian rule are more likely to have shorter and less healthy lives, as shown by indicators of human development; over time, democracies have proven more effective in fostering key aspects of development including life expectancy and reduced child mortality. The global democratic regression may lead to more interstate conflict. In addition, political retrenchment may foster extremism, creating favorable conditions for groups inspired by the self-proclaimed Islamic State or for other types of extremists, such as Buddhist nationalist extremist groups in Myanmar or hardline royalist groups in Thailand. Already, outside Southeast Asia groups linked to the Islamic State have made headway in states where political freedom has regressed, or never fully emerged, and where people feel they cannot create political change by working within the system. In Egypt, for example, where a military government has thrown leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood in jail, and also crushed more liberal political groups, Islamists have increasingly turned to violence, attacking police, military, and government targets in the Sinai and other parts of the country. In Libya, where the collapse of the Qaddafi dictatorship led to a chaotic political environment, the Islamic State has established a large foothold, and have reportedly started heading south to recruit fighters from sub-Saharan African states. Overall, notes Edward Delman of The Atlantic in a study of the Islamic State’s international recruiting, “the countries that send the largest numbers of foreign fighters to Syria and Iraq, either in absolute terms or on a per-capita basis, tend to be either politically repressive (Saudi Arabia, 2,500 fighters), politically unstable (Tunisia, 6,000 fighters), discriminatory toward a Muslim minority (Russia, 2,400 fighters), or a combination of the above.” Notably, Southeast Asian nations are not on the list of countries that send the most foreign fighters to Syria and Iraq. Yet Southeast Asian nations that do not embrace political reform could face a greater threat from Islamic State-linked extremists. To combat the spread of Islamic State-influenced groups in Southeast Asia, the region’s leaders need, most importantly, to reverse Southeast Asia’s democratic regression. The region’s leaders should not overreact to the actual threat of terrorist attacks, but rather should more effectively address the root causes of popular alienation from normal politics. After all, even if 1,500 or even 2,500 Southeast Asians have traveled to Islamic State-controlled territory and returned to the region, this figure is a miniscule fraction of the total population in Southeast Asia. And as Delman notes, countries in the Middle East and Europe have contributed a far higher number of fighters to the Islamic State than Southeast Asian nations. Yet if Southeast Asian nations respond to the militant threat by subverting the rule of law, and promulgating legislation that gives the security forces excessive powers, they risk further alienating populations and actually pushing more people into joining extremist groups. Instead, Southeast Asia’s leaders should battle militants within legal frameworks. In Indonesia, the Jokowi government had not, before this month, sought legislation that would allow security forces to detain suspects for extended periods of time without charge, as is possible in some other countries in the region. Potential changes to counterterrorism laws in Indonesia currently being debated still would not give security forces the sweeping powers they enjoy in other Southeast Asian nations. Still, Indonesia is going to probably get tougher. The country is about to potentially pass preventative detention laws that could allow the authorities to hold terrorism suspects for up to six months, a significant shift that could undermine the rule of law in the archipelago. Adhering to the rule of law bolsters popular support for antimilitancy efforts and does not run the risk that regional governments can use detention for broad roundups of political opponents. Jokowi’s government also has sent a signal that it will not tolerate extrajudicial killings by the police and other security forces. Although Indonesia’s security forces hardly enjoy a clean reputation, Jokowi has suggested that an independent, nonpartisan investigating body will analyze suspected rights abuses by the security forces, such as in places like Papua. Other governments in Southeast Asia should copy this approach, relying on legal, humane strategies to investigate and arrest militants, and fostering more effective oversight of security forces. In addition, countries in Southeast Asia need to strengthen institutions that can resolve political conflicts, so that they do not have to rely on undemocratic, archaic institutions to resolve disputes. In Thailand and Myanmar, political conflicts too often are resolved by the military; in Cambodia and Malaysia disputes are often resolved in backroom negotiations involving a small handful of business and political elites. These weak institutions foster cycles of political conflict, and make it easier for militants to claim that democracy is failing to create peace and security.

Next week, at a summit in California, President Obama will meet the ten leaders of countries in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the most important regional group in Asia. The event, the first-ever US-ASEAN summit on American soil, is being touted by the White House as a sign of the importance of Southeast Asia. After all, the Obama administration has made relations with Southeast Asia a centerpiece of “the pivot,” or “rebalance to Asia,” a national security strategy that entails shifting American military, economic, and diplomatic resources to the Pacific Rim. There are indeed important reasons for holding the U.S.-ASEAN summit. Tensions are rising between several Southeast Asian nations and China, in part because of Beijing’s increasingly assertive actions in Asian seas. China’s recent decision to move an oil rig into waters claimed by Vietnam could precipitate another showdown in the South China Sea, as happened in 2014. Two years ago, tensions over China’s decision to move the same rig into disputed waters led to deadly anti-China riots in Vietnam. Not only Vietnam but also other Southeast Asian nations are increasingly frightened of China, led now by the most autocratic Chinese leader since Deng Xiaoping. Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, and the Philippines are all desperately trying to upgrade their navies and coast guards. Two decades after essentially tossing U.S. forces out of bases in the Philippines, Manila has welcomed back American troops, as part of a new military cooperation deal. Even some of the region’s poorest nations, which are heavily dependent on Chinese aid and trade, are concerned. In Laos, where China is the biggest aid donor and largest trading partner, the ruling communist party last month elected a new leadership reportedly devoid of any pro-China politicians, a drastic shift from Laos’ last government. In Myanmar, where China is probably the biggest trading partner and most important donor, the Myanmar military’s concern about becoming a kind of Chinese satellite was a major reason why the country’s junta ceded power to civilians in the early 2010s. In addition, trade ties between the United States and Southeast Asia are increasingly important to the U.S. economy. Together, the ten ASEAN nations comprise the fourth-largest trading partner of the United States. Some evidence also suggests that the new ASEAN Economic Community, a nascent regional free trade plan, is helping Southeast Asian nations weather an increasingly rocky global economic environment. But President Obama’s summit with Southeast Asian leaders comes at an awkward time in one very important respect. Since the pivot was launched, Southeast Asia’s political systems have, on the whole, regressed badly. For more on my analysis of Southeast Asia’s democratic regression, read my new Project Syndicate piece.