Myanmar’s ongoing
liberalization and its normalization of relations with the outside world have
the possibility of profoundly affecting geopolitics in Asia – and all for the
better.
Geographically, Myanmar dominates the Bay of Bengal. It is where the
spheres of influence of China and India overlap. Myanmar is also abundant in
oil, natural gas, coal, zinc, copper, precious stones, timber and hydropower,
with some uranium deposits as well. The prize of the Indo-Pacific region,
Myanmar has been locked up by dictatorship for decades, even as the Chinese
have been slowly stripping it of natural resources. Think of Myanmar as another
Afghanistan in terms of its potential to change a region: a key, geo-strategic
puzzle piece ravaged by war and ineffective government that, if only
normalized, would unroll trade routes in all directions.
Ever since China’s Yuan (ethnic Mongol) dynasty invaded Myanmar in the
13th century, Myanmar has been under the shadow of a Greater China, with no
insurmountable geographic barriers or architectural obstacles like the Great
Wall to separate the two lands — though the Hengduan Shan range borders the two
countries. At the same time, Myanmar has historically been the home of an Indian
business community — a middleman minority in sociological terms — that
facilitated the British hold on Myanmar as part of a Greater British India.
But if Myanmar continues on its path of reform by opening links to the
United States and neighboring countries, rather than remaining a natural
resource tract to be exploited by China, Myanmar will develop into an energy
and natural resource hub in its own right, uniting the Indian subcontinent,
China and Southeast Asia all into one fluid, organic continuum. And although
Chinese influence in Myanmar would diminish in relative terms, China would
still benefit immensely. Indeed, Kunming, in China’s southern Yunnan province,
would become the economic capital of Southeast Asia, where river and rail
routes from Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam would converge.
Much of this infrastructure activity is already under way. At Ramree
Island off Myanmar’s northwestern Arakan coast, the Chinese are constructing
pipelines to take oil and natural gas from Africa, the Persian Gulf and the Bay
of Bengal across the heart of Myanmar to Kunming. The purpose will be to
alleviate China’s dependence on the Strait of Malacca, through which
four-fifths of its crude oil imports pass at present. There will also be a
high-speed rail line roughly along this route by 2015.
India, too, is constructing an energy terminal at Sittwe, north of
Ramree, on Myanmar’s coast, that will potentially carry offshore natural gas
northwest through Bangladesh to the vast demographic inkblot that is the Indian
state of West Bengal. The Indian pipeline would actually split into two
directions, with another proposed route going to the north around Bangladesh.
Commercial goods will follow along new highways to be built to India. Kolkata,
Chittagong and Yangon, rather than being cities in three separate countries,
will finally be part of one Indian Ocean world.
The salient fact here is that by liberating Myanmar, India’s hitherto
landlocked northeast, lying on the far side of Bangladesh, will also be opened
up to the outside. Northeast India has suffered from bad geography and
underdevelopment, and as a consequence it has experienced about a dozen
insurgencies in recent decades. Hilly and jungle-covered, northeast India is
cut off from India proper by backbreakingly poor Bangladesh to the west and by
Myanmar, hitherto a hermetic and undeveloped state, to the east. But Myanmar’s
political opening and economic development changes this geopolitical fact,
because both India’s northeast and Bangladesh will benefit from Myanmar’s
political and economic renewal.
With poverty reduced somewhat in all these areas, the pressure on
Kolkata and West Bengal to absorb economic refugees will be alleviated. This
immeasurably strengthens India, whose land borders with semi-failed states within
the subcontinent (Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh) has undermined its ability to
project political and military power outward into Asia and the Middle East.
More broadly, a liberalized Myanmar draws India deeper into Asia, so that India
can more effectively balance against China.
But while the future beckons with opportunities, the present is still
not assured. The political transition in Myanmar has only begun, and much can
still go wrong. The problem, as it was in Yugoslavia and Iraq, is regional and
ethnic divides.
Myanmar is a vast kingdom organized around the central Irrawaddy River
Valley. The ethnic Burman word for this valley is Myanmar, hence the official
name of the country. But a third of the population is not ethnic Burman, even
as regionally based minorities in friable borderlands account for seven of
Myanmar’s 14 states. The hill areas around the Irrawaddy Valley are populated
by Chin, Kachin, Shan, Karen and Karenni peoples, who also have their own
armies and irregular forces, which have been battling the Burman-controlled
national army since the early Cold War period.
Worse, these minority-populated hill regions are ethnically divided
from within. For example, the Shan area is also home to Was, Lahus, Paos,
Kayans and other tribal peoples. All these groups are products of historical
migrations from Tibet, China, India, Bangladesh, Thailand and Cambodia, so that
the Chin in western Myanmar have almost nothing in common with the Karen in
eastern Myanmar. Nor is there a community of language and culture between the
Shans and the ethnic Burmans, except for their Buddhist religion. As for the
Arakanese, heirs to a cosmopolitan seaboard civilization influenced by Hindu
Bengal, they feel particularly disconnected from the rest of Myanmar and
compare their plight to disenfranchised minorities in the Middle East and
Africa.
In other words, simply holding elections is not enough if all elections
do is bring ethnic Burmans to power who do not compromise with the minorities.
The military came to power in Myanmar in 1962 to control the minority-populated
borderlands around the Irrawaddy Valley. The military has governed now for half
a century. Myanmar has few functioning institutions that are not
military-dominated. A system with generous power awarded to the minorities must
now be constructed from scratch; peaceful integration of restive minorities
requires vibrant federal institutions.
Myanmar, it is true, is becoming less repressive and more open to the
outside world. But that in and of itself does not make for a viable
institutionalized state. In sum, for Myanmar to succeed, even with civilians in
control, the military will have to play a significant role for years to come,
because it is mainly officers who know how to run things.
But given its immense natural resources and sizable population of 48
million, if Myanmar can build pan-ethnic institutions in coming decades it
could come close to being a midlevel power in its own right — something that
would not necessarily harm Indian and Chinese interests, and, by the way, would
unleash trade throughout Asia and the Indian Ocean world.
Robert D. Kaplan,
vietnamica.net
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