Aung San Suu Kyi is showing fine touch as she
moves from being an icon to a politician.
Her
status as icon is yet to be matched by her formal power in Burma's political
structure. If present shifts were to continue, she might fulfill her destiny as
Burma's democratically-elected leader.
Not
yet, though. Suu Kyi is playing the cards she's been dealt with skill and some
daring, but the hard reality is that the military regime still dominates the
game and makes the rules.
The
regime has the power to call off the game completely and again banish Suu Kyi
to house arrest.
Many
surprising signs point in a hopeful direction, but the continuing risk of
backsliding or backlash is significant; the bad old habits are deeply
ingrained. This brings us to a set of core questions about the extraordinary
moment playing out in Burma: why is the regime loosening its grip? Why now? And
will the democratising trend continue?
Burma's
course is markedly different from the Arab Spring. Burma had its Saffron
Revolution in 2007 and that was brutally snuffed out. The current shift was set
off by the regime and it is driving the process. The black box nature of the
regime means it is virtually impossible to give definitive responses to the
questions like 'why?' and 'why now?' So without promising answers, let's try to
give some marks to various elements of the puzzle and see what they add up to.
The
scoring approach is inspired by Suu Kyi's response to a journalist's question
about where Burma's shift towards democracy stands on a scale of one to
ten: 'We're approaching one.'
Accepting
that as an accurate assessment of Burma's progress to democracy, here is an
attempt to score the pro and con weightings on a more limited question about
the internal forces driving the regime's choices. This is a Black Box scoring
system, seeking to weigh and rank the forces inside an opaque regime.
The
score always adds up to 100 – inside the Black Box the regime is entire unto
itself. The purpose of the individual scores is to assess what is influencing
regime choices and the conflicts between the key factors; to chart what is
driving policy in one direction, while noting forces that could cause a change
of course. The majority of the marks will be about factors inside the regime
and within Burma, but players beyond the border do matter in convincing those
inside the Black Box that it's time to tip, not sit.
For
Burma's military, the status quo mark is always been high. This is the part of
the Black Box where hardliner habits of holding power for decades mingle with
the personal and economic self-interest of various parts of the officer corps. As Bertil Lintner writes, the military interest is what it
has always been: 'to remain the ultimate arbiter'.
At the
time of the Saffron Revolution, the status quo mark probably stood at close to
90 out of 100, because of the imperative to crush any challenge and hang on to
existing power. At that point, the status quote mark was a massive weight
against any chance of reform.
Obviously,
the changes under way have more than halved this number (if it wasn't below 50,
Suu Kyi would not be an elected politician). The status quo mark is still a
measure of regime self interest, but the reformers seem to be winning some
ground with what can be a powerful argument: 'If we want things to stay as
they are, things will have to change.' That exquisite
line from The Leopard encapsulates the tensions inside the Black Box:
what change will work for the regime, what change will sap its power?
Let's
be optimistic and give the status quo a weighting of 35 points. On that
score out of 100, not much has to shift in other areas of the equation to drag
the regime back into backlash territory.
The
status quo mark in most regimes is usually higher. So why have some in Burma's
ruling elite decided to be bold in seeking to change regime structures? Call
this the new and surprising element the 'Glasnost' score. In this instance,
Glasnost can stand for concepts such as Growth, Legitimacy, Atrophy, Social
Needs, Openness...
The
popular support for Burma's Glasnost may be huge outside the Black Box, but as
with its earlier Soviet manifestation, this is a top-down policy. Just like
Gorbachev, Burma's regime wants to improve the system, grow the economy and
achieve more popular support and prestige. And just like Gorby, the regime
wants its power to stay unchanged while lots of other things are altered.
Some in
the regime have decided it is time for a bit of dialogue with the people. The
need for greater legitimacy and the risk of atrophy are among the hardest
elements to score in all this. Some in the military and the bureaucracy are
smart enough to know that without a bit of Glasnost they might eventually
stumble into their Ceausescu moment. Camus had it right ('Tyrants conduct
monologues above a million solitudes') but as Ceausescu found when delivering
his last wooden monologue to the masses in 1989, there comes a moment when the
millions start booing and jeering.
The
Glasnost mark at 25 is well short of the status quo mark; still, it is a high
mark that suggests an understanding inside the Box of the need for some form of
renewal and greater popular legitimacy. To give change a pass mark, we need to
add together various external forces which provide some push.
The
China factor always matters. The regime gives signs that it is no longer so
keen on being lumped with North Korea as China's pair of rusted-on allies. The Burma visit by South Korea's president dealt with a lot of history but it was also another step for a
regime finding more space beyond China's orbit. Putting a stop to the major
Chinese dam project on the Irrawaddy river last year just as
Hillary Clinton touched down for the first visit by a US Secretary of
State since 1955 was an interesting confluence of events. Finding more space
beyond China – a lean towards India while the door opens to everyone else —
should be worth at least 10 points.
Give a
matching 10 points to ASEAN. Engagement seems to be paying off. Many in ASEAN
are having trouble believing it because of the long history of snubs and snarls
from the regime. Yet ASEAN membership does have privileges that matter. Getting
that annual ASEAN chairmanship in 2014 is a prize that is worth
something. Face always counts. And achieving that leadership role in 2014
is an objective that melds regime status with the need to continue on the
course of political reform.
Remember
that on the previous cycle, ASEAN deprived Burma of its right to the chair in 2006 because
the pariah state was so on-the-nose with the rest of the world. The rest of the
world impinges only slightly on the Black Box, but regime standing with the
rest of Southeast Asia has significance. The score for the West and decades of
sanctions needs to be appropriately modest; significantly less for ASEAN or
China.
As the
West turns to engagement, perhaps it is worth 5 points in support of the
importance of Glasnost.
The
score so far is: Status Quo 35, Glasnost 25, China 10, ASEAN 10 and the West 5.
And that leaves the final 15 points to a force that is external to the Black
Box but integral to its future. The final 15 points must go to the people of
Burma and to Suu Kyi, an icon now allowed to work her magic as a politician to
help break open the Black Box and remake the scoring system.
Graeme
Dobell
Business & Investment Opportunities
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