We began this week with reports of dozens of pro-democracy protests in Myanmar being shot by government soldiers.
On February 1st of this year, General Min Aung Hlaing, backed by the far-right military and aligned parties, launched a coup against the democratically elected head of government Aung San Suu Kyi and seized the apparatus of the state in the past month. Min Aung Hlaing has returned the South East Asian nation to a state of martial law, prevented the democratically elected parliament from being sworn in, and has arrested over half a dozen ministers and bureaucrats in prison. Hlaing’s military junta has now killed over fifty democratic protesters with no sign of stopping and forcibly detained seventeen hundred protestors with an unknown number wounded according to the United Nations Human Rights Commissioner Michelle Bachelet. Crackdowns are now the norm in Nay Pyi Taw, the capital, and the junta has even taken down the internet as a means of limiting pro-democratic protests in their efforts to stop the military from solidifying control. However, this has not stopped the people’s will for the fight for democracy, across the country protestors and strikers are continuously risking their lives for democracy in what seems like a herculean task of restoring democracy in Myanmar.
What kind of foreign relations president will President Biden become? Will he be an internationalist? An interventionist? Will he build coalitions of concerned nations? Will he use personal diplomacy? Perhaps the Covid pandemic and domestic issues will make him more cautious? Perhaps rebooting international meetings and establishing America’s presence on climate change agreements is enough of an accomplishment after four years of dismantled alliances, commitments and responsibilities under President Trump.
Recently, President Joe Biden implemented token sanctions upon the military junta and expressed his hope for “restoration of democracy in Burma” according to the Secretary of State Anthony Blinken. No material aid has been provided to these protestors; no UN security council has convened to censure the generals; peacekeepers are not even in the quiver to restore democratic order in Myanmar.
Keep in mind too that Myanmar’s democracy has been thoroughly criticized for its ruthless handling and persecution of the Rohingya. The human rights luster of its president wore off over time. They might have been a democracy, but they were a flawed democracy accused of genocide. Can a pro-democracy movement restore their human rights record?
Are there any other indicators about where Biden is going internationally? Perhaps it’s too soon to tell.
With no consent from the UN or any other geopolitical group we belong to, the US military did deploy on a mission recently bombing Iranian-backed militias in Iraq whilst “talks” with Iran to rejoin the nuclear deal have begun. Is this about balance of power politics? Is it realpolitik? Is it showing bark and bite?
Time and time again, in Syria, in Venezuela, in Hong Kong, the US has stopped itself from executing a real effort to democratize nations across the world. Under both the Obama and Trump Administrations We’ve“monitored” situations in Hong Kong, Venezuela and the middle east, but did not act, while withdrawing forces from Iraq and Afghanistan and from various US bases around the world. Critics labeled this a “return to isolationism” and an abandonment of commitments. We talked tough, but did nothing. But those commitments have long been sullied, stalemated and agonized failures.
And now Myanmar.
Should we use sanctions? Sanctions, it has been argued, never truly pressure nations into relinquishing their authoritarian rule. One great exception might be the boycotts against South Africa in the 1980s. The other might be the successful boycott and quarantine of Iraq 1991-2003, which left Iraq weakened and alone. It was more effective than Operation Iraqi Freedom, in 2003, which led to our armed commitment to that nation to this day.
But the crisis is now and the clock is ticking.
People in Myanmar are being killed in the streets and imprisoned fighting for the same ideals that are at the foundation of the core beliefs of the American Revolution.
We have become too complacent about the deaths and imprisonment of these pro-democratic activists just as we are complicit in the deaths of the drone strikes.
But interventions are fraught affairs for Americans. Historically, for example, American intervention in Central America during the Cold War produced de-stabilization in the region; some of today’s immigration crisis is a direct result of America’s support of local military governments and several generations of human rights abuses against the citizens of Guatemala, Nicaragua and El Salvador.
What I call for is an American Resurgence.
We have the strongest military, the best outfitted and the most advanced, why should we be yanking the chain when we can be flexing its muscle? We have military outfits like the Army Rangers and Delta Forces that are specialized on insertion and regime change. A shepherd doesn’t watch his flock get culled by the wolves. It defends it. It is the same for America and the remaining democratic nations to step up.
But that does not mean using violence. Sometimes, Sun Tzu pointed out, the most important battles are the ones you never fight.
We have to be careful against any rhetorical call to open arms against a new “axis of evil.” We learned that lesson the hard way in Iraq and Afghanistan. Our pretense at decency was undone in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo and in The Patriot Act and in Extreme Rendition.
History has called on us as Americans to be the standard bearer of democracy, but standard-bearer does not mean enforcer. Diplomacy and peace-making is a multilateral effort with our remaining allies, assets and citizens. We must be proactive with our allies at home and abroad to fight back against authoritarianism.
President Biden incessantly says, “America’s back.” But I oppose that. It’s too knee jerk. It’s meant to be reassuring but it runs the risk of sounding like a boast.
Biden is better when he whispers. At his best, Biden, in his Covid emergency stimulus and aid programs, creates comprehensive packages of care that surprise us by the depth of their humanity. We must be mobilizing our aid and our forces, but our new “arsenal of democracy” is also made up of what Elie Wiesel called weapons of the spirit and imagination. It’s about building and beguiling rather than bullying. It’s about finding common ground. In the wake of this pandemic, truth and reconciliation are as important as the more traditional varieties of the American Experience. This is not just about America, it’s about the world.
The Marshall Plan was not built in a day. The same will be true for the Biden Administration.
