Sanctions Aren't the Answer for Burma

[question everything]

Sanctions Aren't the Answer for Burma
By Fareed Zakaria
Newsweek

Oct. 15, 2007 issue - The Burmese government's grotesque crackdown on pro-democracy protests will have one certain effect. The United States and the European Union will place more sanctions on the country. Its economy will suffer, its isolation will deepen. And what will this achieve? Sanctions are the Energizer Bunny of foreign policy. Despite a dismal record, they just keep on ticking. With countries like Burma, sanctions have become a substitute for an actual policy.

Sanctions do hurt. The Burmese junta's reference to them last week makes clear that they feel the pain. And the fact that 15 years ago Aung San Suu Kyi supported them makes me pause. I admire her moral courage tremendously. But that does not mean that every specific policy prescription of hers is right. I can think of other moral giants — Gandhi, Martin Luther King — who could also, sometimes, be wrong on policy. Iran's leading dissident — Akbar Ganji — does not support broad sanctions against his country.

By design, sanctions shrink a country's economy. But the parts of the economy they shrink most are those that aren't under total state control. The result, says Robert Pape, a University of Chicago professor who has authored a wide-ranging study on the topic, is that "the state gains greater control of a smaller pie. And it shifts resources in the country toward groups that support and away from those that oppose it." In other words, the government gets stronger. We can see this at work from Cuba to Iran. "Even in Iraq," says Pape, "there were far fewer coup attempts in the era of sanctions than in the previous decades."

In Burma, one effect of Western sanctions was to shut down the country's textile exports during the late 1990s, forcing hundreds of thousands of people out of jobs. There is evidence that many of the women ended up in the sex trade, enough evidence that in 2003 the then State Department spokesman Richard Boucher acknowledged it but expressed the hope that over time sanctions would change Burma. In addition, as legitimate businesses dry up, black markets spring up, and the thugs and gangs who can handle these new rules flourish. Burmese gems are now traded actively in this manner. Then there are drugs, whose production and supply multiply. In all of this, the military, which controls border crossings, ports and checkpoints, always prospers.

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The other effect of sanctions has been that American firms have mostly been replaced by Chinese companies. (This is precisely what's happened on a larger scale in Sudan, where American firms discovered and built the country's oilfields, then had to abandon them because of the worsening human-rights situation, and now find that the fields have been picked up by Chinese state oil companies.) And while it is perfectly fair to blame Beijing for supporting a dictatorial regime, the Indians, the Thais, the Malaysians and others have also been happy to step into the vacuum in Burma. Is this a net gain for America, for Burma and for human rights?

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URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21162318/site/newsweek/

[pnorman]

1. This needs to be considered carefully, in terms of what might be the most effective response.

But that differs very little from what Reagan said about South Africa. And if I recall correctly, many of the victims of apartheid BEGGED for sanctions.

pnorman