Washington: When Aung San Suu Kyi visits the White House on Wednesday as Myanmar’s de facto leader, six years after she was released from house arrest, it will be a moment of triumph for the democracy icon — and for the Obama administration’s policy of engagement with antagonistic or hostile regimes.
But unlike in Cuba or Iran, President Barack Obama’s decision to jump-start dormant US relations with the long-isolated Southeast Asian nation in 2011 received critical support from Republican leaders. And the burgeoning democratic transition in Myanmar, also known as Burma, away from a half-century of brutal authoritarian rule could represent a rare bipartisan success story.
Washington will roll out the red carpet for Suu Kyi, who is scheduled to have breakfast with vice-President Joe Biden and congressional leaders before visiting the Oval Office. She will visit Capitol Hill on Thursday and have dinner with business leaders before heading to New York for the United Nations (UN) General Assembly.
The White House, which eased some economic sanctions against Myanmar in May, is weighing additional steps to eliminate a national emergency established by presidential executive order in 1997 that bars US companies from doing business with a list of companies and individuals.
That move could spur greater US economic investment in the nation of 53 million people that is rich with natural resources.
“For many years, sanctions served as a very important source of leverage,” Ben Rhodes, a White House deputy national security adviser, said on Tuesday at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies. “Now the country is opening up. Investment is flowing.”
US restrictions on jade and ruby exports and on military-to-military engagement are likely to remain in place, although Rhodes emphasised that no final decision will be made until Obama meets with Suu Kyi.
“The question is, how do we balance the need to demonstrate this transition is not complete with not wanting to shut ourselves off from valuable investment in the country?” Rhodes said.
No one in Washington is ready to call Myanmar’s reform process anywhere close to complete. Suu Kyi has faced sharp criticism for her reticence to address ethnic violence against the Rohingya Muslim minority and sectarian warfare that has prevented a fully representative government. She recently presided over a first-of-its-kind political summit of tribal groups and established a commission, overseen by former UN secretary general Kofi Annan, to make recommendations on the ethnic clashes.
Human rights advocates said civil society remains marginalised politically. And the military-drafted constitution prevented Suu Kyi from becoming president even after her National League for Democracy swept to power in historic elections last year. She has assumed a newly-created role as state counsellor, in which she advises President Htin Kyaw.
But her warm Beltway reception is evidence of the political capital invested in Myanmar’s fate on both sides of the aisle.
Obama’s landmark 2012 visit to Yangon, the nation’s former capital, not only was preceded by a visit from then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in December 2011 but was followed by a trip by then-Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, a month later.
McConnell had long been an influential voice on Capitol Hill in support of the sanctions on Myanmar’s military rulers, and Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize winner who had spent 15 years under house arrest before being freed in 2010, personally invited him to visit her in January 2012. McConnell met with her and other Myanmar leaders and came away convinced that concrete reforms from the ruling military regime were under way.
The country “has made dramatic changes for the better,” McConnell said in June 2012, citing the release of political prisoners and Suu Kyi’s election to parliament. That month, he introduced a congressional resolution that accommodated the Obama administration’s waiver on restrictions on investment and financial services in Myanmar.
Derek Mitchell, who served as US ambassador to Myanmar from 2012 until earlier this year, said Clinton reached out to McConnell on Myanmar during her first year at the State Department in 2009.
“In my first meeting with him in 2011, he said, ‘Our approach hasn’t worked; we want to work with you,’” Mitchell recalled in an interview this week. “His people said, ‘There are many political issues in Washington; this will not be one of them.’ We had a very productive partnership.”
Erin Murphy, a former Clinton aide who accompanied her to Myanmar in 2011, said McConnell’s trip was perhaps more important than Clinton’s, even though it received less international attention.
“I call it the trip that launched 1,000 trips,” said Murphy, now a consultant on Myanmar in the private sector. “At the time, they were not granting many visas. It was still tenuous and tentative. It was his vision: He was going to see the changes for himself to ask, ‘Is this for real?’”
Obama has had a frosty relationship with McConnell, now the Senate majority leader, who in 2010 said the GOP’s most important goal was to make Obama a “one-term president.”
McConnell aides acknowledged a collaborative relationship with the administration on Myanmar. But they emphasised that the US economic sanctions got results in pushing the military regime toward reforms, in contrast to Cuba and Iran, where Obama’s outreach has been fiercely opposed by most Republicans.
Foreign policy analysts said geopolitical factors have contributed to elevating Myanmar’s bipartisan appeal, citing the strategic importance of a nation that borders China and has had friendly relations with North Korea.
“Both on the Republican side and the Democratic side, they saw Burma as a country that was really reeling under pressure from China,” said Victor Cha, who served as Asia director for the National Security Council under President George W. Bush. “In that sense, it was like pushing on an open door ... That was unique. You didn’t have that in Cuba.”
But Suu Kyi’s unique personal star power also helped bridge the ideological divide in Washington. The daughter of Aung San, the Myanmar leader who secured independence from British rule before being assassinated, Suu Kyi long enjoyed a revered global standing for her push to restore democratic rule. She was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal during her previous visit to Washington, in 2012.
Inspired by Suu Kyi’s story, former First Lady Laura Bush devoted significant personal attention to Burma while in the White House, working to promote education initiatives. The George W. Bush Presidential Centre in Dallas maintains a programme to develop young political leaders in Myanmar.
“It goes back to the Bush administration, to be fair,” said Rep. Joseph Crowley, D-New York, a leading advocate for human rights in Myanmar. “George Bush and Laura Bush were very much engaged and focused on [Suu Kyi’s] incarceration and the sanctions themselves.”
