Clarion Content

Situation Burma, Iraq, Pakistan

The current socio-political status quo in Burma, Iraq and Pakistan reveal the outline of the massive failure of the superstructure underpinning the application of American power in the years since the Cold War disintegrated. These three states are not representative of the entirety of the multiplex of countries with which the United States has relationships. They are most defintely particular. There are other places where United States power projection has achieved greater successes. These three states share certain commonalities that when looked at in parallel underline the structural failures, seams, cracks and tensions in United States policy that render so much of its potential for postive impact impotent.

Let us then examine these states, some of their parallels, and the differences in United States policy and action toward them.

The case for war in Iraq was made around Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs.) In the end, Iraq and its dictator Saddam Hussein were found not to possess nuclear weapons or significant stockpiles of any WMDs. Pakistan and its military dictator do indeed possess known and tested nuclear weapons. Iraq was under United Nations sanctions for its pursuit of WMDs. As recently as 1993 Pakistan was being sanctioned by the United States government for illegal receipt of missle technology. As long ago as 1985 Pakistan was being sanctioned by the United States government for the pursuit of nuclear weapons. Pakistan carried out its first nuclear test in 1998.

The United States supports General Perez Musharraf, the military dictator of Pakistan. This support has continued despite his attempts in the last year to remove the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Pakistan. The attempted removal produced widespread protests and street demonstrations by the lawyers of Pakistan and the dictator, Perez Musharraf, temporarily backed down. General Musharraf wanted to remove the Chief Justice because the judge was using what is left of the legal apparatus of Pakistan to object to the General’s attempts to retain his uniform and his office, after pledging to resign the Army in 2004. The General made this pledge as he attempted to convince parliament and the courts to legitimize his rule, period, through an ex post facto consitutional amendment sanctioning his 1999 coup. Now he is trying every means possible to retain the presidency despite having never been directly elected.

To repeat for emphasis: all of these actions were taken by a military dictator supported by the United States government. It is possible to argue that support is too soft a term to describe the exercise of power that the United States uses to keep their man on top. The package includes billions of dollars in aid, weapons and other kit, military training, tacit agreement to ignore the tribal grievances of Baluchistan (where incidentally amongst a tribal minority is where Pakistan chose to test its nuclear weapons.) The United States also disregards and even encourages the territorial violations of Afghanistan, extrajudicial killing of Afghani and Pakistani citizens by the Pakistan Army and Secret Service (ISI), as well as accepting Musharraf airburshing away the worry of hundreds of fundamentalist Madrasses in the Pakistan heartland. The United States has judged General Musharraf as the best positioned to keep a lid on this state.

American policy makers value political stability in Pakistan above all other elements in their calculus on the state. The General is their man and they will do everything and anything to keep him in place. The General has survived multiple assassination attempts this year alone. Saddam Hussein was once judged by the men in the gray suits in Washington as the best way to keep a cork in the bottle that was Iraq. In a country riven by Sunni and Shi’ite religious divisions, composed of what were once three Ottoman provinces, United States policy makers believed a firm hand and secure bulkwark against Iran were what was needed. Saddam subsequently spent decades suppressing the independent freedoms of Iraq’s nations and peoples from the Marsh Arabs to the Shi’tes and the Kurds. Suppressing is surely too soft a word for a dictator who was executed for mass gasing of his state’s own citizens. There are pictures of Donald Rumsfeld and Saddam Hussein shaking hands as recently as 25 years ago.



In 2003 the United States went to War with Iraq and sought the arrest and removal of dictator Hussein. Eventually following his arrest by United States Military forces, America allowed his execution to occur in a most unseemly manner. It was carried out by the newly installed Iraqi regime after a cursory wave toward the rule of law, with more than a jigger of victor’s justice.

At the time of Rumsfeld’s handshake and America’s support Saddam’s irreligiousity, like that of the Burmese junta, like that of General Musharraf, was an asset in the eyes of U.S. policymakers. Saddam was only into the cult of himself, hijacking the Ba’ath party to this end. When the American suits compared him to Iran and the Ayatollah they were able to convince themselves of his utility. Just as they are now and have been convincing themselves in Pakistan of the need for General Musharraf to stay in control. Political stability trumps, but most especially when a state already has nuclear weapons. Iraq and Saddam were attacked because of the imminent threat their possession of WMDs posed to America, not because of the state’s form of government or Saddam’s repression of his people. There is more cause in Zimbabwe. In 1991 America specifically looked away as Saddam mauled the Shi’tes. In Pakistan, Musharraf keeps actors America considers much more Ayatollah like away from the nuclear button.

But where does this leave old Burma or Myanmar as its dictatorship has attempted to reinvent it? This state, too, has been under American sanctions to little affect since 2003. Why does America not propose to invade Burma to depose its evil dictatorship and free its people? Is it simply because Burma does not possess weapons of mass destruction? Instead of pursuing regime change in Mynamar, American policymakers have pursued a course of encouraging the regime to change its behavior. If there were Al-Qaeda connected groups in Burma being pursued by the Myanmar Junta's security apparatus, would America support said Junta?

Those who would accuse American policymakers of pursuing an anti-Islam, anti-Arab agenda would surely have a hard time making a case that explains why America felt compelled to free Iraqis from their dictator when sanctions were ineffectual, but won’t initiate the same actions in Burma. Is it because America looks at the landscape in Burma and out of the corner of its eye at Vietnam, and thinks it would lose? Is it because America looks at its experience in Iraq and thinks it would lose? Are Iraqi human rights more important than Burmese? Mr. Greenspan said Iraq was all about oil in his book and then backed off. Burma exports natural gas in signifcant quantities. 7.5 billion cu m (2004 est.) It is presumed to have the largest natural gas reserves in Southeast Asia.

How could America lose in Burma if it were the flipside of Vietnam? In Vietnam the majority of citizens (North and South combined) wanted America out. They identified America with neo-colonialist exploitation. They succeed in convincing America to withdraw. (The United States, and the other states of Empire came back with branded post modernist MNC colonialism.) The Burmese people seek freedom, how can America help them? By invading? Thru more sanctions? Is there a state to be built? Are their multiple nations, ala Iraq? How can the answer be that the American government is impotent? How can it find away to keep the despised dictator in power in Pakistan, but not a way to help implement the Burmese people’s most basic desire for human freedom. Years have passed with no progress. The recent protests have again highlighted the situation which is either long unchanged or worsening. How can America be incapable of improving the situation?

Do the answers lie in the rubble of the civil war that has followed the removal of a dictator in Iraq for weapons of mass destruction that ultimate did not exist? Not exclusively. What role do and should American experiences in Somalia and Serbia play? In Pakistan? In Afghanistan? How can America present its face at any world forum, while continuing to justify the Iraqi invasion, but ignore Burma? The blowback of the Iraq war is far and wide, but the failure of American policy and the application of power by the world's biggest economy runs much deeper. Iraq is a symbol and a symptom of America's hubris and failure, but not the first cause of it. On the other side of the world American policymakers are impotent in the face of a human rights disaster carried out by a nefarious oligarchy in Burma. What happened to soft power? Is the concept antiquated in a globalized world? Will outlaw states always find a way around? Despite a Pentagon budget that outspends the world’s next twent biggest militaries combined, despite all this money yet America can affect no change in a place no bigger than the home state of the President. American power is broken.

Labels: Middle East, Politics, thought