Suu Kyi treads carefully in deals with neighbours

Brahma Chellaney looks at the challenges faced by Myanmar's leader

Myanmar's State Counsellor and Foreign Minister Aung San Suu Kyi. Hein Htet / EPA

Myanmar’s de facto leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, is seeking to carefully balance relations with major powers as part of her commitment to revive the country’s tradition of pursuing a neutral foreign policy. Ms Suu Kyi’s visit to India last week followed trips to Beijing and Washington.

Myanmar’s geographic, cultural and geostrategic position between India and China makes it critical to the long-term interests of these powers.

Crippling United States-led sanctions since the late 1980s pushed resource-rich Myanmar into China’s strategic lap. During his 2010 Indian tour, US president Barack Obama criticised India’s policy of constructive engagement with Myanmar, only to return home and pursue, within months, a virtually similar policy. The shift in US policy helped spur Myanmar’s reform process, ending half a century of military rule.

When, in August, Ms Suu Kyi paid her first visit to a major capital almost five months after her National League for Democracy (NLD) party came to power, she visited Beijing – not New Delhi, where she was educated..

Her aim was to smooth over the relationship frayed by Myanmar’s 2011 suspension of the $3.6 billion (Dh13.2bn) Chinese-financed Myitsone Dam project. The suspension on the eve of China’s national day constituted a loss of face for Beijing made worse by the fact that the action became a turning point for Myanmar’s democratisation and reintegration with the world.

The bold move demonstrated to Washington that Myanmar was no client state of China and helped both change US policy and accelerate Myanmar’s own transition to democracy. It set in motion an easing of western sanctions that ended Myanmar’s international isolation, best symbolised by Mr Obama’s visit in 2012.

With the rise of a democratic Myanmar that is being wooed by all powers and international investors, China can no longer push its strategic and resource interests by brushing aside questions about the environmental and human costs of its mining and other projects there.

But with China still wielding more leverage over Myanmar than any other power, president Xi Jinping is pushing for the Myitsone project’s revival. To deflect Chinese pressure, Ms Suu Kyi, before visiting Beijing, appointed a 20-member commission to review Myitsone and other dam projects on the Irrawaddy river, the country’s lifeline.

After her China trip, Ms Suu Kyi visited Washington, where she was warmly received at the White House on September 14. But it was only on October 7 – about 11 months after the NLD won a landslide election victory – that Mr Obama lifted economic sanctions on Myanmar while retaining military sanctions.

Ms Suu Kyi, accompanied by key ministers, travelled to India this month to attend a weekend multinational summit in Goa. India had invited member states of the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation for a joint summit with the five Brics nations – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

At the meeting, Ms Suu Kyi met Mr Xi again, as well as Russian president Vladimir Putin. From Goa, she went to New Delhi for meetings with prime minister Narendra Modi and other top Indian officials.

Myanmar is India’s gateway to the east. It was at the India-Asean summit in Myanmar’s capital Naypyidaw in late 2014 that Mr Modi launched India’s US-backed “Act East” policy.

When Ms Suu Kyi was in opposition, India supported her democracy movement and sheltered many Myanmar refugees and dissidents, despite engaging with Myanmar’s military government in a carefully calibrated manner to promote political reconciliation and to stem China’s growing clout.

A key challenge for both Myanmar and India is to manage a difficult and complex relationship with China. Just as India’s northern neighbour historically was Tibet, not China, Myanmar’s neighbour for much of its early history was the independent kingdom of Yunnan, with Tibet also sharing a border with Myanmar until 1950.

Myanmar, like India, has long complained about the flow of Chinese arms to guerrilla groups, accusing Beijing of backing several of them. Still, recognising that Beijing holds the keys to ending decades of armed conflict in Myanmar, Ms Suu Kyi has given China an important role in her initiative to promote ethnic reconciliation. Despite China playing mediator, a Suu Kyi-sponsored peacemaking gathering attended by ethnic warlords in Naypyidaw ended in early September without any headway.

China values Myanmar as a strategic asset, viewing its long shoreline as a gateway to the Indian Ocean, where it is seeking to chip away at India’s natural geographic advantage. Having established a foothold in Myanmar’s Bay of Bengal port of Kyaukpyu, from where new energy pipelines lead to southern China, Beijing is now seeking to open a shorter, cheaper trade route to Europe via the Irrawaddy, which flows south from near the Chinese border to the Andaman Sea.

Against this backdrop, India can ill afford to neglect Myanmar or persist with its sluggish implementation of projects there. From Myanmar’s perspective, cooperation with all major powers will advance its interests.

Brahma Chellaney is the author of nine books, including Water, Peace, and War