Opening Closed
The Burmese situation continues to deteriorate, although, as Foreign Minister Alexander Downer so helpfully noted, we don’t yet see tanks in the streets (isn’t he sweet?), so the problem outside Myanmar remains as it has for the last 30+ years: how do we change their society? Economic sanctions have been in place between the U.S. and Burma for some time now, to one degree or another, but little has changed. Frequent diplomatic pressures have been applied, again to no particular effect. Australia’s trade with Burma is limited only in respect to weapons, but exports to Burma well exceed imports, so without full participation in a system of trade sanctions, the government sees no utility in cutting them off. (Besides, we get a lot of prawns for the BBQ that way.)

Seriously, sanctions are problematic. Look at South Africa: it took decades of official and unofficial sanctions before they finally dissolved apartheid. The U.S. blockade of Cuba was of limited duration, and the imposition of trade restrictions did nothing, since the rest of the world was only too happy to buy their sugar and cigars. The UN oil-for-food program of sanctions against Iraq was a laughable effort, easily rorted, even by the sanctioning nations, let alone the dictator himself. Trade between the USSR and the USA and its allies, although carefully limited on either side, probably did more to open up the former and depose communism than not selling them wheat and Levis and Pepsi would have (which isn’t to deny that the arms race didn’t have a significant effect, insofar as it ultimately bankrupted the economy of a bankrupt economic system, although the personality stakes between Reagan and Gorbachev also probably helped, insofar as Ronnie came off more willing to act on disarmament unilaterally than did his counterpart, whose half-measures, Perestroika and Glasnost, were more late-night joke fodder than they were newsworthy steps towards normalization).

So what, then? Sanctions on the poor? Or cut free trade? There are already those calling for military intervention, but that’s Bush-style regime change more than it’s anything resembling the Timorese intervention.