The Diplomat's Steve Finch reports from Burma on President Barack Obama's historic visit. Will reforms press forward?
RANGOON– At about 9:40am local time today, Air Force One flew over lush late-monsoon farmland and gold-leafed pagodas before touching down at the unlikeliest of destinations in the first visit to Burma by a sitting U.S. president.
During a whirlwind six-hour trip, Barack Obama met with both sides of Burma’s evaporating political divide – reformist President Thein Sein and opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi – and expressed cautious optimism about Burma’s future during a speech at Rangoon University, a focal point for Burma’s independence leaders and later for many opponents of the five decades of military rule.
“I recognize that this is just the first steps on what will be a long journey,” the U.S. president said alongside his Burmese counterpart, Thein Sein, at the former parliament in Rangoon. “But we think that a process of democratic reform and economic reform in Myanmar … can lead to incredible development opportunities here.”
Part encouragement, part self-fulfilling prophecy as the U.S. rolls back sanctions, Obama’s delicate balancing act of caution and optimism not only points to the work Burma’s government still has to do, but also recognizes the time it has taken to come this far. In fact, a succession of U.S. presidents have, at least in part, helped Burma reach this point through a careful calibrated strategy of targeted sanctions and incentives.
“Two years ago, it was an unimaginable thing,” Tin Maung Than, the head of Rangoon-based policy think-tank Myanmar Egress, said of Obama’s visit.
As someone who has worked closely with Thein Sein’s government, he says that the current period of rapid reforms is a made-in-Burma process as reforms have been initiated at lightening pace in recent months.
The part that the U.S. has played – amid the still simmering arguments of carrots and sticks – remains a question of debate. So too the role played by Obama.
In the week leading up to the president’s visit, senior administration officials have been quick to attribute credit to the White House for Burma’s rapid, recent progress.
Photo Credit: Official White House Photo by Pete Souza
View as Single Page
Reddit
Digg
StumbleUpon
Delicious
Technorati
Yahoo
Google
Plurk
Really
Backing a social marxist like suu kyi is easy
Soros backs her and so does the Agenda 21
mej313
Living here in Thailand, born in the Vietnam war era (I am American) and observing what's going on in SE Asia, what I believe "reforms" boils down to is a long coastline of resorts hotels cheap housing and cheap sex industry for baby boomers planning their retirements and people wanting cheap vacations in these economic hard times–I foresee hotels and resorts and construction lining the Andaman Coast up from Phuket until it reaches the tip of Myanmar/Burma. That's reform all right, it's just been done in increments. First, destroy all anti-Imperialist movements in Vietnam and then the genocide/"revolution" of Cambodia, then break the will and pride of the SE Asians and take over control build exploit and build build build make hotels resorts cheap food for Westerns cheap prostitutes—horrible really.