Author Event: A Story From Burma's Never-Ending War

I had the pleasure of sitting in on a presentation by Mac McClelland about her new book, "A Story From Burma's Never-Ending War".

The presentation was generally good. However, I wish she had used a more structured power point presentation. As much as I love good ad libbing. It's much easier to understand 100 years of complex history with the assistance of some nice visual aids.

While much of the information was old hat for any serious Burma-phile. A few points warrant further discussion.

• CIA involvement on both sides of the Burmese civil war: After the Guo Min Dang lost control of China in 1949. A number of GMD insurgents took up arms in a part of the Shan state and attempted to re-invade China through Yunnan province. The CIA armed both sides in an effort to stabilize the regime in Rangoon and create momentum for pushing the Chinese Communist Party out of power. Not surprisingly, the attacks were repulsed and the CCP backed the Communist Party of Burma through much of the next two decades.
• Genocide: Although Burma has been officially labeled on a watch list for having the potential for real genocide. Not much has been made of that fact at the international level. With China and Russia sitting on the United Nations Security Council, we can rest easy that no serious measure condemning the military regime in Nyapyidaw will ever be tabled. I guess that leaves the hard work to the tough guys manning the border areas.
• Despite the co-sponsorship of the event by the US Campaign for Burma it's safe to say that Mac McClelland definitely disagrees with the current international sanctions policy. Ms. McClelland maintained that the resource extraction done by the military regime would support it comfortably for a long time. As a consequence, the blanket sanctions currently in place is only hurting the common people. (This author wholeheartedly agrees.)

This event provided a pretty good background on the situation in Myanmar and the international communities response to the problems there. I hope that future programs include more debate about the merits of the sanctions currently in place. Far too often the debate about sanctions is not about what's best for most of the people in Myanmar. But instead, the focus is only on how best to hurt the regime in Nyapyidaw. Maybe the international community should reconsider the questions we are asking about how best to handle the situation there. After all, even if the military returned to it's barracks at the stroke of 12 tomorrow. Myanmar would still have enormous capacity, infrastructure and governance challenges.