The Hidden History of Burma: Race, Capitalism, and the Crisis of Democracy in the 21st Century

by Thant Myint-U

Burma became the focus of global media attention just as world leaders were congregating in New York for the annual UN General Assembly.

The protests were rooted in the economic desperation of the poor, but the West chose to see these events as a pro-democracy uprising that was crushed. The protests were retroactively termed the Saffron Revolution, to draw parallels with the Orange Revolution in Ukraine and the other “color revolutions” in the former Soviet bloc. The economic dimensions of what was happening in Burma were almost entirely lost.

1992, though, I was feeling increasingly uneasy about aid restrictions and sanctions, in part because of their unintended humanitarian consequences but also because I felt anything that pulled the country out of its shell was a good thing, including the right kind of trade, investment, and even tourism.

In writing a second book on Burmese history, The River of Lost Footsteps, I began to understand more clearly that the roots of Burma’s problems lay not just in its military dictatorship but in the peculiar nationalism that had led to war, isolation, and impoverishment. What Burma needed was not simple regime change but a more radical process of transformation.

was in Sarajevo during the Bosnian War. At the time, I wanted nothing so much as NATO-led armed intervention on the side of the Bosnian government, to stop the atrocities and bring about a just settlement. But by 2007, I was extremely skeptical that any outside intervention could work, anywhere, unless it was part of a peace accord already agreed upon by all parties.

advised that the Iraq invasion would be a disaster, not because the US didn’t have the might to overthrow Saddam Hussein, but because the “international community” would have next to no ability to deal with the day after.

They also thought that they were fundamentally misunderstood. One general said, “If I were a Western policy-maker and only knew what was written about us in their media, I would do the same as them. I would be even tougher against us! But the media reports are wrong. We’re not who they think we are.”

I could tell even from these early meetings that their instinct was never to show any weakness. Change was possible, even desirable, but it could never seem to have come under pressure. “We’ve spent our lives on the battlefield,” said one senior officer. “Stand and fight to the death is what we’ve always been told to do.”

A big hurdle was the bizarre psychology that had evolved during Burma’s isolation. We should be looking for ways to break down that isolation, I said, including the right kind of economic engagement. No one really disagreed. But no one wanted to rock the boat. Burma was just not important enough. Showing solidarity with the democracy movement was politically expedient. Results didn’t matter.

The Irrawaddy delta—about the size of West Virginia or southern England—was a swampy backwater until colonial times, when a combination of Anglo-Indian financing and migrant Burmese labor turned it into the most profitable rice producing area in the world. Ever since the Great Depression, the area had become increasingly destitute, though at the same time more crowded.

At about six the next morning, Nargis slammed into Burma’s southwestern coast, with winds of up to 215 miles an hour. An enormous storm surge followed, and a wall of water twelve feet high pushed as far as twenty-five miles inland. On the evening of May 2, the cyclone passed over Rangoon, weaker but still able to lash the city of five million with torrential wind and rain, felling thousands of trees and damaging hundreds of buildings, before disappearing over the eastern hills. For the delta—a level landscape of five million people nearly all living in rickety wooden houses—Nargis was a disaster of epic proportions.

AT LEAST 138,000 PEOPLE died between May 2 and 3.

delta and toward Rangoon, 450,000 homes were destroyed and another 350,000 damaged. Seawater flooded 600,000 hectares of farmland, and 60,000 water buffaloes, essential for plowing, were drowned.2

It was, by far, the worst natural disaster in Burma’s history. As news began to filter out, the world geared up to help. But this was to be no ordinary natural disaster: Nargis had not struck an otherwise trouble-free land. Over the next three weeks, the natural disaster would give rise to a political crisis of global proportions, a Burma crisis dominating international television screens for the second time in less than a year and drawing in politicians and diplomats from around the world.

By the 2000s, the Chinese were hoping that Burma would provide a route to the Indian Ocean. This was a very old ambition, going back to the first Chinese explorers two thousand years ago who searched for a way from today’s Yunnan, via Burma, to the sea.

back door to China during the Second World War, when the Americans trucked supplies over the Burma Road to Chiang Kai-shek’s besieged forces at Chungking. In the 1990s, Chinese scholars began discussing what they termed “the Malacca Dilemma,” the fact that nearly all China’s shipping and energy supplies depended on the narrow Straits of Malacca, a potential chokepoint that could be blockaded by the American or other navies. Beijing wanted a new Burma Road, a permanent one, and much else.

In November 2009, Burma and China finalized plans for a $2.5-billion oil and gas pipeline that would connect a port in Arakan...

addition, China began work on a massive $3.5-billion hydropower project in Kachin state, four times the size of the Hoover Dam and projected to be the fifteenth biggest in the world. A slew of other dams were also planned, along the Irrawaddy and Salween rivers, as well as a giant nickel mine worth $1 billion.

In Burma itself, China’s push was controversial, to say the least. Given Western sanctions, the junta felt it had little alternative. The junta had few qualms about the environmental destruction some of these projects would cause, or the land confiscations they would entail, but many ordinary people did have qualms. An image of a rapacious China, taking advantage of Burma’s international weakness, took root.

In informal meetings, they said that what was intended was “new system, old people.” There would be a genuinely new set-up but, for the first five years, perhaps ten, ex-military men would dominate institutions, to break them in. They wanted to make sure reform didn’t lead to revolt, to protect their families and safeguard their wealth. Not all generals were corrupt, but many had family members who had profited from their positions. Perhaps more than anything, they seemed to want their legacy respected. But beyond that, they were open to ideas.

Speaking at the European Union parliament in Brussels in June 2009, I argued that the new constitutional set-up would not lead to democracy, but would be the biggest shake-up in the Burmese political order in a generation. I advocated trying to take advantage of this shake-up, thinking not just about politics but also about the economy and the armed conflicts.

In an op-ed in the New York Times, headlined “We Can’t Afford to Ignore Myanmar,” he wrote, “Our distinct policies toward different countries amount to a form of situational ethics that does not translate well into clear-headed diplomacy.”6

“Young people didn’t have access to new ways of thinking. They hated the military. But they still had the same idea as the military of a Burma that was unchanged from millions of years ago. They didn’t know what had been the product of the British and what was not. We talked about all these things. About how the country’s borders themselves were new. This opened their eyes. Some were very upset. ‘No, Myanmar was always there!’ some said. But then they changed. With that they came to accept a more pragmatic approach. It wasn’t going to be about bringing back a glorious past.”

They shared the beliefs that sanctions were counterproductive, that revolution was not around the corner, and that the opportunities around Than Shwe’s impending retirement could be used to push Burma in a reformist direction.

BARACK OBAMA CAME to Burma in November 2012. Ulysses Grant had visited in 1879 as part of a post-retirement round-the-world tour. Herbert Hoover worked in Burma as a mining engineer at the turn of the century. And Richard Nixon made a trip as vice president, stepping out of his motorcade to confront left-wing student protesters on the side of the road. But Obama was the first sitting US president to visit Burma.

As they passed the towering Shwedagon Pagoda, Campbell declared, “No visit to Burma is complete really without a visit to the Shwedagon.”

Obama then called on Thein Sein, remarking on “the incredible potential of this beautiful country.”

THE STORY HAD CHANGED, but the world saw only a fairytale. Few did their homework to really understand what was driving the positive momentum and how best to keep it going.

There were also other warning lights flashing. Over the summer of 2011, the seventeen-year-old ceasefire in the north between the army and the Kachin Independence Organization broke down, leading to all-out war.

On August 18, 2011, a little more than four months after taking office, President Thein Sein formally invited the leaders of the insurgent groups to new peace talks. He didn’t have a clear strategy, but he knew that his core agenda of economic development would be constrained unless he could also find an end to Burma’s seven decades of armed conflict.

His orders were clear: do not agree to anything that might lead to the breakup of the country or damage Burma’s sovereignty. Otherwise, anything is acceptable.

Within weeks, Thein Sein received a positive response from the country’s oldest insurgent group, the Karen National Union. The Karen lived across the south of Burma. They included both Buddhist and Christians, but in the eastern hills most villages, a...