Sanctioned Reform: Myanmar's Policy Puzzle Pieces
Scot Marciel, the former US Ambassador to Myanmar, reflected on his diplomatic career in a recent podcast episode, emphasizing the complexities of Myanmar's challenges, from the Rohingya crisis to the military coup, and advocates for international support for local governance and displaced populations in Myanmar as they strive for a better future. In the following excerpt, he discusses the American government’s thinking behind their decision to lift sanctions in 2016.
“But the argument, and I believe it to this day, the argument was that the NLD government needs to succeed, and part of succeeding means delivering economically.”
“With the beginnings of reform under Thein Sein - you had this heavy sanctions approach before that, and I wasn't involved in this part of the policymaking, because I was in Jakarta - in 2011, ’12,’13, you started to see some relaxation, some easing of the sanctions in response to progress. I think there was general agreement, certainly within the administration. I wasn't close enough at the time to know what everyone in the sort of Burma Lobby thought. I think there was hesitation to move forward with easing sanctions
By the time I got there, in 2016, we had eased sanctions, but kept a number [of them] in place. What I saw was that the purpose of easing the sanctions is to send a signal, that if you keep moving in the right direction, there'll be progress. But what we were seeing on the ground was that this sort of ‘salami slice’ removing sanctions approach wasn't really having much impact in terms of willingness to invest, certainly by the US, and I think by a lot of other companies. What I heard regularly from the business community was [that] the sanctions are really complex. And the penalties, if you violate them even unknowingly, are extremely high. And this market is small; so, our compliance people are just not going to support anything until it's clear that there's no sanctions problem. So, we saw that the kind of gradual easing of sanctions wasn't resulting in the economic benefit that we had hoped in theory [we] would get by gradually easing sanctions.
Then some of the some of the economic advisors around Aung San Suu Kyi started coming to us, in 2016, and saying, ‘Ah, the sanctions are really hurting us. Can you can you really look at lifting them?’ At that point, Aung San Suu Kyi, when it would come up with in conversation with her, she would be rather agnostic. ‘Well, that's up to you whether to lift them or not.’ And there was no way we were going to lift the sanctions if Aung San Suu Kyi wasn't on board; that just wasn't going to happen
After a while, people in Washington began to see that for us to really help the cause of reform that the NLD government needed to be able to deliver economically. And that would be helped [by], the one area we could affect that would be, with sanctions relief. So, I and a few others began to argue that maybe we should consider lifting sanctions. And that led to discussions with Aung San Suu Kyi, where we presented the options to her. And she decided that lifting the sanctions made sense. And she didn't do it lightly. I don't want to speak for her. But she knew there were pros and cons of doing it. And we all knew that. But in the end, she decided that the benefits outweighed the risks. Based on that, there was agreement in the White House to lift sanctions.
A lot of the business community, of course, supported it, but they didn't drive it. And a lot of people in the Burma Lobby opposed it. Inside Myanmar, there were mixed views. Some people strongly supported it. Others opposed, because they thought it would remove leverage. But in the end, President Obama agreed to lift the sanctions.
This is the important point that I think some people are still not getting. The decision to lift the sanctions wasn't, ‘Okay, you've done enough; sanctions are gone.’ Right? It was, ‘What policy decision action can we take that can most support the reform movement, realizing that there's an ongoing struggle?’ That was the basis for lifting sanctions. Not, ‘Okay, everything's done.’
We all knew there was a lot of work to do. And a lot more than that had to happen. But the argument, and I believe it to this day, the argument was that the NLD government needs to succeed, and part of succeeding means delivering economically. And if we've got sanctions in place that are inhibiting that, then we should lift those sanctions to give them the best chance. And that was the basis for the decision.”