BURMA - now more formally known as Myanmar - is the latest cause célèbre espoused by the chatterati, by the 'human rights' lobby, by the 'something must be done' brigade and international sanctions junkies.
If you are not concerned about Burma, you are distinctly uncool. Precisely what it is that 'we' are supposed to do remains opaque. When politicians jostle one another into television studios to denounce a "vile and oppressive régime", it is a reliabl
e signal that there is nothing whatsoever they can do about it.
Last week was an embarrassing début by our sixth-form Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, a rabbit in the headlights facing Jeremy Paxman on Newsnight. There was something almost disarming about his comprehensive ignorance of the situation, notably the scale of British investment in Burma. So much for the reputation of New Labour anoraks and Foreign Office briefing.
Reliable information about UK investment in Burma is exceptionally elusive. The FCO suggests it amounts to little more than British businessmen occasionally swapping doubles from their stamp collections. When Rolls-Royce was pilloried for doing work in Burma, the company protested it consisted of servicing just three civil aircraft engines to ensure passenger safety. Yet campaigners against the tyrannical government claim the UK is the second-largest source of approved investment in Burma. The explanation is most likely the channelling by third parties of investment through Bermuda and the British Virgin Islands.
The issue is irrelevant, in moral terms. This is all humbug. It is a classic example of the hypocrisy and double standards of the liberal consensus. Does British public opinion have a long history of agitation over the rights of the Burmese people? The incontrovertible answer is no: the earliest date at which Burma became a BBC-driven, Guardian-endorsed Hampstead crusade, approved to British double standards, was 1988. In that year the army engaged in serious bloodletting. But what was happening in that far-off country of which we knew little between independence in 1948 and the conflict of 40 years later?
Enter the S-word. Out of the statutory post-independence ethnic civil war emerged, in 1962, the dictatorship of the Burma Socialist Programme Party, which proclaimed national salvation through the "Burmese way to socialism". That way, as usual with socialism, involved the abolition of free elections, free speech and assembly, enforced by imprisonment and torture. Yet here is a funny thing: during the 26 years that one-party socialism ruled Burma, the lack of human rights seems to have escaped the notice of British liberals. The progressive maxim prevailed: you cannot make an omelette without breaking eggs.
In Burma, socialism did what it does best: transformed a nation of fertile land and rich resources into an economic basket case (if you are reading this anywhere in central Scotland, a glance out of the window will illustrate the point). It was rice shortages (in Burma!) that provoked the uprising in 1988 that was so bloodily put down by a regime that thenceforth became a straightforward military dictatorship.
Now we are told it would be immoral to have dealings with the regime. In terms of moral absolutism, that seems indisputable; but where is the ethical consistency? The Burmese rulers killed, at the highest estimate, 10,000 people in 1988. Multiply that several times, if you like, to cover all victims of repression in the intervening and antecedent years. It is difficult to take the estimate as high as 100,000. Yet Red China has murdered 65 million people.
What is our posture towards Beijing? In economic terms, we simply cannot do enough for the comrades. Between 1998, when Britain established a "co-operative partnership" with China, and 2003, our trade with Beijing doubled from $5bn to $10bn. The UK's actual investment in China also leapt by over $10bn in the same period. In 2005, UK companies spent more than $4.5bn on 15 Chinese companies. Perhaps one is missing something, but what was the qualitative difference between the lives lost in Tiananmen Square in 1989 and those killed in Burma in 1988?
In any case, investment in China is indirect investment in Burma, since Beijing has been ploughing millions of dollars - actually by now billions - into its neighbour's economy. Yet the cack-handed, moralistic American response was to ban all investment in Burma in 1997, a prohibition reinforced in 2003. Beijing loved that: the comrades were in there like ferrets, filling the investment vacuum. The Burmese refer to China as 'paukphaw', meaning 'sibling'.
We criticise India for trying to cultivate Burma: it does so in the hope of detaching it, even slightly, from its superpower neighbour. Japan, too, is concerned about Chinese influence in Burma. Britain's posture is pretentious and absurd. The Burmese dictatorship is odious: so was Saddam, but what were the consequences of toppling him? One-third of Burma's 50 million population is composed of alienated, vengeful and armed ethnic minorities which the military regime has never crushed. The Muslim component is only 5%, but a few al-Qaeda goody-bags could make those guerrillas serious contenders.
Could Oxford graduate Aung San Suu Kyi, for all her undoubted democratic mandate in the annulled 1990 election, hold that country together? Another consideration is the acute paranoia the spectacle of Buddhist monks leading a revolt provokes in Beijing, the coloniser of Tibet. Nor is China itself secure. A Chinese Communist Party organ conceded there were 58,000 incidences of serious civil unrest in 2003, involving more than three million protesters. The regime fears the internet and mobile telephones may eventually facilitate co-ordinated uprisings across its vast empire.
No mechanism of tyranny deserves to fall more than the Chinese Communist Party; but the consequences of a nation that size collapsing into anarchy do not bear contemplation. The best interim outcome in Burma would be the emergence of a more moderate military government. As Iraq has shown, democracy does not travel well and a dogmatic drive to export it may do immense harm.
The full article contains 1009 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
