Pragmatic approach will better serve U.S. strategic interests than sanctions
Given the rising strategic importance of Vietnam, U.S. President Joe Biden did well by stopping in Hanoi last weekend after attending the Group of 20 summit in New Delhi.
His visit has helped cement a new American strategic partnership with Vietnam that seeks to focus on present and future Asian challenges by burying bitter memories of the past.
The stopover in one of Asia’s more authoritarian countries is the latest reminder of how Biden is not hewing to his own simplistic narrative of a “global battle between democracy and autocracy,” implicitly recognizing that the approach would crimp the wider pursuit of U.S. diplomatic interests.
In New Delhi, Biden gave Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman a hearty handshake even though he was criticized at home for fist-bumping him last year. Biden’s embrace of the crown prince contrasts starkly with his own 2019 presidential campaign pledge to treat Saudi Arabia like “the pariah that they are.”
The mending of frayed ties with Saudi Arabia is already paying dividends for Washington. Biden and Prince Mohammed joined other leaders in New Delhi to unveil an ambitious plan to build a rail and shipping corridor that would link India with the Middle East and Europe.
Not surprisingly, Biden’s trip to Vietnam has drawn flak from American human rights activists concerned with Hanoi’s widening crackdown on dissent and peaceful protest. Taking a different stance, Biden said Vietnam is a “critical Indo-Pacific partner” for America.
The promotion of democracy and human rights has a legitimate role in American foreign policy. But if these issues are allowed to outweigh all other considerations, the U.S. will have few countries outside the Western bloc to partner with. The need for a balanced approach is underlined by the fact that even in the U.S. itself, more than two-thirds of the citizenry think the country’s democracy is broken.
Against this backdrop, Biden ought to review his administration’s use of sanctions to promote democracy. Rather than advancing democratic freedoms, punitive measures against vulnerable states often further the interests of China, the world’s largest and longest-surviving autocracy.
While flying from New Delhi to Hanoi, Biden’s Air Force One passed over Myanmar, a country with a struggling economy that has been greatly impacted by U.S. sanctions.
Seeking to restore democracy in military-ruled Myanmar through punishing sanctions while building closer partnerships with other autocracies is inherently contradictory and undercuts U.S. interests.
The fact is that there is not a single truly democratic country in the arc of Southeast Asian countries that stretches between Myanmar and Vietnam and shares a Buddhist heritage.
An alliance between Thailand’s military and monarchy has long shaped politics in that U.S. treaty ally. Nine years after a military coup, Thailand last month installed a new government that still has military-linked parties at its core, sidelining voters who showed a clear preference for opposition parties in May’s general election.
The military has also been the most powerful political player traditionally in Myanmar. But while the U.S. put up with Thailand’s coup without imposing meaningful penalties, the Biden administration imposed wide-ranging sanctions against Myanmar after generals there ousted Aung San Suu Kyi’s elected government in February 2021.
Indeed, sanctions may have contributed to the coup. Thirteen months earlier, the U.S. penalized a number of the generals in relation to Myanmar’s bloody campaign to drive out Rohingya Muslims. Some military leaders may have felt they had little to lose by seizing power.
Post-coup sanctions have made a bad situation in Myanmar worse without advancing American interests. Left with little leverage to influence political developments, the U.S. has been lending increasing support to armed resistance forces fighting military rule.
With its strategic location, Myanmar, like Vietnam, could be co-opted into America’s Indo-Pacific strategy. Instead, thanks to U.S. sanctions policy, China’s footprint in Myanmar is growing fast.
If Biden were to shift from isolating and squeezing Myanmar to gradually engaging with the junta, he would stand a better chance of accelerating the end of direct military rule. Sanctions without engagement have never worked.
Human rights activists and democracy promoters may be highly influential within the foreign policy apparatus of Biden’s Democratic Party, but despite his public rhetoric about democracy versus autocracy, the president has wisely taken a more pragmatic approach.
This approach would benefit more if long-term strategic interests, not narrow considerations or moralizing, guided engagement with any autocracy.
In beseeching China to stabilize its relationship with the U.S. through direct talks, Biden has sent a string of senior officials to Beijing since May, including the director of the CIA, his secretaries of state, treasury and commerce, as well as his climate envoy. Yet Washington has balked at even just opening lines of communication with Myanmar’s generals.
Biden managed to persuade Vietnam to sign a “comprehensive strategic partnership” that grants the U.S. coveted status that Hanoi previously reserved for China, Russia, India and South Korea.
The U.S. could likewise potentially become a favored partner of Myanmar by gradually developing ties with its nationalist military — the only functioning national institution in the culturally and ethnically diverse country.
Today, the U.S. maintains close cooperation with a wide array of undemocratic or weakly democratic governments. Without giving authoritarian states a free pass on democracy or rights issues, the U.S. should use positive incentives, rather than sanctions, to persuade potential and existing partner nations to address their political shortcomings. America’s sharpening competition with China makes it crucial that it prioritize strategic interests by building new partnerships.
Brahma Chellaney is professor emeritus of strategic studies at the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi and a former adviser to India’s National Security Council. He is the author of nine books, including “Water: Asia’s New Battleground.”
Stagecraft and Statecraft 