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Great Game in the east
- As Hillary Clinton travels in Myanmar this week, she is the first American Secretary of State to visit the country in nearly half-a-century.
- The brutal crackdown by the military rulers on the pro-democracy movement led by Aung San Suu Kyi at the end of the 1980s saw much of the Western world shun Myanmar.
- After Rajiv Gandhi travelled there in 1987, none of his successors has had the time to fly across the short distance to Myanmar.
- Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has an opportunity to make amends early next year, by joining a regional summit in Myanmar and spending a day and more on bilateral matters.
- Myanmar now wants to reduce its economic and political reliance on Beijing. Its decision to suspend work on the Myitsone hydel project — being built with Chinese assistance — and its outreach to Washington mark a definitive turn in Naypyidaw’s search for strategic autonomy.
- Powerful single-issue groups in Washington — focused on human rights, religious freedom and non-proliferation — want to condition American engagement with Myanmar by measurable progress on these issues.
- The most difficult moment for an authoritarian system is when it begins to reform, when deep cleavages appear within the ruling elite on the pace and direction of change.
- A year after President Barack Obama criticised India’s Myanmar policy in his address to Parliament, Delhi has reason to be pleased with Washington’s new thinking.
- But India must brace itself for a messy situation next door as the American bull walks into Myanmar’s China shop.
- Barely 48 hours before Clinton landed in Myanmar, Beijing was hosting the chief of Myanmar’s armed forces, General Min Aung Hlaing, and reaffirming its commitment to expand the strategic partnership with Naypyidaw.
- As our important eastern neighbour embarks on the road to reform and becomes a theatre for geopolitical competition between Beijing and Washington, India will need a more energetic policy towards Myanmar.
