AUSTIN, Texas — Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s landmark visit to Burma this week heralds the potential for breakthroughs on two fronts — accelerating democratic reforms in one of the world’s worst tyrannies and realigning the strategic order of Asia.  Accomplishing both of these objectives is possible and represents a best-case scenario.  Yet optimism should be tempered, and it would be prudent to recall previous such gambits that failed, such as then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s champagne toast with Kim Jong Il in Pyongyang in 2000.  Eleven years later, the North Korean regime remains ensconced in power, and that country remains as despotic, irresponsible, and isolated as ever.

Clinton’s visit might produce a more agreeable and substantive outcome, especially considering that the Burmese government has already taken some notable steps, including lifting many restrictions on Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, who welcomed Clinton’s visit and met with the Secretary of State.  Yet the aftermath of the trip should be evaluated not just by the optics emanating from Naypyidaw and Rangoon, but also by other less visible but potentially more revealing indicators. Burma experts such as Jean Geran and Joshua Kurlantzick have already highlighted some of the most salient ones, such as the release of the estimated 1500 remaining political prisoners, an end to the ongoing brutalization of ethnic minorities, and a substantial reform in civil-military relations so that the military becomes genuinely accountable to the civilian government.  Any of these would represent significant steps, and whether or not they are taken will reveal much about the capability and intentions of President Thein Sein.

Burma is not merely a humanitarian concern or a regional problem confined to Southeast Asia.  It is in the crucible of the emerging “great power” maneuvering of China and India.  It is an ally and client of North Korea, whose opaque weapons trade with Burma raises profound security concerns.  And it stands at a pivot point for the global economy, sitting on considerable natural gas reserves and at the maritime crossroads of the Indian and Pacific Oceans, where the Malacca Strait serves as transit route for one-quarter of all global traded goods and one-quarter of all sea-borne petroleum.

Clinton’s visit therefore demonstrates a convergence of interests and democratic values. Burma’s tentative steps to come in from the cold also offer an intriguing insight: sometimes a shifting balance of power can induce democratic reform.  This was partially the case in 2005 when Vietnam’s concerns over growing Chinese hegemony in the region prompted the Vietnamese government to make significant improvements to its treatment of religious minorities.  Vietnam took these steps to improve its relationship with the United States, which it perceived as a potential balance to China.  It is possible that a similar dynamic is at play in Burma today.  While some in the Burmese leadership might have genuine democratic sympathies, the main impetus for the democratic reforms comes from a calculated desire to distance Naypyidaw from China’s increasingly restrictive orbit and energy mercantilism, and to forge new partnerships with the democracies of the Indo-Pacific and the Western world.  In short, if the Burma opening works, it will be a success for balance-of-power realists and human rights advocates alike, and might suggest a new paradigm for international relations theorists and policy practitioners in which maintaining a stable balance of power can serve as a lever for promoting human rights and democracy.

Burma’s opening may have other geopolitical ramifications.   If it continues on a path of adopting political and economic reforms in tandem, it will also demonstrate the limited appeal of authoritarian capitalism of the kind embraced by Beijing and Moscow.  India is also taking notice.  Given the erratic swings in its Burma stance, New Delhi may still be internally conflicted over whether to privilege material interests or democratic ideals in its foreign policy.  A reformed Burma would help resolve these tensions in Indian policy by serving a reminder that, in the long run, the sacrifice of ideals can also undermine a nation’s interests.  Finally, Burma’s steps toward greater liberty may offer a small encouragement to the transatlantic community, dispirited by the eurozone’s travails, that democratic capitalism retains its vitality and enduring appeal.

William Inboden is a Distinguished Scholar and Assistant Professor at the University of Texas and a non-resident fellow with the German Marshall Fund of the United States.

Image by the U.S. State Department

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AUSTIN, Texas — This Sunday, August 14, marks the 70th anniversary of the Atlantic Charter.  Issued as a 376-word telegram by Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill following their historic first meeting aboard the Augusta in Newfoundland’s Placentia Bay, the Atlantic Charter established the blueprint for the transatlantic relationship, multilateral institutions, and international order that emerged in the postwar years and continue into the 21st century.  In the words of historian Elizabeth Borgwardt, the Atlantic Charter “prefigured the rule-of-law orientation of the Nuremberg Charter, the collective security articulated in the United Nations Charter, and even the free-trade ideology of the Bretton Woods charters that established the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.”  To this list of Atlantic Charter-inspired ideals and institutions could be added the Marshall Plan, NATO, the G-8, the World Trade Organization, and even the European Union.

But better remembered today than the Charter itself are the evocative images of that first Atlantic Summit: FDR’s steel will in overcoming his polio to stand and greet Churchill; the transcendence of the Sunday shipboard hymns of faith and hope; and the almost instant forging of the Roosevelt-Churchill bond that would prove so essential in defeating Nazi tyranny.  Such vignettes of history may inspire nostalgia, but do the Atlantic Charter’s principles themselves — of political and economic liberty, of open sea lanes and collective security, and of shared transatlantic values — still endure?

That question is all the more poignant considering that the Charter’s anniversary comes at what may seem an inauspicious time in transatlantic relations, as many of the institutions inspired by the Charter now appear feckless and besieged.  The sovereign debt problems besetting Italy and Spain and imperiling the eurozone, the downgrade of the United States’ credit rating, the ongoing costs and challenges of the NATO mission in Afghanistan, and the rioting in the United Kingdom all leave leaders on both sides of the Atlantic preoccupied with multiple crises and with little bandwidth and few resources for nurturing transatlantic ties.

Things may be hard today, but in the day of the Atlantic Charter they were much worse.  Remembering the Charter’s 70th anniversary should remind us that the transatlantic alliance was forged not in a time of tranquility but in the crucible of trial. During the darkest days of the 20th century, Roosevelt and Churchill cast a vision of a peaceful, whole, prosperous, and free Europe even while the continent itself was torn asunder by fascist tyranny, Axis aggression advanced across the globe, and domestic sentiment strongly favored keeping the United States out of conflict and out of international affairs.  That a robust vision for a transatlantic alliance could be cast even under those circumstances tells us much about the leadership of FDR and Churchill, and about the resilience of shared values.

It is, in fact, hard to think of a time when transatlantic relations did not confront some kind of turbulence.  As historian James Sheehan has pointed out, throughout the Cold War, the Atlantic alliance “faced one crisis after another.  Washington and its European allies had disagreed about German rearmament and French defection, the invasion of the Suez and the war in Vietnam, Kennedy’s missile crisis, Nixon’s détente and Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative.”   To this litany could be added the continuing series of post-Cold War friction points: the first Iraq War, the Balkan crises, climate change negotiations, the second Iraq War, NATO’s role in Afghanistan, and the global financial crisis.

Yet, somehow, the transatlantic alliance has endured.  And here the Atlantic Charter might help explain its past resilience and suggest ways of strengthening transatlantic cooperation in the years ahead.    The Charter demonstrates that shared values must precede institutions, but that institutions are needed in turn to reinforce and promote values.  It shows how the “Special Relationship” between Washington and London is not a barrier but rather a bridge to stronger ties between the United States and the European continent.  It underscores the relationship between political liberty, economic liberty, prosperity, and peace.  And it reinforces the fact that a flourishing transatlantic alliance serves not just the interests of the Atlantic community but of the globe.

William Inboden is a distinguished scholar at the Strauss Center for International Security and Law at the University of Texas-Austin and a non-resident Fellow with the German Marshall Fund.

Photo from paul-simpson.org.

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AUSTIN, Texas — As Western governments wrestle with debates over whether to intervene in Libya—and if so, how—all sides frequently resort to a favorite debating point — the historical analogy.  Opponents of military intervention invoke the grim prospects of “another Iraq” or “another Somalia” as cautionary notes against Western force being initiated in a troubled Muslim country.  Proponents of intervention also have several analogies at their disposal — a failure to do so risks “another Rwanda,” “another Bosnia,” or “another Darfur,” all chilling reminders of how Western inaction permitted the slaughter of innocents on a vast scale.

Any one of those analogies provides an evocative image that implicitly makes a case for the position being advocated.  Each also elicits powerful yet conflicting memories, whether revulsion at past inaction or chagrin at past incompetence.  Yet in the current crucible that is Libya, not all of these analogies – and perhaps none of them – can be correct.  Each case may have certain similarities, but a proper use of history means noting the dissimilarities as well.  Rwanda broke along tribal lines, both Balkan interventions were in response to violence among ethnic-religious groups and self-determination movements, Iraq entailed a wholesale ground invasion without the active involvement of indigenous rebel forces, the Somalia mission evolved from the protection of humanitarian food delivery to hunting warlords, and so on.

One conceptual problem with the use of analogies is the implicit assumption that history has predictive power — just because in a past instance events turned out a particular way, similar future events will turn out that same way.  To those who resort too easily to such analogies, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., memorably cautioned that “those who remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”  Writing amidst fears that a nuclear exchange between the United States and Soviet Union would be “inevitable” during the Cold War, Reinhold Niebuhr offered an insight less acerbic but just as trenchant as Schlesinger’s: “Many of the historical miscalculations are due to mistaken analogies.  History is fruitful with recurrences and therefore with analogies.  If it were not so, no ‘lessons’ could be learned from history.  But since history also elaborates endless dramatic variations, none of the analogies are exact enough to become the basis for prediction.”

In our implicit demands that it help predict the future, we ask too much of history, and fail to see its “endless dramatic variations.”  Yet history’s lack of prediction does not mean that it lacks any insight, or even foresight.  History can provide much in the way of guidance as long as we understand it as an intellectual discipline rather than an easy validator of our own preconceptions. It can help us question our own assumptions, and remind us of the art of the possible as well as the persistence of surprise.  It can caution us against the folly of simplistic action yet also urge us to condemn inaction.  It can expand our perspectives to be mindful of the interconnectedness and the second- and third-order consequences of our choices.  It chastens our hubris even as it maintains our hope.  Edmund Burke observed that history offers its wisdom when it is used “as habit, not as precept.”  In other words, a knowledge of history can contribute to the habits of historical consciousness, including virtues of statecraft such as prudence, insight, humility, and yes, audacity.

All well and good for a graduate seminar, one might say, but what does this mean for the policymaker now wrestling with the vexing Libya question?  History will not offer a simple answer but, properly employed, it can offer to the policymaker a set of questions to ask and an expanded range of options to consider.  In other words, it provides a body of evidence from multiple episodes in the past, from America’s conflict with Barbary pirates over two centuries ago, Hungary in 1956, and Czechoslovakia in 1968; to Lebanon in 1983, Panama in 1989, and Rwanda in 1994; and the Balkans, Sierra Leone, and Iraq in any number of years.  Moreover, history can offer insight into something as particular as Muammar Gaddafi’s possible response to outside intervention by examining his behavior in previous episodes, such as America’s bombing attack in 1986 or the relinquishment of his WMD program in 2003.  History also provides a record of the possible.  While the fact that something happened in the past does not mean that it will happen in the future, it does show that it can happen in the future.  History understood in this way can expand our imaginations about possible outcomes.  Finally, history can remind us that each situation is unique.  In other words, Libya today is not a simple repeat of any of the oft-cited precedents – it is rather Libya, in 2011.  And whatever the outcome, it will soon enough become an analogy of its own.

William Inboden is a Distinguished Scholar at the Strauss Center for International Security and Law at the University of Texas-Austin and a Non-Resident Fellow with the German Marshall Fund.

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AUSTIN, Texas — By most objective measures, the Obama administration has experienced a rough few weeks.  The substantial Democratic losses in the midterm elections were followed by an Asia trip of mixed reviews, with its final days dominated by a visible setback on the U.S.-South Korea Free Trade Agreement and G-20 discord on global economic imbalances. While the various differences between the Republicans in Congress, the Obama administration, and the other G-20 countries are real, they should not distort the fact that genuine cooperation is possible – and, in fact, needed – on strategic issues.  Democracy promotion presents one such opportunity. In fact, a confluence of several factors may be heralding a propitious time for a renewed transatlantic partnership on global democracy promotion.

At first glance this might not be apparent.  In Washington, the first two years of the Obama administration saw democracy promotion relegated to the periphery of policy priorities, and the Republican gains in Congress have significantly eroded the White House’s political capital while also bringing a more acute focus on domestic economic issues.  In Europe, tightened fiscal straits have curtailed budget resources available for international endeavors, and public fatigue with overseas engagements – exemplified by reduced public support for the NATO mission in Afghanistan – has diminished the political will for democracy promotion.

So what is the basis for this purported opportunity?  First, President Obama himself of late has been rhetorically signaling a new commitment to democracy promotion.  Witness his September address to the United Nations General Assembly, where he devoted a substantial portion of his speech to defending democracy and human rights as universal values.  He continued this theme in his speeches this month in India and Indonesia, proclaiming in New Delhi that “we must never forget that the price of our own freedom is standing up for the freedom of others.”  Presidential speeches alone do not amount to policy implementation, but they do serve as a guide and mandate for his foreign policy team on follow-up policy priorities.

Meanwhile, notwithstanding the fact that emboldened Congressional Republicans will doubtless oppose the Obama administration on many domestic policies, foreign policy represents an area for cooperation.  On democracy and human rights promotion, the new Republican leaders and committee chairs in Congress might make surprisingly agreeable partners.  For example, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell has been a longstanding and indispensable supporter of funding for democracy promotion organizations such as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), International Republican Institute (IRI), and National Democratic Institute (NDI).  Moreover, Sen. McConnell has a particularly impassioned and enduring commitment to human rights in Burma.  In the House, Representative Kay Granger, an IRI board member, is poised to chair the Appropriations Subcommittee on State and Foreign Operations, which controls almost the entire democracy and human rights promotion budget across the State Department and USAID.  Also in the House, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen will chair the Foreign Relations Committee, and she brings a longstanding commitment to human rights and democracy.

The time is ripe in Europe as well.  Recent headlines on U.S.-Europe ties have focused on neuralgic points in the transatlantic relationship, such as European frustration with U.S. deficit spending, or the reluctance of NATO partners to commit further forces to Afghanistan.  Numerous European leaders also privately lament what they perceive as the White House’s general inattention to the United States’ transatlantic allies.  Yet on both sides of the Atlantic, there are genuine hopes for renewed cooperation and closer ties.  And the European interest in democracy and human rights remains broad and deep.  Witness British Prime Minister David Cameron’s speech in China last week with its clear calls for human rights and more accountable government, or French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s vocal support for the Green Movement reformers in Iran, or the widespread acclaim in Europe for the Norwegian Nobel Committee’s award of the Peace Prize to imprisoned Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo.

A White House-Congress-Europe coalition for democracy promotion would need a few specific initiatives to become a reality.  Fortunately, there is no shortage of opportunities.  Possible ideas could include: the launch of a joint high-level U.S.-EU-Australia multilateral human rights dialogue with China that replaces the moribund, ineffective slew of bilateral dialogues; the formation of a transatlantic taskforce on global democracy and human rights promotion; reinvigorated support for the Broader Middle East North Africa/Forum for the Future initiative, launched by the G-8 in 2004; renewed commitment to the United Nations Democracy Fund, with U.S.-EU-Indian leadership; deepened U.S./EU commitment to the Community of Democracies, especially with Lithuania chairing the 2011 Ministerial in Vilnius; or a targeted focus on countries in the crucible of political ferment, such as Burma, Lebanon, Iran, and Egypt.

In short, the political opportunity is ripe, and the global needs are acute.  A White House-Congress-Europe partnership on democracy promotion could bear substantial dividends over the next two years, and beyond.

William Inboden is a Distinguished Scholar at the Strauss Center for International Security and Law at the University of Texas-Austin and a Non-Resident Fellow with the German Marshall Fund.

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