“Soft Powers” Fighting over Transitional Societies: The Case of Myanmar

The classical soft power concept is not entirely sufficient to explain the phenomena of influence on transitional societies since traditional soft power tools virtually do not work there. We can see the full picture if we analyze the rivalry between the soft powers of today’s two great powers in the same developing country.

The U.S. and China are pouring efforts into advancing their soft power influence in Myanmar. If the U.S. expenses amount to nothing, China and its stable authoritarianism will fill the emerging vacuum. The political aspect of influence will be cemented by the economic aspect; China’s economic model (economically, China has proved to be Myanmar’s most effective partner) is based on the so-called Beijing Consensus, a combination of a paternalist state and Confucian relations between the superior and the subordinate in the private sector. These institutions do not fit well with the democracy the West has been promoting in Myanmar since the 1980s. It means that China’s soft power enhanced by its peacemaking efforts will most likely be capable of turning around the unfinished process of democratization in Myanmar.

The classical soft power concept is not entirely sufficient to explain the phenomena of influence on transitional societies since traditional soft power tools virtually do not work there. We can see the full picture if we analyze the rivalry between the soft powers of today’s two great powers in the same developing country.

Soft power: broadcasting or a choice?

Georgy Toloraya:
Awakening of the “burmese elephant”

The defining feature of soft power is that the areas of influence it helps form rather clearly demonstrate the division into donors and recipients. Donors are states with a well-recognized country brand, a consolidated political regime, integrally built value systems, and models of cooperation between civil society and the authorities. The latter play a particularly important role since they serve as a foundation for the edifice of a state that may undergo changes to its image, repairs, and overhaul of its framework. Recipients are characterized by an unformed political culture and problems in promoting their country’s brand. These problems may be caused by a variety of factors: the checkered past of the ruling elite, unsettled conflicts, poor imitation of donor states, discords between the authorities and civil society (if the latter exists at all), and, finally, by a low quality of life.

Interaction between donors and recipients appears to be a rigid connection outlined by the logic of post-colonialism. However, this point of view simplifies the picture: neither the status of a regional power, nor the possession of a country brand, nor the establishment of special agencies for promoting said brand, nor even a historically formed “colony-metropolis” model of relations guarantee that recipients will choose not to reject the soft power of a donor country. First, there are quite a few donors. The global West is not homogeneous when it comes to political regime models and values. For its part, the global East is becoming increasingly confident in promoting its own brands and proving that it is frequently more stable, more cutting-edge, and more reliable than the West. Second, the political templates and paradigms offered by donors are not unified. They vary from a paternalist quasi-dictatorship to liberal democracy with an emphasis on exercising fifth-generation human rights. Third, the transnational nature of individuals, ideas, and capital has blurred the line between regional donors and those who are far removed from recipients physically but are close to them culturally and historically. As a result, recipients have the right to choose whose soft power they will receive favorably in exchange for political loyalty, a right that is unthinkable in classical post-colonialism.

The process of choosing a soft power donor is particularly long and difficult for poor countries encumbered with ethnic and religious conflicts as well as an unfinished democratic transition. Giving their citizens stipends to study in programs for political leadership and development may at best result in pushing young professionals into the opposition and at worst in garden-variety brain drain. The promotion of culture may appear to be an attempt to reconstruct classical colonialism. Transplanting democratic institutions on the soil of a political culture where violence and social fragmentation are a norm of life begets hybrid regimes. In short, the classical soft power tools described by Joseph Nye have trouble functioning in oppressed countries. It makes it possible to label them as “the non-structural elements in the structure” of the post-colonial world.

For traditional tools to work, oppressed countries first need help in resolving problems in their economic and social development the their people will have the time and energy to think about political regime, education, and freedom of speech, i.e. about the values that classical soft power broadcasts.

Fight for Myanmar

Aida Simoniya:
Why Have the Reforms in Myanmar Slowed Down?

China has adhered to such a strategy since the early 2000s. This has been particularly obvious in its relations with Myanmar. Without attempting to appear more democratic than it was, China did not reject cooperation with Myanmar when the military rule there seemed if not stable then at least understandably evolving into a hybrid regime. Such a modus operandi stemmed not only from China’s preferred strategy of encouraging “South and South” cooperation or from its economic interests in the energy sector in Arakan but also from a general understanding of soft power. China expands the traditional soft power concept through the notion of the universal need for human development, primarily for development buttressed by economic growth. China believes various types of economic cooperation, from building HPPs and TPPs to promoting national IT products, to be parts of soft power and views national interests, the interests of business, and sustainable development as something that has long since formed an integral whole.

China’s advance was not limited to the economy. Beijing’s attempt to become an immediate mediator in the conflict between Naypyidaw and Kachin insurgents in 2012 failed, but the failure did not make China abandon its peaceful initiatives once and for all. China transitioned from the strategy of being a neutral mediator to the multilateral diplomacy of an indirect participant in the conflict. For instance, in 2013, when the Yunnan province was inundated with refugees from Myanmar, China appointed a special envoy as a leading contact person and official observer at peace talks. As time went by, this office was transformed from an ad hoc to a standing institution and today it still promotes talks between ethnic armed organizations (ЕАОs) and Myanmar’s government. At the time, the U.S. mostly engaged in supporting democratic reforms in Myanmar without emphasizing the settlement of ethnic territorial conflicts or helping to build an institutional structure appropriate for a multiethnic state. Thus, China filled the “ally vacuum” in the conflict resolution.

Additionally, unlike China, the U.S. separated “soft power” from economic influence. This is why the American Center working at the U.S. Embassy, which offered Fulbright and Hubert H. Humphrey fellowships to Burmese students, and Barack Obama’s friendly visit, which aimed to provide reputational support to the young democracy, went hand in hand with imposing sanctions on a state that, according to UN rules, had a right to export benefits. As a result, even corporations that earmarked large funds for education, healthcare, and water supply infrastructure limited their efforts in order not to be punished by the U.S. Department of the Treasury and thereby yielded their places to China. The realization that helping democratization was not enough to improve the effectiveness of soft power dawned only at the end of Barack Obama’s presidency in 2016. The exacerbation of the ethnic territorial conflict in Arakan, which was largely prompted by the region’s poverty and underdevelopment, was right around the corner; Western investments had difficulties making their way to Arakan. The exacerbation was followed by a rollback: instead of rethinking the “democracy first, investment later” policy, the U.S. first leveled a barrage of criticism at Myanmar’s national leader Aung San Suu Kyi and then put the country’s military officers on sanctions lists and supported the embargo imposed by Canada and the EU. As a result, the soft power of the “flagship of western democracy in Southeast Asia” once again is beginning to dissolve in economic hardships.

Gleb Ivashentsov:
The Myanmar Perestroika

Dissolution is not the worst thing that could happen to U.S. soft power. In the fall of 2020, Myanmar will hold general elections. Experts from the USIP and the Carnegie Council predict heated debates during the electoral campaign and profound dissent on the issue of settling ethnic conflicts pursuant to the elections’ outcome. However, even now, old discords are being revived and new confrontations are emerging. This is primarily taking place between Westernized followers of the National League for Democracy and the supporters of the nationalist Union of Solidarity and Development Party. The former are attempting to limit the power of the military by amending the Constitution and to expand the rights of children of foreign citizens to obtain citizenship. The latter are vehemently opposed to these “anti-sovereign” initiatives and, at the same time, accuse electoral committees and the media for not giving enough attention to the opposition. Even the electoral steps of the principal political forces (the NLD, the USDP, separatists) are highly “conflict-generating”: amending the constitution may provoke a military “counter-democratic coup” (while the USDP holds rallies and their supporters in the parliament are getting ready to block the amendments) and vice versa, while the USDP “breaking” into the information space may provoke aggression on the part of the NLD plagued by inter-faction discord when it comes to ways to stay in power. Separatists will become more active in looking for financing and become involved in irredentism on the country’s periphery and provoke ethnic dissent in the center, while pan-national forces are locked in a fight against each other (they have been at it for their entire political life, but during the electoral campaign, provocations will be more brazen ranging from open extremism on social media to street violence in the spirit of 2012).

The young Myanmar democracy may not be able to withstand passions that run so high, and then U.S. expenses on promoting its soft power will amount to nothing, while China and its stable authoritarianism will fill the emerging vacuum. The political aspect of influence will be cemented by the economic aspect; China’s economic model (economically, China has proved to be Myanmar’s most effective partner) is based on the so-called Beijing Consensus, a combination of a paternalist state and Confucian relations between the superior and the subordinate in the private sector. These institutions do not fit well with the democracy the West has been promoting in Myanmar since the 1980s. It means that China’s soft power enhanced by its peacemaking efforts will most likely be capable of turning around the unfinished process of democratization in Myanmar.