The Last Gasps of The British Empire

And no, it's not because of Oprah...

The Sun is Setting on the British Empire. They told us it never would, but the centuries of oppression and malfeasance are coming home to roost. To suggest that the fall we are witnessing is a product of their own making is an egregious understatement. Many would agree that Brexit was an historic self-own, but there are reasons beyond the obvious Brexit fiasco that contribute to this precipitous decline we are seeing play out. 

The violence that has erupted in Belfast is being simplified from over-seas as solely a result of Brexit and the trade restrictions set as a result. The increased restrictions on border checks in the Irish Sea in order to maintain a soft border between the North and the Republic of Ireland were a conciliation by the British to the EU in order to avoid the violence experienced during The Troubles. In their perennial arrogance, the British concern revolved around preventing a reignition of Nationalist/Republican anti-British sentiment. In Brexit negotiations, considering the support of the EU fell squarely behind the Republican sentiment, this was quickly discovered to be an issue where the British did not have any firm ground to stand on and thus had no choice but to concede to the conditions that ensured a soft border. Despite all the “hard-Brexit” rhetoric and the fleeting inclusion of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) in Teresa May’s Brexit coalition, the posturing by many British politicians that insinuated a strong support for the Loyalist/Unionist cause in Northern Ireland and a position of strength in negotiations with the EU were just that: posturing. The Pro-leave campaign never had a strong negotiating position – or a plan at all, really – that wasn’t based on their blatant fudging of numbers and stoking of xenophobic fervor. Similarly, the “Leavers” only used the DUP to form a coalition based on lies and bigotry (which works perfectly for the DUP,) but the rest of the Pro-Brexit coalition could not have cared less about paying the DUP back for it. Essentially, after more than a century of playing colonialism in their backyard at the brutal cost of their neighbor, the British have dropped their Unionist/Loyalist toys and forgot to clean them up. The DUP is on its own as it continues to naturally lose relevance demographically and now, no longer has its nanny to look after it.

This begins to explain the violence sprouting up in Loyalist communities. The final straw for these pro-British Unionists was apparently a much pettier, culture-related incident. The death of Bobby Storey, a former intelligence operative for the Irish Republican Army, is at the heart of what ignited this wanton violence. As Storey is both an infamous bogeyman figure to the Loyalist/Unionist community, and a beloved hero to the Nationalist/Republican community, his death would likely have always been a catalyst for tensions between these communities. But since his death occurred in the Summer of 2020, the focus rests on the attendance of his funeral which occurred during the government-mandated lockdown. Several Sinn Fein Republican politicians broke with lockdown restrictions in order to pay their respects to a man they see as a hero and friend. Those in attendance were initially charged with breaking lockdown restrictions. But the violence erupted after those charges were dropped by the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI). Outraged that there were not repercussions for politicians they don’t like, attending the funeral of a man they revile, Loyalist paramilitaries incited the youth in their communities to act out their fury against the PSNI who had neglected to chastise the mourners.

Astoundingly, but unfortunately not surprisingly, the DUP leadership prefers to focus on their political opponents. The violence in the streets of Belfast and other cities in the North is being openly perpetrated by Loyalist youth spurred on by paramilitaries. Yet Arlene Foster, leader of the DUP and First Minister of the devolved power sharing government in the North, tweeted condemning the violence, while distancing herself from it and claiming that it “…only serve[s] to take the focus off the real law breakers in Sinn Fein.” 

Essentially, the official DUP response to violence they incited is:

‘I don’t know those kids, LOOK OVER THERE!’

Rather than this being a good reason to criticize those who are being targeted by the violence, it would seem that this is another step in the devolution of the Pro-British Unionist/Loyalist cause in the North of Ireland.

But this is not the only reason the sun is setting so dramatically now. There was a time when the British Empire spanned the globe and held sway over governments and populations the world over. Historian John Morris described the British view of its form of what it believed to be a Moral Colonialism thusly:

“…what might not be done if the moral authority of England were distributed across the earth – to tackle the evils of slavery, ignorance and paganism at source, to teach the simpler peoples the benefits of Steam, Free Trade and Revealed Religion, and to establish not a world empire in the bad Napoleonic sense, but a Moral Empire of loftier intent?” {1}

This incredibly charitable self-assessment gave the British a justification to criticize all other colonialism as immoral while congratulating themselves for being the good guys, doing the very same thing.

Today, British influence has diminished and its greatest export, Independence Days, are its most enduring legacy. And there look to be more of these on the horizon. Scottish independence and a referendum on Irish Unity are looking more and more possible as populations there grow increasingly frustrated with the consequences of retreating from the EU. It is becoming harder to justify their chosen title “United Kingdom,” as “Kingdoms” are rather taboo at this point, and the “United” descriptor becomes increasingly factually dubious. Up to this point, the power that Britain maintains has been largely financial. London’s position as a global financial hub, in addition to a very profitable handful of Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies, the current strength of the British is mostly related to clandestine financing. This is a tenuous and unsavory position to be in.  Especially when you consider that these “secrecy jurisdictions” and tax havens are the primary contributor to the existence of the current form of the Russian government. British journalist Ben Judah writes, 

“[Russians] know that London is a center of Russian corruption, that their loot plunges into Britain’s empire of tax havens – from Gibraltar to Jersey, from the Cayman Islands to the British Virgin Islands – on which the sun never sets.”  {2}

The result of this is illicit, corrupt Russian capital being heavily tied up in British power and stability, the most immediately identifiable consequence of which being that Russian offshore wealth in London drives up real estate prices there, at the expense of Londoners.

The last remnants of an empire are either erupting in sectarian violence or heavily financially leveraged by corrupt and illicit foreign entities. On top of all this, the recent scandals revolving around the antiquated spectacle that is the continued existence of the British Monarchy – which still maintains a weirdly significant position in British government and financial stability – do not help the image of the country around the world. While I will continue to insist that the credit for toppling the British Empire does not lie with Oprah, I admit, she has made a contribution to the effort. 

This is not to suggest that England as a country is over, by any means - it has every ability to revitalize its image. But perhaps the slow dissolution of the monarchy, more calls for financial transparency in Parliament (which had begun to gain traction under David Cameron until the Brexit fiasco started,) and a repudiation of political parties responsible for violence in its backyard, would all be in its best interests. While the remnants of the British Empire remain for now, it might be time to flip on the porch lights, because it looks like the sun is setting.

Endnotes

{1}Hochschild, Adam, “King Leopold’s Ghost” pp 212

{2}Åslund, Anders, “Russia’s Crony Capitalism” pp 161

Russia and Tax Havens

‘Tax havens are the mechanism by which the world’s dirtiest secrets, and most devastating evils are allowed to freely persist, without consequence.’

    When we think of Russian leadership, there is one name that immediately comes to mind: Putin. He has recently tightened his grip over power in Russia by holding a vote (just as dubious in its legitimacy as any other vote Putin has allowed to take place,) making it constitutionally possible for him to remain in power until 2036. But while Putin is the President, the Russian Federation is commonly referred to as an oligarchy. This simply means a government run by few. More specifically, Russia is a plutocratic oligarchy which means those “few” are running the government because of their wealth. I will not be detailing how the most famously communist government in the world, the Soviet Union, became the most extreme example of a crony-capitalist plutocracy; That would be a different topic, and there are many resources to dive into that history. What I want to focus on here is the relationship between the power structure in Russia and the global plight that is tax havens. 

    In order to be a successful oligarch in this sort of plutocracy, you have to acquire and sustain immense amounts of wealth. Beyond the obvious perks of being super-duper rich, the incentive for these oligarchs to amass and maintain such vast troves of wealth, is that their wealth is what gives them power and influence in the Russian government. These few who have the most wealth, these oligarchs, are the only ones in the country with the means to fund government initiatives and projects. But they don’t even necessarily need to be spending anything to maintain that influence. It is simply their exclusive capacity to do so that allows them to hold sway over government policy. Also, being Putin’s buddy definitely doesn’t hurt.

    I know I said I won’t be doing a history of the transition from communism to oligarchy, but just to explain how the oligarchs got all this cheddar in the first place, it starts with Boris Yeltsin selling off the previously communist government-owned state commodities, like oil and other natural resources. But in the decades since then, and especially since Putin came to power in the last decade, the coffers of these oligarchs have grown at a much greater rate than before. At the same time, the wealth gap between the top echelons of Russian society and the poorest in the country has deepened considerably. So, it isn’t as if the growing wealth of the oligarchs is going towards funding government programs to benefit the citizens of Russia. It is simply growing and growing. More curious still, is that the sources of this continued growth in wealth are not easily identified. This brings us to what I am suggesting allows this system to continue as smoothly as it has: tax havens. In order to understand how tax havens are relevant to the maintenance of Russian plutocratic wealth, we need to begin by understanding what they are and what effect their practices have on the world at a more basic level.

    So, what is a tax haven? The Tax Justice Network, who are the vanguard in the fight for international financial transparency, states on their website: “There is no generally agreed definition of what a tax haven is." (Oh. Great…) "The term itself is troublesome, because these places offer facilities that go far beyond tax. Loosely speaking, a tax haven provides facilities that enable people or entities escape (and frequently undermine) the laws, rules and regulations of other jurisdictions elsewhere, using secrecy as a prime tool. Those rules include tax – but also criminal laws, disclosure rules (transparency,) financial regulation, inheritance rules, and more.” Essentially, tax havens can act as ways for Multinational Corporations or MNCs, and the super wealthy to avoid paying taxes and to hide their immense wealth. They are also sometimes referred to as “secrecy jurisdictions”. 

    When MNCs hide their wealth in these tax havens and avoid paying their fair share of taxes, it means the government of the country that they really should be paying taxes to doesn’t get that money. When the government doesn’t get the money that it would be making from the massive amounts of taxes that a giant corporation ought to be paying, that money doesn’t get to go to programs that would help the working class and middle class. This becomes an even bigger problem when we’re talking about MNCs not paying taxes to developing countries. For example, the Zambia Sugar company, a subsidiary of the Associated British Food group, was discovered to be using “aggressive tax avoidance” practices with the help of tax havens to cheat the Zambian government out of unbelievable amounts of money in tax revenue. Sixty percent of Zambian citizens live in poverty and so therefore, the Zambian Government could really use the tax revenue it should be making from Zambia Sugar. But this is just one example of so many. 

    What really compounds the problem is that, by design, these aggressive tax avoidance practices, funneled through tax havens, are incredibly difficult to identify. That is why we need to make international financial transparency a priority. There have been steps taken to begin to tackle this global issue, and there are a number of fantastic organizations and groups that address and expose this problem like The Tax Justice Network, The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and their Base-Erosion and Profit Shifting Action Plan, as well as the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. The European Union has also taken steps to create a blacklist of countries that it defines as Off-shore Financial Centers. What needs to be done going forward is to continue these efforts by the EU and expand the OECD’s country-by-country reporting to be released publicly and not only to the relevant tax authorities in order to further increase transparency globally. But before you run off to support these efforts, we’ve only touched on part of this.

    So far, I’ve only touched on one portion of what the existence of tax havens allows to persist. I started with this aspect because it is actually the simplest to understand and the easiest to dig up some documentation and evidence of. MNCs and government resource extraction and transportation create at least some paper trail, even if they’re being funneled through shell companies in tax havens. Also, technically none of what I’ve mentioned so far is actually illegal. Where things get really murky and start to be considerably less legal, is another popular function of tax havens: money laundering. 

    The Corporate Finance Institute defines money laundering as “a process that criminals use in an attempt to hide the illegal source of their income. By passing money through complex transfers and transactions, or through a series of businesses, the money is ‘cleaned’ of its illegitimate origin and made to appear as legitimate business profits.” They go on to describe the three steps that make up the process of money laundering which begins to explain what money laundering really is:

1. “Initial entry or placement is the initial movement of an amount of money earned from criminal activity into some legitimate financial network or institution.” (tax havens)

2. “Layering is the continuing transfer of the money through multiple transactions, forms, investments, or enterprises, to make it virtually impossible to trace the money back to its illegal origin.” (multiple shell companies, registered in tax havens, moving the illicit money from one to the next until the origin is obscured)

3. “Final Integration is when the money is freely used legally without the necessity to conceal it any further.” (the money is now “clean” because there’s no way to identify whether or not it was used in illegal activity.)

Money laundering only becomes necessary if the original source of the money is from something scandalous. So, as unsavory as cheating developing governments out of the money in tax revenue they deserve is, it’s actually not illegal to use “aggressive tax avoidance”. What is blatantly illegal is collecting money from human-trafficking, drug-running, arms-dealing, etc. Let’s imagine you’re a criminal. If you were making money this way, you’d need to find a way to be discrete about the fact that this is where the money was coming from, but you’d also want to have the ability to spend that money. Time to find a clever and unscrupulous accountant to set up a few shell companies in tax havens! After the accountant moves the money around a couple of times, all of a sudden, you appear to be a successful real-estate mogul. As far as any tax regulation officials can tell, you have invested in several very expensive apartments in Manhattan, own an extravagant cruise ship docked in a port off the coast of a small island, and the paper trail for your luxurious purchases tracks back to a recently opened business with one employee and a P.O. box in the British Virgin Islands. That’s where the trail ends, and you get to spend your money any way you’d like because, for all intents and purposes, it’s perfectly legitimate.

    Now that I’ve given you some tips on how to be an international criminal, you may be thinking: ‘well thanks, but what does this have to do with the Russian government? Are you suggesting that all the money in the Russian government is from drugs and sex-trafficking?’ Not necessarily, no. Though, I am suggesting that it does raise questions about where your money comes from when you use what are technically legal “aggressive tax avoidance” practices. There is little denying that offshore tax havens are used by Putin’s oligarch buddies. Particularly after the release of the “Panama Papers” in 2016, which exposed political leaders and the extremely wealthy all around the world for having used offshore tax havens to hide their wealth/launder money, we know there are many culpable Russians among the exposed. Even after the Panama Papers revealed so much illicit banking, the Russian exposures have had little to no impact. This is because, even after discovering that they had used such practices, many of the transactions had been obscured even before being taken over by Mossack Fonseca, the unscrupulous accounting firm that failed to prevent the leak. So, even though we learned some specifics in terms of who in particular has been using these financial institutions and practices, we were left with even more questions than answers in terms of what Russian oligarchs do with, or how they acquired their wealth.

    What we do know is that publicly, Putin has made calls for “deoffshoreisation,” asking Russians to remove their money from banks and financial institutions outside of Russia. While this public statement was meant to convey some sort of legitimacy, there is little evidence to suggest anything has changed since Putin coined the ungainly term in his 2011 “State-of-the-Nation” address. These comments suggesting Putin’s intent for businesses to reinvest in the Russian banking system in order to revive the Russian tax base, were also apparently immediately met with literal laughter from the Russian business community assembled at the address. For Putin’s display of anti-corruption sentiment to be taken as a joke is very telling. The Russian financial community obviously knows how the Russian economy functions better than anyone. It is not really surprising that they would see this as a joke because as far as we can tell, Putin has complete control over how the business community operates, so he clearly tells them privately how to handle the Russian economy. Plus, it has been made clear through multiple examples of diligent financial reporting, that Putin himself has all of his billions of dollars of personal wealth tucked away in various offshore institutions hidden by creative accounting. So, shocker: it’s probably best to not take Putin at his word.

    While it may not be much of a surprise to hear that Putin is not necessarily the most trustworthy or honest leader the world has ever seen, it is interesting that he would want to make a public display of being against corruption. For anyone that has paid attention to Putin’s role in the Trump presidency, we know the guy has some serious cajones and revels in being coy about his role in international criminal conspiracy. He has multiple times been credibly accused of murdering, or attempting to murder political opponents through poisoning, and his response usually falls somewhere between Steve Urkel and Shaggy. So, for Putin to want to make even a half-hearted, vaguely sarcastic commitment to corruption-reduction, tells us a little something about how even the strong-man leader of an authoritarian plutocracy wants to give the appearance of financial legitimacy. Kinda’ makes you think that maybe, this might possibly be a sensitive subject, doesn’t it? 

    As I mentioned earlier, there are organizations and international bodies that have made some progress in the fight for international financial transparency and preventing the use of aggressive tax avoidance practices. But to say we are a long way off would be an egregious understatement. As great as it would be to put an end to the network of offshore tax havens, it turns out ‘the calls have been coming from inside the house.’ Probably the biggest threat to international financial transparency is Delaware. Yes, “The First State.” While there are other states, like Nevada, that have very “business-friendly” taxation laws, Delaware sports some of the ‘friendliest’. That’s why there are so many businesses registered there (like, for example, the company Trump’s lawyer used to pay off porn star, Stormy Daniels.) It’s a good place to do business you’d rather have fewer questions asked about. There are also countries, aside from small island nations with no other economy to speak of, that have similarly “business-friendly” tax structures, like the Republic of Ireland. So, even if what we normally think of as tax havens were somehow limited in their ability to operate the way they currently do, I’d bet telling a U.S. state how it should structure taxation would be a much greater hurdle to jump. We also know that Putin and various oligarchs have diverse assets in the U.S. that serve to effectively launder their clandestine finances. One oligarch even owns a large portion of the Brooklyn Nets. 

    Tax havens are the mechanism by which the world’s dirtiest secrets, and most devastating evils are allowed to freely persist, without consequence. Whether in Delaware, or the British Virgin Islands, the greatest wealth the world has ever seen is hidden, with only a handful of individuals knowing how much just their own portion of that vast treasure amounts to. Imagine if that money weren’t just sitting on an island, or tied up in a network of Delawarean shell companies. Imagine the taxes owed to a developing government were actually paid to that government and invested in infrastructure or social services for the most at need. Imagine if criminals had to keep piles of cash under their mattresses instead of being able to wash away their crimes and spend without any fear of consequence. Imagine if Putin was expected to release a document detailing his finances, (like how Joe Biden and *most* other U.S. Presidents do,) and a legitimate tax authority were able to examine them. My guess is that the result of the last one would be the end of the Russian government as it exists today. Do I have concrete evidence to support that? Nope, no one does. That’s the problem. If we were to make more significant steps to achieve a greater degree of financial transparency for the world’s wealthiest, all of this imagining could begin to be realized. While it’s a daunting task, perhaps the recent surge in support for anti-corruption political platforms across the world, spurred on by the 2007 financial collapse, and now further compounded by the global pandemic and subsequent recession, there could be a greater incentive to address this issue. But, I have a feeling Putin wouldn’t really be into that.

Myanmar Explained

    Aung San Suu Kyi, the Rohingya, and a coup

    About a month ago I finished reading “The Hidden History of Burma: Race, Capitalism, and the Crisis of Democracy in the 21st Century” by Thant Myint-U. I had felt I needed to know more about the region and what was going on. 

Then there was a coup.

 I felt like I had just been preparing myself to understand what was happening. Much of what follows is based on my reading of Thant Myint-U’s telling of the history of Myanmar/Burma and the quotes are exclusively taken from this fascinating book. So, I’m not an area expert, or at all qualified to express any views on what should be done, or how this should be handled. But I did read a book, and you didn’t. Here are my thoughts on the matter:

    If you live in the global “West” and you don’t understand what’s going on in Myanmar, you are forgiven. Firstly because, as a “Westerner,” there’s very little reason to feel the need to understand what’s going on pretty much anywhere in the world. But particularly in this case, because western media does a dismal job of giving context to this area without viewing it through global finance eyes. Therefore, all the coverage you get on western media discusses this issue in regard to how it affects China. Considering what’s actually happening there, it’s a pretty icky lens through which to view this. If you’re interested, I’m gunna’ try to break this down as best I can, as simply as I can.

    First off, Myanmar was officially known as Burma until 1989. (We’ll come back to that, because the name itself is actually relevant to what’s happening.) It shares a border with India, China, Laos, Thailand, Bangladesh, as well as sporting a long coastline on the Indian Ocean. The north is a heavily mountainous region which has been a headache for China’s perennial attempts to establish a trade route to the South Pacific for centuries. Chinese dynasty after Chinese dynasty has tried and failed to achieve this goal. This obviously has been a source of frustration for China. But while pissing off China rarely goes well for anyone, to explain just how destabilized this region has been, Chinese aggression and manipulation has always been pretty far down on any list of Myanmar’s problems. 

    Over the last several years, the words you have probably heard most often associated with this region are “Rohingya” and “Aung San Suu Kyi”. “Rohinga” is a designation used to refer to a Muslim ethnic minority, predominantly located in a western province of Myanmar on the border with Bangladesh.  Aung San Suu Kyi (Ong saan sue chee) is the daughter of the former military leader of Burma and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 for her efforts to peacefully establish a democracy in the newly named Myanmar. She is a complex character who it is not simple to categorize as either good or bad. Discussing her requires nuance and an understanding of the political climate in Myanmar. 

    Recently, the news coming from Myanmar is that there has been a military coup and the leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, has been detained by the military. While this coup is not directly related to the Rohingya, in that there are many more factors that you could have examined that would have led you to predict that this coup would happen, the Rohingya issue gets to the heart of the troubles the country has been facing that led to this moment.

    At the risk of overly simplifying this, the core problem haunting Myanmar is ethno-nationalism and the consequences of colonialism. The British occupation of India and large sections of this region to the east are somewhere intwined in the roots of the conflicts that exist today. The British colonists set into place a racial hierarchy during their rule, and its insidious legacy permeates the politics of this country to this day. To explain how the British felt about the people who populated this region during their colonial rule, one British author at the time (N.C. MacNamara) described them as “the Irish of the East.”(p21) For anyone who does not know THAT history, coming from a British person, that is a massive insult. As was so commonly practiced when one showed up to colonize an area, the racial hierarchy was established to create conflict between those who cohabitated prior to white arrival. This way, certain groups would be held above other groups to establish a ruling racial class that would be loyal to the colonizer while subjugating the rest, all to the benefit of the colonizer. With a racial hierarchy set into place that dictated your place in society, this way of looking at the world and your neighbors becomes ingrained. The idea that there are distinctions based on visual criteria and that these differences carry important weight that indicates who you are and how you should be treated is not easily wiped away. The British, who were not alone in this sort of racial thinking at the time, were obsessed with categorizing people by race. This was apparently a very important thing to know. Without any introspection regarding the fact that these racial distinctions were largely their own creation, during the 1911 colonial census, the British began to worry that there was “racial instability” in the region. They were having trouble labeling people because the differences between these designated races were “neither definite, nor logical, nor permanent, nor easy to detect… they are unstable from generation to generation, the racial designation of a community sometimes changes so rapidly that its elders consider themselves as belonging to one race whilst their descendants claim to belong to another.”(p23) This passage is a great example of what is wrong with race as a concept to begin with, and if such importance is placed on the distinctions between races, you’ve dug your own confusing, racist grave. Unfortunately, it was not the grave of the British that was being dug, but rather the grave of those upon whom the British imposed this way of thinking.

    The colonial imposition of a racial hierarchy has infected the politics of Myanmar. Remember how I mentioned the name itself is relevant? Well, “Myanma” in the Burmese language, is an adjective that essentially means “Master race”. It does not hold the sort of connotations that this phrase elicits in those of us in the west but is rather meant to instill feelings of national pride and patriotism. Regardless of its intended purpose, the name chosen points to the underpinnings of the democracy established by Aung San Suu Kyi as being rooted in nativism and ethno-nationalism. This is where Aung San Suu Kyi as a player in this story becomes complex. 

    Considering the colonial history, there is good reason why having pride in the fact that there is a government run by people who have ancestral roots in the region as opposed to a foreign power imposing their will and reaping all the benefits, is warranted and even admirable. After growing up under imperial rule, one would rightfully be proud when your country is then freed from this rule and has the ability to govern and profit from its resources without outside forces intervening. While we see this sort of ethno-nationalism as abhorrent and anathema to a democracy, after experiencing a brutal history of foreign oppression, it is understandable why creating a government based in national pride and ethnic heritage would be a way to galvanize the citizens to rally behind their new government. Considering this, it is hard to criticize Aung San Suu Kyi’s original goal that won her the Nobel Peace Prize. Her father, Aung San, was the leader of the military government for a time as the British were losing interest in their racially complex colony. His goal, which she adopted as her own, was to establish a government in Burma that was not controlled by a military dictatorship or foreign power. An independent Burma. While her father was not successful in bringing about a new era before he was killed by a rival, just as he was supposed to usher in non-militarized home rule post-colonialism. The people of Burma saw him as a hero and a martyr for the cause of an independent Burma. Years later, Aung San Suu Kyi would pick up the mantle and similarly be seen as the great hope for a democracy ruled by the people. It is an admirable goal and is why she earned the Peace Prize after installing what looked at the time to be the most stable, free-market democracy in the region. But with the legacy of racial distinctions and a powerful military in control of most aspects of life, the democracy Aung San Suu Kyi was bringing to the newly named Myanmar in the early 90s was concerning. Concerning in that it was both, not necessarily intended to be what most westerners believed a democracy looked like, while also being doomed to crumble under the weight of a military that was more comfortable being in complete control. The government that was negotiated by Aung San Suu Kyi afforded the military much greater powers than what we would recognize as a democratic level of military control over government. This is not a criticism of Aung San Suu Kyi, but rather speaks to the obstacles she was expected to overcome and what sort of concessions she had to acquiesce to in her attempt to reach a result that was as close as she could come to what she and her father had always hoped for. 

    Since the 90s, Aung San Suu Kyi and her party, the “National League for Democracy” (NLD) were slowly yet persistently attempting to wrest more power from the military through democratic means. This process was going well, and progress had definitely been made. The greatest achievement coming this past year when the NLD won decisively in landslide victories across the country. Obviously, this seems to have been the breaking point for the military leaders and what has clearly precipitated these most recent developments. 

    So, we could just stop here and accept that a tenuous attempt at establishing a democracy failed, and resign it to the heap of democratic failures around the world where a military coup ended an unstable democracy. But that misses what is at the core of the problem. Just as the name “Myanmar” is fraught with controversy, the “National League for Democracy” is similarly not quite what it sounds like to us: “In Burmese, the word for “National” in the name of the ‘National League for Democracy’ is amyo-tha. It’s the same word for ‘race.’ ‘Race’ and ‘nation’ are synonymous, and for some ‘democracy’ should mean nothing more or less than the supremacy of the race-based nation.”(p209) This brings us to why the world has been losing faith in Aung San Suu Kyi’s vision for a democratic Myanmar.

    Over the past several years, reports were coming out of Myanmar that suggested that atrocities and gross human rights violations were growing so rampant as to amount to what many have referred to as genocide against the Muslim minority Rohingya population. More and more accounts of violence perpetrated by the more prominent (and socially favored) Buddhist population were trickling out of the country to the horror of the global community. The world expected their great hope for democracy in the region, Aung San Suu Kyi, would once again show herself as a champion of human rights. This was not to be. The Rohingya were continuing to be oppressed and sometimes slaughtered, and she had come out in defense of the military. Many would wonder if she was being silenced or coerced. But understanding how important ethno-nationalism is to the people of Myanmar, it begins to look like perhaps she truly did not believe this was a violation of human rights. Her vision of bringing democracy to Myanmar, was a democracy based on racial divisions and attitudes that had been in place there since well before even her father was born. To Aung San Suu Kyi, her goal was to protect the people she saw as her countrymen against a culture that she did not see as being her own. To her, the military leadership, and a majority of the citizens she was accountable to, alienating what they saw as an alien race in order to protect and defend HER people was an admiral goal. For many in Myanmar, the Rohingya Muslims were the ones at fault for having immigrated from a different place than them generations ago, and daring to maintain their own culture. Today in Myanmar, it is likely that many who you would come across, see the Rohingya as a dangerous threat to them and their way of life, not an oppressed minority being subjected to a genocide at the hands of their government. They believe they are protecting their culture which is based on the notion of a racial nationalism.

    This is not an effort to make you empathize with people who are accused of committing genocide. Nor am I at all denying that it is one. In fact, it is so decidedly a genocide that even the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, famous for denying genocide, has referred to it as such. But to understand the contextual/historical reasons why a culture looks at things in a certain way, is to make progress in understanding the underlying issues that contribute to such atrocities and how to address them in a constructive way. 

    The hope that a democratic Myanmar sparked across the world turns out to have been short-lived, but it is important to do a holistic and nuanced post-mortem before we return to our old habits of sanctioning this poor country to high heaven. We’ve tried this tactic and the result is that the poorest in the country suffer the greatest consequences brought about by the sanctions. Perhaps more targeted sanctions could be considered, but unless they are carefully specified and the result of an understanding of the situational factors in the country, they will likely have a deleterious outcome for the most vulnerable citizens. Considering that the military coup has apparently detained Aung San Suu Kyi and her allies, it is as of yet unclear what her role in all this has been, and what it will be in the future. She has garnered herself numerous prominent allies and friends, in leaders across the world. From Mitch McConnell and Laura Bush, to the Clintons and Cate Blanchette, counted amongst those who have spoken highly of her, she has proven herself to be a charismatic, intelligent and complex figure. But as of now, she does not seem to be the champion of human rights she was promised to be. 

    The leaders of the military coup have announced that they believe the NLD’s wins were fraudulent and claim this to be the reason they enacted a coup. (Remind you of anyone? Lucky for us, the American coup was led by an incompetent buffoon.) They have claimed that they will hold control of the government for one year, at which time there will be elections held again. Obviously, it will be necessary to scrutinize the voting process, if one ever actually happens, to verify its legitimacy as it is hard to take seriously those who claim fraud occurred in what has been widely accepted to have been a well-executed election. It is likely that over the course of the next year the military leadership and China will begin some sort of interaction, whether friendly or contentious, and this will likely have the most impact on what direction Myanmar takes going forward. 

    Whatever happens, we have seen an attempt at democracy rise and fall in a region that has few successes on that front. This moment serves as a critically important insight into the difficult process of establishing and maintaining a democracy. Many factors play into what allows a democracy to be successful and while patriotism and nationalism are often seen as what shows the strength of a democracy, pride in one’s nation can mean very different things to different people. It might be best to ask what someone means by “national pride” before commending them for their patriotism.