Why Obama's Courtship of Myanmar Backfired

On Nov. 11, President Obama will travel to Myanmar for the ninth East Asia Summit, a meeting of leaders from across the Pacific Rim. It will be the president’s second trip to a country that, for decades, was seen as a pariah in Washington, run by a brutal and xenophobic military regime that gunned down protestors in the streets and jailed opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi. In 1997, the Clinton administration signed a law barring new U.S. investment, and the George W. Bush administration made the sanctions even tougher.

Coming into office, the Obama administration concluded that a hard-line policy toward Myanmar had failed – failed to advance political and economic change, and failed to serve U.S. strategic interests in Asia. Obama eased sanctions on Naypyidaw and encouraged U.S. companies to plunge into the country, among other steps.
When Obama visited for the first time, in 2012, optimism about the future – of Myanmar politics, of Myanmar as a market, and of U.S.-Myanmar relations — was almost unbounded. The new government had scheduled elections for 2015 and released Suu Kyi from house arrest. Myanmar President Thein Sein had freed hundreds of political prisoners, signed cease-fire deals with the ethnic minority insurgencies that had fought the government for decades, and loosened restrictions on the domestic media environment.