ASEAN’s Burma tangle

Uneasy bedfellows they obviously are, but what are the dynamics of the ASEAN – Burma relationship?

When the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) was being established in 1967, Burma was approached to be a founding member. Rangoon declined, citing the principle of strict neutrality as a barrier to joining an organisation perceived to be an imperialist tool. That attitude persisted for two decades. But the emphatic international condemnation of the bloody crackdown on the pro-democracy movement of 1988 changed the mindset. The military junta, named the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) in 1997 before which it was known as the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC), realised that in order to survive it must end its self-imposed isolation and find regional friends.

The fall of the Berlin wall in 1989 also altered the political landscape of Southeast Asia. In the region's hotspot, Cambodia, a 14-year-old conflict was brought to an end two years later, enabling former foes such as Vietnam and the rest of the Indochinese states, including Cambodia and Laos, to reconcile their present and forget their past. Their admission to ASEAN in the late 1990s was a watershed event in regional politics, marking the closure of the ideological spit forced by the Cold War. Burma's return to the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) in 1992, after it had departed in 1979, was indicative of its desire to rejoin the international community.