Center for Strategic and International Studies
Southeast Asia Program
Keynote Address by Ben Rhodes at the “The United St
ates and
Myanmar: Next Steps” Conference
Speaker:
Ben Rhodes,
Assistant to the President and Deputy National Secu
rity Adviser for Strategic
Communications and Speechwriting, Executive Office
of the President
Moderator:
Amy Searight,
Senior Adviser and Director, Southeast Asia Program
,
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Location: CSIS Headquarters, Washington, D.C.
Time: 9:30 a.m. EDT
Date: Monday, September 12, 2016
Transcript By
Superior Transcriptions LLC
www.superiortranscriptions.com
(Applause.)
BEN RHODES: Great. Well, thank you, everybody, fo
r being here today. And I know you
have a good day of panel discussions. I’ll just gi
ve you some opening comments on how we’re looking
at the visit from State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi,
who will be arriving in Washington later today.
And I do think it’s sometimes hard to recall just h
ow improbable this is. I was thinking of it
recently when we were in Laos for the U.S.-ASEAN me
eting and the East Asia Summit. And the first
ASEAN meeting we had, in 2009, I recall there was a
n extensive debate over whether we would even
shake hands with the Burmese president. Aung San S
uu Kyi was under house arrest. And so being in
Laos and looking over at the Burmese seat and seein
g it occupied by Aung San Suu Kyi in her capacity
as state counselor I think really speaks to the eno
rmous transformation that has taken place inside of
Myanmar over the course of the last eight years.
Of course, this process is not complete by any meas
ure, and I’ll speak a little bit about that
today as well. But I do think that that perspectiv
e has to bear in our minds as we prepare for what i
s a
truly historic visit.
During her time here, Aung San Suu Kyi will be meet
ing with President Obama tomorrow.
She’ll also be meeting with Vice President Biden at
his residence, a number of Cabinet members, and
of course members of Congress who have been critica
l to our Burma policy for many years, as well as
the business community. And she’s very interested
in trying to promote greater investment in Burma.
You know, I’ll just step back for a moment and put
in perspective some of the changes that have
taken place over the last several years. You know,
we have to recall that Burma is a country where ou
r
policy was rooted in promoting democracy and human
rights for many decades. And it’s been a shared
goal of every U.S. administration and the Congress,
particularly since the crackdown by the Burmese
military in 1988 and the subsequent refusal to allo
w Aung San Suu Kyi and the National League for
Democracy to take power following elections after t
heir overwhelming victory in 1990.
And so, over many years, we had robust sanctions in
place and restrictions on individuals and
entities in Burma to try to bring about change from
the military junta. And for many years, that was
met with resistance.
When we took office in 2009, we initiated a review
of our policy to see if there would be
openings for engagement to try to move things forwa
rd and try to see if we could get further with
engagement than purely through a policy of isolatio
n. Around the same time, the military authorities
who assumed power in 2011 began an initial process
of reform, and they demonstrated some degree of
a commitment to change and they created an opening
for us to begin to ease our own restrictions. And
that led by President Obama announcing in 2011 that
we would be sending Secretary Clinton to visit
for the first time, and ultimately also she then an
nounced that we would be sending an ambassador,
Derek Mitchell, who’s here today, so that we’d begi
n the process of normalizing our diplomatic
relationship.
Over the course of the next several years, we began
to ease our sanctions. We began to engage
the government. There was a sense of things openin
g up, of political prisoners being released, of the
re
a desire for there to be greater investment and int
erconnectivity with the global economy. Clearly, t
hat
was something that had been desired by the Burmese
people, by the NLD, by Aung San Suu Kyi, but
also some of the military leadership was clearly in
dicating that they wanted to move in a different
direction.
I remember when I visited Burma for the first time
with President Obama. You had a sense of
an overwhelming thirst for this engagement with the
United States. We had never really seen crowds
like that greet a motorcade, even in all the travel
s that President Obama had done around the world.
You know, I think what was most striking to me is w
hen we came in from the airport, at first there
were kind of uniformed schoolchildren greeting us a
nd it felt like, you know, a ceremony arranged by
the government. But then, when we passed through t
hat phalanx of people, suddenly the crowds
swelled to the tens of thousands, in a country wher
e gatherings of people in any – in any number had
previously been restricted. And so you had a sense
of a pent-up desire to engage the world and to tak
e
the future of the country into the hands of the peo
ple.
The next time I visited, Derek was ambassador, and
I don’t think he was sleeping very much
because there was so much to do. There was such a
desire for an engagement with the United States,
and there was also an enormous need for capacity in
the government, in all of the ministries, in terms
of
how to attract investment, in terms of how to gover
n more effectively. And a lot of the space that we
sought to fill, that I’ll speak about in a moment,
was building up the capacity for there to be a
democratic transition. It’s both an issue of will
on the part of the government; it’s also an issue o
f
whether or not we can support the capacity-building
necessary to ensure a dividend along with
democracy.
Now we are at a critical juncture. A lot of our ef
fort went into ensuring that the election that
took place last year was credible and inclusive and
allowed the Burmese people to express their voice.
And ultimately, that is what took place. And, as i
n 1990, you had an overwhelming victory for the
NLD, very much because of the leadership of Aung Sa
n Suu Kyi but also because of a desire for
change in the country. I think at each juncture th
ere as skepticism. Would the election go off well?
Would international monitors be able to participate
? Would there be broad access to the polls across
the country? And that was the case. And then ther
e was, I think, a question about whether or not the
re
would be a peaceful transition of power, and whethe
r or not the military would respect the result of t
he
election. And, indeed, they did, in part because o
f outreach from the NLD, in part because there was
a
sincere commitment to a democratic transition from
President Thein Sein and some of the military
leadership.
Again, that’s not to say that the process is by any
means complete. But, of course, we had the
first peaceful transition of power with the inaugur
ation earlier this year of President Htin Kyaw as t
he
first elected civilian president in more than 50 ye
ars. And then, of course, Aung San Suu Kyi, as the
leader of the NLD, assumed the position of state co
unselor, and it’s in that capacity that she’s visit
ing
the United States.
To put this in perspective, there are now over 100
former political prisoners serving as
parliamentarians in the Union Parliament. We conti
nue to engage not just the leadership and Aung San
Suu Kyi, but parliamentarians and ministries, so th
at we’re most effective in building the capacity th
at I
spoke about.
The new government has released another 63 politica
l prisoners. They’ve dropped charges
against almost 200 individuals who were facing conv
iction on political grounds.
