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For America’s Army, the ones who will be tasked with building relations with the Burmese Army, this will present a problem. Whether we accept it or not if America wants close ties with Burma our Army is going to have to engage with the Burmese Army just as strongly and closely as our State Department does with Burma’s diplomats. And if that happens the U.S. Army will be dragged into this internecine conflict.

The question is, what will the U.S. Army do when their new Burmese friends come to them for advice on how to handle the ethnic tension that permeates the country? Perhaps more to the point, what will they do if their Burmese Officer friends do not come to them for advice and simply light out for the countryside with a few regiments to slap the Atsi, Bwe or Chin minorities back into place?

If the U.S. Army is not careful it could find itself not only allied with but possibly responsible for the Burmese Army reverting to its old ways.

On the good side, for the time being the military is taking advice from the newly formed central government, with the government actively trying to use diplomacy instead of military force to keep the natives calm. This has brought a few breakthroughs, as in January the government signed a ceasefire with the rebel Kachin (a.k.a. Kayin and Karen) ethnic group, one of the more aggressive and well armed of the minorities.

On the bad side, in June communal violence broke out between the Rakhine Buddhists and the Muslim Rohingya. More than just being a religious matter, the Rohingya people not only don’t like the Rakhine but also hate both the central government and the military. The reason? Back in 1982 the military leaders at that time collectively revoked the Rohingya’s citizenship. Talk about a reason to want to be separate from the nation the world tells you that you are a part of.

One might ask the question then, if today was five years into the future and the U.S. Army had already built solid ties with the Burmese Army… such as hosting Burmese Officers at U.S. facilities for exercises, education, training and the like… what advice and help would we give to them in trying to help them bring the Rohingya back into the fold?

Our answer would be one word: COIN. More to the point, we would hope that by five years down the road from today the U.S. Army would have already graduated a number of COIN qualified Burmese Officer leaders who would by then have been well along the road towards implementing this “weapon system” with the dissatisfied tribes, long before any of them took to the jungles to mount an insurgency campaign.

This then is what we meant when we began this article by speaking of the need for U.S. Army Officers to understand the lay of the land of the nations of Asia that the ‘rebalance strategy’ is impelling us to engage with. Unless we know who they are, what they are, and what problems they are facing—and plan for ways to help our new friends resolve those problems—we won’t be able to effectively bring these people into our embrace… neither our military embrace, diplomatic embrace, nor the embrace of our national values.

Ethnic tension aside, as it comes together to build relations with the Burmese Army the U.S. Army’s role in Burma won’t end there. We are not the only country to notice that Burma is making moves suggesting it wants to be part of the world again. In May Manmohan Singh, the Prime Minister of India, paid the country’s first official visit to Burma since 1987. While there he just happened to sign 12 agreements to strengthen trade and diplomatic ties, including a couple that specifically provided for border area development supported by an Indian line of credit.

So the question is, how good are our relations with India? Is India’s sudden interest in Burma a problem for us or a benefit? Students of India will remember that India has that strange appendage that the British left them with, above and to the right of Bangladesh. An appendage that is a part of their country but seems not to be part of it at all. Looking at it reminds one of that saying that Maine farmers utter with their Downeast accent when you stop and ask them for directions: welp… you caint get theah from heah.

Fortunately for India, but perhaps not so fortunate for us, with new relations with Burma India will finally be able to get there more easily via Burma than via its own back yard, thus avoiding the need to keep things on an even keel with either Bangladesh or China. And considering that India and China still on occasion raise their voices over their common border, having an India that can flex its muscles when it wants to might not prove well for America, especially if we are both shoving our elbows in an attempt to be the first country to work its way through Burma up to the border with China.

Also, from India’s perspective, having the U.S. on its eastern border as well as its western (via Afghanistan) may not sit well with India’s military. For example, in addition to the U.S. gaining a land presence on India’s eastern flank via a new relationship with Burma, it will now have a chance to extend its presence into what were previously considered (by India) as its home waters. Specifically, without a foothold in either Bangladesh or Burma the U.S. has been unable to make its presence known in the Bay of Bengal. Unlike the Arabian Sea, which the U.S. military has treated as an active zone of presence for many years, the Bay of Bengal has been something that India has considered as its own backyard. If America moves into Burma and gains a military presence there, this is bound to result in the U.S. Navy extending its presence to the Bay of Bengal. Without doubt this will not sit well with India.

One can see than that while there have been no points of confrontation between the U.S. and India to date, that doesn’t mean there won’t be any in the future. Remember, in the past the U.S. and India rarely ran across each other. Now we will both be vying to become Burma’s BFF. That is bound to bring some tension.

Then there is China itself. As evidenced by the quick trip that Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping took to Burma in November of 2011, where he offered to boost military ties with the country days ahead of U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's historic visit to Burma, the U.S.' efforts to begin building ties between our military and Burma's seems to make Beijing very, very jittery. And while in public China's leaders may say otherwise and act like it could care less if America engages with the newly opened Burma, deep down inside it is petrified of having the U.S. box it in via one more country. And this one right on its southern doorstep.

From America’s perspective engaging with Burma is critical to our national defense. If there is one lesson that we should have learned by now it is that our past decade of “strategic neglect” as regards the rise of China’s military has left us almost wholly unable to counter their new assertiveness. The net result is that since we failed to deal with China when we could have, now we are forced to fall back on the threadbare concept of a “strategy of containment.” In our view a strategy of containment is no strategy at all. It’s simply a phrase that makes us feel better when there is nothing else we can do to change the outcome of an imbalance between our country and another, something we allowed to happen on our watch. Containment is little better than closing our eyes and hoping the problem goes away.

So how did we get here? For nearly two decades America's leaders talked up the idea of engagement with China but never backed up our talk with muscle when China gained the upper hand via cunning, deceit and chicanery … not with trade, not with monetary policy, not with tariffs, not with exchange rates, not with price fixing, not with pirated intellectual property, not with North Korea, not with China’s stalling moves in the UN, and certainly not when our militaries bumped heads (think: the 2001 Hainan Island incident). So, since we don't seem to have the diplomatic courage to stand up to them, absent our ability to occupy another square on the chess board, what makes us think that we will be able to contain China now?

The only thing that will work, and this is perhaps our last chance, will be to build a strong and long term relationship between the U.S. military and the Burmese military. To occupy the square on the chess board that is marked Myanmar.

That will contain China.

As to why our China containment strategies of the past have failed, it’s because we failed to recognize that the security architecture we need to keep China in check requires that we have a position on the eastern flank of the Asia Pacific. For nigh on 45 years now, since Vietnam, we have done nothing about staking one out, with the result that China has grown in influence throughout the region. And now that it has the economic muscle to stand behind its expansionist goals, without such an eastern flank focused architecture there is little America can do to stop it. From this perspective, gaining a land and political base with a friendly eastern flank country is a strategic imperative.

For those who failed in geography China’s eastern flank really means the eastern flank of Asia, not the eastern flank of China. This area includes Vietnam, Laos, Burma, India, and to a lesser extent Bangladesh, Bhutan and Nepal. In this regard, it is true that it could be said that the United States has a Strategic Partnership with India of sorts, but there is no such linkage with Burma or Bangladesh. And even in India’s case, the Strategic Partnership is more of a diplomatic nature and less one of trade or military ties. After all, you don't exactly see India coming to our aid in Afghanistan... or putting a little pressure on Pakistan to clean up its terrorist infested house, do you?

Looking at this eastern flank, of all of the available countries we could partner with to "contain" China, Vietnam would probably be a better bet than Burma. But hey, we already tried that, and it’s highly unlikely Vietnam is going to let us set up a military base in North Vietnam anytime soon. That leaves Burma, a country that has overwhelming military significance for the US’ rebalancing strategy, not to mention military significance via Burma's geographic contiguity with China in its northern and north-eastern provinces. The problem though is that over the past 60 years China has made sizeable strategic, military and political investments in Burma… surprise… as part of its counter-containment strategy aimed at the United States.

Where does that leave us in the U.S. Army? Considering that even with the political changes afoot in Burma the Burmese military will run the country for decades to come (think: Turkey), the only way to broaden ties between the U.S. and Burma will be via military to military contacts… in other words by having the U.S. Army take the lead in building closer ties with the Burmese Army.

Why? Because military people are alike no matter what uniform they wear: we think the same, we talk the same language, and we view the world through the same conservative but jaundiced glasses. Because of this the U.S. Army will be able to do things to influence Burma’s behind the scenes military rulers that the State Department attachés would never be able to do. Like get them to toss their friend China out of the barracks in favor of the new guy on the scene: America.

Strategically, it is an American imperative that the U.S. loosen the linkage between Burma and China. In our view only the U.S. Army can do that.

As important, much of that strategic imperative comes from military needs, and who better to deal with strategic imperatives born out of military matters than the military people who will have to fight to overturn those matters if the cause that created them is not peacefully undone. A few examples will suffice.

For one, unless the U.S. military is able to gain a peaceful, respectful, mutually beneficial foothold in Burma—alongside of and sharing beers at night with our new friends in the Burmese Army—it may one day find itself facing China’s military sunning itself on the Indian Ocean. The reason is that China’s current strategically cooperative relationship with Burma gives it land access to the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean. So, since the U.S. military will be the ones called to block China’s advance via this route during a time of conflict, who better to figure out how to undo this “opportunity” for China now than the U.S. military? Since we are being sent over to Burma today to begin building better relations between our two militaries, shouldn’t we get busy figuring out how to get the Burmese to peacefully deny this route to China rather than wait until we have to stop the Chinese Army with the 1st ID?

For another, one of China’s main goals in getting closer to the Burmese military rulers is to enable construction of a well thought out overland oil pipelines grid that will take oil from the Burmese coast to South China. More than a means to bring more oil to China’s sweatshops, this is a coveted goal of the Chinese military, designed to outflank and avoid dependence on the Straits of Malacca for oil supplies. Why? Because the U.S. Navy can easily block the Straits and deny critical oil to China’s military in a time of conflict.

Again, if the case has to be made between using U.S. diplomats to persuade Burma’s military leaders to put a stop to this project, or U.S. military personnel who are resident in the country as part of a long term exchange program, then this author would vote for the military. Why? Because military people speak the same language, and it is easier for a Burmese General to ask a U.S. Army General for new toys to play with if he is to grant the U.S. General’s wish, than a State Department official that a) does not know what the new toy’s kinetic strength is, b) will have to go to the Pentagon to get it approved anyway, and c) will (because of his liberal mindset) fear giving any kind of new weapon system to the Burmese military.

Summarizing then, it is easy to see that most of the reasons for needing a containment strategy for China stem from military matters to begin with. Considering that Burma is ruled by military leaders, it is only natural that the U.S. military, with the Army in particular, should carry a better than fair share of this load. Whether it’s the need to deny China a land bridge to the Bay of Bengal, stopping an oil pipeline that benefits few more than China’s army, or securing military oversight over the offshore oil-blocks sprinkled throughout this region (think: the ‘energy strangulation’ of China), all of these factors and more come into the picture only because of strategic military necessities. Who better then to manage America's resolution of these strategic military necessities than America's military? And, since management will entail working closely and on a day to day basis with Burma's Army, who better within the U.S. military than the U.S. Army?

Finally, if reading this causes you to pay attention to future news items about how China views the U.S.’ intentions in Burma, pay no attention to the claims China makes that the U.S. and China have no reason to clash over Burma. The truth is otherwise. China has invested substantially in this country over the last three decades and they are not prepared to lose. They would rather go to war than see the U.S. Army have a base in Burma.

 

    

 

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