Myanmar has emerged as a new test case for Obama administration’s engagement strategy in Asia, especially when the military junta has shown no sign of complying with the international opinion on restoring democracy and has been further tightening control over its people. The numerous carrot and stick policies utilized by the US have not proved successful. The latest volte-face in Washington’s Myanmar policy has been applying the carrot approach and abandoning using the stick as the means for seeking a peace dividend.

Within the ASEAN, especially for ASEAN’s critics, Myanmar has long served as proof of the organization’s ineffectuality. The country’s military junta has successfully defied the world and suppressed democracy, oppressed its people and ignored worldwide demand for respecting human rights. ASEAN member countries have refrained from applying economic sanctions because the founding agreement does not allow intervention in the internal affairs of fellow members. However, in the wake of international clamour for the restoration of democracy in Myanmar and worldwide condemnation of the detention of Aung San Suu Kyi, ASEAN member states are facing a critical test in their quest for legitimacy. It is unclear if and how ASEAN member states will pressure the military regime to accept the organization’s governing norms. Strategic economic sanctions with the intention to bringing around the military junta and thereby demonstrating the world that ASEAN is a legitimate and effective regional organization is a tempting option. However, there remains the possibility that such an approach might further harden the stance of the junta and the repressive regime could become still more repressive.

Perhaps having realized the futility of such an option, the Obama administration is seeking to engage the military junta by sending senior leaders to initiate dialogue. Here some parallel can be drawn with the US policy towards North Korea. Both Kim Jong Il of North Korea and General Than Shwe seem to be pursuing the policy of repression at home to extract economic aid from the US and as a bargaining tool to come to the negotiating table.

The last high level diplomatic visit from the US to Myanmar was in 1995 when Madeleine Albright visited the country as the chief US representative to the United Nations. Now under the Obama dispensation, senior US officials were allowed to meet Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of Myanmar’s pro-democracy movement. A high-ranking group led by Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell, the top American diplomat for East Asia, met privately with the Nobel Prize winner in the first week of November 2009. Campbell also held talks with top generals in the government, including Prime Minister Gen Thein Sein and leaders of Suu Kyi’s political party.

Campbell’s visit was a demonstration of US commitment to repair relations between the two countries, while assuring democracy activists American support for their cause. It is premature at this stage to expect a dramatic change in the regime’s authoritarian tactics, many of which have been in place since the military seized power in 1962. Campbell’s two-day exploratory mission to Myanmar came nearly a month after US Senator Jim Webb became the highest-ranking US official to have met with the junta and a week after US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced the Obama administration’s plan to engage with the reclusive junta.

There are two views on the latest US overtures to Myanmar. One view is that it is a positive step towards a fresh engagement with Myanmar. The other is that talking with the top generals at this moment guilty of flagrant abuses of human rights undermines the US goal of democracy promotion. Clinton has said that though sanctions would continue to remain as part of US policy, these by themselves have not produced the desired result. Though the new US initiative to engage the military junta is laudable, any unilateral action is unlikely to succeed because of historical and geopolitical reasons.

Though the junta may have shown some interest in warming ties, it has a history of stringing visiting Western diplomats along without changing course. Since the 1990s, successive UN special envoys have returned empty-handed and been snubbed by junta leaders. Early this year, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon tried to meet with San Suu Kyi but was rebuffed by the military government.

The US’ engagement policy may be premised on the general elections promised that the  junta has promised to hold in 2010. Much as the international community may wish for the release of the detained opposition leader and other political prisoners enabling them to campaign in elections, any expectation of bringing legitimacy though the proposed elections without inclusive participation seems remote at this time.

The bright side of the Obama administration’s engagement policy by sending top diplomats to talk with junta as well as opposition leaders is that it marks the end of the  Bush administration’s policy of isolating the regime and seeking to corral Asian powers into punishing it. The engagement however is unlikely to succeed for now. The question that begs an answer is whether only carrots without sticks will make the military junta change course. Past experience seems to testify against this.