By PHK
Victor Mallet concluded his October 11, 2007 Financial Times column with the admonition that the world should not give up so easily on the possibility of radical change in Burma in the not so distant future: “Revolutions happen,” Mallet wrote. “It is just hard to predict when.”
I agree with his assessment to the extent that I can think of no fail-safe predictors of when, where and how a revolution in Burma or elsewhere might happen. There are also no fail-safe predictors as to whether a revolution will succeed – or how long it will take revolutionaries to topple a regime or whether the new regime will be any better than the previous one if and when it does succeed in supplanting the old order.
When I lived in Moscow during the latter part of the Brezhnev era, for instance, I never expected the Soviet Union to fall apart. The 60 year old regime appeared rock solid. I certainly never thought it would crumble in the relatively peaceful way it did over the next decade.
Only eight years after leaving Moscow, I watched the old order start to unravel from my comfortable catbird seat in Helsinki – often with baited breath as I waited for the next shoe to drop or machine gun draped OMON security guard to strafe a group of unarmed protesters in a Baltic capital.
In early 1973 when I went to Thailand, a military junta controlled the country. But less than a year later, a student-led revolt demanding a democratic constitution brought that round of armed forces rule to a screeching halt and ushered in several years of unsteady parliamentary democracy. No one had expected the Thai student protests to happen, let alone swell and end the way they did. In Thailand, the military’s firing on unarmed students on the Pra Mane Ground near Thammasat University led the King to tell the ruling generals that enough was enough, that they had badly overplayed their hand and it was past time for them to leave.
Moral Authority and Revolution Making
There’s a lot of chatter now about the significance of moral authority in revolution-making most recently as a result of the monks role in the anti-junta demonstrations in Burma.
It seems to me, however, that moral authority usually only overrides brute military power when fissures exist within the security forces’ ranks. And by the way, true revolution also occurs only when a new political order is installed – not just when one group of military officers replaces another. That’s a coup d’etat not a revolution.
The Burmese Buddhist monks, we’re told, had the moral authority that might have made their popular revolt succeed. History tells us that their predecessors had played an important role in opposing a dictatorship at least once in the past.
In the end, however, the army did not break ranks. The soldiers obediently rounded up the monks, tortured or murdered some, locked many in their monasteries – just like the current president of China Hu Jintao broke the anti-Chinese rebellion led by Tibetan monks in the 1980s when he was in charge there.
The Burmese junta’s gun-wielding lackeys then apparently murdered some of their countrymen, intimidated non-religious demonstrators, arrested non-clerical leaders of the opposition and kept democratic opposition leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi under raps. The junta did not, however, have the lengthy Burmese border with Thailand sealed from which a Burmese opposition today watches and waits.
I think the question that begs an answer is why the Burmese army – nearly 500,000 troops – remains so loyal to the reclusive and corrupt ruling junta. Had potential opposition leaders in the military already been purged and the rank-and-file so frightened and kept so ignorant that there would have been no thought of disobedience?
This is the 12th largest army in the world. But what’s in it for most of its members? A little petty smuggling on the side?
Burma is rich in natural resources and it’s also increased its opium production business this year. Before the SLORC, the first junta, took over in 1962, Burma was the largest rice exporter in the world. Now it’s one of the most impoverished places in existence.
Why, for instance, is the Burmese Army so different from the neighboring Thai Army or most other armies in Southeast Asia which all play large – but not exclusionary roles in the political process? Why did the Burmese army not crack when the soldiers were ordered to murder their much revered citizens and brothers? In contrast, this is precisely what happened in the Philippines in 1986.
In Thailand, the army is a strong political force, but there are systemic checks that restrain generals – or politicians - from going overboard. The supreme moral authority for all Thai rests with the monarch. Over the years, the country has alternated between military rule and democratically elected leaders. Regardless, the ultimate power remains quietly, behind the scenes with the centuries-old monarchy. Everyone knows and respects it. Burma, in contrast, has had no monarch since the British became the country’s colonial masters in the 19th century.
In Vietnam, in contrast, the Vietnamese military is checked by the Vietnamese Communist Party leadership. In Burma, in contrast, all political parties are banned
The importance of moral authority of non-military elements in the political world was significant in the Philippines in 1986 and Indonesia in 1998. Victor Mallet is right to flag both countries as examples of democratic revolutions where moral authority played a decisive role. In the Philippines, a country whose history I know better, that role was particularly obvious.
In 1986 People Power engulfed Manila's streets and toppled the Marcos Dictatorship. The 1998 popular revolt in Indonesia brought down the 30 year old creaking and fragmented Suharto regime which was sunk finally by the negative effects of the Asian financial crisis.
But the political histories, cultures, economies, geographies, religions and popular expectations of the Philippines and Indonesia differ substantially from those in a much more isolated, poor and now less educated Burma. Weakening economies helped topple authoritarian governments in both Manila and Djakarta as popular economic desperation just threatened to do in Rangoon. Never, however, were Filipinos or Indonesians forced to live in such austerity as has befallen the Burmese under the junta. Never was either country so isolated from the world – and the pressure of world opinion and leaders - except for China’s - as Burma.
In the Philippines under Marcos, moral authority rested foremost with the Roman Catholic Church in the person of Cardinal Jaime Sin. When the time came, Sin and the Church hierarchy sided openly and actively with the demonstrators. Troops and commanders then sided with the people. In the crucial hours, the military sent to deal with the demonstrators made it clear that it would hold fire. Marcos – himself a lawyer not a military man – finally realized his hours were numbered. A bipartisan US Congressional delegation helped him see the light. As the crowds mounted along EDSA and the Philippine military deserted him, Marcos and his wife Imelda took up the US government’s offer to help him leave the country quietly and quickly - although Imelda left most of her shoes behind. I guess they just didn’t all fit on the helicopter.
So in the end, it seems to me that superior moral authority of an opposition is often, if not always, a key to revolution-making – but moral authority is unlikely to achieve a revolution’s aims alone.