Biden threatens US sanctions after Myanmar coup
US President Joe Biden on Monday threatened to reimpose sanctions on Myanmar following a coup by the country’s military leaders and needed a good concerted international response to press them to relinquish power.
Biden condemned the military’s takeover from the civilian-led government in Monday and its detention of elected leader and Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi just as “a direct assault on the country’s transition to democracy and the rule of law.”
The crisis in Myanmar, also referred to as Burma, marks an initial major test of Biden’s pledge to collaborate more with allies on international challenges, especially on China’s rising influence. That stance contrasts with former President Donald Trump’s often go-it-alone ‘America First’ approach.
It also represented a rare policy alignment between Biden’s fellow Democrats and top Republicans because they joined found in denouncing the coup and calling for consequences.
“The international community should come together in a single voice to press the Burmese military to immediately relinquish the energy they have seized, release the activists and officials they have detained,” Biden said in a statement.
“The United States removed sanctions on Burma in the last decade based on progress toward democracy. The reversal of that progress will necessitate an immediate overview of our sanction laws and authorities, accompanied by appropriate action,” he stated.
Biden warned America was “taking note of those that stand with the persons of Burma on this difficult hour.”
“We will work with this partners throughout the region and the world to support the restoration of democracy and the rule of law, as well concerning hold accountable those responsible for overturning Burma’s democratic transition,” he said.
Biden called about the military on Myanmar to lift most restrictions in telecommunications and to refrain from violence against civilians.
A US official later told Reuters the administration had launched high-level internal discussions targeted at crafting a “whole of government” response and planned to seek advice from closely with Congress.
Analysts cautioned that US leverage was limited.
Greg Poling and Simon Hudes at Washington’s Centre for Strategic and International Studies said there would almost certainly be different sanctions against those mixed up in coup.
“But that's unlikely to have many immediate effect on the generals,” they stated, given that handful of them had any intention of going to or doing business in america.
Also, unlike its a reaction to a 2014 coup in Thailand, the United States cannot pull back in military exercises, training, and sales, because military-to-military relations with Myanmar remain practically non-existent, they said.
Former President Barack Obama started easing sanctions in Myanmar in 2011 after the military started out loosening its grip, and on 2016 lifted various remaining restrictions. In 2019, the Trump administration imposed targeted sanctions on four military commanders, including coup leader General Min Aung Hlaing, over allegations of abuses against Rohingya Muslims and different minorities.
Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party won a good landslide 83% in a good Nov 8 election. The army named its takeover a response to election fraud.
White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki told a normal news briefing Washington had had “intensive” conversations with allies. She declined to say how many other actions were in mind aside from sanctions.
Psaki said Biden’s remark that the United States was “taking note” of how other countries respond was “a message to almost all countries in the region.”
The very best Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Robert Menendez, said Washington and other countries “should impose strict monetary sanctions, as well as other measures” against Myanmar’s army and the military leadership if indeed they did not free the elected leaders and remove themselves from government.
He also charged that the Myanmar army was guilty of “genocide” against minority Rohingya Muslims - a good determination yet to be explained by the US government - and of a good sustained campaign of violence against different minorities.
US Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, who just like members of the Biden administration has already established close past ties with Suu Kyi, called the arrests “horrifying” and said Washington had a need to “impose costs” on those behind the coup.
“The Biden Administration must have a strong stand and our partners and all democracies all over the world should follow suit in condemning this authoritarian assault on democracy,” he said.
The events in Myanmar certainly are a significant blow for the Biden administration and its own effort to forge a robust Asia Pacific policy to endure China.
A lot of Biden’s Asia policy team, including its head, Kurt Campbell, are veterans of the Obama administration, which on leaving office in 2016 hailed its work to get rid of decades of military rule in Myanmar as a major foreign policy achievement. Biden dished up as Obama’s vice president.
