President Barack Obama hopes to highlight a foreign policy success Wednesday when he hosts Myanmar de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi in the Oval Office, a symbolic image of his moves toward repairing broken US relationships across the globe.
Coming only days after Obama departed Asia for the final time as president, the visit also underscores the administration’s driving foreign policy pivot toward the continent, an approach that’s come with mixed success.
In his meeting with Suu Kyi, Obama hopes to ascertain whether the time is right to remove further economic sanctions on leaders in Myanmar, which he hopes could spur greater economic development in the country. In November, when Suu Kyi was elected to her post, the US removed certain government-run businesses and some banks from a blacklist in an attempt to jump-start trade.
A latest round of sanctions relief could ease restrictions on Myanmar’s military, which ran the country for decades and still controls important government functions like its borders and armed forces. It’s not clear whether Suu Kyi would support such sanctions relief, however, given the military’s still-outsized role in governing her country.
The US is also looking to end restrictions on imports of jade and other precious gems, which could prove a boon to Myanmar’s fledgling economy.
“I think the biggest thing we can do is help their economy grow by opening up greater trade between Myanmar and the United States and other countries around the world,” US deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes said last week during Obama’s stop in Laos.
“Some of that involves us working with them so that they’re strengthening the environment for investment and trade. Some of that involves sanctions relief, and we’ve taken steps to relax the sanctions and to authorize greater activity,” he said. “It’s something that we continue to look at, because the purpose of the sanctions regime was to support a democratic transition, and some of the sanctions even were tied to the treatment of Suu Kyi specifically.”
Kept under house arrest for almost 15 years, Suu Kyi is legally barred from becoming Myanmar’s president since her two sons are British citizens. Changing the country’s constitution to make her eligible for the top post would require the support of the military’s large voting bloc in parliament, which leaders have signaled is unlikely.
Despite her ineligibility, Suu Kyi is widely considered to be Myanmar’s symbolic leader. Her official title is “state counselor,” but an audience in the Oval Office with Obama leaves little doubt of her stature.
While Obama and his administration were pleased at Suu Kyi’s elevation to the role after decades as an outspoken critic of the military junta, rights groups are concerned at the condition of ethnic minorities in the country. Thousands of Rohingya Muslims have been either targeted by sectarian violence or have attempted to flee on boats to Thailand and Malaysia.
Those concerns aside, Myanmar is mostly viewed as a success for Obama — and Hillary Clinton, his secretary of state at the time he moved to thaw relations between Washington and Yangon. Those moves, taken during his first term, have led to hundreds of freed political prisoners and a fledgling peace process.