Washington Post
WASHINGTON – As Secretary of State Rex Tillerson welcomed
officials from 10 Southeast Asian nations this week, a representative from
Myanmar handed him a personalized letter.
The author was Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace Prize
winner and de facto leader of the nation's civilian government, who wanted to
express regrets for being absent due to a scheduling conflict, U.S. officials
said.
The note represented rare direct communication between
Suu Kyi and the Trump administration. As President Donald Trump has made a
flurry of calls to foreign leaders, he has yet to speak with Suu Kyi, who twice
welcomed Trump's predecessor, Barack Obama, to her lakeside villa in Rangoon as
a powerful symbol of U.S. support for the slow, fitful transition from
authoritarian military rule to a fledgling democracy in the nation also known
as Burma.
The Myanmar project remains fraught – political reforms
have ebbed, and Suu Kyi has faced international criticism for failing to speak
out more forcefully against ethnic violence directed toward the Muslim
minority. And China continues to exert economic and political pressure on the
neighboring nation of 54 million.
From Capitol Hill to Yangon, the question is whether the
Trump administration will continue to nurture Myanmar's transition or turn its
back at a crucial juncture.
“The country wants it. It gives them a sense of
confidence,” Derek Mitchell, who served as U.S. ambassador to Myanmar from 2012
to 2016, said of political support from Washington. “But the focus on things we
care about, such as values and democracy and human rights, they don't feel that
with Trump. There's a cost in losing all of that.”
Behind the scenes, Myanmar's ambassador to Washington has
been pressing the White House for more attention from high-level officials, a
sign of Suu Kyi's uncertainty about Trump's public silence.
Trump aides emphasized that the president's failure to
reach out to her is not intended as a slight. On Friday, national security
adviser H.R. McMaster hosted the Southeast Asian officials, including Myanmar's
representative, at the White House. Trump aides said the president, who was
away at his estate in Bedminster, New Jersey, would have stopped by had he been
in town.
The questions over Trump's approach to Myanmar come as
the administration is starting to formulate its broader policy stance toward
Southeast Asia and what role the countries there may play in the U.S. effort to
further isolate North Korea diplomatically and economically. Administration
officials pointed to several signals in recent days that were intended to reassure
the region that the White House would maintain a focus there even as it
scrapped the Obama administration's “Asia rebalance” policy aimed at deepening
U.S. security and trade ties.
In Indonesia last month, Vice President Mike Pence
announced that Trump would attend a trio of security and economic summits in
Vietnam and the Philippines this fall.
Tillerson emphasized to the Southeast Asian officials
that the administration would make a “sustained commitment” to the region, said
W. Patrick Murphy, the State Department's deputy assistant secretary for
Southeast Asia.
In a conference call with reporters, Murphy added that
the administration's relationship with Myanmar would be “enduring.”
In a separate interview, a senior White House official
was more emphatic, emphasizing that Trump views Southeast Asia as “the most
exciting component” in an emerging administration strategy for the broader Asia
region.
This official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to
describe the president's thinking, pointed to the combined population of more
than 600 million among the 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian
Nations and their fast-growing economies as key reasons for sustained U.S.
engagement.
Yet the administration's failure to produce a coherent
foreign policy strategy has alarmed members of Congress who fear Myanmar will
be neglected or mishandled.
In his first meeting with Tillerson, Senate Majority
Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., told him, “Don't forget about Burma,” according
to people familiar with the conversation.
But McConnell, who helped shepherd the U.S. economic
sanctions that prodded Myanmar's military regime toward reforms, has been left
trying to piece together where the administration is headed from scant public
or private signals.
A Senate Republican leadership aide said that as the
administration attempts to coax Beijing to do more to change North Korea's
behavior, it is unclear where Myanmar, whose opening to the West was once
viewed as a hedge against China's economic and military muscle, fits in.