Constructive Engagement’ as Assertion of Soft Power by Burma’s Military Junta

“’Constructive Engagement’ as Assertion of Soft Power by Burma’s Military Junta.”
The oft-used term, ‘soft power,’ is typically reserved for indirect forces of control and co-optation wielded by more developed countries and aimed at influencing their less developed international counterparts. Thus, academics and journalists describe Japan, China, and the United States as attempting to exercise soft power on Burma through strategic employment of trade sanctions, humanitarian and development aid, private and public diplomacy, as well as campaigns to win “hearts and minds.” In this talk, I overturn this dominant paradigm, whereby soft power is conceptualized only as flowing to Burma from developed countries. Instead, I describe a scenario where a form of soft power has flowed out from Burma to the rest of the world. I describe how, going into both the 2015 and 2020 elections, Burma’s military junta sought to build up an intellectual and research infrastructure aimed at producing academics and policy analysts to advocate on their behalf. I also document how they sought to employ what Michel-Rolf Trouillot would have described as “formulas of erasure and banalization” to draw attention away from political atrocities and human rights violations they committed between 1988 and the present-day. I conclude the talk by describing the forms of “soft power” and “counter-control” which have been asserted by democracy activists, who oppose military rule in Burma.