Why boycotts just make things worse

Cut off contact with Hamas! Don’t talk to Israel! Keep away from Burma! In the past few years there have been calls from many quarters to break off contact with regimes we don’t like. Former Chief of Staff and Foreign Minister of Israel Moshe Dayan was more of a hawk than a dove. Nonetheless, there is reason to recall his words on the subject: “If you want to make peace, you don’t talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies.”

Far too many people seem to take the opposite view: if we don’t like someone, we shouldn’t talk to them. But few seem to have a realistic idea of whether breaking off contact works, or what kind of regime it might work on.

Dialogue is not a goal in itself. The goal is to reduce conflict and save lives. We must be clear at all times about our basic values: which include respect for the individual, human rights and democracy. In dialogue with parties to a conflict, we are clear about our views. 

For more than 20 years, I have been a champion of human rights and democracy in Burma, hoping for progress. A number of times I’ve thought that a major breakthrough was imminent. But I was always disappointed. At the end of January I was in Burma and saw with my own eyes that in many respects the country has stood still for the past several decades. The West’s response to the lack of democracy has been to isolate the country. So far we haven’t succeeded in getting the military regime to implement the necessary political and economic reforms. It’s time for us to take a new look at our approach.

Isolation rarely leads to improvements in a country, but it often creates considerable problems for the people living there. Experience has shown that democratic development is closely linked to the emergence of a middle class. It is the middle class that has the resources to become politically engaged in promoting freedom of expression and to engage in social issues, not the poor, who have all they can do to keep their children from going hungry. If a country is isolated from the rest of the world, there will be no middle class. Then it is much more difficult to achieve democratic development. According to President of East Timor José Ramos-Horta, Indonesia would still be a dictatorship and East Timor would still be under Indonesian rule if Indonesia had been isolated in the same way as Burma. Democratic development has also been closely linked to the emergence of a middle class in Thailand, South Korea and most other countries in East Asia.

Because of isolation, few Burmese receive any stimulus from the outside world, and even fewer are aware of how far Burma is lagging behind in relation to neighbours like Thailand and China, both economically and technologically. If Burma’s military leaders are given more opportunity to travel abroad, some of them will be more likely to say as Mikhail Gorbachev once did: “we cannot live like this any longer.”

I am proud that one of the hallmarks of Norway today is that we are nearly always willing to talk to everyone. This has given us a special role in a number of conflicts. Because we could talk to Hamas and were thus among the first to establish contact with the Palestinian National Unity Government, we have had unique access to the negotiations in the Middle East conflict. In Sri Lanka we were among the few who had contact with both the Tamil Tigers and the authorities. We met with the Nepalese Maoists before anyone else. Now the Maoists are represented in the national assembly and the Prime Minister is from their party. We talk to communist guerrillas in the Philippines, and have contact with rebel groups in Burundi and Sudan. When the parties in strife-torn Zimbabwe decide to establish a Government of National Unity we start a dialogue with all of them. The fact that we talk to someone doesn’t mean that we agree with them on all issues. We take the opportunity to present our views.

One of the main problems with former President Bush’s world view was that it gave rise to the practice of compiling lists of organisations and countries the US was not to talk to. This was a fundamental break with US tradition. Even during the Cold War, the Americans had extensive contacts with the Russians at various levels. Now there is every reason to reconsider the current practice of blacklisting. If we have contact with regimes and armed groups, this doesn’t mean that we accept their views. It means that we have an opportunity for dialogue. This enables us to avoid misunderstanding and put forward alternative ideas.

Last year Burma was hit by the devastating cyclone Nargis. The emergency relief effort in its wake showed that it was possible to get much-needed aid to the people of Burma. The UN and NGOs did a wonderful job. The participants in the relief effort described the situation as a “humanitarian space”. Together with many other Western and Asian countries, Norway has helped to fill this space, which opened up after the UN Secretary-General and the regime talked together. In this case dialogue worked. Now it is essential that we help to preserve this space and that it is eventually extended to the rest of the country.

Burma is facing major challenges because of the financial crisis. The military regime is planning elections, which are bound not to be free and fair. Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi is still being kept under strict house arrest. Unfortunately there is little hope of any democratic breakthrough in the near future. We must take a longer, historical perspective. In the long term openness and dialogue are bound to be more effective than isolation.