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In December, I submitted a paper to USIP’s first Case Studies in Peacebuilding Competition. USIP’s Academy for International Conflict Management and Peacebuilding conducted the competition in coordination with Georgia State University’s Department of Political Science. I recently received word that my submission, a case study on participatory violence and localized peacebuilding initiatives in post-election Kenya, was selected by the competition panel as one of the winning cases.

You can read the paper here, or take a look at the summary below. I have little background in Kenyan politics, and would certainly welcome feedback on the paper’s development, structure, and content:

This case study assesses existing gaps in Kenya’s national-level, post-election political reconciliation processes, particularly those which pertain to international, regional, and national interactions with Mungiki, the Kikuyu ethnic revival movement, violent crime syndicate, and youth organization. The study views Mungiki’s violent mobilization surrounding the 2007 elections as a mechanism for political participation, rather than an apolitical clash of ethnic or land-based interests. Mungiki’s participatory violence in 2007-8 operated at both the local level, as a form of preference expression in a violent, democratic sphere, and the national level, at which Kenya’s Kikuyu elites utilized Mungiki violence as a political vehicle for state capture. Seen through this lens, Mungiki’s social role differs from mainstream categorizations of the movement as an unruly, disorganized collection of disaffected youth. Instead, Mungiki functions as a form of uncivil society within Kenyan politics, using formal, informal, and violent mechanisms of participation, association, and service provision to organize constituencies, influence politics, and facilitate social interaction.

The study focuses on community-based mediation and dispute resolution efforts during and in the aftermath of Kenya’s 2007-8 election-related violence. While international coverage and analysis of post-conflict reconciliation efforts has frequently focused on national-level processes, this study centers on local efforts to engage Mungiki participants and mitigate community violence surrounding the elections. This case study centers on the work of Pyramids of Peace, a national network of local peacemakers active in urban and rural communities throughout Kenya’s post-election crisis.

This week, the international human rights community celebrated R2P’s tenth anniversary in style, with programs, discussions, and a fair share of online space devoted to discussing R2P best practices, lessons-learned, and prospects for the future. I had the fortunate opportunity to “attend” two of the events: the first, “R2P: The Next Decade,” was organized in New York by the Stanley Foundation, an excellent peacebuilding NGO in the noble corn-town of Muscatine, Iowa*; the second, “The ‘Responsibility to Protect’ after the Arab Spring,” which STAND organized and I moderated, was held in DC, on Georgetown’s campus. While the events fell short of the International Debutante Ball, they (especially the Stanley Foundation conference) represented a who’s-who of international human rights advocacy: a solid half of the original International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, which developed the first fully-articulated R2P framework; Francis Deng and Edward Luck, the UN’s genprev/R2P tag-team; and a host of prominent civil society leadership.

Both events centered on the lessons-learned from R2P’s past decade of normative evolution and operational implementation, as well as case-based best practices for the doctrine’s future. As with any adolescent experience, R2P’s coming decade will be contentious, dynamic, and exciting. International politics will challenge the doctrine’s moral framework; doctrinal and operational norms, similarly, will shape a core component of multilateral diplomacy. In the spirit of the R2P’s shift towards maturity, I composed a list of the doctrine’s top five dilemmas for the coming decade, sparked by yesterday’s discussions:

The Cosmopolitan Temptation: Yesterday’s events underlined the doctrine’s philosophical nascency, much due to the seemingly irreconcilable tension between rights-based cosmopolitanism and community-based cultural, national, political, and religious diversity. This isn’t anything new; the transcendence vs. prediction debate on communal identities figures centrally in liberalism’s evolution since the Enlightenment. The cosmopolitan vision appears to occupy the upper-hand in contemporary human rights discourse, likely as a result of the perceived prevalence of identity-based conflicts in the Cold War’s aftermath (for example, see Steven Pinker’s emphasis on the pacifying character of the modern, cosmopolitan ideology). To a significant degree, however, the identity-based approach undergirds R2P’s intellectual origins–before he consolidated his proto-R2P vision of “sovereignty as responsibility,” Francis Deng’s IDP-and-human-rights research emphasized the need to accommodate, manage, and pacify, rather than transcend, identity-based conflict.

R2P’s normative dilemma plays an important role in the doctrine’s operationalization–Deng’s emphasis on communal identities and inclusive governance has led the UN SG’s genprev adviser to focus on R2P’s first, nationally-oriented pillar, while ICISS chair and former Australian FM Gareth Evans’ emphasis on the doctrine’s cosmopolitan character has led the former ICG chair to focus on the politics of international response. There’s a place for both, but we’re fooling ourselves if we see them as easily resolved.

Building a Moral Framework for Unintended Consequences: At the DC event, former Virginia Congressman and current CAP Advocacy Director Tom Perriello chided R2P’s critics for dismissing out-of-hand the “cost of action vs. cost of inaction” dilemma. If the doctrine’s critics tend to over-emphasize the moral shortcomings of coercive international intervention, R2P supporters’ unwillingness to engage competing high-grounds represents a similar moral failure. As I’ve stated before, the Hippocratic nature of human rights advocacy renders “collateral damage” a morally specious and intellectually irresponsible argument. If R2P is, in earnest, a doctrine focused on the promotion and establishment of common human dignity, coercive actions that infringe, even ever so slightly, on said dignity pose a profound challenge to the moral framework.

As Perriello noted at the DC event, the international community’s coercive technology has made sweeping improvements, strengthening the precision capacity of targeted financial sanctions, weapons systems, and intelligence platforms. At some point, though, technological improvements are going to reach a point of diminishing marginal returns, and the moral dilemma of unintended consequences will remain. The original ICISS document articulates a just-war-theory-based notion of legitimate, timely, and last-resort use of military force; however, there have been few indications of a credible commitment to the existing framework. Brazil’s “responsibility while protecting” may not be far off the mark, but the moral enterprise should be expanded to the full spectrum of coercive civilian protection initiatives, including economic sanctions and, more controversially, various forms of kinetic, covert warfighting.

Collaborative Responsibility, Collective Action: In the direct aftermath of the Libya intervention’s successful conclusion, Anne-Marie Slaughter published a controversial analysis of military intervention, heralding an R2P-inspired re-definition of state sovereignty and international responsibility. As the subsequent blogosphere uproar indicated, normative and functional definitions of sovereignty have remained constant throughout the era of internationalization; territorial and domestic control continue to define the terms of international legitimacy and political authority. Late last week, I offered my thoughts on the political dynamics of military intervention, observing a necessary intersection between a third-party intervention’s civilian protection mandate and the disputed goal of regime change. In a Twitter exchange yesterday, Hayes Brown offered an important rejoinder, observing the prospect of second-pillar force deployment, which supports, rather than supplants, state-based civilian protection authority.

At yesterday’s New York event, Gareth Evans observed the palpable consolidation of international R2P consensus throughout the five-year period between the 2005 World Summit and last year’s MENA upheavals. What Evans didn’t mention, however, is the remarkable imbalance in international capacity-building–the international community has invested significant resources in emboldening third-pillar policy interventions, both coercive (Libya, Cote d’Ivoire, and UN peacekeeping operations in the DRC, Sudan, and elsewhere) and non-coercive (Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Guinea), while the second-pillar component of international civilian protection support lies fallow. Liberia’s nascent early warning and response initiative, an extension of its peacebuilding office, is a valuable case study in effective second-pillar implementation: the Liberian government has benefited from robust international civil society investment and technical support. In order to build an effective path towards collaborative, second-pillar responsibility and collective action, the international community will need to transfer its systemic best practices to governments and sub-state actors.

The Austerity Politics of Civilian Protection: R2P was conceived in the early years of the last decade, during a period of relative international prosperity, particularly among North American and West European governments. Even in spite of the relatively anti-UN orientation of the previous U.S. administration, U.S. and European actors were more flexible in their support for international peacebuilding, conflict prevention, and civilian protection initiatives. However, the politics of international funding have shifted, especially as a result of the renewal of austerity politics in the United States, Canada, the UK, and Germany. Fiscal spending tends to move in cycles, but it’s entirely feasible that heightened restrictions on “peace spending” will limit the reach, depth, and effectiveness of civilian protection initiatives.

Accordingly, R2P advocates must learn to make the fiscal case for mass atrocities prevention. The U.S. human rights community, alarmed by the Republican Congress’ aggressive opposition to U.S. peacebuilding support, has increased its focus on the preventive essentials, including the State Department’s stabilization operations, flexible crisis-response funding, and preventive diplomacy capacity-building. As Deng observed during the New York event, “prevention is always better than cure.” It’s also cheaper, and human rights advocates would do well to bring that to the attention of international policymakers.

Emerging Powers and the Status Quo: As I noted in a prior post on Brazil’s “responsibility while protecting” principle, emerging powers will play an increasingly prominent role in the international politics of civilian protection. According to ICRtoP’s Evan Cinq-Mars, the UN is teeing up for a critical public debate on the RwP concept in 2012, likely comparable to the General Assembly’s Summer 2009 discussions. Since the 2005 World Summit, emerging powers–Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, especially–have generally adopted a cynical perspective towards R2P. Brazil’s principle appears to be the first sincere attempt to shift the discursive terms of R2P operationalization. Judging from yesterday’s New York event, the UN leadership’s perception of RwP is mixed; SG Ban sees RwP as a valuable mechanism to engage the global South, while his R2P adviser, Edward Luck, is more skeptical of the doctrine’s phased approach to R2P implementation.

The global North’s response to RwP is not yet clear. For governments supportive of R2P’s evolution and implementation, RwP and related global South initiatives pose two challenges. The first relies on a normative differentiation in foreign policies. North American and Western European foreign policies tend towards the transformative, focused on the piece-meal facilitation of social and political change. Emerging powers, in contrast, have tended towards the status quo, preferring to emphasize regional stability and border security. As an anecdotal example, China’s engagement in Burma demonstrates the prioritization of the status quo: China has done little to promote human rights and political transition in Burma, preferring to selectively mitigate domestically relevant crises (see, for example, China’s diplomatic intervention in the 2009 Kokang incident). In order to facilitate the progressive operationalization of the R2P doctrine, Western diplomacy needs to combine an empathetic acceptance of RwP’s relevance with substantive capacity- and political will-building initiatives.

The second challenge relies on the shifting international dynamics of policy leverage. Questions of military force aside, third-party actors’ ability to incentivize and coerce shifts in regime behavior determine the effectiveness of civilian protection initiatives. As controversial as their engagement remains, emerging powers possess relatively increasing levels of credibility and leverage with conflict-affected states. Even if R2P-minded governments cannot mobilize international consensus on coercive policy interventions (see Syria), emerging powers can play a critical role in developing governments’ capacities for mass atrocities prevention.

*While not present at the Stanley Foundation event, I was able to follow the program on a FORAtv livestream, as well as the #R2P10 Twitter stream.

Earlier this morning, CFR fellow and Middle East specialist Steven Cook laid down the most recent argument for international intervention in Syria. Cook’s analysis didn’t offer a particularly new perspective, offering familiar and, in general, moderately well-placed justifications for armed intervention: with diplomatic channels largely exhausted, military intervention represents a “last resort,” in accordance with the “responsibility to protect” doctrine; the Assad regime is hemorrhaging, and just a small push would send the rate of military defection over the edge; and, perhaps less convincingly, the “do no harm” principle of unintended consequences doesn’t apply because, well, Assad can’t possibly escalate his military operations any further. Seeking to preempt operational rebuttals from more cautious colleagues, Cook dismisses the operation’s technical limitations as a immaterial, due to the relative impotence of Syrian air defense systems:

The opponents also claim that intervention in Syria is likely to be harder than it was in Libya. On a technical level, the argument is specious. There is nothing in the Syrian arsenal that would pose an undefeatable threat to Western aircrews. That’s not to suggest that undertaking military action in Syria would be a “cakewalk,” but relatively recent Israeli incursions into Syrian airspace suggest that in terms of force protection, the risks are minimal. The technical issue is, however, a red herring.

Cook has it wrong: the strength of Syria’s air defense systems, and not the technical difficulties associated with international military intervention, is the red herring. In a quick response to Cook’s analysis, Marc Lynch outlined some of the core barriers to a successful intervention, across the full spectrum of technical, operational, and strategic levels. On a technical level, Cook’s no-fly zone would serve a marginal purpose, given the relative sparsity of airpower usage by Assad’s armed forces. From an operational perspective, Syria’s urban warfare is more dense and more fluid than Libya’s multi-terrain conflict, and, accordingly, much less able to accommodate the discriminate use of force in third-party air sorties. The strategic component of an international Syria intervention would likely prove the most challenging–the Syrian National Council has been unable to consolidate authority over the Syrian opposition, to an even greater extent than the severely handicapped Libyan National Transitional Council. As Lynch observes, a quick-strike international intervention would do little to bolster a sustainable, reliable opposition infrastructure; such an end goal would necessitate a longer, more robust safe zone operation, which carries its own moral hazards.

Diplomatic, financial, and economic interventions are much easier to conceptualize, but, even in the absence of military experience, an international safe-zone’s intensive military and political-will requirements are evident. The Henry Jackson Society’s Michael Weiss, an avowed supporter of robust military action in Syria, conducted a logistical, legal, and hazard assessment of a Syria intervention, observing the threat of proxy violence from Hezbollah and Iraqi insurgents, Russia’s naval grand-standing against the threat of NATO force deployment, and the possibility of regional destabilization. Weiss’ report, however, did little to consider the complex technical and operational characteristics of a safe-zone intervention. There has been no consensus amongst the commentariat on the purpose of such an intervention: Would the safe zone be directed towards the Syrian opposition, allowing them a more flexible base of operations? Or, would the area be focused on a civilian protection mandate, seeking to restrict violence against displaced persons and unarmed populations? If the former, the safe zone would likely make few contributions to a reduction in violence against civilians (see the MARO report‘s description of safe-area operations for a similar consideration); if the latter, the safe zone would require a long-term, sustained ground-force presence, with significant fiscal, human, and political consequences for international forces.

As the Syria intervention debate has indicated, quick-and-easy dismissals of the technical challenges of military intervention lack a degree of argumentative integrity. If a no-fly zone is technically inappropriate, we need to be clear on the tangible barriers to alternative policy mechanisms. Otherwise, advocates are setting themselves up for mission creep, unintended consequences, and, from a long-term perspective, the gradual political delegitimization of measured, limited intervention’s moral principles.

This Friday, I gofered for the Georgetown Center for Peace and Security Studies’ all-day conference on Asian security challenges, U.S. strategy in the Asia-Pacific, and the way forward for strategic dialogue between the United States, its Asian partners, and its regional rivals. The conference, titled “Clashing Values, Merging Strategic and Intelligence Interests: Cultural Dialogue in East Asian Security,” was a typical Georgetown event: during the first session, which focused on the strategic imperative for U.S. engagement in Asia, the conversation quickly shifted from a discussion of complex strategic risks to one of diplomatic commonalities, cross-cultural dialogue, and normative frameworks. (As I tweeted during the event, if you put two hydraulic engineers on the same Georgetown panel, you’d come out with a report on cross-cultural dialogue and water infrastructure.)

As the first session’s conversation shifted towards diplomatic conflict and coordination on human rights in East and Southeast Asia, one of the presenters* commented on the broad chasm between Asian and Western democracy and human rights perspectives. In a sense, the conversation focused more on divergent priorities, rather than irreconcilable standards–by most definitions, Western liberal democracy makes few accommodations for social and economic rights, whereas China’s development-based, neo-authoritarian rights regime dismisses the predominant importance of civil liberties. Where earlier presenters criticized American exceptionalism’s presumptuous universalization of liberal-democratic principles as a barrier to effective dialogue, the first session presenter attempted to construct common ground between Western and Asian governance values. Citing the historical evolution of Western thought, basic demographic data, and geopolitical shifts, the presenter emphasized that, in spite of the presumed timelessness of Western governance principles, democracy and human rights’ future normative salience in the 21st century will depend on the accommodation of Asian definitions. Static Western liberal democracy just won’t cut it, not least because of its distance from the perceived political inertia of the global South.

I agreed with much of the presenter’s conclusions, although he underplayed the substantial synthesis between the West’s left-oriented intellectual legacy and contemporary notions of good governance and rights in the South. In general, the presenter was spot-on: the process of securing human rights–from the right to assemble, to the right to health, all the way up through the right to life–will, in large part, depend on the acquiescence, cooperation, and, further along the road, proactive leadership of the global South’s emerging authorities. In his much-discussed analysis of the global-historical decline of violence in human society (currently reading), Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker identifies the emergence of the coercive state and the normative “civilization” of human behavior as the driving forces behind peace’s relative rise. However, as Elizabeth Kolbert’s excellent New Yorker review notes, Pinker’s analysis is minimally concerned with the relative evolution of violence in Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, and Latin America. Still, there’s a lesson to be learned from Pinker’s West-centrism: if the international community wants to see a similar decline of violence throughout the global South (and I’d hope it does), both the state and behavioral norms–that is, politics and morality–will play an integral role. In effective rights-oriented policies, Western governments cannot afford to dismiss either the politics of violence, or the normative underpinnings of state authority in the global South.

The discussion of human rights norms and U.S.-Asia dialogues of course raises the challenge of the “responsibility to protect” doctrine, perhaps the post-World War II era’s most sweeping discursive shift in international human rights. From a normative perspective, R2P can hardly be characterized as a “Western construct”–former Sudanese Minister of Foreign Affairs (and the UN Secretary-General’s current Special Adviser for the Prevention of Genocide) Francis Deng’s Brookings research on internal displacement, human rights, and political responsibility formed the intellectual foundation for the doctrine’s evolution, and six out of the twelve members of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (which authored the R2P’s framing report) hailed from non-American/Western European countries. While the ICISS report established an ethical framework for the use of military force for civilian protection, subsequent incarnations of the R2P doctrine quickly rejected the norm’s military operationalization–for example, the 2005 World Summit document, approved unanimously by the Summit’s general body, endorsed “the responsibility to use appropriate diplomatic, humanitarian and other peaceful means” to protect civilians, with no mention of military force.

NATO’s Libya intervention–and UNOCI/FAF’s Cote d’Ivoire operation changed all that–in the years between the ICISS report’s release and the Libya intervention, the international community neglected to conduct kinetic civilian protection operations (excluding Chapter VII multilateral peacekeeping operations, like MONUC/MONUSCO in the DRC). It’s tempting to see Libya as an anomaly in R2P’s normative evolution, and to differentiate between the doctrine’s operational and normative characteristics. However, the Libya intervention revealed R2P’s potential military operationalization, weakening the doctrine’s normative credibility among politically cautious emerging powers. Brazil, one such power, recently proposed an operational modification, attempting to reign in R2P’s perceived excesses. USIP’s latest Prevention Newsletter featured a summary of Brazil’s efforts at the UN Security Council:

During her opening speech at the UN General Assembly in September 2011, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff tried to reignite the conceptual discussion by emphasizing the international community’s “responsibility while protecting.” In order to shape the debate on the use of “humanitarian force” post-Libya, Brazil repackaged the “do no harm” principle, urging for strict limitations on the use of military force and mechanisms to avoid the misuse of R2P.

Brazil’s “responsibility while protecting” principle is hardly a seismic shift; if one were to categorize the RwP edit, it might classify under “3A,” as an addendum to doctrine’s third, internationally-oriented pillar. However, given the perceived overlap between operational implementation and normative development, Brazil likely perceives RwP as a necessary precondition for R2P’s continued salience. Brazil’s November concept paper, which further extrapolates on RwP’s operational characteristics, places a heavy emphasis on preventive diplomacy, limited and proportional force, and rigorous, preparatory impact assessment procedures. An emergent focus on preventive diplomacy may serve the Secretary General well in his second term, particularly as the UN makes further strides to unify the relatively hand-tied UN Joint Office of the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide and R2P (maybe, if the name were shorter, effective policy execution would be a tad easier).

At the same time, NATO et al. have offered little indication of any willingness to accommodate Brazil’s RwP addendum. The diplomatic debacle surrounding reports of NATO-caused civilian casualties during the Libya intervention–a scuffle which culminated in the South African UN ambassador’s call for a UN Security Council investigation into NATO crimes–didn’t help much. From the perspective of emerging-power clout, last year’s Security Council was likely the strongest in recent memory, with Colombia, Brazil, India, South Africa, and Nigeria each playing a critical role in Council affairs. Beyond China and Russia’s obvious political sway, the model of emerging-power leadership will likely continue into 2012–India and South Africa remain on the Council, and the IBSA partnership lends continued weight to Brazil’s leadership. With the Security Council facing a significant credibility deficit, support from emerging powers will likely be more critical than ever.

Ultimately, the multilateral balance of political authority goes both ways–if emerging powers want to play a greater role in Security Council and international affairs, they’ll need to show a bit more leadership on conflict prevention, civilian protection, and regional stability than they have in the past. At the same time, however, R2P’s political salience is far from certain. In securing a future for the doctrine–and, more generally, for the operational concepts of civilian protection and mass atrocities prevention–Western governments cannot afford to dismiss either the politics or the normative underpinnings of R2P in the global South.

* Unfortunately, the event was under the Chatham House Rule, so I can’t divulge his identity or institutional affiliation.

Related Reading: Oliver Steunkel, an IR professor at Sao Paulo’s Getulio Vargas Foundation, wrote a great post last November on the evolution of Brazil’s RwP doctrine, entitled, “Brazil and the responsibility while protecting.”

Early yesterday, Western media sources reported a peace agreement between Burma’s central government and representatives of the Karen National Union, the primary insurgency and local governance authority in Burma’s eastern Karen province. Since the controversial election of Burma’s civilian government last year, the country’s political development has progressed at a rapid pace. Just today, the Burmese regime announced the release of hundreds of political prisoners, including leading members of the opposition’s 1988 (8888) uprising. Western human rights organizations have tentatively applauded the prisoner release, which, due to the nature of the prisoners, appear to be a bit more sincere than the regime’s previous political theater. Within hours of the news, the U.S. State Department announced a path to normalization with the Burmese regime, starting with the deployment of an ambassador to Naypyidaw.

While Burma’s democratization process remains tentative, the Karen peace deal may prove to be a remarkable step forward for conflict resolution in the divided country. The KNU has waged a low-intensity campaign against the Burmese regime since 1949, marking the early demise of the recently-assassinated Aung San’s Panglong Agreement on ethnic minority political participation. The international community’s focus on Burma has centered on the democratization struggle, with media attention spiking during large-scale pro-democracy protests, periodic, cosmetic releases of Burma’s political prisoners, and infrequent diplomatic interactions with Aung San Suu Kyi, the country’s internationally-lauded opposition leader.

The Karen conflict, meanwhile, has received very little attention, despite its ignoble status as the persistent epicenter of the Burmese regime’s mass atrocities. Forced displacement, frequent rates of sexual violence, and widespread extrajudicial killing have characterized the eastern region’s human rights crisis, which has occurred in the all-to-familiar context of SPDC (Burma’s military)-KNU conflict. Citing the UN’s Special Rapporteur for human rights in Burma, a 2009 Harvard International Human Rights Clinic report addressed the wider humanitarian crisis in Karen State and its surrounding provinces:

The Myanmar Rapporteur has documented a large number of extrajudicial killings by the military forces in 2002. The majority of victims were reportedly IDPs who were shot after being discovered by Tatmadaw soldiers. The Myanmar Rapporteur documented reports of egregious cases involving groups of individuals stated to have taken place in the Shan and Karen States. The reports also included cases of torture and arbitrary detention that appeared to indicate that the military has used these practices as a warning to others to follow orders. In most reported cases, the torture victims were accused of being supporters of armed elements of ethnic nationality groups.

The release of Burma’s political prisoners is a symbolically significant effort, essential to effective political reconciliation between Burma’s civilian government and the pro-democracy opposition. However, the real challenge to Burma’s democratization will stem from the regime’s effort to negotiate a political settlement with Burma’s ethnic minority groups. The Karen conflict is a microcosm of a wider issue–Burma’s central government, interested in consolidating political authority and access to the border regions’ natural resource wealth, prefers a Naypyidaw-based, centralized government, while minority opposition groups prefer a federalized system. Even during Burma’s post-independence, parliamentary democracy era (1948 – 1962), minority insurgencies posed an unavoidable threat to the stability, security, and legitimacy of Burma’s central government.

After decades of marginalization by Rangoon/Naypyidaw, minority leadership appears to have little faith in the credibility of the government’s political outreach. The Burmese military continues to conduct operations in Burma’s northern Kachin state, causing instability and population displacement. As Indiana University’s David Williams wrote in an edition on “designing federalism” in Burma, the sustainability of political trust, reconciliation, and security relies on the delicate balance between cohesive, multi-ethnic governance and cultural, political, and economic autonomy for Burma’s ethnic minority groups.

If the regime makes tangible progress towards reconciliation with ethnic minority groups, Burma’s gradual emergence may prove a replicable case study for successful “constructive engagement,” a concept much belittled by human rights advocates throughout the 1990s. In contrast to, say, U.S. Sudan policy, the United States and the international community pursued a clear, transparent, and accountable diplomatic process with Burma’s military government, successfully ferrying a transition to civilian rule. The international community’s constructive engagement policies indicate the diplomatic value of compromise–rather than allowing Burma’s illegitimate elections to serve as a barrier to successful engagement, the United States, ASEAN, and other relevant stakeholders provided a clear roadmap for the country’s new civilian authorities, as well as clear incentives for cooperation and continued dialogue. U.S. engagement in an emerging Burma possesses clear strategic benefits, between increased access to natural resources, a credible buffer against China’s regional dominance, and potentially heightened levels of regional stability (fewer cross-border migrations from Burma’s ethnic minority regions, in particular). However, U.S. diplomatic compromises may also underline a resounding human rights victory, allowing for the long-awaited resolution of political abuse, violent conflict, and minority marginalization.

Update: Since the prisoner release and the U.S. government’s subsequent normalization pledge, various bloggers and human rights advocates have offered more skeptical perspectives on Burma’s reform prospects. Daniel Serwer, at Peacefare, offered a couple of critical questions on the Burmese generals’ political intentions, noting the cyclical trend in prisoner releases:

Still, it is not clear how far the Burmese generals intend things to go.  Are they opening up the system in a way that will lead to their own loss of power?  Or is this an effort to open a restricted space for civilian political competition and governance, with the generals keeping at least control of security and foreign policy?  How will they react to efforts to establish accountability for past abuses of human rights?  What if it proves difficult to extend the ceasefire with the Karen and other ethnic groups into political settlements?  Some of the political prisoners released yesterday had been released years ago, only to be re-arrested.  Could it happen again?

Similarly, Wai Hnin Pwint Thon, a London-based Burma activist and daughter of 8888 Uprising leader Mya Aye, noted the Burmese regime’s penchant for backsliding on their reform commitments:

Some people are now arguing that the release of these political prisoners is proof that there is genuine reform in Burma, and that sanctions should now be lifted. I ask them to remember that in mid-2007 there were around a thousand political prisoners in Burma. This was considered unacceptable, and the European Union, US, Canada, and Australia were debating whether to increase sanctions. Following the uprising in late 2007 the number of political prisoners almost doubled. My father was one of those jailed. Now, after all the excitement about these releases, there are still possibly around a thousand political prisoners in Burma’s jails. Compared to the situation last year, it looks like we have come a long way. Compared to the situation five years ago, it looks like we have stood still.

Meanwhile, the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, a leading Burmese pro-democracy advocacy group, re-cast the news of the prisoner release, observing the continued incarceration of ethnic minority opposition leadership:

But human rights award-wining Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP) calls the exclusion of members of the ethnic armed groups damaging to the prospect of national reconciliation in Burma. The group says that by their count around 1000 political prisoners remain in Burmese jails and that the latest amnesty is both selective and discriminatory.