A commitment to engagement is perhaps the most visible and pronounced foreign policy shift undertaken by the Obama administration. Judging sanctions–based efforts to punish or isolate authoritarian regimes to be unproductive, the administration has announced new approaches to engaging Cuba, Syria, Russia, Iran and, most recently, with Burma.
Burmese democracy and human rights activists have had mixed reactions to the US policy shift, but Joshua Kurlantzick cautions the U.S. to tread warily. The country’s military junta has a record of playing the international community for diplomatic or economic benefits, giving enough hints of reform to win concessions before reverting to its natural hard-line state.
Attempts to use sticks without carrots have been unproductive, Kurlantzick concedes, but “engaging with the junta has dangers as well,” he writes. “It can undermine dissidents and human rights activists, now unsure whether Washington will stand behind them.”
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