Strength Through Weakness

In his effort to promote negotiations over Viet Nam, U.N. Secretary-General U Thant last week pointed with pride to his native Burma. His homeland, he told newsmen, had been faced with Communist insurrection after independence in 1948, but by themselves, the Burmese contained the Reds.

U Thant added that Burma has a 1,000-mile border with Red China, "but let me tell you, there has not been a single instance of outside help to the Communists inside Burma in the last 17 years." Had Burma accepted outside aid against the Reds, one of two things would have happened: "Either the country would be divided into two parts, or the whole country would have become Communist long ago." Finally, U Thant contended that Burma had held off Communism without the loss "of one American life" or the "expenditure of one American dollar in military assistance."

Americans, said U Thant redundantly, should know the true facts about Southeast Asia--but which facts are true about Burma?

Seeming Communists. One reason it is difficult to tell is that Burma's dictator, General Ne Win, is allergic to visitors; all transit visas are limited to 24 hours. Burma is indubitably a sovereign state, has outlawed the Communist movement, and has signed a border agreement with Peking. Its high-stepping military, duly cheered each year on Armed Forces Day, is relatively stable and competent. With some success Burma has managed to steer a perilous neutral course between the West and China, having been helped greatly by the fact that the British withdrew in relatively good order rather than at the end of a disastrous war as the French did in Indo-China.

But Burma's countryside has been racked by 17 years of warfare anyway. Besides the Communists, the Burmese army is battling such dissident tribal groups as the predominantly Protestant Karens and the hill-dwelling, opium-smoking Shans. While the fighting has nowhere come close to the proportions of the Vietnamese war, any week's reading of Burmese newspapers makes the land seem less than idyllic. Recent examples: "Rebels" have damaged the railway between Mandalay and Lashio. Five armed rebels "who seemed to be Communists" carried off a village chief and shot him. A band of police escorting seven provision-laden elephants was ambushed only seventy miles from Rangoon.

About 1,300 political prisoners (including former Premier U Nu) are held in jail or under house arrest.

Unholy Mess. Happily for Burma, its Communists spend as much time fighting against one another as against the army. The insurgent White Flag Communists, after some inner dissension, came out for Peking, while the above-ground United Workers' Party backed Moscow. The Red Flag Communists are a Trotskyite rebel group that seem moribund. Peking may not supply arms to the White Flag Communists, but it gives asylum to their leaders. When General Ne Win held 1963 peace talks with the rebel Reds, several of their chiefs arrived in Rangoon via a Red Chinese plane from Peking.

U Thant exaggerates when he says not a single American dollar has been spent on military assistance to Burma. In 1958, under a subtly termed 40-year, 3.5% loan, Washington agreed to sell Burma $8.8 million worth of equipment, ranging from Jeeps to patrol boats. Burma is potentially so rich a land that Ne Win has managed to increase foreign-exchange reserves from $170 million in 1962 to $240 million last year, largely because Burma is the world's largest exporter of rice.

Nevertheless, Ne Win's "instant socialism" is an unholy economic mess. He has nationalized everything from banks (including two Red Chinese ones) to tiny shops selling betel nuts and needles. Since the dispossessed shopkeepers were mostly Indians and Overseas Chinese, the Burmese people took the crackdown philosophically, but suffer because the new government-owned shops are so inefficiently run. Yet even as they queue up for onions and chili peppers in the drab city of Rangoon, which is filled with patched-up pagodas and sidewalks broken by the roots of banyan trees, the Burmese say, "Let's hope nothing happens to Ne Win."

Still, that public loyalty reflects Burma's earlier experience with parliamentary democracy, which was even more bungling and far more corrupt than the present government-by-army-officers.

Diplomats in Rangoon concede that, compared to the rest of Southeast Asia --with the notable exception of sturdy and prosperous little Thailand--Burma is not too badly off. In other words, it has just managed to avoid disaster. But that still leaves it far from being a pilot plant for Western policy in Asia.

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