Burma’s March towards Progress
Last week, the leader of the political opposition in Myanmar (Burma), Aung San Suu Kyi, made her first step on United States soil in more than 40 years, after a culmination of over a year and a half of new reforms in her country and after 15 years of house arrest. Looking at the political situation in Burma, there has been a basic and very long power struggle between the former ruling military junta (which still controls the puppet government) and Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (which advocates reform).
The military junta has always been debating whether to choose to reform or maintain status quo (which means heavy economic and political sanctions by nearly all western countries), but the sticking point for more than two decades is whether they should work with Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy (NLD). This has been true on the flip side as well, since the same two choices — cooperate or not — has been vigorously debated within the NLD as well. Both have been wary and distrustful of each other, but they are suddenly working together now. We can make a model (albeit greatly simplified) of this decision with a payoff matrix to see a possible explanation of their reasoning.
In looking at the chart above, let’s first ignore the first block (+2, +2), and look at (-1, +1). This has been the decision for the better part of the past two decades, in which the military has been antagonistic towards the NLD. The military gains a little since they can maintain power while the NLD has negative benefit since they’ve been consistently — and violently — crushed. Likewise, if the military would like to cooperate, but the NLD refuses, then the military would be unable to improve their image in the western world or be able to have sanctions lifted (since many countries require that the military work with the NLD before lifting them). And, the status quo choice (+1, +1), a decision by both to not cooperate, is a Nash equilibrium, where both sides pursue their own interests, and both gain a little. This has been the choice for the better part of two decades.
That changed, however, when Aung San Suu Kyi was released in 2010, and both parties chose (+2, +2). What’s interesting is that they both saw that there was much to gain if they chose to work together. To be clear, though, we can only model the thought process, as only hindsight can guarantee that choosing to work together could actually work. There are far, far more variables to consider that can affect the outcome than we can model, but to keep things simple, this model effectively represents the thought process.
Clearly, though, both believed reform could result in a mutually beneficial situation, and indeed, the military has had much of the country’s sanctions removed because of its willingness to reform with the NLD, and the NLD has greatly increased their political power and have had many of their imprisoned colleagues released. The chart doesn’t guarantee reality, though, as the payoff chart, in this case, is more of a mental reasoning. Both believe that the payoff will be greater, but many variables can affect the actual success. For now, we can only observe how things will roll out.