Myanmar - Obama Presidency Oral History

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Stephanie Valencia

...and Korea, the Philippines, Vietnam, Burma . And I think one of the bigges...

Tommy Vietor

...time, your job was to really care about Burma , and learn about the normalizatio...

Daniel Russel

...stuff only to say that I had worked on Burma , visited Burma, and then accompanie...
...say that I had worked on Burma, visited Burma , and then accompanied Hillary Clinto...
...think, 2012—whenever it was she went to Burma —before I went over to the Stat...
...Chinese, these businessmen, in parts of Burma that have really just taken over. Ther...
...impact, as in his decision to visit Myanmar ; even the invitation to Thein Sein...

...it wasn't quite like the coup in Myanmar , where they immediately imprisone...
...on, and we didn't get that deep into Burma . But I think the big one is really i...

Derek Mitchell

...and policy coordinator for Burma , with rank of ambassador, at th...
...in 2012, he was appointed ambassador to Burma , the first to ambassador there i...
...important to the work that you did on Burma or in the Asia-Pacific region in th...
...particularly when I got to work on Burma . It sort of set me up with, I had bot...
...cover to cover, “Why am I reading about Burma ?” I was a self-identified Chin...

...And I said, “I'll never, ever use Burma . Why am I reading this book?” And ...
...someday I actually did something with Burma .” Fast-forward to NDI 1995, I wake u...
...acceptance speech and tell the story of Burma . I did the film. I interviewed he...
...her for the film to tell the story of Burma ; we showed it on the margins of th...
...her and became deeply immersed in the Burma issue, got to know a lot o...
...to know a lot of relationships in the Burma human rights community and becam...
...and national security—my heart is with Burma . For years after I stopped workin...
...I really didn't do anything more with Burma . But I kept following it and kep...
...it and kept saying, “My heart is with Burma , you have—my head is with the broade...
...wrote a Foreign Affairs article on Burma . I think it's “Asia's Forgotte...
...you beginning to see the question of Burma as more central to US strategy i...
...great interest in what was happening in Burma . The first lady, Laura Bush, wa...
...the NSC [National Security Council] on Burma . They imposed a series of sanctions o...
...They imposed a series of sanctions on Burma . It was very much an isolatio...
...Why don't you just pitch your ideas on Burma ? Because you have some new ideas o...
...Because you have some new ideas on Burma .” So, literally on the back of a...
...I said, “We need a new approach to Burma . We need to maintain our sanctions. W...
...right after the Saffron Revolution in Burma , where the monks had gone out i...
...alms. It was a very dramatic moment in Burma 's democracy movement, human right...
...to move forward to your time working on Burma , and maybe the third iteration in you...
...were things happening with regard to Burma in the administration, and in Burm...
...to Burma in the administration, and in Burma itself, earlier than that, but how di...
...come back to intersect with that of Burma ? What's interesting is that in tha...
...envoy who is focused uniquely on Burma to herd all the cats.” We had ver...
...had just done a revision, a review of Burma policy in 2009, at State Department...
...So it really came back to me; because Burma became an issue for the administration...
...Taiwan and China. So, I think they saw Burma as—if you look at the geography, it'...
...envoy position. What about events in Burma itself? There were elections in 2010...
...There were elections in 2010. Some Burma watchers kind of heralded them as ...
...might have prompted more attention on Burma ? How did you view those? Was that a...
...Cyclone Nargis, which destroyed Burma in 2008, led to hundreds of thousand...
...“Okay.” Everyone was skeptical, because Burma 's had false springs for many years...
...[Aung San], who's the iconic leader of Burma , there were new things happening. S...
...weren't right? Absolutely. I had done Burma long enough and was skeptical lon...
...United States in particular, carry in Burma , and why? Obviously, they'r...
...of affection for the United States in Burma , among the people. And that includes...
...and any bank that does business with Burma is then sanctioned—that we would no...
...we would not work with—that meant Burma , they couldn't be part of th...
...thing that was important for this whole Burma issue, is the lady—in my first visi...
...was a mindset potentially—certainly on Burma , which would explode our policy befor...
...and people were very suspicious in Burma of what was really happening. The...
...official publication, the New Light of Myanmar , was like Pravda on a bad day. The...
...ends with you becoming ambassador to Burma . [INTERRUPTION] How does the stor...
...there, I traveled to Thailand; because Burma does not just exist in Burma. There'...
...because Burma does not just exist in Burma . There's also exiles, ethnic folks i...
...don't care if there'd be democracy in Burma , it would not be worth it. Literally...
...we talk about your time in in Burma , I want to come back to the issue o...
...and he said, “Look, our approach to Burma hasn't worked. These sanctions are no...
...for twenty years, a unique interest in Burma and in Aung San Suu Kyi, personally...
...perspective on what was going on inside Burma . Also, for McConnell, it's obviousl...
...speaking to some of the same forces in Burma that the administration was speakin...
...to, so you didn't have factionalism in Burma replicated in the United States. But ...
...waiting for failure, assuming that Burma could never change, it could neve...
...there in a few lines as she talks about Burma , because of the timing, late 2011 whe...
...going on, but not for me. And I'd done Burma , as we talked about, for many years...
...years. Every context is unique. And Burma was certainly a unique context. I...
...your wife and your dog make the trip to Burma , and—I actually don't know, is the U...
...of the complexities of what Burma represented. It was different tha...
...the trajectory of the relationship with Burma in the later years of th...
...to the Rohingya that would work for Burma , that would work for the United State...
...once that started, no politician in Myanmar would gain a vote by standing up fo...
...Yangon, they say, “We are traveling to Burma .” [Laughs] I mean, they don't conside...
...I want to backtrack to Obama's visit to Burma in November of 2012. I'm curious wha...
...approach to Asia, what significance Burma had for him. I guess my sense—and yo...
...And I think it was not just about Burma , to be honest. It was also abou...
...American president ever to go to Burma , that he was there. People just wer...
...recent modern history, the massacre in Burma that happened on August eighth...
...we get to the end of your time in Burma , I did want to ask about China, whic...
...in the policy as well. Where did Burma fit in that, and how did you se...
...the word “China” whenever talking about Burma , because I feared a few things. On...
...make it about China. But when I went to Burma on my first visit, much of what the...
...in the eighteenth century, invasions of Burma by China, and have been through th...
...that from what's happening here in Burma .” But then, they had three Chines...
...here. It's not about you. It's about Burma . It's in our interest that the...
...And we, of course, have interest in Burma 's own sovereignty and having ...
...is on norms and values. Our vision for Burma is like Burma's vision for itself...
...values. Our vision for Burma is like Burma 's vision for itself, which i...
...Burmese ambassador, in an interview in Burma , said, “We need to do more corporat...
...these norms and winning vis-à-vis Burma . That's frankly—if I may say, this i...
...It was a microcosm during my days in Burma of what we now see writ large...
...a country seeking sovereignty against a Burma that will empower governments to coerc...
...talking about China in the context of Burma . That's a beautiful illustration...
...in October, the US lifts sanctions on Burma . A number of things had happened i...
...do dollar-denominated transactions with Burma . You couldn't do normal trade. Ther...
...the notion of having sanctions—that “ Burma ” and then next to it is the wor...
...the way for Daw Suu, I think, and for Burma to take the next step. I think th...
...as somebody who had been thinking about Burma for more than twenty years, what U...
...was able to achieve with regard to Burma —and maybe what it wasn't able t...
...the military, the opposition in Burma , civil society out there, the broade...
...spoken about it in the case of Burma , so I think we'll wrap it up there...
...and policy coordinator for Burma . And in 2012, he was appointe...
...in 2012, he was appointed ambassador to Burma , the first US ambassador there i...
...the first visit of President Obama to Burma , which was the first visit of ...
...first visit of a sitting president to Burma ever—it was also the second visit o...
...San Suu Kyi, the democracy leader of Burma , which was the highlight of that trip...
...who was the former military leader of Burma , who's now the head of the parliament...
...a third story doesn't have to deal with Burma , if I have that right, but from you...
...division, which typically stopped at Burma —State Department or the NSC—extende...
...trial or test, when I had to go to Burma and work with the military. I didn'...
...of those, particularly the ones from Burma , and I just thought of the on...

Elizabeth Phu

...refugees. The exodus of refugees from Myanmar , from North Africa, from the Middl...
...more than half of my time working on Burma . We had the Saffron Revolution i...
...we had Cyclone Nargis that had ravished Burma . That was one of the hardest things t...
...the conversations we were having with Burma at that time and Aung San Suu Kyi ha...
...was it like for you having worked on Burma , as you said, under circumstances tha...

...now understanding what's going on in Burma now. But in 2015, you could not hel...
...May of 2015 when I traveled with Ben to Burma and to Laos, because elections in Burm...
...Burma and to Laos, because elections in Burma were coming up in the fall, and in 201...
...specific issues. We briefly touched on Burma and Myanmar. Where did that stand whe...
...issues. We briefly touched on Burma and Myanmar . Where did that stand when you cam...
...We had a very capable ambassador in Burma , Derek Mitchell, who kept in clos...
...example, we still didn't go to using Myanmar . It's symbolic. It's not a big deal...

Rumana Ahmed

...got to organize for him when we went to Myanmar , with the Rohingya leaders an...
...well. Were you on one of the trips to Myanmar ? Yes. I went on all the trips wit...
...especially 2014 and 2015. We went to Myanmar twice and then Laos three times. Yes, ...
...In fact, the first time we went to Myanmar together was right before the electio...
...didn't go on all the trips. But for Myanmar and Laos, those two years, I went o...

...issue, in terms of what's happening in Myanmar . What was great about it was that Be...
...roundtables for him while he was in Myanmar . One of them, I worked with our U...
...I worked with her to identify others in Myanmar that we should hear from directly o...

Susan Rice

...of relations with countries like Myanmar , also deepening engagement i...

Hadi Pir

...Iraqis, from Africa, from Ukraine, from Burma , all over. But it was easier for me t...

Michael Posner

...it was the opening to a country like Burma , whether it was policy towards Iran...
...tell me, but that kind of thing. The Burma , Myanmar, case is one I'm very prou...
...but that kind of thing. The Burma, Myanmar , case is one I'm very proud of, eve...
...things I said at that meeting was, “ Burma has probably more long-term politica...
...was a visit by Secretary Clinton to Burma . So I'm pushing, and I'm meeting som...

...prevailed. Secretary Clinton did go to Burma in, I think, December of that year. ...
...left. We didn't deal with the fact that Burma 's still run by basically a militar...
...we have a mixed picture in a place like Burma , where though the political prisoner...

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Myanmar - Obama Presidency Oral History

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