NPR's Morning Edition: Sen. Webb: U.S. Can Help Myanmar Move Forward

RENEE MONTAGNE: …Having won the release of an American in Myanmar, Virginia Senator Jim Webb is on his way home. He visited a country whose military rulers have had bad relations with the U.S. for years. He was allowed to meet with Aung San Suu Kyi, the opposition leader who spent much of the last two decades under house arrest.

STEVE INSKEEP: This morning Senator Webb is in Hanoi, Vietnam where he sat down to talk about the country once known as Burma. He remembered boarding a plane for Myanmar’s remote new capitol. The officials who met him there included the country’s leader, General Than Shwe

SEN. WEBB: I’m told that I’m the first American leader who’s ever met with him.

MR. INSKEEP: Yeah, he’s described at most as the country’s reclusive leader. I don’t know that Americans know anything more about him. What did you see? Where did you meet him?

SEN. WEBB: The reality is that he is not only a reclusive leader but that the governmental leadership in Myanmar is very isolated from the outside world. They’re isolated physically and they’re isolated in terms of the viewpoints that they receive about how the world reacts to certain things that they do. And so, it was very important for me to be able to say to them, frankly and in exactly the same characterizations that I use anywhere else, how important it is in my view that they find a way to allow Aung San Suu Kyi To participate in the political process -- that the world views the leadership of Myanmar through the way that they treat her. At the same time, I think it’s very important to say that the sanctions that have been put in place against Myanmar: we need to find a different way to deal with the problem. We have isolated the Burmese people from cultures and individuals and systems of government that could actually elevate their consciousness. And at the same time, in terms of strategy, we essentially are delivering Myanmar over to the Chinese.

INSKEEP: Oh, because they’re willing to engage with the government and we’re not?

WEBB: Well, yeah. Sanctions don't work when the largest country in the world is on your border and is buying you up. It's a huge strategic error that the United States is making. And we all want to assist and help the people of Burma to move forward, but we have to find a way that actually can do that, and allow the people of Burma to prosper and have access to the outside world.

INSKEEP: So you’d like a different approach to Myanmar. Did you get a sense from the fact that the senior leadership was receptive to you, allowed you to see who you wanted to see, allowed you to come away with an American, that they would like a different relationship with the United States?

WEBB: We’ll have to see. The fairest thing I can say is that, in this part of the world – and I’ve spent 18 years in a similar situation from where Vietnam was when I first started coming back here in 1991. It was a closed, Stalinist system in 1991 and I saw the benefit after we did our sanctions against Vietnam. Actually I was opposed to lifting sanctions as someone who fought here as a combatant, and didn’t like what happened to the people I care about, after the war ended. But I could tangibly see the benefit in terms of allowing the Vietnamese people to have contact with the outside world, and to see, step by step, how a process could evolve. It’s not perfect here in Vietnam. The interim solution in Myanmar would not be perfect. But we have to take opportunities as they arise and build on them. And I do think that if we have reciprocal gestures, and if we are careful in our response, we can assist Myanmar in moving forward, and not forget our friends along the way. That’s the approach I’ve taken here in Vietnam. I’m very close the Vietnamese community in the Unites States. In fact my wife was born here, she was a boat person, and I do think that in the art of the possible that’s what we should be trying to do in Myanmar.

INSKEEP: Senator Jim Webb of Virginia is in Hanoi, Vietnam, he’s recently left Myanmar. Thanks very much.

WEBB: Thank you.