On the Road to Nowhere.(U.S imposes sanctions on Burma)(Column)

Now that George W. Bush is discovering the shades of gray between good and evil, he might want to rethink his black-and-white approach to Burma. Last week the U.S. administration backed off its zero-carrot approach to North Korea, allowing that it would consider easing sanctions as Pyongyang begins to dismantle its nuclear weapons program. At the same time, Washington is moving in an opposite direction against Burma--imposing all-or-nothing sanctions that will be lifted only after the military junta frees democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, holds free elections and cedes power to a civilian government.

The Burma policy is a dead end. In North Korea, Bush has come to recognize that even a superpower can't bargain by sheer force and offer nothing in return for something, even when dealing with a crude dictator. In Burma, however, "they're saying give up power and then we'll talk. It doesn't make sense," says Georgetown University Asia expert David Steinberg. General Khin Nyunt became prime minister amid growing international pressure over the detention of Suu Kyi, whom the United States claims was on a hunger strike last week. So far, the pressure has only inspired the generals to dig in deeper.

They can live in a bunker and defy the West indefinitely. The most famous case of sanctions that helped bring down a ruthless government was South Africa, but the apartheid regime was deeply engaged in trade before the world united to cut it off completely. Many expected North Korea, too, to collapse under sanctions, but it has not. And, like North Korea, Burma has an agrarian, subsistence economy so backward that tougher Western sanctions don't present a significantly greater threat, yet it still produces enough to keep the narrow ruling elite in great comfort. "They will continue to survive," says Steinberg. "When you talk about a country collapsing economically, you're thinking about an industrialized country. In Burma, forget it."

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