Hard Choices

by Hillary Rodham Clinton

  Back at the hotel that evening, sitting outside at a large table with the American press corps, I tried to sum up what I had learned that day. The steps the civilian government had taken were significant, including easing restrictions on media and civil society, releasing Suu Kyi from house arrest along with some two hundred other political prisoners, and enacting new labor and election laws. Thein Sein had promised me he would build on this progress and push through even more far-reaching reforms, and I wanted to believe him. But I knew that flickers of progress could easily be extinguished. There is an old Burmese proverb: “When it rains, collect water.” This was a time to consolidate reforms and lock them in for the future, so that they would become ingrained and irreversible. As I had told Thein Sein that morning, the United States was prepared to walk the path of reform with the Burmese people if they chose to keep moving in that direction.

  The flight to Rangoon took just forty minutes, but it felt like entering another world after the surreal government ghost town of Nay Pyi Taw. Rangoon is a city of more than 4 million people, with bustling streets and faded colonial charm. Decades of isolation and mismanagement had taken its toll on crumbling façades and peeling paint, but one could imagine why this place was once considered a “jewel of Asia.” The heart of Rangoon is the soaring Shwedagon Pagoda, a 2,500-year-old Buddhist temple with glistening gold towers and countless golden Buddhas. As a sign of respect for the local custom, I took off my shoes and walked barefoot through the pagoda’s magnificent halls. Security guards hate removing their shoes; it makes them feel less prepared in case of an emergency. But the American journalists thought it was great fun and loved getting a look at my toenail polish, which one described as “sexy siren red.”

  Accompanied by a throng of monks and onlookers, I lit candles and incense in front of a large Buddha. Then they brought me to one of the enormous bells that reputedly weighed forty tons. The monks handed me a gilded rod and invited me to strike the bell three times. Next, as instructed, I poured eleven cups of water over a small alabaster-white Buddha in a traditional sign of respect. “Can I make eleven wishes?” I asked. It was a fascinating introduction to Burmese culture. But this was more than sightseeing. By visiting the revered pagoda, I hoped to send a message to the people of Burma that America was interested in engaging with them, as well as with their government.

  That evening I finally met Suu Kyi in person, at the lakeside villa where American Ambassadors used to live. I wore my white jacket and black pants; the cautionary clothing memo now officially forgotten. To everyone’s amusement, Suu Kyi arrived in a similar outfit. We had a drink with Derek Mitchell and Kurt Campbell and then sat down for a private dinner, just the two of us. Her political party had been allowed to register in November 2011, and after numerous meetings among its leaders, they had decided to participate in the 2012 elections. Suu Kyi told me that she herself would run for Parliament. After so many years of forced solitude, it was a daunting prospect.

  Over dinner I offered my impressions of Thein Sein and the other government officials I had met in Nay Pyi Taw. I also shared some memories of my first run for office. She asked me many questions about the preparation and process of becoming a candidate. This was all so intensely personal for her. The legacy of her slain father, the hero of Burmese independence, weighed on her and spurred her on. That patrimony gave her a hold on the nation’s psyche, but it also created a connection to the very generals who had long imprisoned her. She was the daughter of an officer, a child of the military, and she never lost her respect for the institution and its codes. We can do business with them, she said confidently. I thought of Nelson Mandela embracing his former prison guards after his inauguration in South Africa. That had been both a moment of supreme idealism and hardheaded pragmatism. Suu Kyi had the same qualities. She was determined to change her country, and after decades of waiting, she was ready to compromise, cajole, and make common cause with her old adversaries.

  Before parting for the evening, Suu Kyi and I exchanged personal gifts. I had brought a stack of American books that I thought she would enjoy and a chew toy for her dog. She presented me with a silver necklace that she had designed herself, based on a seed pod from an ancient Burmese pattern.

  Suu Kyi and I met again the next morning, across the lake in her old childhood colonial home, with hardwood floors and sweeping ceilings. It was easy to forget that it had also been her prison for many years. She introduced me to the elders of her party, octogenarians who had lived through long years of persecution and could hardly believe the changes they were now seeing. We sat around a large round wooden table and listened to their stories. Suu Kyi has a way with people. She may have been a global celebrity and an icon in her country, but she showed these elders the respect and attention they deserved, and they loved her for it.

  Later we walked through her gardens, resplendent with pink and red blossoms. The barbed-wire barriers that bounded the property were a pointed reminder of her past seclusion. We stood on the porch, arm in arm, and spoke to the crowd of journalists who had gathered.

  “You have been an inspiration,” I told Suu Kyi. “You are standing for all the people of your country who deserve the same rights and freedoms of people everywhere.” I promised that the United States would be a friend to the people of Burma as they made their historic journey to a better future. She graciously thanked me for all the support and consultation we had given over the past months and years. “This will be the beginning of a new future for all of us, provided we can maintain it,” she said. It was the same mix of optimism and caution that we all felt.

  I left Suu Kyi’s house and drove to a nearby art gallery dedicated to work by artists from Burma’s many ethnic minority groups, who make up nearly 40 percent of the population. The walls were covered with photographs of the many faces of Burma. There was pride in their eyes, but sadness too. Ever since the country achieved independence in 1948, the Burmese military had waged war against armed separatist groups in the country’s ethnic enclaves. Atrocities were committed on both sides, and civilians were caught in the crossfire, but the Army was the primary perpetrator. These bloody conflicts were major obstacles to the new era we hoped Burma would soon enter, and I had stressed to Thein Sein and his Ministers how important it was to bring them to peaceful conclusions. Representatives from all the major ethnic groups told me how much their people had suffered in the conflicts and hoped for cease-fires. Some wondered aloud whether Burma’s new rights and freedoms would extend to them. It was a question that would haunt the reform process.

  The flickers of progress were real. If Thein Sein released more political prisoners, passed new laws protecting human rights, sought cease-fires in the ethnic conflicts, cut off military contacts with North Korea, and ensured free and fair elections in 2012, we would reciprocate by restoring full diplomatic relations and naming an Ambassador, easing sanctions, and stepping up investment and development assistance in the country. As I had told Suu Kyi, it would be action for action. I hoped my visit had provided the international support that reformers needed to bolster their credibility and push ahead with their work. On the streets of Rangoon, posters went up with photographs of my walk in the garden with Suu Kyi. Her portrait was quickly becoming almost as common as her father’s.

  Meanwhile, I wished I could have experienced more of this picturesque country, traveling up the Irrawaddy, seeing Mandalay. I promised myself that I would return one day soon with my family.

  Suu Kyi and I stayed in close touch over the following months as the reform process moved forward, speaking five times on the phone. I was delighted when, in April 2012, she won a seat in Parliament, as did more than forty of her party’s candidates, winning all but one seat they contested. This time the results were not annulled, and she was allowed to serve. Now she could put her political skills to use.

  * * *

  * * *

  In September 2012 Suu Kyi traveled to the United States for a seventeen-day tour. I remembered the wi
sh we had shared in our first phone call. I had visited her, and now she would visit me. We sat together in a cozy nook outside the kitchen in my home in Washington, just the two of us.

  The months since my visit to Burma had been full of exciting changes. Thein Sein had pulled his government slowly but surely down the path we had discussed in Nay Pyi Taw. He and I had met again over the summer at a conference in Cambodia, and he reaffirmed his commitment to reform. Hundreds of political prisoners were released, including students who organized the 1988 pro-democracy demonstrations and Buddhist monks who participated in protests in 2007. A fragile cease-fire was signed with some of the rebel groups representing ethnic minorities. Political parties were beginning to organize again, and soon privately owned newspapers would be allowed to publish for the first time in nearly half a century.

  In response, the United States had begun easing sanctions and had sworn in Derek Mitchell as our first Ambassador in years. Burma was rejoining the international community and was set to chair ASEAN in 2014, a long-standing goal. While the Arab Spring was losing its luster in the Middle East, Burma was giving the world new hope that it is indeed possible to transition peacefully from dictatorship to democracy. Its progress was bolstering the argument that a mix of sanctions and engagement could be an effective tool to drive change in even the most closed societies. If the Burmese generals could be coaxed in from the cold by the lure of international trade and respect, then perhaps no regime was irredeemable.

  Reassessing the conventional wisdom on Burma back in 2009 and then experimenting with direct engagement against the advice of many friends back home had been a risky choice, but it was paying off for the United States. Burma’s progress, in the wake of President Obama’s well-received Asian tour in November 2011, which helped erase any lingering memories from 2009 in Beijing, was making the administration’s pivot look like a success. There were still plenty of questions about what would happen next, both in Burma and across the region, but in February 2012 the journalist James Fallows, who has long experience in Asia, wrote glowingly about the pivot and the President’s trip in the Atlantic: “Much like Nixon’s approach to China, I think it will eventually be studied for its skillful combination of hard and soft power, incentives and threats, urgency and patience, plus deliberate—and effective—misdirection.” Professor Walter Russell Mead, a frequent critic of the administration, called our efforts “as decisive a diplomatic victory as anyone is likely to see.”

  Still, despite the progress we had seen in Burma, Suu Kyi looked worried when we met in Washington. When she arrived at my house, she asked to speak to me alone. The problems, she said, were that political prisoners still languished behind bars, some ethnic conflicts had actually gotten worse, and the gold rush by foreign companies was creating new opportunities for corruption.

  Suu Kyi was now in Parliament, cutting deals and forming new relationships with former adversaries, trying hard to balance all the pressures on her. Shwe Mann, the Speaker of the Lower House of Parliament, was gaining stature, and Suu Kyi had developed a positive working relationship with him; she appreciated his willingness to consult with her on important matters. The political situation was complicated by the possibility that Thein Sein, Shwe Mann, and Suu Kyi were all potential Presidential candidates in 2015. The behind-the-scenes maneuvering, shifting alliances, and political competition were getting intense. Welcome to democracy!

  Thein Sein had gotten Burma moving, but could he finish the job? If Suu Kyi withdrew her cooperation, there was no telling what would happen. International confidence might collapse. Thein Sein would become vulnerable to hard-liners who still hoped to roll back the reforms they resented. Suu Kyi and I discussed the competing pressures she faced. I sympathized because I too had experienced the push and pull of political life. And I knew from years of painful experiences how hard it can be to be cordial, let alone collegial, with those who had once been your political adversaries. I thought her best option was to grit her teeth, keep pushing Thein Sein to follow through on his commitments, and keep their partnership alive at least through the next election.

  I know it’s not easy, I said. But you are now in a position where what you’re doing is never going to be easy. You have to figure out a way to keep working together until or unless there is an alternative path. This is all part of politics. You’re on a stage now. You’re not locked away under house arrest. So you’ve got to project many different interests and roles all at once, because you are a human rights advocate, you are a member of Parliament, and you may be a future Presidential candidate. Suu Kyi understood all this, but the pressure on her was enormous. She was revered as a living saint, yet now she had to learn to wheel and deal like any elected official. It was a precarious balance.

  We moved to my dining room and joined Kurt, Derek, and Cheryl Mills. As we ate, Suu Kyi described the district she now represented in Parliament. As much as she was focused on the high drama of national politics, she was also obsessed with the minutiae of constituency service and solving problems. I remembered feeling exactly the same way when the voters of New York elected me to the U.S. Senate. If you can’t get the potholes fixed, nothing else matters.

  I had one more word of advice. The next day she would receive the Congressional Gold Medal in a lavish ceremony in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol. It would be a well-deserved recognition for her years of moral leadership. “Tomorrow, when you get that Congressional Gold Medal, I think you should say something nice about President Thein Sein,” I told her.

  The next afternoon I joined Congressional leaders and about five hundred others at the Capitol to honor Suu Kyi. When it was my turn to speak, I recalled the experience of meeting Suu Kyi in the house that had been her jail for so many years and compared it to walking through Robben Island with Nelson Mandela years before. “These two political prisoners were separated by great distances, but they were both marked by uncommon grace, generosity of spirit and unshakable will,” I said. “And they both understood something that I think we all have to grasp: the day they walked out of prison, the day the house arrest was ended, was not the end of the struggle. It was the beginning of a new phase. Overcoming the past, healing a wounded country, building a democracy, would require moving from icon to politician.” I looked at Suu Kyi and wondered whether she had thought about my suggestion from the night before. She was visibly moved by the emotion of the moment. Then she started to speak.

  “I stand here now strong in the knowledge that I’m among friends who will be with us as we continue with our task of building a nation that offers peace and prosperity and basic human rights protected by the rule of law to all who dwell within its realms,” she said. Then she added, “This task has been made possible by the reform measures instituted by President Thein Sein.” I caught her eye and smiled. “From the depths of my heart, I thank you, the people of America, and you, their representatives, for keeping us in your hearts and minds during the dark years when freedom and justice seemed beyond our reach. There will be difficulties in the way ahead, but I am confident that we shall be able to overcome all obstacles with the help and support of our friends.”

  Afterward she asked me, with a twinkle in her eye, “How was that?”

  “Oh, that was great, really great,” I said.

  “Well, I’m going to try, I’m really going to try.”

  The next week I met with Thein Sein at the United Nations General Assembly in New York and talked through many of the concerns Suu Kyi had raised with me. He seemed more in command than in our first conversation, in Nay Pyi Taw, and he listened carefully. Thein Sein was never going to be a charismatic politician, but he was proving to be an effective leader. In his speech at the UN he praised Suu Kyi as his partner in reform for the first time in a public setting and pledged to continue to work with her toward democracy.

  * * *

  * * *

  In November 2012 President Obama decided to see Burma’s “flickers of progress” for himself. This was his firs
t foreign trip since winning reelection, and it would be our last as a traveling team. After visiting together with the King of Thailand in his Bangkok hospital room, we flew to Burma for a six-hour stop, to be followed by the East Asia Summit in Cambodia. The President planned to meet with both Thein Sein and Suu Kyi and address students at Yangon University. Crowds jammed the streets as we drove by. Children waved American flags. People craned to see something that was impossible to imagine not long before.

  Rangoon felt like a different city, although it had been just under a year since my previous visit. Foreign investors had discovered Burma and were rushing to put down stakes in what they saw as the last Asian frontier. New buildings were under construction, and real estate prices were soaring. The government had begun relaxing restrictions on the internet, and access was slowly expanding. Industry experts expected the smartphone market in Burma to grow from practically no users in 2011 to 6 million by 2017. And now the President of the United States himself had come to Burma. “We’ve been waiting fifty years for this visit,” one man along the route told a reporter. “There is justice and law in the United States. I want our country to be like that.”

  For the ride from the airport, Kurt and I joined the President in the big, armored Presidential limousine that is transported everywhere the President travels (known fondly as “the Beast”), along with his close aide Valerie Jarrett. As we rolled through the city, President Obama looked out the window at the soaring golden Shwedagon Pagoda and asked what it was. Kurt told him about its central place in Burmese culture and that I had gone there to demonstrate respect for Burma’s people and history. The President asked why he wasn’t going there too. During the trip-planning process, the Secret Service had vetoed the idea of visiting the busy temple. They were concerned about the security risks posed by the crowds of worshippers (and they certainly didn’t want to take their shoes off!), and no one wanted to close down the site and inconvenience all the other visitors. Having years of familiarity with the concerns of the Secret Service, I suggested that they might agree to an unscheduled “off the record” stop, or “OTR,” as they are called. No one would know he was coming, and that would allay some of the security concerns. Plus, when the President decides he’s going to go someplace, it’s very difficult to say no. Soon enough, after the meeting with President Thein Sein, we were strolling through the ancient pagoda, surrounded by surprised Buddhist monks, about as close to being a couple of regular tourists as a President and a Secretary of State ever get.