Francis Christophe, Asialyst, 3/5/2021
Translated by Fausto Giudice
The West knows this. The Achilles heel of the coup generals in Burma is energy. They are under the financial influence of a complex arrangement for the exploitation of a huge gas field. The whole thing was designed and implemented by Total in partnership with Chevron. France and the United States therefore have a decisive weapon in their hands. While Paris still does not seem to want to use this lever, a bipartisan group in the Senate in Washington has asked Joe Biden to impose sanctions where it hurts the Burmese junta.
Burmese General Min Aung Hlaing, head of the junta that overthrew the civilian government of Aung San Suu Kyi in a coup on January 1, 2021. (Source: Le Devoir)
All parties involved in the Burmese maelstrom discovered on April 28 that a decisive step had been taken in the thirty-year saga of sanctions against the successive juntas in power in Burma. A Reuters dispatch, picked up by some of the international media, announced the suspension of a veritable sword of Damocles over the heads of the February 1 coup generals. The report exposes some of the peculiarities that occurred in the U.S. Senate last week, surprising senior analysts consulted by Asialyst.
Since Donald Trump took office in January 2017 until
April 28, 2021, no bipartisan group had been able to emerge in the Senate, so
deep is the ideological gap separating Republicans and Democrats. However, such
a group has just been formed for the declared purpose of calling at the highest
level of the Biden administration for sanctions explicitly targeting the MOGE
(Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise), the main currency pump of the successive
juntas that have been bleeding Burma for 30 years. [Read letter from the Senators to Blinken and Yellen]
