 Hi, I'm Dave McCray. I'm a research fellow in the East Asia program at the Lowy Institute. And I'm Ernie Bauer, and I'm the chair for Southeast Asian Studies here at CSIS in Washington. Welcome, Ernie. Today we'll be discussing Myanmar, previously a pariah state, but in the last two years a standout example of political change in Southeast Asia. Under President Thane Sehn, we've seen restrictions on political expression relaxed, political prisoners released, the opposition parties welcomed back into parliament through limited by elections that have seen Aung San Suu Kyi herself become an MP. But Myanmar is still not a democracy. Competitive elections won't be held to 2015, and the Constitution still grants the military 25% of seats in parliament and prevents Aung San Suu Kyi from running for president. We've also seen violence against the Rohingya minority as well as other internal conflicts which have grabbed international attention, which created a dilemma for countries that have previously applied sanctions as to whether to engage and how. Ernie, what has been the U.S. approach to this situation? Well, I think, you know, you've got to watch where the president himself has gone. You know, he, Dave, you're probably aware, he actually took, he took the decision to visit Myanmar himself, which is, it was pretty extraordinary decision from the White House and from President Obama. I think that the read in Washington is that this is a historic opportunity to promote economic and political change. And actually in the reverse order, we usually see it in Southeast Asia. Most countries have done economic reform and then followed that with political reform. Myanmar is trying it a different way, trying to lead with political reform and have economic reform provide momentum for that change. And I think Washington has bought into that approach. Even the harshest high priest of sanctions in our Senate, Mitch McConnell, has visited Myanmar and has come back and said that he would not, he would not favor extension of sanctions. No, Australia has been very much the same. In fact, I think Australia was the first country to relax economic sanctions. And after that, our foreign minister, Senator Bob Carr, has really actively lobbied the European Union in particular earlier this year to remove rather than simply suspend sanctions. And I think that reflects, again, as you've met with the United States, a desire to support reforms. It also reflects that you mentioned political change has preceded economic change, the tremendous poverty in Myanmar and opening up a chance to address some of that. Also, in Australia's case, the foreign minister has very much depicted this as a way of aligning Australia's approach more closely with what the ASEAN states have pursued over previous years of engaging rather than a punitive approach. Of course, this still does leave, as I mentioned, the human rights issues. How has the U.S. addressed this within the context of removing sanctions? Well, I think, you know, you rightly point out that Australia's been a leader here. And I think this is a really important opportunity for the United States, Australia, Japan and India to work to strengthen ASEAN while we support political and economic reform and the advancement of human rights in Myanmar. So we all have our own interests there, commercial and otherwise. But I think we need to work together behind an ASEAN lead, particularly on issues like human rights. So I would, from a policy perspective, Dave, I think a good idea for us as we approach the human rights issues in Myanmar is to try to support the ASEAN Human Rights Commission and its engagement of Myanmar and provide them with support, training, on-the-ground joint meetings with key players in Myanmar. And I think that will strengthen not only our ties and the alliance, but it will help us work together to strengthen ASEAN and promote good results in Myanmar. Okay. On another front, on military ties, Australia and its White Paper earlier this year announced that it would restore a resident defence attaché and also resume military ties in the non-controversial areas of disaster relief, humanitarian relief, so on and so forth. What has the U.S. been doing on defence engagement with Myanmar and what can it achieve through that? You know, we're really leaning forward on this. The Myanmar government and the military has asked for engagement and support, not on lethal training, but really on doctrine and civil rights and how to increase civilian leadership in the military. So these are good areas to work on. And we have begun actual direct training in some of those areas in Myanmar. And we will use institutions like the AP, CSS in Hawaii, and I think eventually our IMET program to do this training. But again, it's training we could do together with Australia and also possibly under the ASEAN Defence Ministers Plus might be a good opportunity for the joint militaries regionally or the select militaries that are willing to do joint training and help support the mill-to-mill or the advancement and the modernization and professionalization of the Myanmar military. But we're keenly interested in this subject here in Washington. Sure, and multilateral engagement is also an option and Australia has broached for its own defence engagement. And you know, with the level certainly that Australia is talking about of defence engagement, I don't think anyone imagines that this is going to transform the Myanmar military, still an extremely powerful institution within the country and one that's been closed off for so long. But I guess, again, it's this calculation that at an overall moment of political change, it's a chance to try to affect some change. Finally, Ernie, what do you see as the role of aid in supporting the political and economic change happening in Myanmar? I think aid and development assistance is going to be a huge a huge enterprise. In fact, one of our biggest Myanmar and Yangon is becoming one of our biggest aid missions in the region now. And I know that that's true for AusAid too. I hate to sound like a broken record here, but you know, this is exactly the kind of the coordination of efforts on aid, sort of looking at the spectrum of who's got particular talents and areas ranging from government governance to rule of law to IT to soft and then hard infrastructure is something that the donors in Myanmar should try to coordinate. There are, you know, attempts, as you well know, Dave, on coordination of aid. But I think there has to be room for smaller groups of like-minded countries to team up and coordinate our assistance because, as you'll know from your trips to the region and to Napodaw and Yangon, I think the biggest issue is their absorptive capacity to receive this assistance and then digest it and actually act on it. Sure. And I mean, it's a situation where previously you've had a regime that has neglected even some of the most basic functions of government. I mean, there hasn't been a census for 30 years. Australia is very much focusing on basic education. And so certainly the opportunities to support change through aid are large. But as you say, when you have had such a limited bureaucratic capacity, the ability to absorb that is difficult. And I think that's true of, if we look back to when Indonesia democratized with the civil society there as well, you know, very important to support civil society as a check on political change. But when you're providing assistance to civil society groups, it's not always the case that more is always better because, again, you have to find some common ground on the sorts of issues that these civil society groups can raise, look at their capacity to absorb aid, and also the capacity of donor countries to manage the programs they're supporting. Ernie, it's been great to talk to you today. And I hope we can talk Southeast Asia again in the near future. Thanks for the time, Dave. And great to connect across the Pacific here. Good luck down under with your elections. Thank you. Cheers.