Many have recently debated whether U.S. president Barack Obama’s foreign policy can appropriately be deemed “realist.” Whether or not it fits the academic definition, the Obama administration’s worldview has evinced an audacious level of pragmatism—a pragmatism perhaps best illustrated by Myanmar. Obama and Myanmar’s Nobel Peace Prize-winning opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, found usefully practical partners in one another and have achieved impressively idealistic ends. Continued reform there, however, will require even more hard-nosed approaches to difficult dilemmas by both the United States and Myanmar.
In 2011, the Obama administration saw the shifting political dynamics in Myanmar as an opportunity to flex its campaign-pledged pragmatism and productively engage with a traditionally hostile regime. Following a limited opening by the military government, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton became the first such official to visit Myanmar in 56 years. While conferring with the recently-released Suu Kyi, she reportedly told Clinton, “I don’t want to be an icon, I want to be a politician,” and that she was ready to get her hands dirty in the hard work of politics. (Courtesy of The Diplomat)
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