Why we must help Myanmar escape poverty and not impose sanctions

From Prof Jeffrey D. Sachs.

Sir, In challenging my critique of economic sanctions on Myanmar, Nyan Lett (Letters, August 2) writes that "the regime managed to spend more than 60 per cent of gross domestic product on expansion of the military . . .". This is a good example of emotion overtaking reason regarding Myanmar. The authoritative Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri) puts Myanmar's military spending at 2.1 per cent of gross domestic product in the year 2000 (the most recent datum), and at an average of 3.0 per cent of gross domestic product during the period 1990-2000.

John Jackson (Letters, July 30) describes Myanmar as having "one of Asia's largest armies" but according to Sipri the armed personnel were about 1.4 per cent of the labour force in 1999 (the most recent datum), about the same as Norway, lower than France, Greece and Italy, and not very high for a country with multiple internal armed insurgencies. South Korea reported 8.8 per cent of its labour force under arms that year.

I am not condoning the lack of democracy, and certainly not blaming Myanmar's problems mainly on the sanctions. I am saying that the sanctions are counter-productive when solutions are needed to much deeper economic, ethnic, political and ecological problems faced by one of the poorest countries in the world. We should be helping Myanmar to get out of its current poverty and political trap, not pushing it in further by sanctions.

To help, we should heed the words of Derek Tonkin (Letters, August 3) when he tells us: "Many Burmese will tell you that Aung San Suu Kyi, pro-democracy leader, is their only hope. But most will also tell you that she is wrong on sanctions."

Jeffrey D. Sachs, Earth Institute, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027, US