Excerpt from U.S. SANCTIONS AGAINST BURMA A Failure on All Fronts by Leon T. Hadar

Burma has not traditionally been a top foreign policy concern for Washington, although it does have some limited effect on U.S. economic and strategic interests as well as on counternarcotics policy. (Burma is the world's largest grower of opium.)

Washington has sought to isolate Burma since the State Law and Order Restoration Council came to power in 1988, and especially since it refused to transfer power in 1990 to the National League for Democracy, which had defeated the SLORC in an open election. (Burma's ruling junta officially abolished the SLORC in November 1997, only to replace it with the equally repressive State Peace and Development Council.)

The United States has refused, among other things, to recognize the government's change of the country's name to Myanmar, but it has maintained limited diplomatic and economic ties as well as counternarcotics cooperation with Rangoon. In 1990 Washington withdrew its ambassador from Rangoon, and since then it has opposed Burma's membership in various multilateral financial organizations, refused to approve licenses for the export of military-related items to Burma, and imposed limited economic sanctions on that country (for example, suspending Burma from the U.S. Generalized System of Preferences).

Since 1990 the U.S. policy of isolating Burma has been rejected by America's trade partners in Asia, who happen also to be Burma's major trade partners, but it has received some symbolic backing from Washington's Western allies.

The entire document is available on http://www.cato.org/pubs/trade/tpa-001.html