"It will hurt the very people we are trying to help."

That's what former British premier, Margaret Thatcher said in reference to the effectiveness of economic sanctions against South Africa, whose apartheid regime so inflamed the world's sensibilities that the country became a virtual outcast.

And the occasion where the statement was made - at a Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in 1985 - meant it had to be just more than a statement.

Firstly, it underscored with prescience that as a form of warfare, sanctions will not endear the people it purports to help, to those who ought to help them.

It is warfare; and because warfare is about aggression, don't expect people upon whom it is waged to admire it.

Secondly, this is the least unimaginative of responses to a political order born and bred in a system of values, attitudes, customs and historical experiences that made the situation possible in the first place.

Thirdly and most importantly, as former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev may ruefully want to admit, the first step to a healthy political environment is economic restructuring or perestroika, before it can grow into a political oak tree that is powerful, unshakeable and enduring.

Arrogant approach

The approach by nations espousing sanctions against Burma is all of the above and perhaps even more.

Without any serious understanding of the political situation in a country, sanctions are no more than bypassing the people to whom these are aimed.

Talking to those living in repressed states - not talking past them - is what is needed in dealing with odd political situations, as Thatcher and more recently Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi concluded.

That political order cannot be arrogantly patterned by some universal claim that only one party knows best.

Prescribing sanctions is akin to a doctor saying that a standard medicine is all it takes to cure a patient, whatever the malady. This is not only shortsighted but self-defeating. In no time, the same doctor may be called upon to treat an already treated malady.

Sanctions on their own say nothing about what they need to address.

If it is meant to achieve a political end, then this is best served by engagement through diplomatic, cultural and sports exchange.

Witness the early times when 'ping pong diplomacy' proved instrumental in bridging the ideological gulf between China and the United States in the 1970s, even when sanctions were in place.

The more one looks at all the nations reeling under the wrath and grip of warfare in the form of sanctions, the more one is convinced of the ineffectiveness of this approach.

Just look at US-imposed trade sanctions against Cuba, which while trying to establish a political goal, appear to have fallen flat.

Ignorance of conditions

So why then do nations continue with something coloured with imperialistic overtones?

That answer can be traced to a simple refusal to acknowledge differences in polity that result in intolerance and clear frustration due to the inability to stamp a form of authority that mirrors these nations.

From that standpoint, though, sanctions would be ineffective as an instrument of political policy because it is bred out of ignorance of existing social conditions.
Instead, it builds prejudice leading to the build up of a complex that borders on hysteria the minute countries like Burma or any other nation steps out of line.

Thatcher realised this 20 years ago. US President George W Bush could learn from her in dealing with supposedly 'difficult' nations.

If anyone needs to talk to Burma, get on the phone and ask the regime what needs to be done to promote change.

JAYA PRAKASH lectures in journalism at Beacon School of Technology in Singapore.