One of the most distinguished Western observers of modern Myanmar, Professor David Steinberg has passed away at 96. Steinberg was a diplomat, development worker, scholar and public intellectual who specialized in Myanmar, Korea and broader international relations.
Educated at Dartmouth in the United States, Steinberg was one of the last American exchange students to China in 1948 and 1949, before the Communist revolution expelled many foreigners. He went on to study at Harvard University and the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) before joining the Asia Foundation.
He was stationed in then-Burma from 1958 to 1962, when the military coup d’etat of General Ne Win forced most Westerners out of the country. He was then stationed in Hong Kong and South Korea for the foundation before joining the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), where he was posted to Bangkok for three years.
Steinberg was instrumental in assisting the reopening of the Asia Foundation office in Yangon in 2013 after an absence of over 50 years. He also generously donated his sizeable Myanmar-related book collection to the office in 2019, just two years before the 2021 coup forced its closure.
Steinberg was well-known as a professor of Asian Studies at Georgetown University for many years. His academic career spanned 14 books, most on Myanmar, but several too on Korea, along with 150 monographs, reports and book chapters, and some 300 commentaries and opinion pieces, including in Asia Times.
He continued to write for a number of publications well into 2024, including The Irrawaddy and Frontier Myanmar. His approach to understanding Myanmar was always multi-disciplinary, seeking a convergence of diplomatic perspectives, academic inquiry and the practicalities of development work.
In a 2007 interview, he said, “I would characterize my work as trying to bridge the gaps between official policies, the academic community, and the non-profit field. So those in each sector would probably complain that I am not sufficiently committed to their approach (either theory or practice). I firmly believe that these three sectors can enrich each other and their programs.”
Quite presciently, given the state of civil war and widespread suffering in Myanmar now, he provided advice to younger scholars. “In whatever field you are in, think what your research and study might contribute, directly or indirectly, to increased understanding of the myriad problems facing the people of that country, and thus in internal and external capacities to mitigate their sorry state. There are good theoretical and intellectual reasons for studying Burma, but the needs in that society seem paramount to me at this stage.”
Steinberg was a trenchant critic of Western economic sanctions policies on Myanmar, prompting a great deal of vitriol from many activists. But his perspectives were ultimately based on a mixture of evidence-based technical criticism and humanist concerns over how sanctions impacted average Myanmar people.
He was also a proponent of critical engagement with Myanmar’s previous military regimes. His critics tended to obscure his long time based in the country as representative of the Asia Foundation, which he remembered with great compassion. These critics tended to misrepresent his positions at times, forgetting that he was a supporter of sanctions against arms sales to the country imposed following the 1988 coup d’etat.
In 2006, Steinberg was included in a National League for Democracy list of “Enemies of the Burmese Revolution.” He wrote about his listing in an article from late-2023 in The Irrawaddy: “(m)ost of the names had titles, military units and comments on their views. The vast majority of those included were military, but there were a large number of foreigners of varying nationalities. Since Steinberg comes close to the end of the alphabet, I was listed as number 320, with a note that I was opposed to the sanctions policy of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. That was accurate. I know not the degree of intensity against me, but I did not seem to suffer because of my inclusion.”
This analyst first met Professor Steinberg at an Australian National University (ANU) Burma/Myanmar Update conference in Canberra in 1998. He was always genuinely supportive of emerging scholars, full of interest and advice, and craved hearing a multitude of diverse research and perspectives. He attended the biannual Burma/Myanmar Studies Conference in Singapore ten years ago, at the age of 86, attended every session and was always swamped by old friends and new admirers. And he always spoke his mind.
I had a vociferous exchange with Steinberg on issues of sanctions and human rights accountability in Myanmar on the pages of Asia Times in 2011. It was a mark of his character that he bore no grudges and I always valued his friendship, insight and counsel, even when we disagreed.
As he once told me, “we can agree on 95% of issues and that other 5% we can continue to disagree but always discuss” he once told me in Washington. This was the indisputable gentleman scholar side to him. He was always ready to discuss, debate and share information with grace and wit. Even his detractors had to admit he was a class act when debates in Washington DC became, as they often did, heated.
We maintained a regular correspondence until shortly before his death. Touching on a variety of Myanmar subjects and giving feedback on each other’s published articles, Professor Steinberg also regularly regaled me with numerous anecdotes, including reminiscing in an email last year about a lunch at Harvard in 1956 with Henry Kissinger. With his characteristic understatement, he said of Kissinger, “(w)e all know that being intelligent does not necessarily result in better policies.”
To say that Professor Steinberg was dismayed at the 2021 military seizure of power would be an understatement. He was genuinely pained as only someone with 70 years of experience with Myanmar could be.
He was thrilled, and in some respects vindicated, by the early years of the post-2011 “transition”, which at first seemed to expand openings and possibilities more than anyone had predicted. Yet even before the coup, he had growing concerns over the direction the country was taking under the National League for Democracy, especially the malevolent maneuverings of the military.
His post-coup writings conveyed those concerns, but as always he thought and argued with independence, reason and, as ever, a sense of how to improve the dire conditions of the country and its people.
His analysis was markedly more thoughtful, compassionate and informed than commentators half his age, and as always he decried those “bound in webs of self-deception or propaganda” – propaganda that permeates political action on Myanmar – from Myanmar opposition figures and their Western courtiers.
In one of his pieces from earlier this year, he wrote of the challenges of “assembling” a new Myanmar. “The present leadership of all conflicting parties has proven to be inept at best, and incompetent in negotiating the compromises necessary for reassembly. A new generation of leaders of all groups willing to think constructively is urgently needed, but power is a corrosive force that often undercuts reality and is rarely voluntarily discarded…The present chaos is unacceptable to all parties, and yet no group has sought viable alternatives. There is a need for dialogue, discussion and compromise.”
As Myanmar reassembles for a difficult future, the legacy of Professor Steinberg will provide invaluable markers for what failed in the past. But most importantly will be how he approached thinking and writing: with clarity, honesty and commitment.
David Scott Mathieson is an independent analyst working on conflict, humanitarian and human rights issues on Myanmar
