The 200% Neutral

Most state visitors to Washington arrive on a flood tide of oratory and depart on an ebb of verbal ennui. Not the tough, tight-lipped little Asian who landed by helicopter at the White House last week. In what was probably the shortest luncheon toast ever uttered, Burma's Strongman General Ne Win, 55, raised his glass to proclaim: "I hope that these contacts will afford better understanding." Then, after two hours of low-key, getting-to-know-you talks with President Johnson and an exchange of gifts (a set of golf clubs for Ne Win, a teak coffee table for the Johnsons), the Burmese leader slipped inconspicuously out of the capital for an eleven-day tour of the U.S. It was the quietest state visit in memory.

The very fact that Burma's boss was in the U.S. was news enough. As recently as last year, it seemed that Ne Win's "Socialist Way" was leading straight to Peking's doorstep. He had contemptuously cut off American aid programs, ousted Western businessmen and missionaries, clapped a 24-hour limit on transit visas, and nationalized everything from banks to chili peppers. He posed benignly with Mao Tse-tung near Peking's Temple of Broad Charity, stood amicably beside Soviet Premier Aleksei Kosygin during a ten-day Moscow call, and kept his dry distance from U.S. Embassy officials in Rangoon. Why then the sudden appearance in Washington?

"Thirty Comrades." Ne Win, according to Washington officials, is "a 200% neutral," and he wishes to symbolize that neutrality for Peking, Moscow and Washington alike. Hence the visits to the three major cold war capitals. Just as Ne Win is no longer convinced that the U.S. wants to destroy his government, Washington has decided that--for all its dislike of the General's internal policies--Burmese independence is in the best interest of Asia.

Since Ne Win came to power in a 1962 coup that unseated Premier U Nu, Burma has been run with a firmness reminiscent of Sukarno's in the halcyon days of Indonesian leftism. As Ne Win's wife Kitty, a talkative defender of her husband's dictatorship, told her Washington hostesses last week: "You can't feed a baby steak before it has been weaned." Ne Win was one of the "Thirty Comrades" (along with U Nu) selected by the Japanese in 1941 for special training as anticolonial insurgents. As a major in the Japanese-backed Burmese independence army, he doublecrossed his mentors and became a true nationalist. When Burma won in dependence from British rule in 1948, Ne Win became Commander in Chief of the army and a high-living horseplayer to boot, with a penchant for lavish parties on Rangoon's Inya Lake.

Into the River. Ne Win's high life came to an end in 1958. The country was threatening to erupt in civil war, and Premier U Nu's government was split on the question of legalizing the Burmese Communist Party, which for ten years had been waging a guerrilla war against the Rangoon regime. Ne Win's troops moved with lightning speed in a classic coup d'etat. "We must fight the Reds tooth and nail," he proclaimed. From 1958 to 1960, Ne Win also began his fight against the Chinese and Indian merchants who dominated Burma's commerce and, by stirring strong nationalist sentiments, managed to cement the country's cracked unity. Though Ne Win turned the government back to U Nu in 1960, the old fissures soon began reappearing, and in 1962 he jailed the Cabinet and took power again, convinced that only austerity and discipline could save the country.

Economically at least, redemption is a long way off. To reduce foreign influence, Ne Win has nationalized virtually every aspect of the economy--a balm to the national ego but a painful loss in managerial skill. Burma, once the world's leading rice exporter, now must ration rice to its own people. Long queues form before the green-and-white-fronted "People's Stores" off gaudy Sule Pagoda Road when cloth is rumored to be on sale, but most customers go away emptyhanded. In Rangoon, there is a persistent shortage of everything from prawns to potatoes, thanks to bungling officeholders whose clumsy distribution system allows foodstuffs to rot in the warehouses. Tons of inedible vegetables must be dumped into the Rangoon River each year.

The Long Border. Still, Ne Win (whose name means Radiant Sun) has firm support from both the 128,000-man army and the peasantry. Though tribal warfare among the aggressive Karens, Shans and Kachins continues in Burma's forested back country, the populous river valleys south of Mandalay are quiet and reasonably content. For the scattered dissenters who occasionally raise their voices in Rangoon, Ne Win is ever ready with a stern warning --or a jail cell.

Burma shares 1,200 miles of wide-open border with Red China, and Ne Win admittedly is nervous about Chinese expansionism. He must court Peking to avoid trouble and, at the same time, steer clear of any deep involvement with the U.S., for fear of giving the Chinese a pretext for encroachment. Still, the Burmese seem to approve the U.S. stand in Southeast Asia, for it keeps Chinese attention away from their borders and themselves relatively safe.

The degree of that safety is evident from the fact that Ne Win feels free to take a 21-month leave from his capital. Before arriving in the U.S. last week, he spent six weeks in Britain (apparently for medical treatment and a few rounds of golf, his favorite diversion). From Washington, he flew on to New York for a luncheon with his fellow countryman, U.N. Secretary-General U Thant. Then, still avoiding all contact with press, TV or public, he set off on a leisurely private ramble through California and Hawaii.

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